DOCSLIB.ORG

Cutting Edge

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Cutting Edge 13/02/2020 William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin review - The TLS North Ameriican lliiterature || Book Reviiew Cutting edge Two majjor Beat figures:: Briion Gysiin and Wiilllliiam S.. Burroughs By Julles Smiith February 114,, 2020 Read thiis iissue Brriion Gyssiin and Wiilllliiam Burrrroughss wiitth ““The Drream Machiine”” || © Harrolld Chapman//TopFotto IIN THIIS REVIIEW BLADE RUNNER:: A MOVIIE 88pp.. Tangerriine Prress.. Paperrback,, £9.. Wiilllliiam S.. Burrrroughss Buy LET THE MIICE IIN Ediitted by Jan Herrman 80pp.. Molloko Prriintt.. €20.. Brriion Gyssiin uriing an iinterviiew wiith Kathy Acker at the October Gallllery iin London iin 1988,, Wiilllliiam Burroughs remarked,, “I’’m seeiing a fillm when I wriite”.. Hiis prose iis iindeed ciinematiic,, wiith perverse echoes of Hollllywood product:: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/blade-runner-a-movie-william-s-burroughs-let-the-mice-in-brion-gysin-review-jules-smith/ 1/4 13/02/2020 William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin review - The TLS mordant voiiceovers,, hard--boiilled diiallogue,, sllapstiick comedy scenes,, niightmariish dream sequences,, montages,, jjump cuts,, cross--cuttiing and any number of eniigmatiic fadeouts.. These D are most sensatiionalllly deplloyed iin Naked Lunch (1959),, but turn up iin many of Burroughs’’s other fictiions.. Art techniiques allso fed hiis word hoard,, notablly by way of the cut--up techniique whiich he and the experiimentall artiist Briion Gysiin piioneered siixty years ago.. Burroughs’’s fillmiic aspiiratiions were variious.. He wrote the scriipt for – and appeared,, allongsiide Gysiin and theiir acollyte Ian Sommerviilllle – iin Anthony Ballch’’s short fillms Towers Open Fiire (1963) and The Cut--Ups (1966).. Theiir entertaiiniing oddiitiies may be viiewed on YouTube.. Moviing back to New York iin 1974,, he taught a course iin screenwriitiing,, and wrote two fictiions approxiimatiing to fillm scriipts:: The Last Words of Dutch Schulltz (1970,, reviised 1975) and Bllade Runner:: A Moviie (1979).. It was the first two words onlly of the llatter that resullted iin Burroughs’’s most siigniificant iimpact on maiinstream Hollllywood,, beiing seiized on by the diirector Riidlley Scott for hiis otherwiise unrellated 1982 scii--fi fillm of that tiitlle.. In a llengthy iintroductiion to thiis handsomelly produced fortiieth anniiversary ediitiion,, Olliiver Harriis expllaiins how iit happened.. Burroughs’’s source was The Blladerunner,, a 1974 dystopiian pullp novell by Allan E.. Nourse set iin a near--future ravaged New York,, about a mediicall apocallypse averted by teenage boys runniing supplliies to underground mediics.. Harriis scrupullouslly outlliines the “worlld of diifference” between the two tiitlles,, descriibiing Burroughs’’s lluriid storylliine – iin whiich,, after riiots at hospiitalls,, a viirus vacciine iis spread to counter an epiidemiic of “accellerated cancer” – as “a mutatiion” of Nourse’’s.. He poiints out severall overt recyclliings from Naked Lunch (such as the drunken anaesthetiist and mouthwash gags),, as wellll as sexualliized boy gangs from The Wiilld Boys (1971).. Viirus B23,, wiith iits accompanyiing uncontrollllablle sexuall frenzy,, whiich has iits oriigiins iin Bllade Runner,, was soon to feature iin the novell Ciitiies of the Red Niight (1981).. Harriis’’s enthusiiasm iis iinfectiious,, but he admiits that Bllade Runner iis diifficullt to viisualliize as a fillm.. It iis riiddlled wiith repetiitiions,, narratiive diiscontiinuiitiies and tiime shiifts – the very features that,, for Harriis,, make iit “exempllary”.. Burroughs was fond of quotiing Gysiin’’s decllaratiion that “wriitiing iis fifty years behiind paiintiing”,, from Gysiin’’s essay “Cut--Ups Sellf--Expllaiined”.. Thiis appears iin Briion Gysiin’’s Let the Miice In,, oriigiinalllly publliished iin 