RealityStudio.org

i seem to rever burroughs as some kind of instigator of raw poetic brutality, (i n a very positive way)
im currently researching him and delving into the content of his novels for my dissertation, currently reading the nova express in an attempt try and expel suma the social criticism he unravels,
tragically i dont know if im becommming a little regretful to have loved the idea of him so, is he trully as politikally engaged as made out by the subversive SF etc..or simply a mysogynist,gun loving poetic madman?
any discussions people??

i do think howveer that the layering of some of his poetics is superb in naked luch for example.. and in doing so creates a literary chaotic mess of beautiful words, and thus a rejection of the stability and rigidity of society,...am i on to a point or just making no sense ouuta cut up randomness???

I don't really see Burroughs as an instigator of raw poetic brutality but rather of New Poetic Imagery. I guess that if you want to know more about Burrough's talks of politics, you should read The Job, or any interview, or maybe The Adding Machine.

What you say about revering Burroughs reminds me of Oliver Harris' book William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination. Check it out!

You ask whether he was one of these ideas you have of him. Some great subversive instigator of poetic brutality, or a gun toting misogynist poetic madman. The answer of course is neither. He was somewhere in between. There's a danger in revering artists too much, expecting too much of them. Burroughs was just a man, another man like you or me. Someone who liked drugs, and liked literature, and led an unusual life that formed his beliefs. His addictions led to strong beliefs in control, power, etc. I've known many junkies, and many of them tend to meditate on the same things, I know I did. He fell in love with the outlaw life. He loved breaking the rules, and these beliefs were fostered by the other members of the Beat generation. Just don't mistake him for some idealistic image of a reality rebel, someone who went into it to change society's perception of reality or its rigidity through cut ups and fold ins. He might have said so in later years, but there is a difference between cause-and-effect, and effect-and-cause. Don't make him out to be more than he, or anyone else, could be.

thankyou yall. i guess i wasnt as lucid about what i meant (my fault) but thankyou much for the advised reading..shall do so!..when i said raw peotic brutality i think i meant the blatant honesty with which his words flow sometimes, and just resonate aeshtetic appreciation in a brutally honest way...make sense?
and of course hes just a man....as lee the agent says....no i dont see him as a reality rebel, but im wondering whetehr im going to have much ground in finding a lot to explore this area,,,becuase dont you think hes be made into this kinda subversive sterotype by the media?,,,when in fact his ideas are quite mediocre....i shall read the books though and then maybe i can try and explore his texts further with such.... thankyou though

The popular persona of Burroughs is partly based in 50s years of media sensationalism and part genuine, i.e. he really was a anti-authority homosexual junkie that killed his wife, but that is by no means an accurate description of him. Its is however 1) not wrong and 2) the way that probably 60% of the people that have heard of him think of him. He has garnered most of his celebrity in 2 mains ways: The notoriety of Naked Lunch and being a founding member of the Beat Generation, indeed I think that most people find there way to him by means of one of those avenues. Burroughs is challenging however in that he cannot be so easily approached as the gentle smiling Ginsberg or the all American boyishness of Kerouac. What is found in Burroughs work is bizarre, startling and often unfriendly. His travels where not the romantic poetic wandering of Kerouac but rather mysterious explorations into foreign places.
Burroughs supposed rebelousness is summed up easily, that is he provides a key. His appraisal of the title of Ted Morgans biography was that it was flawed. He said that he could not be considered an "outlaw" as he did not recognize the "law" he was supposed to be rebelling against. (I would copy the quote but I can't find it).
Looking at is work it is clear that he adopted this positron from the start. His ideas and images as presented in his work are far from the norm but not exploitative, he writes what HE is interested in writing about with no regard at all for how it be received by the literary world or by readers. And it important to make special mention of this: Much (if not all) of his work is written in such a way that it is apparent that Burroughs had no regard for the reader when he wrote it. I do not mean this negatively, I simply mean that he wrote and constructed in exactly the way he wanted to present it, even if that meant making it practically impenetrable for the average reader and thusly keeping him a cult figure. Compare this to someone like Kurt Vonnegut (I'm a huge Vonnegut fan too) who intentionally keeps his books short (around 200-250 pages) and the language simple for the sake of his readers, he wants to reach as wide a variety of readers as possible. Even Joyce did not intend Ulysses to be the labor to read that it most readers find it. He wrote it for a larger audience then it has found. Burroughs is unique among his peers in his writing being (at times) unapologetically difficult to decipher the meaning of. This is not to says that his meaning is hidden completely as it can be found. Naked Lunch's satirical attacks on society can be seen relatively simply as can his blatant attacks on issues such as the death penalty. The Nova trilogy is understandably more difficult for a few reasons; he used the cut-up technique and so even he was not 100% in control of the resulting text and his ideas and concepts broadened from just terrestrial concerns to space itself.
I have to take special exception with your accertaion that his ideas are mediocre, as his ideas and concepts are among the most fascinating aspects of his work. When one looks around the persona (both real and mythical) and cuts through the dense thicket of his prose one finds some of the most intriguing and interesting ideas in modern literature. Burroughs foresaw what would later manifest as the punk movement, concepts incorporated into the Matrix trilogy and reality television just to name a precious few. Since I have gone way off topic and forgot what the original thread was about I'll cut it short here. But I will say this, in all the years that I've read and studies Burroughs I have always found him to retain a element of mystery. His work is like the South American jungle that he explored in his search for Yage. With each swipe of the machetee you find yourself deeper and deeper into strange surroundings.

