DOCSLIB.ORG

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Radek Gregor Posthuman and Death in William S. Burroughs' Last Trilogy Bachelor's Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D. 2020 / declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. Author's signature Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor Stephen Paul Hardy Ph.D., for his patience and encouragement. I would also like to thank my parents for being endlessly supportive. Table of Contents Introduction 1 1. Burroughs' Writing Techniques and Style 3 2. Burroughs and Posthuman 14 3. Death, Sex and Immortality 31 4. Conclusion 36 Works Cited 37 5. Summary 39 6. Resume 40 Introduction William S. Burroughs was a writer well-known for his unusual and experimental concepts of writing and (de)constructing texts by incorporating cut up methods. Those methods were basically aleatoric literary techniques. In his novels, such as Naked Lunch or The Ticket That Exploded, Burroughs deals with various ways of mind control by incorporating the cut-up methods where text is cut and then rearranged and edited. His most complex and accomplished work is the latest trilogy of novels, sometimes called The Red Night Trilogy. In contrast to his earlier works, the last trilogy is not wholly based on the cut up technique, which means that it contains more or less complex narratives. In The Red Night Trilogy, Burroughs examines the potential of the human body as well as its crucial limitations. He also criticises modern society and often exhibits nostalgia for times before industrial revolution arguing that it made human beings chase after quantity instead of quality. Characters in the trilogy are often strong individuals with specific morals and subversive plans to completely change society. Those plans include psychical and biological changes and enhancements of human experience and existence. Such experiments should eventually result in transformation, so that it would in the end be possible to exist in space without the limitations of traditional corporeal form or even completely without the body. The narrative of the books is often interrupted by Burroughs speaking. Using a specific and almost scientific language, he proposes ideas concerning human conscious experience, limitations of human body and he also mentions the limitations of the modern society. Human existence should be improved sociologically, biologically and psychically. Burroughs' ideas are connected to ideas of posthumanism which is a school of thought which proposes an idea of posthuman existence, improved by using genetics or technology. Burroughs says that the corporeal form is not able to sufficiently exist after death, whereas 1 the spirit is—and this spiritual separation from the body is the only way to achieve immortality; thus, the human body is a vessel that is left behind at the moment of death. In the last novel of the trilogy, The Western Lands, Burroughs pays a close attention death and immortality. In The Red Night Trilogy, Burroughs constructs a genuine and original view of death and human existence in the universe. A great part of human experience is an idea of religion which is based on quintessential human quality called spirituality which works with the phenomenon of human soul. This thesis aims to introduce Burroughs' methods and style of writing and also analyse the way in which his approach cohere with the content of the final texts. Regarding, Burroughs style it is necessary to mention his specific approach to narrative and also to explore his accent on the visual. The second chapter of the thesis deals with Burroughs' viewpoint on the problematics of human condition. It intends to analyze Burroughs' specific outlook on embodiment and subjectivity that coheres with body/mind duality. Burroughs propagates an idea of transformation or transition of human body. This chapter argues and explains how Burroughs' transformational ideas, concerning what is considered to be human body, correlate with ideas of posthumanism. The third and final chapter of the thesis analyzes Burroughs' perspective on death and its relationship to human body, mind and. It also deals with the problematics of sexuality and its connection to death and immortality. 