1973 by the Somethiing Ellse Press iin San Franciisco.. Thiis new ediitiion of an iinfluentiiall work,, both iinstructiion manuall and maniifesto,, iis extended by the use of photographs of a smartlly dressed Burroughs,, Gysiin,, Sommerviilllle and others,, iin Tangiier and at the Beat Hotell iin Pariis.. Gysiin sets out the how and why of the cut--up method.. Yet,, he wriites:: “Anythiing I may say about Cut--Ups must sound lliike speciiall plleadiing unlless you try iit for yoursellf”.. The purpose was to “cut through the word lliines to hear a new voiice off the page”,, a concept that Burroughs llater extended to tape recordiings.. A sectiion of Gysiin’’s “Permutated Poems” (the permutatiions carriied out by Sommerviilllle’’s computer and arranged iin collumns over severall pages) shows them to be sound poetry remiiniiscent of the work of Kurt Schwiitters,, word patterns giiviing “an expandiing riipplle of meaniings”.. Of “I Am That I Am”,, Gysiin states that he heard “the diiviine Tautolloy” as “a sort of wiilld pealliing iinsiide my head,, lliike an ether experiience.. Other works iindiicate the drug habiits that Burroughs and Gysiin lliived wiith and among:: “KICK THAT HABIT MAN / THAT HABIT KICK MAN / MAN KICK THAT HABIT / KICK THAT MAN HABIT”.. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/blade-runner-a-movie-william-s-burroughs-let-the-mice-in-brion-gysin-review-jules-smith/ 2/4 13/02/2020 William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin review - The TLS Of partiicullarlly eccentriic iinterest iis the essay by Ian Sommerviilllle about the “Flliicker”,, patented iin 1961 as “The Dream Machiine” by Gysiin,, desiigned “to stiimullate our facullty of iimage--makiing” and ecstatiic viisiions through endlless viisuall repetiitiions.. Consiistiing of a cardboard cylliinder wiith a lliightbullb on a gramophone at 78 rpm,, the Dream Machiine was augmented by Gysiin wiith an iinteriior cylliinder covered wiith hiis own paiintiings.. The whiirlliing shiimmeriing deviice can be seen and heard iin actiion duriing Ballch’’s fillm Towers Open Fiire.. Burroughs contriibutes two essays to Let the Miice In:: “The Inviisiiblle Generatiion” about the potentiiall effect of tape recordiings contaiiniing “wakiing suggestiions”,, and “Word Authoriity More Habiit Formiing Than Heroiin”,, iitsellf a bravura examplle of the cut--up method,, shuffliing llanguage iinto abstract patterns.. Gysiin iis a lluciid and wiitty wriiter.. He giives viiviid glliimpses of Burroughs at the moment when Naked Lunch was beiing ediited for Ollympiia Press – as he “ranted through the gargantuan rolles of Doc Benway,, A..JJ..,, Cllem & JJody”,, or,, as a drug addiict,, “through the shadows from one pharmaciia to another,, huggiing a bottlle of paregoriic … hiis raiincoat glliintiing lliike the underbelllly of a shark”.. Briion Gysiin’’s Let the Miice In iis a key collllaboratiive work.. It represents those llate 1950s to earlly 1960s years when Beat wriitiing met European experiimentalliism.. The most sophiistiicated iintelllliigence of the Beat Generatiion was permanentlly affected.. Keep reading North Ameriican lliiterature || Book Reviiew Planetary picnics Conttempllattiing tthe ffutture sett outt iin tthe pastt By Robert IIrwiin North Ameriican lliiterature || Essay Not asking for compassion Robertt Lowellll,, Elliizabetth Hardwiick and The Dollphiin By Mark Chamberllaiin North Ameriican lliiterature || Book Reviiew Occult information Reappraiisiing an unlloved novell ffrom JJames’’s miiddlle phase By Bharat Tandon North Ameriican lliiterature Scavenger of eternal truths Thomas Meaney on Norman Maiiller iin tthe 1960s By Thomas Meaney https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/blade-runner-a-movie-william-s-burroughs-let-the-mice-in-brion-gysin-review-jules-smith/ 3/4 13/02/2020 William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin review - The TLS HOME REGULAR FEATURES THE ARCHIIVE EXPLORE CATEGORIIES ABOUT US SHOP SUBSCRIIBE TO THE PODCAST Googlle Products Spotiify Applle Podcasts Terms & Condiitiions Priivacy Cookiie Settiings Copyrriightt © The Tiimess Liitterrarry Suppllementt Liimiitted 2020.. The Tiimess Liitterrarry Suppllementt Liimiitted:: 11 London Brriidge Sttrreett,, London SE11 9GF.. Regiisstterred iin Englland.. Company rregiissttrrattiion numberr:: 935240.. VAT no:: GB 243 8054 69.. