I uploaded a william s burroughs .pdf/.doc collection, featuring quite a bit of his work (though not all): http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YUFP9QUA ... contained within: cities of the red night, the soft machine, the ticket that exploded (my fav.), nova express, naked lunch, queer, exterminator!, four horsemen of the apocalypse, electronic revolution, naked scientology, immortality, and the yage letters (with allen ginsberg). I know I left out Junkie, but you can find like a 40kb .txt file of that pretty easily.

My yearbook profile's general info section says, "William S. Burroughs 4eva. Takeshi Kitano is king. That is all."

to say that Beats are not relevant in 2010 is just absurd. Most of the narratives are about youth coming of age, friendship, sexuality and experimentation. That's going to be relevant for an awful long time, at least as long as we continue to churn out "youth".

And as for writing quality, there are some passages in NL, Soft Machine, Wild Boys, etc. that are very well written, touching and hilarious. I don't read WSB nearly as much as I used to, but when I do, it's all still there. Last Words of Dutch Schultz, Yage Letters and Roosevelt after Inauguration are all quite good. Soft Machine and NL are modern classics, in the same stature as the best of world lit.

Ligotti is a decent horror writer. I don't find him very entertaining, but then horror isn't really my thing...

Why? You'll still be "above it."

I bought it like one or two years ago. still haven't read it. I've been reading Cities of the Red Night.