It started out as a typically insane idea to map every part of the published text in terms of its manuscript provenance and history, and to establish the cultural meaning of the book, part and whole.

A good deal of editing a manuscript looks like mechanical work, as if anyone with time on their hands and a magnifying glass could do it. But at a certain point, you need a strong interpretive conviction and, as you say, an "intangible" relationship to what you are doing.

It started out as a typically insane idea to map every part of the published text in terms of its manuscript provenance and history, and to establish the cultural meaning of the book, part and whole.

I like to focus on the varieties of paper, the different sizes and watermarks, evidence perhaps of what was typed when and sometimes where and by whom.

I am always looking for some clue, some easily missed sign that might just be the missing piece in the puzzle.

I was suckered in by the myth of the man [ William Burroughs] as much as by his work.

That rewriting of literary history is most obvious in the case of The Yage Letters, where I was able to show that the true history inverts the official one.