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/blade-runner-a-movie-william-s-burroughs-let-the-mice-in-brion-gysin-review-jules-smith/ 4/4.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Everything Lost
    Everything Lost Everything LosT THE LATIN AMERICAN NOTEBOOK OF WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS GENERAL EDITORS Geoffrey D. Smith and John M. Bennett VOLUME EDITOR Oliver Harris THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS / COLUMBUS Copyright © 2008 by the Estate of William S. Burroughs. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burroughs, William S., 1914–1997. Everything lost : the Latin American notebook of William S. Burroughs / general editors: Geoffrey D. Smith and John M. Bennett ; introduction by Oliver Harris. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1080-2 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1080-5 (alk. paper) 1. Burroughs, William S., 1914–1997—Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc. 2. Burroughs, William S., 1914–1997— Travel—Latin America. I. Smith, Geoffrey D. (Geoffrey Dayton), 1948– II. Bennett, John M. III. Title. PS3552.U75E63 2008 813’.54—dc22 2007025199 Cover design by Fulcrum Design Corps, Inc . Type set in Adobe Rotis. Text design and typesetting by Jennifer Shoffey Forsythe. Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanance of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.49-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 coNtents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii INTRODUCTION BY OLIVER HARRIS ix COMMENTS ON THE TEXT BY GEOFFREY D. SMITH xxvii NOTEBOOK FACSIMILE 1 TRANSCRIPT AND FAIR COPY (with notes and variant readings) 105 ABOUT THE EDITORS 217 acknoWledgments First and foremost, the editors wish to thank James Grauerholz, literary execu- tor of the William S. Burroughs estate, for permission to publish this seminal holograph notebook.
    [Show full text]
  • Snedeker: "Closing Time"
    Closing Time George Snedeker In his novels, William Burroughs constructs a complex mythological structure. The tropes of evolution and religion are central to novels like Nova Express and The Western Lands. In this essay, I will argue that these novels are political/philosophical representations of contemporary society. Burroughs moves concrete political conflicts to the plane of metatheoretical reflections by means of the construction of grand mythological frameworks. He rarely ever addresses politics directly. Instead, he offers movie-like narratives that the reader is forced to reconnect to everyday reality. Both the cut-ups and his fragmented narratives try to force the reader into the work of reconstructing the existential field of action. There are no blueprints or programs for action to guide our struggles in his novels. Burroughs' radicalism was a radicalism of the imagination. He tried to revive the capacity to dream and imagine alternative worlds, not to get stuck in this highly corrupt universe of thought. How does one think his/her way out of a prisonhouse of language and the symbolic order of domination? This is why there is so much emphasis on individual and collective struggles for personal liberty in his novels. I will argue that Burroughs understood the quest for freedom in both quotidian and global terms. In books like The Wild Boys, Cities of the Red Night and The Place of Dead Roads there is a clear attempt to formulate a collective struggle against the cosmic and social forces of evil. In The Wild Boys, this struggle takes the form of the politics of the imaginary.