amazing, its so constructuve having people explore and criticse what im asking, i greatly appreciate this,, thankyou, when i said mediocre, yuore right josh i was being reductionist stupidly im aware of that, but not very fluent on the inet......and yeah i completely appreciate his lack of target audience as such, as you say..(well done with the description thats helped my perspective a lot) and i do completely appreciate him delving into the realms of ayahuasca of course this beautiful plant helped him outa his junkie madness..and his general view of the cosmos at large, his projections of astral dynamics and sci fi sychronicity issues i love...BUt (im writing this for an attack PLEASE) im intrgued by what people on this board then can say about his ideas, dont get me wrong im greatly intrigued and love this myustery of burroughs but its interesting the varying opinions people on this board are throwing out, both that 'he is only a man' and dont expect too much of him(im not, but am writing a dissertation of him...) and that his ideas reach beyond mystery as such....i guess the underlying point is that, his lack of connecting with an audience, projects him outa the realsm of media and popularism? and it is this underlying point that makes him such a intriguing and influential being??

(if my posts are getting tedious ignore me!!im just fascinated by it all and there is a sincere lack of people who have read burroughs to discuss with)

Well, first I should say that I don't think that he has completely avoided connecting with his audience, but rather he has put the burden on his audience to connect with. What I mean by that is that his work does not extend a friendly hand to the reader and readily give what it has to offer but rather must be pursued. (forgive me for using Vonnegut again) Take a work such as Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut, 1963), here is a book that challenges and comments upon topics such as (but not limited to) religion, social order, the relationship between political and spiritual leaders and the exploitation of indigenous people. These are serious and not entirely un-Burroughs topics to explore. The author had some pretty clear opinions that he wanted to get across, so the book is written in a clear 287 page narrative that a high school student could grasp (at least most of) in the first read. Here we have an author that has approached his audience in the hopes of making a connection, and by most accounts succeeded. Burroughs does not make this attempt, he presents ideas no less (and often more so) radical an important but he places them within an unusual and often difficult format, whether that be the randomly ordered routines of Naked Lunch, the cut-up prose of the Nova trilogy or the 3 separate narratives of Cities of the Red Night. He challenges the reader to actively look for him and his meaning rather then simply approach the reader with open arms. Like a mystic hermit that sits alone on the top of a mountain waiting for the student to make the journey to find him. Comparatively few actually make an effort but the ones that do find the experience more rewarding.
The other side to this is that while Burroughs places his meanings, ideas and concepts in difficult literary wrapping he seems more then happy to reveal, discuss and consider his ideas/meanings/concepts in the non-fiction format. In books such as The Job and A Report from the Bunker we find a Burroughs discussing openly a cornucopia of topics with, seemingly, no reservations or attempts to remain vague or mysterious This is furthered in his cooperation with biographers such as Ted Morgan and his decision to publish intimate personal selections such as his dream diary in My Education. And maybe most telling his publication of letters to friends, most importantly Allen Ginsberg. In the letters volume we find a Burroughs that is at turns, caring, loving, lonely, worried and loyal. I can't stress enough the importance of reading these non-fiction works if one wants to gain a true understanding of Burroughs as it enriches the reading of his fiction immensely
Lastly, let us not forget that Burroughs was experimenting with the literal deconstruction of the novel form. The randomness of Naked Lunch and later the cut-up/fold-in of the 60s work was not weird for the sake of weird but rather experiments in what one can physically do to the printed page (or recorded audio/video for that matter). So what we get is something that no one had ever seen before (and really since)

