But only the foolhardy few would expect conventionality to shackle Beat's least categorised player, and soon he is ecstatically shipping his young family to the paradise of Mexico -- "The way things look from here, don't know as I'll ever want to go back to the States" -- until the infamous death of his second wife.

The William Tell-inspired accident that did for Joan Vollmer Burroughs has been signposted by the man himself as the kick-start for his art and forms the nucleus of Cronenberg's film (staged in essence twice), so there is some perversity to be gained from the fact that at the time (1951) it rates barely even a footnote, left until 1955 before being dealt with in any real detail by her executioner; these letters are more concerned with the legalities of Mexican gaols and his subsequent expulsion (seemingly the accepted norm with foreign transgressors). It's from about this time that a novel debut -- Junky -- stems, but already Burroughs is signalling deep dissatisfaction with orthodox narrative technique: "A medium suitable for me does not yet exist, unless I invent it."

Fantastic and grotesque South American excursions in pursuit of a legendary jungle narcotic follow, before he washes up in Tangier and makes the acquaintance of Brion Gysin and fellow novelist Paul Bowles ("that shameless faker"), key members of the stand-offish expatriate community. Both would later be seen as valued friends, while, despite some initial animosity, Tangier itself metamorphoses into Interzone, and Burroughs' immersions in the indigenous sex (by now he was strictly homosexual) and drug culture are narrated by "Bill" or even "Bill Lee" in extraordinary streams of consciousness -- or routines, as he had it -- and posted back to now agent Ginsberg, and Beat supremo Jack Kerouac.

As the lack of conventional narrative in The Naked Lunch (forged from this material and "written to reveal the junk virus, the manner in which it operates, and the manner in which it can be brought under control") suggests, these early novels, although always conceived as novels, were never penned in linear fashion. The letters are studded with editing directions, reorganisations of text, and fresh ideas; the Tangier period is an astonishingly rich period, a monologue on life as an addict and the characters it throws up.

More surprising however is a vision of Burroughs as pliant author. Ginsberg receives instructions to ensure material is acceptable to potential publishers, commerciality considered a reason enough for change. The book ends with the storm of controversy and legal difficulties that greeted The Naked Lunch's eventual Parisian publication.

Less well documented previously, and therefore even more intriguing, is a curious romanticism, from an unexpected tenderness towards his then boyfriend, Kiki (also key to Cronenberg's text), to longings for Ginsberg (by now the nascent poet of Howl). It is indeed this and the often scatological humour that keeps these letters from being just dry academia. Editor Oliver Harris is to be commended for performing his task near flawlessly, from the copious footnotes, to an extensive introduction detailing known information for the period -- a useful screen through which to filter Burroughs' own thoughts -- ensuring the reader access to all the salient facts.

Of course, any notion that Burroughs the man is at once his own very best creation is efficiently derided as "pansy shit about living his art", but this volume makes undeniable the sense that, like it or not, the ornery croak-voiced, gun-toting junk prophet is as much his own character as any Spare Ass Annie or Dr Benway. This is an elaborate, often absurd life, self-documented with some accuracy in his fiction, but The Letters is the pure, undiluted Burroughs mindset, and leaves the case to be made for this colossal, indispensable tome as his undisputed masterpiece.