2 1. Burroughs' Writing Techniques and Style No matter how extraordinary it might sound, a writer can dedicate almost all of his work to overcoming, surpassing and fighting the quintessence of literature-the word itself. This fundamental literary paradox is crucial to grasp and to understand Burroughs' style and methods of writing: I felt the weakness in my chest, silver spots appeared in front of my eyes with vertiginous sensation of being sucked into a vast empty space where words do not exist (Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night 128). For Burroughs, the state of existence without language is only possible in space out of time. Throughout Burroughs' work, language is problematic in many ways. In the last trilogy of his novels, Burroughs deals with the problem of language as much as in any other of his works. One of the main subjects of Burroughs' writing is a problematic theme of control. For Burroughs, language is primarily a vehicle for imposing control either on an individual or a group of human beings. In his last trilogy, Burroughs develops a conspiratorial theory which states that language is a virus from outer space that is spread on planet Earth by parasitic Venusians: "Their most potent tool is the word. The inner voice" (Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads 97). For Burroughs, language thus is a tool for gaining and maintaining control, and more importantly, language possesses a viral quality which subsequently allows to secretly and unscrupulously manipulate the victim-a user of a complex system of communication-and to create discrepancies of the reality. By writing, Burroughs seeks ways to deal with the language virus and to beat it by using its own tools. As Land says: "Making the argument that the human subject is the product of a linguistic control system that operates virally, Burroughs set himself the 3 challenge of escaping from this linguistic control: of writing his way out of the human condition" (Land 19). To escape or avoid this form of linguistic and social control, Burroughs with help of other writers and artist developed methods or techniques of writing or (de)constructing texts. In order to understand the process of development of Burroughs' style, it is necessary to mention an important method of producing text that Burroughs developed. The cut-up method was developed by Dadaist artist Tristan Tzara. He presented the idea in Dada Manifesto in 1918 as a manual called To Make a Dadaist Poem. The cut-up was then reinvented by a French artist and Burroughs' colleague Brion Gysin in the 1950s. Burroughs, fascinated by the potential of the technique, adopted it and used it to create a whole new kind of prose. In his thesis from 2004 called Technologies, Texts and Subjects: William S Burroughs and Post-Humanism, Land describes the technicalities of the cut-up: "With these techniques, a page of text is taken, and sliced or folded down the middle then placed with half of another page. The pieces are then moved around until they line up, and the results are typed onto a fresh page which, depending upon the results, may then be combined with further pages to produce yet more cut-ups. In a sense, the idea is to turn the work into a material thing which can be manipulated like the celluloid film on the cutting- room table, a photo-collage, or the paints on an artist's palette" (Land 128). Burroughs creates his texts by cutting up already existing external content or his own original work. The cut up texts are then mixed up and put together randomly. The passages that come into being are purely aleatory, therefore it is eventually not Burroughs who writes. Quite the reverse-the final texts are created by chance and to some extent the "writer" becomes a mere mediator. When finished, the texts break basic rules of narration and create new dreamlike and surprising sequences, contexts and juxtapositions. Burroughs was convinced that by using this technique he would be able to surpass the language control: "Paradoxically, this 4 escape was attempted through the use of language, or rather words, an endeavour that Burroughs ultimately found self-defeating" (Land 119). As Land suggests, the aspiration to break the control of language through writing is paradoxical. However, Burroughs attempts to change the influence of the language had a certain relevance at least in his proposition of the possible posthuman existence. As was mentioned above, Burroughs proposed an idea that time is connected with language. By cutting up and reconstructing the original, Burroughs produces new temporal and spatial contexts as the narrative becomes vague and both the writer and the reader are obliged to follow these newly arisen associations: "...the techniques are instrumental in facilitating a form of space-time travel whereby the reader experiences an extratemporal simultaneity in the text that escapes the confines of linear time" (Houen 527). In a way, Burroughs deliberately manipulates texts to create a notion of relativity of time. At least he is able to simulate time travelling by using another method called fold-up. As Burroughs himself says: "I take page one and fold it into page one hundred -1 insert the resulting composite as page ten - When the reader reads page ten he is flashing forward in time to page one hundred and back in time to page one" (Burroughs qtd. in Houen 528). The fold-up technique is used by Burroughs to create suggestive and repetitive images which tend to surface - always slightly altered - in different parts of the narrative.
Recommended publications
  • Snedeker: "Closing Time"

