RealityStudio.org

This is the new cover's for Oliver Harris' new edition of Queer.

Has anyone read Barry Miles' new book called "The Typewriter Is Holy: The Complete, Uncensored History of the Beat Generation"?

"The Typewriter Is Holy" is not by Barry Miles but by Bill Morgan. I haven't read it -- but I'll bet Jed will.

Oops, sorry for that!

No sweat. So... How's everyone like the new cover?

I don't really like it actually.
I think they should have put a picture, or a drawing connected to Burroughs' time in Mexico or South America during the time the events related took place.

As somebody who has never read the book, but will when this comes out, this cover gives me no clue what it's about (I know what it's about, but you know what I mean - the general public may well not) or what to expect from the text.

The cover art really is kinda out of left field, but I like it. What I don't like is the font's inconsistency. All the letters in QUEER should be the same. Says me.
The latest Turkish edition has a flower in a pot on the cover, which also doesn't convey the book's text.

Rubbish cover I think. Something annoying about the centre of interest being the stool. It looks like one of the initial rough ideas has somehow been accidentally used. God knows what ideas they rejected. The notion of Burroughs being like a skeleton is annoying too; how the hell would he have felt about this if he was alive?

Yet nevertheless I suppose it is reasonably eye-catching and original, if not ultimately very likeable. I'd quite like to see them in old British Penguin Classics style covers, replete with high art paintings and photographs on them! But that is just me...

This together with the other recent covers that there was a link to here make me think that a Burroughs is being interpreted as a different writer by a new generation than I take him to be. But then I don't understand the new generation; what are they but a bunch of asexual 'hipsters' constantly pissing aropund on their laptops and i-pods ignoring each other in groovy cafe's? Slightly sweeping statement but there is something in it, non? If Burroughs was right about CONTROL then CONTROL has moved right in on these 'hipsters' I'd say.

Anyone know what I'm talking about or disagree?

On a visceral level, I like the cover illustration. It's funny, it suggests Day of the Dead woodcuts and therefore Mexico, and there is something about it that invokes Burroughs.

In invoking Burroughs, though, the illustration does seem to put the myth -- the old man with bony knees -- before the text. Then again, there is a way in which Queer belongs to the old man with bony knees: it was published late with significant "edits" and an even more significant (certainly more often quoted) introduction.

If you push the interpretation and look at the emphasis on the crotch and the skeleton in the suit, it implies that the book is not about queerness but about a conjunction of sex and death.

At any rate, it's tough to get a good cover out of a publisher as big and corporate as Penguin. Let's just be grateful if the text is in good shape (as, knowing Professor Harris, I suspect it will be).

i like it okay. it's obviously burroughs. i figured the skeletal hands were day of the dead as well.

later in life when he started to give cameos in films someone interviewed him and asked what kind of parts he would like to play as an actor.
i can't remember exactly what he said but it was along the lines of: monsters, vampires, ghosts, aliens etc
i think he would've dug the cover.

hmm, i don't like the drawing myself but i do like the fonts/words

anyway, i just can't wait for this!!!!!! i've never read Queer before in its entirety, only passages, and i'm excited about another Harris-edited work after falling in love with the re-edited Junk(y)

Burroughs also said he would like to play Nazi officers!

cover bloody awful, though it may indeed sucker a few unsuspecting casual burroughs fans, surprised to see how many havent read it, hmmm. it is called QUEER after all.i think WSB would have made a great Timelord, but then i am biased in that respect.