In this intelligent book, Jamie Russell offers the first queer reading of Burroughs' novels. He explores how the novels of Burroughs can be seen as a sustained attempt to offer a very personal rethinking of gay subjectivity and as an attempt to overturn stereotypes of gay men as effeminate. Yet in his celebration and appropriation of some of the most violent, misogynistic, and effeminophobic elements of heterosexually-identified masculinity, Burroughs' life and writing suggest a subjectivity that has been deeply troubling to many in the gay community.