    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.

  • Everything Lost the Latin American Notebook of William S

    Everything Lost The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs William S. Burroughs Edited by Geoffrey D. Smith, John M. Bennett, and Oliver Harris In late summer 1953, as he returned to Mexico City after a seven-month expedition through the jungles of Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru, William S. Burroughs began a notebook 2007 240 pp. of final reflections on his four years in Latin America. His first novel, Junkie, had just been published and he would soon $59.95 cloth 978-0-842-080-2 be back in New York to meet Allen Ginsberg and together complete the manuscripts of what became The Yage Letters and Queer. Yet this notebook, the sole survivor from that period, reveals Burroughs not as a writer on the verge of success, but as a man staring down personal catastrophe and visions of looming cultural disaster. Losses that will not let go of him haunt Burroughs throughout the notebook: "Bits of it keep floating back to me like memories of a daytime nightmare." However, out of these dark reflections we see emerge vivid fragments of Burroughs's fiction and, even more tellingly, unique, primary evidence for the remarkable ways in which his early manuscripts evolved. Assembled in facsimile and transcribed by Geoffrey D. Smith, John M. Bennett, and Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, the notebook forces us to change the way we see both Burroughs and his writing at a turning point in his literary biography. William S. Burroughs is recognized as one of the most innovative, politically trenchant, and influential artists of the twentieth century.
  • UC Santa Barbara Journal of Transnational American Studies

    UC Santa Barbara Journal of Transnational American Studies

    UC Santa Barbara Journal of Transnational American Studies Title Interzone’s a Riot: William S. Burroughs and Writing the Moroccan Revolution Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3x68h6kb Journal Journal of Transnational American Studies, 8(1) Author Suver, Stacey Andrew Publication Date 2017 DOI 10.5070/T881028666 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Interzone’s a Riot: William S. Burroughs and Writing the Moroccan Revolution STACEY ANDREW SUVER A survey of Burroughs Live, a collection of interviews with William S. Burroughs spanning the years between the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959 and his death forty years later, reveals that interviewers made little of his life in Morocco beyond classifying it as Just another curious fact in an already scandalous biography of a homosexual and sometime heroin addict who felt at odds with his own government.1 Indeed, despite living in Tangier’s International Zone from 1954 through its dissolution following Moroccan independence two years later, Burroughs was far more likely to be asked his opinion about United States politics than his views on Moroccan politics.2 This proved true even in the 1960s, when he still spent much of his time in Tangier. Critics such as John Tytell and Mary McCarthy have long argued that Burroughs’s work frames a reaction against the restrictive US political climate of the time: the cold war, suburbanization, McCarthyism, and American exceptionalism.3 However, anticolonial violence in Tangier had, I will contend, a profoundly significant impact on Burroughs’s writing.
  • Narrative Immunities: the Logic of Infection and Defense in American Speculative Fiction

    Narrative Immunities: the Logic of Infection and Defense in American Speculative Fiction

    Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 1-9-2018 11:30 AM Narrative Immunities: The Logic of Infection and Defense in American Speculative Fiction Riley R. McDonald The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Schuster, Joshua The University of Western Ontario Joint Supervisor Carmichael, Thomas The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Riley R. McDonald 2018 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the American Literature Commons Recommended Citation McDonald, Riley R., "Narrative Immunities: The Logic of Infection and Defense in American Speculative Fiction" (2018). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 5174. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/5174 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract In this project I analyze the roles that notions of viruses and immunities and their figurations play within the narrative discourse of speculative fiction. Focusing on a series of texts from twentieth- and twenty-first century American fiction, I seek to examine the ways in which the dialectical confrontation between infection and immunity is explored, reified, or challenged on a narrative level. The terms “virus” and “immunity,” so intrinsic to life sciences, have come into use to describe specific micro-organisms and biological processes only within the last 150 years. Yet these terms possess a significantly longer history in political, legalistic, and philosophical discourses.
  • The Archontic Spirituality of William S. Burroughs Tommy P. Cowan