    [Show full text]
  • Abstract Art, 29 Abstract Writing, 29, 31, 43, 81, 83, 84, 160
    Index Abstract art, 29 254, 260 Abstract writing, 29, 31, 43, 81, 83, Authorship, 2, 30, 43, 47, 62, 65, 109, 84, 160 121, 143, 144, 158, 59, 197, Abstraction, 82, 158 201, 207, 209, 221, 223 Acker, Kathy, 3, 4, 18, 131, 149, 151- Author Function, 7, 27, 56, 57, 206, 197, 199, 207, 209, 210n, 211, 223 218, 219, 222, 225, 230, 232, Authority, 43, 48, 86, 128, 142, 152, 238, 241, 242-243, 250, 251, 167, 243, 250 253, 261 Automatic Writing, 6, 25, 77 and antagonism, 152, 164 Avant-bard, 205-206 biographical details, 151-153, Avant-garde, 4-5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12-13, 160, 162 17-18, 22-23, 26, 38, 42, 47, 65, and censorship, 167, 188 67, 68, 70, 83, 152, 153, 156, critical reception, 164-165 163, 165, 182, 202-205, 213- and identity, 153n, 163-164 214, 216, 223, 226, 237, 249, influences, 151, 153, 155-156, 251, 252-253, 260, 265 181-182 Ballard, J.G., 70 and plagiarism, 153-154, 157- Balch, Anthony, 58, 63-65, 99, 125, 160, 163, 170, 180-181, 191, 161 193, 196 Barthes, Roland, 11, 15, 38, 40, 100- and tattoos, 190 101, 243, 263 Ah Pook is Here (Burroughs), 116, Beach, Mary, 70, 74, 75, 76, 106 121, 125-126, 127, 130, 145 Beach Books, Text and Documents, Allen, Richard, 200, 205, 218-220, 70, 73, 75 223-224, 226 Beat Generation, 1, 2, 22, 27, 71, 76, Anti-Oedipus, 168-169 88, 91, 159, 204 Antin, David, 163 Beckett, Samuel, 4, 208, 240 Anti-novel, 208, 228, 229, 238, 243 Beiles, Sinclair, 27-28, 47, 70, 234 Appropriation, 13-14, 95, 108, 156, Belle de Jour, 201, 246 160, 162, 163, 165, 175, 183, Bergson, Henri, 219 184, 189, 195, 198, 205, 210,
    [Show full text]
  • Authorship in Burroughs's Red Night Trilogy and Bowles's Translation of Moroccan Storytellers
    CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 18 (2016) Issue 5 Article 5 Authorship in Burroughs's Red Night Trilogy and Bowles's Translation of Moroccan Storytellers Benjamin J. Heal National Chung Cheng University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the African Languages and Societies Commons, American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, and the Translation Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <[email protected]> Recommended Citation Heal, Benjamin J. "Authorship in Burroughs's Red Night Trilogy and Bowles's Translation of Moroccan Storytellers." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 18.5 (2016): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2966> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field.
    [Show full text]
  • NPRC) VIP List, 2009
    Description of document: National Archives National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) VIP list, 2009 Requested date: December 2007 Released date: March 2008 Posted date: 04-January-2010 Source of document: National Personnel Records Center Military Personnel Records 9700 Page Avenue St. Louis, MO 63132-5100 Note: NPRC staff has compiled a list of prominent persons whose military records files they hold. They call this their VIP Listing. You can ask for a copy of any of these files simply by submitting a Freedom of Information Act request to the address above. The governmentattic.org web site (“the site”) is noncommercial and free to the public. The site and materials made available on the site, such as this file, are for reference only. The governmentattic.org web site and its principals have made every effort to make this information as complete and as accurate as possible, however, there may be mistakes and omissions, both typographical and in content. The governmentattic.org web site and its principals shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information provided on the governmentattic.org web site or in this file. The public records published on the site were obtained from government agencies using proper legal channels. Each document is identified as to the source. Any concerns about the contents of the site should be directed to the agency originating the document in question. GovernmentAttic.org is not responsible for the contents of documents published on the website.
    [Show full text]
  • Then and Now
