He referred to his transplanted liver as his "new wife." He pretty much rejected his own life, however, symbolized in a curious way by his refusal to take anti-rejection drugs, and died before 35. His famous father comments on this in the first paragraph of a letter to a friend, followed by several other paragraphs about the burden of his own fame and his own considerable addictions. In this collection of letters, poems and unfinished writings, Ohle (U. of Kansas) lets the younger Burroughs speak for himself. The lad probably would have been charming had his father not shot his mother to death; the resulting descent into drugs and alcohol and the deeper descent into writing that resulted are punctuated with the darkest humor possible. Maybe he knew even in his death he would get no more than one paragraph of attention from his father. Annotation 2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