    The Archontic Spirituality of William S. Burroughs Tommy P. Cowan

    What Most People Would Call Evil: The Archontic Spirituality of William S. Burroughs Tommy P. Cowan 1. Introduction: The Burroughsian Legacy William Seward Burroughs II (1914-1997) could be considered one of the most influential American authors of the twentieth century. His writing influenced figures such as J.G. Ballard, Hunter S. Thompson, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Chuck Palahniuk, Nick Land, Terry Southern, Timothy Leary, William Gibson, Robert Anton Wilson, and Hakim Bey, (and even Philip K. Dick to an extent),1 which is to say nothing of his prominent status within the origins and developments of Beat literature. He also influenced numerous musicians such as The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Genesis P-Orridge, Kurt Cobain, and Steely Dan;2 his works possibly led to the original popularization of the term “heavy metal,”3 (which only later appeared in music, first used by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat as an homage to Burroughs),4 and his inclusion on the album cover for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is evidence of the iconic status he had achieved by the mid-1960s. He even made appearances on television, such as reading one of his “routines” on Saturday Night Live in 1981,5 and by 1991 his book Naked Lunch finally became a feature film, written and directed by David Cronenberg. However, what is ostensibly less explored is how immense William Burroughs’ impact on Western esotericism and New Age movements is. For example, Burroughs’ works are critical inspirations for famed esotericists Genesis P-Orridge (1950-) and Hakim Bey, themselves important influences on the 1 See: Mr.
  • A School for Singing: the Poetics, Politics, and Aesthetics of the CBGB Scene Shaun Michael Cullen Springfield, PA M.A., Humanit

    A School for Singing: the Poetics, Politics, and Aesthetics of the CBGB Scene Shaun Michael Cullen Springfield, PA M.A., Humanit

    A School for Singing: The Poetics, Politics, and Aesthetics of the CBGB Scene Shaun Michael Cullen Springfield, PA M.A., Humanities, University of Chicago, 2005 B.F.A., Cinema Studies, New York University, 2002 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Language and Literature University of Virginia December, 2013 © Copyright by Shaun Cullen All Rights Reserved November 2013 ii ABSTRACT On August 16, 1974, exactly one week after Richard Nixon’s resignation, the Ramones made their debut at CBGB. Over the next ten years, the club would become synonymous with the punk aesthetic that the Ramones embodied. By shifting, however temporarily and by no means completely, the focus of punk studies (and by extension, cultural studies, American studies, urban studies, and queer studies) back to an often disavowed origin point, CBGB and New York City, “A School for Singing” rediscovers a utopian imaginary inherent in that scene often taken to be one of the most shambolic and nihilistic in the history of postmodern arts and letters. Punk was not just a musical movement, it was an artistic event that had wider ramifications, felt across the art world, from the dingiest clubs to the most rarefied art galleries, publishing houses, and runways. Just this past year, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its fifth most popular exhibit of all time, “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” which features, among other mementos of the punk era, a faithful recreation of the CBGB bathroom, where “all the action happened,” as Patti Smith once quipped.

  • Retaking the Universe

    Schn-FM.qxd 3/27/04 11:25 AM Page iii Retaking the Universe William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization Edited by Davis Schneiderman and Philip Walsh Schn-FM.qxd 3/27/04 11:25 AM Page iv First published 2004 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Davis Schneiderman and Philip Walsh 2004 The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7453 2082 1 hardback ISBN 0 7453 2081 3 paperback Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization/ edited by Davis Schneiderman and Philip Walsh. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-7453-2082-1 (hbk.)—ISBN 0-7453-2081-3 (pbk.) 1. Burroughs, William S., 1914—Criticism and interpretation 2. Homosexuality and literature—United States—History—20th century. 3. Sexual orientation in literature. 4. Beat generation in literature. 5. Narcotic habit in literature. I. Schneiderman, Davis. II. Walsh, Philip, 1965– PS3552.U75Z835 2004 813Ј.54—dc22 2003025963 10987654321 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, India Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England Schn-FM.qxd 3/27/04 11:25 AM Page v Contents List of Abbreviations vii Acknowledgments x Foreword xi —Jennie Skerl Introduction: Millions of People Reading the Same Words —Davis Schneiderman and Philip Walsh 1 Part I Theoretical Depositions 1.
  • William S. Burroughs and Writing the Moroccan Revolution

