lin

Oh, yeah. That's what Burroughs was all about. Whimsical and trying to shock people.

You get upset if anybody takes you up on these idiot pronouncements, then just roll a few more off. What does this tell you about how you might bolster your self-esteem?

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Edgewise

Self-esteem? Plenty fine thanks.

Let's talk about you for once.

lin:

1. Why do you troll around a website devoted to writing without submitting your own?
a. Because you are a pussy.
b. Because you don't write at all.
c. You consider what you do here writing.

2. Why do you troll?
a. Because YOU lack self-esteem.
b. Penis envy makes you bitter.
c. Boredom.

3. Why do you attack those whom you disagree with?
a. Insanity.
b. You consider this site your own personal feif.
c. Inability to take part in a meaningful debate.

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lin

Calm down edgewise, you're just making it really clear what a little asshole you are.

You aren't debating, haven't been at any point. In fact you NEVER do. You just sound off then crybaby.

Why don't you limp back over to wf.org and tell them you got scuffed up by the mean people over here?

If you really think Burroughs is some whimsical guy who does graatuitous stuff to shock little wide-eyed hicks like yourself, fine.

But don't expect anybody to take it seriously.

And don't sob and whine and smear feces about it, okay. Trying saying something instead of just tossing out personal bullshit. Which is all you have done in this thread anyway.
Or any thread I've seen.

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valeca

Play nice, gentlemen. And please, feel free to use the ignore feature provided.

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Mike C

I'm glad the Joyce parallel was noted, I've often thought that Burroughs' contribution to American (and world) literature was as much of a landmark as Joyce's. Both offered a redefinition of what a novel was and what could be done with the form. The other novel I'd compare it to in that regard - novels that change what novels can be - is Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf.

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Mike C

Let's not. Personally I think it's great that people can get passionate enough and argue almost to the point of blows about books, but so far all you've offered that's on-topic is that you didn't get it.

Naked Lunch may seem like a mish mash of wierdness and perversion, but it's strongly themed and combines surrealist techniques with his own inimitable style and his own semi-autobiographical experience. It's an exploration of truth (which isn't always beautiful) as Burroughs saw it, and doesn't pull any punches. Burroughs used a series of vignettes to provide snapshots of people and events, and always maintained that the chapters were written so as to be read in any order. This isn't easy, comfortable, linear storytelling (contrast with Kerouak's On the Road, which is as linear as the highways he travelled) and requires (as 'intelligent' novels should) some investment and commitment from the reader. Reading Burroughs is not a passive experience.

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lin

A LOT of his later stuff.

It's pretty obvious what happened. This guy wrote the college road book of his generation...which somehow got seized up as a great piece of literature and forefront of the whole obscurely world-changing Beat jag.

Like many people who slash out a vivid recital of wild events in their youth, he couldn't keep doing it as he matured.

He was being told he was a literary genius and tossed into the pot with Burroughs and Ginsberg and and Snider and Ferlinghetti and major in the pot because he was far and away the best seller in the bunch) but wasn't an intellectual or literatus. Just a big muscular jock with an impulse to write it down.

So he ended up trying to live up to his own legend, writing things like Dr. Sax and Book of Dreams that were like what teenagers wrote in imitation of the Beats to try to fulfill the second-hand idea of his own literary genius.

How Kerouac ended up is rather sad. You see the earlier pictures, a lithe, brawny athlete, handsome as a movie star...then find out he spent his last years back home in Lowell, MA. sitting in a dark room in his Mom's old house, drinking beer and watching TV in the dark, a depressive recluse.

You could make a case for him having been shafted by the critical establishment. But he didn't have to buy into it.

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Edgewise

Thank you for answering my original question.

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lin

Read "Algebra of Need" and answer it yourself.

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Mike C

I hadn't heard of the Algebra of Need, so I googled it and I came across these audio interviews with Burroughs from the BBC archive - of interest to you, Lin? Favorite quote - "I write for the cosmonauts of inner space".

BBC - BBC Four - Audio Interviews - William S(eward) Burroughs

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lin

It posits NEED as sort of the ultimate evil. We are conditioned to see neediness as something to feel sympathy for. It is even, in the Victim=Hero modern culture, seen as a virtue.
But isn't it really the root of all harm, driving need.

It's the central metaphor (among several) that Burroughs weaves around addiction. But you see it throughout the book, and much of his work.

He says, at one point, "Bureauocracy is cancer at the governmental level." And several times, "Cancer is like junk, all it wants is more junk."


Homosexuality, other than his personal reference and a source of humor, also becomes a metaphor, in many cases for the auto-cannibalism that a truly driving need engenders.

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Malone

I'm reading Cities of the Red Light now, and if I didn't know better, I wouldn't even believe they were written by the same man. It's excellent so far. I'll have to go back and give Naked Lunch another read. As soon as you mention Joyce, the connection is quite obvious between Naked Lunch and Ulysses stylistically.
Incidentally, I'm reading Steppenwolf right now too. Interesting that should also come up in the discussion. Much better than The Glass Bead Game (which I enjoyed quite a bit). It's like Hesse is writing directly to me.

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Mike C

Yeah, it used to be one of those 'required reading for cool kids' books when I was younger, though the book is dated it contains universal truths and the disaffected (and which teenager isn't) find plenty to identify with. Less popular with kids today, though, I think.

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lin

Getcha motor runnning. Head out on the hiiiiighway...."

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Malone

Come on, we all know that cool kids don't read.

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