    Across the SPRING SUMMER THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 2 0 1 3 Then and now Rediscovering the past, preparing for the future artsandsciences.fsu.edu SPRING / SUMMER 2013 • Letter from the dean reetings to our alumni and Those of you who know Jim O’Brien friends, and welcome to will understand when I describe him as a another issue of Across the force of nature. We honor his long career, Spectrum. In this issue, we one in which he has shared his passion celebrate both the history and for his subject with so many students, Photo by FSU Photo Lab Photo FSU by Photo G the future of FSU with stories with a profile in this issue. Perhaps the that simultaneously indulge our nostalgia most startling thing about Jim is the sheer DEAN PUBLISHER for the past and speak to the promise of number of students he’s mentored— Sam Huckaba Nancy Smilowitz our university moving forward. One of the including 44 Ph.D.s. After all he’s given to EDITOR DESIGNER great joys of being a part of a college as FSU, it gives me great pleasure to celebrate Wil Oakes Martin Young large and diverse as the College of Arts his career here. www.oakescreative.com [email protected] and Sciences is that our particular story is woven through every aspect of the larger Robert O. Lawton Professor of English PHOTOGRAPHY COPYEDITOR university’s story. This Spectrum invites us Stan Gontarski is part of an effort that Penny Gilmer Barry Ray WIMSE to remember that story even as we prepare has recently uncovered original writings FSU Special Collections CONSULTING EDITORS to write the next chapter.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael Stevens' the Road to Interzone
    “The scholarship surrounding the life and work of William Burroughs is in the midst of a renaissance. Students of Burroughs are turning away from myths, legends, and sensationalistic biographical detail in order to delve deeply into textual analysis, archival research, and explorations of literary and artistic history. Michael Stevens’ The Road to Interzone is an important part of this changing landscape. In a manner similar to Ralph Maud’s Charles Olson’s Reading, The Road to Interzone places the life and literature of “el Hombre Invisible” into sharper focus by listing and commenting on, in obsessive detail, the breadth of literary material Burroughs read, referred to, researched, and reviewed. Stevens reveals Burroughs to be a man of letters and of great learning, while simultaneously shedding light on the personal obsessions, pet theories, childhood favorites, and guilty pleasures, which make Burroughs such a unique and fascinating figure. Stevens’ book provides a wealth of new and important information for those deeply interested in Burroughs and will no doubt prove essential to future scholarship. Like Oliver Harris’ The Secret of Fascination and Robert Sobieszek’s Ports of Entry before it, The Road to Interzone is an indispensable addition to the canon of Burroughs Studies.” -Jed Birmingham “Michael Stevens has created a new kind of biography out of love for William S. Burroughs and love of books. Author worship and bibliophilia become one at the point of obsession, which of course is the point where they become interesting. Burroughs’ reading was intense and far flung, and Stevens has sleuthed out a portrait of that reading--the books Burroughs lent his name to in the form of introductions and blurbs, the books in his various libraries, the books he refers to, the books that found their way into his writing, and much more! Along with lively notes from Stevens, we have Burroughs throughout--his opinions, perceptions, the ‘grain of his voice.’ That in itself makes Stevens’ book a notable achievement.
    [Show full text]
  • Gay Themes in the Film Interview with the Vampire
    THESIS A QUEER PERSPECTIVE: GAY THEMES IN THE FILM INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE Submitted by Jared A. Bendel Department of Communication Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado Spring 2013 Master’s Committee: Advisor: Carl R. Burgchardt Eric Aoki Sarah Sloane ABSTRACT A QUEER PERSPECTIVE: GAY THEMES IN THE FILM INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE There are a growing number of mainstream films and television shows which include gay characters or same-sex families as central figures: A Single Man, The Kids Are Alright, Will & Grace, Mad Men, Two and a Half Men, and Modern Family. This thesis sets out to determine if the film Interview with the Vampire, which preceded the above named films and television shows by more than five years, is a cite of queer cinema that focuses on gay themes while proposing a same-sex family. In coupling Seymour Chatman’s rhetorical theory of narrative in fiction - literature and film with Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin’s theory of Queer Cinema, the study focuses on locating and citing specific instances where gay themes of identity and identification along with the theme of the same-sex family emerge. The study utilizes the novel Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice as a critical touchstone and draws from Roland Barthes’ concept of “Rhetoric of the Image” to evaluate the strength of the themes found within the adapted film Interview with the Vampire. The research finds several examples of the re-presentation of individual gay lives and uncovers evidence of a cinematic representation of a same-sex family.