    William S. Burroughs and Writing the Moroccan Revolution

    Interzone’s a Riot: William S. Burroughs and Writing the Moroccan Revolution STACEY ANDREW SUVER A survey of Burroughs Live, a collection of interviews with William S. Burroughs spanning the years between the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959 and his death forty years later, reveals that interviewers made little of his life in Morocco beyond classifying it as Just another curious fact in an already scandalous biography of a homosexual and sometime heroin addict who felt at odds with his own government.1 Indeed, despite living in Tangier’s International Zone from 1954 through its dissolution following Moroccan independence two years later, Burroughs was far more likely to be asked his opinion about United States politics than his views on Moroccan politics.2 This proved true even in the 1960s, when he still spent much of his time in Tangier. Critics such as John Tytell and Mary McCarthy have long argued that Burroughs’s work frames a reaction against the restrictive US political climate of the time: the cold war, suburbanization, McCarthyism, and American exceptionalism.3 However, anticolonial violence in Tangier had, I will contend, a profoundly significant impact on Burroughs’s writing. Reacting against US authoritarianism is indeed an important component of Burroughs’s oeuvre, but its primacy has tended to overshadow the equally significant influence of the nationalist violence and anticolonial riots the writer witnessed in Tangier. Burroughs’s biographers have typically underemphasized the influence of the more violent aspects of the revolution on his creative output. Even Ted Morgan’s excellent Literary Outlaw glosses over the bloody riots.
  • A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S. Burroughs V. 3.0

    A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S. Burroughs V. 3.0

    I ANYTHING BUT ROUTINE: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S. Burroughs v. 3.0 by Brian E. C. Schottlaender The Audrey Geisel University Librarian UC San Diego Libraries 2012 II PREFACE to v. 3.0 This third edition of Anything but Routine includes an entirely new section, “Video Recordings” (Section F). Not only is Burroughs’ film work with Antony Balch and others well documented in various video formats, but a number of Burroughs’ readings over the years are likewise well documented. Section F represents a first attempt to pull these disparate materials together in one place. In addition, particular attention has been paid in this v. 3.0 to promotional materials, including: • Press Kits • Press Releases • Posters, and • Publishers’ Prospectuses. These can be found in Section G. Quantitatively, v. 3.0 includes 1,127 numbered entries (and hundreds more sub-entries), as compared to the 1,077 entries in v 2.0., an increase of almost 5%. III INTRODUCTION The bibliography of William S. Burroughs is as challenging as the man was himself. He wrote voluminously and kaleidoscopically. He rearranged, recycled, and reiterated obsessively. He produced across five decades and four continents. He was a novelist, a poet, an essayist, and a correspondent at home in all media. He never met a “little magazine” or an interviewer he wouldn’t share with. There have been a few attempts at documenting the range of Burroughs’ prodigious output over the years—some better than others. I initially conceived of this bibliography as an update of Joe Maynard’s and Barry Miles’ definitive William S.
  • European Journal of American Studies, 6-3 | 2011 the Master Film Is a Western : the Mythology of the American West in the Citi

    European Journal of American Studies, 6-3 | 2011 the Master Film Is a Western : the Mythology of the American West in the Citi

