<DIV>For more than three decades, while its writer's world fame increased, <b>Queer</b> remained unpublished because of its forthright depiction of homosexual longings. Set in the corrupt and spectral Mexico City of the forties, <b>Queer</b> is the story of William Lee, a man afflicted with both acute heroin withdrawal and romantic and sexual yearnings for an indifferent user named Eugene Allerton. The narrative is punctuated by Lee's outrageous "routines" — brilliant comic monologues that foreshadow <b>Naked Lunch</b> —yet the atmosphere is heavy with foreboding.<p> In his extraordinary introduction, Burroughs reflects on the shattering events in his life that lay behind this work.<p></DIV>