    [Show full text]
  • Cities of the Red Night Free Encyclopedia
    FREE CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT PDF William S Burroughs | 352 pages | 04 May 2001 | St Martin's Press | 9780312278465 | English | New York, United States Cities of the Red Night :: William S. Burroughs – The Floating Library Farnsworth, the District Health Officer, was a man so grudging in what he asked of life that every win was a loss; yet he was not without a certain plodding persistence of effort and effectiveness in his limited area. Cities of the Red Night current emergency posed by the floods and the attendant cholera epidemic, while it did not spur him to any unusual activity, left him unruffled. Every morning at sunrise, he bundled his greasy maps — which he studied at breakfast while he licked butter off his fingers — into his battered Land-Rover and set out to inspect his district, stopping here and there to order more sandbags for the levees knowing his orders would be disregarded, as they generally were unless the Commissioner happened to be with him. He ordered three bystanders, presumably relatives, to Cities of the Red Night a cholera case to the district hospital at Waghdas and left three opium pills and instructions for preparing rice water. They nodded, and he drove on, having done what he could. The emergency hospital at Waghdas was installed in an empty army barracks left over from the war. It was understaffed and overcrowded, mostly by patients who lived near enough and were still strong enough to walk. The treatment for cholera was simple: each patient was assigned to a straw pallet on arrival and given a gallon of rice water and half a gram of opium.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rise and Fall and Rise of William S. Burroughs
    The Rise and Fall and Rise of William S. Burroughs Edward S. Robinson University of Sheffield Introduction As so-called “cult” authors go, William Burroughs is perhaps one of the best known of the twentieth century, and is also one of the most influential. For the past few years, I have been working toward a theory of Burroughs’ mutational influence based on the way Burroughs and his works have influenced subsequent authors and infiltrated popular culture in ways which are not always apparent. But what I want to consider here is the way in which Burroughs’ career, during his long and near- legendary life, ebbed and flowed in line with, or on occasions against, the tide of numerous literary fads and fashions, before ultimately transcending fashion and acquiring a place in the modern canon. Finally, I will be looking at the ways in which recent years have seen Burroughs, in effect, being (indirectly) responsible for spawning a number of subsequent literary fads, fashions and short-lived movements. The Rise of William S. Burroughs: Naked Lunch Although published far earlier, with the autobiographical Junkie under the name William Lee in 1953,1 Burroughs first came to prominence in 1959 with the publication of Naked Lunch. Rejected by countless publishers before finally being published by the Olympia Press in Paris, the American publication was further delayed after both printers and binders refused to handle the text, its eventual release occurring in 1962. It also provoked a record-breaking 13-week series of correspondence in the Times Literary Supplement in the UK – again, before it was even available here.2 And so the novel, which has subsequently come to be regarded as a twentieth century classic, gained the author celebrity and notoriety in equal measure.
    [Show full text]
  • Rock Album Discography Last Up-Date: September 27Th, 2021
    Rock Album Discography Last up-date: September 27th, 2021 Rock Album Discography “Music was my first love, and it will be my last” was the first line of the virteous song “Music” on the album “Rebel”, which was produced by Alan Parson, sung by John Miles, and released I n 1976. From my point of view, there is no other citation, which more properly expresses the emotional impact of music to human beings. People come and go, but music remains forever, since acoustic waves are not bound to matter like monuments, paintings, or sculptures. In contrast, music as sound in general is transmitted by matter vibrations and can be reproduced independent of space and time. In this way, music is able to connect humans from the earliest high cultures to people of our present societies all over the world. Music is indeed a universal language and likely not restricted to our planetary society. The importance of music to the human society is also underlined by the Voyager mission: Both Voyager spacecrafts, which were launched at August 20th and September 05th, 1977, are bound for the stars, now, after their visits to the outer planets of our solar system (mission status: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/). They carry a gold- plated copper phonograph record, which comprises 90 minutes of music selected from all cultures next to sounds, spoken messages, and images from our planet Earth. There is rather little hope that any extraterrestrial form of life will ever come along the Voyager spacecrafts. But if this is yet going to happen they are likely able to understand the sound of music from these records at least.
    [Show full text]
  • Becoming-Animal from Queer to Ghost of Chance
    humanities Article Baboons, Centipedes, and Lemurs: Becoming-Animal from Queer to Ghost of Chance Alexander Greiffenstern Independent Scholar, Lehener Straße 59, 79106 Freiburg, Germany; [email protected] Abstract: The paper establishes a connection between the becoming-writer of Burroughs, who found his calling and style during the 1950s and his signature characteristic of becoming-animal. This can first be observed in Queer, where Burroughs develops his so-called routine; a short sketch-like text that often involves instances of metamorphosis or transformation. The theoretical background for this short form and the term becoming-animal is taken from Deleuze’s and Guattari’s book on Kafka, who also worked best in short texts and frequently wrote about animals. “The Composite City” may be the central text to understanding Burroughs’ work. It is the text where Burroughs found his style and his identity as a writer. Becoming-animal is a logical consequence that further develops Burroughs’ aesthetic ideal. Over the following decades, he experimented with it in different forms, and toward the end of his career, it became part of an environmental turn. In Ghost of Chance, one can find the same aesthetic ideal that starts Burroughs’ writing in 1953, but the political implications have turned toward saving the lemurs of Madagascar. Keywords: William S. Burroughs; Queer; Ghost of Chance; Yage Letters; Naked Lunch; Madagascar “As a child I had been a great dreamer, bordering on hallucinations which often involved animals. After years of trying to discover who and what I was, I Citation: Greiffenstern, Alexander. suddenly awoke one morning and realized I didn’t care.
    [Show full text]