    European journal of American studies 6-3 | 2011 Special Issue: Postfrontier Writing The Master Film is a Western : The Mythology of the American West in the Cities of the Red Night Trilogy Michael J. Prince Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/9412 DOI: 10.4000/ejas.9412 ISSN: 1991-9336 Publisher European Association for American Studies Electronic reference Michael J. Prince, “The Master Film is a Western : The Mythology of the American West in the Cities of the Red Night Trilogy”, European journal of American studies [Online], 6-3 | 2011, document 3, Online since 03 November 2011, connection on 08 July 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/9412 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.9412 This text was automatically generated on 8 July 2021. Creative Commons License The Master Film is a Western : The Mythology of the American West in the Citi... 1 The Master Film is a Western : The Mythology of the American West in the Cities of the Red Night Trilogy Michael J. Prince 1. Introduction William S. Burroughs’s innovative and sometimes off-putting textual techniques can be read as part of a satiric project, one that participates obliquely in Black Humor, but, particularly toward the end of his career, may suggest a respite from the hopelessness, helplessness, and skepticism inflicted by the power structures it describes and denounces. His work articulates complex responses to conspiracies of alien invasions and their cruel machinations through social power structures, chief among these being church and state. His skepticism to language is well known (Morgan 71-72; Burroughs, “Technology” 35), and much criticism on Burroughs describes disruptions at the level of sentence (such as employment of “cut-ups”) and in the kaleidoscopic sequences of vignettes referred to by Burroughs scholars as “routines.” But this challenge to the power of representation also extends to a broader field of discourse, that of cultural myth.
  • A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S. Burroughs V. 2.0

    A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S. Burroughs V. 2.0

    UC San Diego Other Documents Title ANYTHING BUT ROUTINE: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S. Burroughs v. 2.0 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8mq028p5 Author Schottlaender, Brian E.C. Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California i ANYTHING BUT ROUTINE: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S. Burroughs v. 2.0 by Brian E. C. Schottlaender The Audrey Geisel University Librarian UC SAN DIEGO LIBRARIES 2009 ii PREFACE In preparing this v. 2.0, I have paid particular attention to reviewing and updating the following: Naked Lunch My Own Mag the Dial-a-Poem Poets vinyl compilations Quantitatively, v. 2.0 includes 1,077 numbered entries, as compared to the 1,047 entries in v 1.0, an increase of almost 3%. Inasmuch as 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of William S. Burroughs‘ Naked Lunch, the user of Anything but Routine v. 2.0 will not be surprised at my concentration on reviewing the entries for that iconic title and its various manifestations. Indeed, I spoke on this very subject at ―Fifty Years of Naked Lunch: From the Interzone to the Archive… and Back‖—a symposium held at Columbia University in October of this year to mark the anniversary. At that symposium, I was particularly pleased to meet for the first time several fellow travelers whose work I‘ve admired from afar, including Barry Miles, Jürgen Ploog, Regina Weinreich, Jed Birmingham, and Keith Seward. And, I was disappointed not to meet another fellow traveler with whom I have been corresponding a good deal in the last year, Dave Teeuwen.
  • © 2009 Mitch Shenassa the Occult William S. Burroughs Page 1 THE

    © 2009 Mitch Shenassa the Occult William S. Burroughs Page 1 THE

    © 2009 Mitch Shenassa The Occult William S. Burroughs Page 1 THE OCCULT WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: THE ROAD TO THE WESTERN LANDS AS MAGICAL TEXT AND OCCULT ALLEGORY by Mitch Shenassa A manuscript and thesis submitted to the Department of Writing and Poetics The Jack Kerouac School Naropa University in partial fulfillment of the degree of Master of Fine Arts 2009 © 2009 Mitch Shenassa The Occult William S. Burroughs Page 2 William Seward Hall … he was a corridor, a hall, leading to many doors. He remembered the long fugitive years after the fall of Waghdas, the knowledge inside him like a sickness. The migrations, the danger, the constant alertness … the furtive encounters with others who had some piece of the knowledge, the vast picture puzzle slowly falling into place. Time to be up and gone. You are not paid off to be quiet about what you know; you are paid not to find it out. And in his case it was too late. If he lived long enough he couldn’t help finding it out, because that was the purpose of his life … a guardian of knowledge and of those who could use it. And a guardian must be ruthless in defense of what he guards. And he developed new ways of imparting the knowledge to others. The old method of handing it down by word of mouth, from master to initiate, is now much too slow and too precarious (Death reduces the College1). So he concealed and revealed the knowledge in fictional form. Only those for whom the knowledge is intended will find it.