ok...nice, so um, what about the effors of joyce, finnegans wake etc,, isnt that far more imginative in its use of transforming novel as cause and effect, as a sequential normative form as well as posing a universal question about the narrative role,... couldnt one suggest that burroughs using gysins cut up technique merely attempts to deal with such social issues and be an initiator of manipulating the format of novel...when its far too obscure to actually gain any insight into social critisim ...i dont necessarily believe this but its an angle people put forward and im intrigued by your opinions,,,i certianly need to widen my non fiction reading of him, i have read yage letters....and it certainly wasnt as impressive as how i thought his pilosohical conclusions would be from ingesting such a plant...am i cynical? i certainly am MORE THAN INTRIGUEd by the prospect of fining his meaning, and that NOT being mediated by external criticisms, but i certainly havent found it yet :/

I agree that Joyce had made substantial progress in expanding the traditional concept of the novel decades before Burroughs made his first attempts. (And the Burroughs/Joyce comparison is an interesting one since both their seminal works (Naked Lunch and Ulysses) are widely seen as somewhat unreadable and both where the subject of bans and obscenity trials.) Joyce, however, allowed many of the novels traditional characteristics to remain while challenging the preconceived ideas of how a novel is written. Joyce maintained a narrative, kept cause/effect logic (as you stated), allowed for character development, choose a specific setting etc... even in his experimental works such as Finnegan's Wake. Burroughs, on the other hand, abandons those characteristics in his experimental works, especially Naked Lunch and the Nova Trilogy. It can be said that where Joyce was expanding the format Burroughs was attacking it. We find no narrative thread so to speak, no character development (although recurring characters) and see quick, and at time sporadic, jumps in time/location. It can be said that maybe Burroughs went to far to quickly in his experiments without regard for his readers (this feeds into my theory). His early published works each make large leaps from one another without explanation. A traditional straight-forward narrative grounded in real life...followed by a seemingly random collection of vinettes and populated by bizarre often disturbing characters in unfamiliar places...followed closely by a trilogy of books again using vignettes but now employing more of a sci-fi motif and with even more unexpected jumps/"cuts" indeed the text is actually physically manipulated after writing. These are long jumps in format between works without link or explanation, its clear that Burroughs was aiming at something and seemed to be getting closer and closer. If we read interviews from the pre-Nova, post Lunch period Burroughs mentions that in his sequel to Naked Lunch he gets even further away from the traditional form of the novel. He challenges what can be called a "novel". I should also mention that Burroughs never intended to be the sole resident of this domain, he intended for others to carry on the experiments that he began. I'm not at home so I can't cite the source of that comment. Also, during the early 60's he was (along with collaborators, most notably Bryon Gysin) conducting experiments in other areas as well, with film, audio, etc... If these experiments fail (I don't think that they do) in any way its that they are not readily accessible to a wide audience and defy definitive literary criticism. When you say "too obscure to actually gain any insight into social criticism" I think you have a point. Burroughs insight must be sought after actively and he must be trusted completely. Burroughs work demands complete trust that he knows what he's doing and what he talking about.
Again I am so off topic that I forgot the original question so I'll stop

In regards to the Burroughs / Joyce comparison, you all (both? can't remember how many were commenting) make interesting points. It's been awhile since I read Joyce's works, so I could be wrong about some things. But, if I recall Finnegan's Wake correctly, Joyce implemented many nonsense jumbled words, in addition to using normal words in odd ways. I don't recall Burroughs ever going that far in his cut up technique. So whereas Burroughs deconstructed his texts, it was mainly against the typical literary idea of linear narrative - he felt that splicing in bits of various places in a story would lead to a sort of sense of deja vu, and perhaps, I don't know, a reverse echo of what happens. He thought that if the story was told in such a nonlinear way, that the reader would learn to think in a non linear (perhaps alien?) way. I guess he had a certain fascination with cognitive ability, for example, look at his search for telepathine, or his descriptions of latahs.

