Two seminal figures of the Beat movement, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, discuss literary influences and personal history in a never-before-published three-day conversation following the release of the David Cronenberg film of Burroughs’ classic novel Naked Lunch. The visit coincided with the shamanic exorcism of the demon that Burroughs believed had caused him to fatally shoot his common law wife, Joan Vollmer Burroughs, in 1951 – the event that Burroughs believed had driven his work as a writer.

The conversation is interspersed with photographs by Ginsberg revealing Burroughs’s daily activities from his painting studio to the shooting range. Don’t Hide the Madness presents an important, hitherto unpublished primary document of the Beat Generation.