The life of William S. Burroughs, best known as the author of Naked Lunch and Junky and one of the godfathers of the ÒBeatÓ generation, has been studied and documented by his fans and scholars of Beat culture. Author Rob Johnson now shares a little-known chapter in Burroughs's life-his years in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. The Lost Years of William S. Burroughs recounts the years 1946-1949, when Burroughs lived in the Texas Valley as a farmer.
Burroughs experiences in South Texas shed light on his life in the period just before he began writing his first book, Junky. He moved there to try his hand at making a living off the land after a run-in with the law in New York City. On his fifty-acre spread near Edinburg, he raised crops such as citrus, cotton, carrots, and peas. He also attempted to grow a different kind of cash crop-marijuana and opium poppies-on land he purchased and moved to in New Waverly, Texas, but that crop failed and he returned to the Valley.
Burroughs's life in South Texas was just as excessive and dangerous as it was in the more exotic locations he made his home, and his circle of friends there was just as Beat. Other Beat writers move in and out of Johnson's narrative, which includes the infamous ÒWilliam TellÓ episode in Mexico in which Burroughs accidentally shot and killed his wife trying to shoot a glass on her head. As a setting in his work, the Valley is central in Junky (1953), ÒTiger in the ValleyÓ (an unpublished 1955 short story), and to a lesser extent in Queer (1985). It recurs as a setting in almost all of his books, in some form or other. The Lost Years of William S. Burroughs provides insight into the life of this famed American writer and how his years in the Valley influenced his writing. Johnson says, ÒBurroughs was, at heart, an explorer, and his life in the Valley turned out to be a test run for-and a pathway to-his future explorations.Ó

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