I don't know that much about what Joyce thought. But from reading both of their works, it seems to me they were both interested in the same thing, a new way of art. Burroughs was of course very influenced by Joyce. But he used Joyce as an example, he took what appealed to him, and expanded on it in a manner that suited his particular eccentricities, and ignored those aspects that didn't suit him, or the way he could write.

Mind you, I'm not an expert on either writer. I'm just spitballing ideas here. So feel free to tell me if I'm full of shit.

wikid yeah i like yor ideas both of ya,,,i really like the proposition that burroughs use of nonlinear style would 'aid' in the audience thinknig in a nonlinear fashion...thats a well nice point, ok but back to my joyce/burroughs conflict, i still am ambiguously reserved about burroughs actual intelectual ability to express such philosohical obsevations, i guess though thats just a question of poetic politix...reading in more to his work..?does anyone know of any nonfiction texts which identify his interest in certain lingustic realsm of postmodern ideologies???im gunna chek out the job as suggested by someone kindly,,,:)
i guess im starting to realise that maaaybe im not as aesthetically engaged in burroughs maybe beaucause of some of his own interests and this is shading my appreication of his work..what dya think?dont get me wrong i appreciate the task of reading burroughs and certain aspects of his work are beautifull just in terms of words...whereas someone like joyce is far more obviously intelligent and twists the stability of language, his work is far more obviously postmodern (chaos theory etc too)(ok finnegans wake is)
sorry im just rambling, josh said:
'Joyce maintained a narrative, kept cause/effect logic (as you stated), allowed for character development, choose a specific setting etc... even in his experimental works such as Finnegan's Wake. Burroughs, on the other hand, abandons those characteristics in his experimental works, especially Naked Lunch and the Nova Trilogy. It can be said that where Joyce was expanding the format Burroughs was attacking it.'
and yeah thats a good way of exploring this, and i like the attaking structur part.. and josh said'If these experiments fail (I don't think that they do) in any way its that they are not readily accessible to a wide audience and defy definitive literary criticism. When you say "too obscure to actually gain any insight into social criticism" I think you have a point. Burroughs insight must be sought after actively and he must be trusted completely. Burroughs work demands complete trust that he knows what he's doing and what he talking about. ' curious, how do you feel his expereiments do not fail?out of interest,if tey do not fail what social crit can be gained outa this?,,, its interesting, is this idea dependent on subjective expereince?i mean i agree, to me though the effectivness of his texts lies in some rejection of stability yeah, but i personally respond to the poetics of his work and the way in which he rejects the stabilty of stable literary modes of beauty for instance(i guess subjective etc) like layers of reality levels and the shifts in conscisousness, i still maintain what isaid in my intial post which didnt seem to be understood, in his raw poetic brutality, which ironically everyone has confirmed in the consequent posts,,,maybe you all just dont get my use of words.. ha how ironic... sorry to ramble on, i am just blurting out my ideas for inspiration....:):)

Hi,

If it can be of any help, here is a text by Burroughs called The Cut-Up Method.

THE CUT-UP METHOD by William S. Burroughs

The method is simple. Here is one way to do it. Take a page. Like this page. Now cut down the middle. You have four sections: 1 2 3 4 . . . one two three four. Now rearrange the sections placing section four with section one and section two with section three. And you have a new page. Sometimes it says much the same thing. Sometimes something quite different-cutting up political speeches is an interesting excercise-in any case you will find that it says something and something quite definite. Take any poet or writer you fancy. Here, say, or poems you have read over many times. The words have lost meaning and life through years of repetition. Now take the poem and type out selected passages. Fill a page with excerpts. Now cut the page. You have a new poem. As many poems as you like. As many Shakespeare Rimbaud poems as you like. Tristan Tzara said: "Poetry is for everyone." And Andre Breton called him a cop and expelled him from the movement. Say it again: "Poetry is for everyone." Poetry is a place and it is free to all cut up Rimbaud and you are in Rimbaud's place. Here is a Rimbaud poem cut up:

Visit of memories. Only your dance and your voice house. On the suburban air improbable desertions . . . all harmonic pine for strife.

The great skies are open. Candor of vapor and tent spitting blood laugh and drunken penance.

Promenade of wine perfume opens slow bottle.

The great skies are open. Supreme bugle burning flesh children to mist.

Cut-ups are for everyone. Anybody can make cut-ups. It is experimental in the sense of bein something to do. Right here write now. Not something to talk and argue about. Greek philosophers assumed logically that an object twice as heavy as another object would fall twice as fast. It did not occur to them to push the two objects off the table and see how they fall. Shakespeare Rimbaud live in their words. Cut the word lines and you will hear their voices. Cut- ups often come through as code messages with special meaning for the cutter. Table tapping? Perhaps. Certainly an improvement on the usual deplorable performances of contacted poets through a medium. Rimbaud announces himself, to be followed by some excruciatingly bad poetry. Cut Rimbaud's words and you are assured of good poetry at least if not personal appearance.

All writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read heard overheard. What else? Use of scissors renders the process explicit and subject to extension and variation. Clear classical prose can be composed entirely of rearranged cut-ups. Cutting and rearranging a page of written words introduces a new dimension into writing enabling the writer to turn images in cinematic variation. Images shift sense under the scissors smell images to sound sight to sound sound to kinesthetic. This is where Rimbaud was going with his color of vowels. And his "systematic derangement of the senses." The place of mescaline hallucination: seeing colors tasting sounds smelling forms.

The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for seventy years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredicatble factors of passersby and juxtapositon cut-ups. And photographers will tell you that often their best shots are accidents . . . writers will tell you the same. The best writings seems to be done almost by accident but writers until the cut-up method was made explicit - all writing is in fact cut-ups; I will return to this point-had no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the unpredictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors.

Concerning the Cut-up Method. I would say that it evolved in time. First, in the 60s, it was considered a weapon, something anyone should use, someone that could affect people's perception of live and sabotage the reality studio. Burroughs always claimed that it was something you had to experience, not to talk about.

Unfortunately, he did not have many followers. In his text Electronic Revolution (a must-read for people who discover Burroughs), he wrote, "I wonder if anybody but CIA agents read this article or thought of putting these techniques into actual operation."

So in the end, the cut-up Method became simply a tool to describe the dream or sex sequences in a way more realistic than straight-narrative prose. This is explicit in the Red Night Trilogy, where cut-up is only used for strictly literary aims. It lost its political aspect and gained an artistic one, it became closer to painting in that sense.

Finally, the cut-up method was not used that much as Burroughs, growing old, did not need it anymore. You could think Last Words is an Cut-UP book, it's not, it's all natural. Some people might say it's written by an old man who keep repeating the same things. I don't think so. I think it's really Burroughs. And Naked Lunch too was written without the cut-up technique. My point is that Burroughs did not need cut-up because he had it integrated in his mind from birth. So, I don't think the lack of understanding of his prose is due to the method or is on purpose, as was Joyce's. I think it was just coming from a man with a different logic, another way of thinking.

thats really inspiring theo thanks. wikid
my interst and intrigue into burroughs is DEFinately!! being relit, thankyou all!!! for my dissertation idea in particular i had contemplated with the way in which political ligustic tools become artistic, etc the crossover and leyering of aesthic into hte political body the ,,,body politic etc, but it became lost and i have been very confused by it all etc,, its really nice to hear people interested im him helping me fragment and challenge my understanding of it, thankyou, the cut up technique is a brillaint starting place for it all... ye i am fascinated by the way in which aesthtic is shaped by a political doctrine etc, i think THIS concpet(if ive been fluent enough to express) is replicated and crucial to understanding the deconstruction and manipulation as used by the media,,,ha the TRU corrupters...so i guess burroughs work as a body is a universal rejection of the stability of words(i use that tem lightly), of language yeah?of the structured routine and in effect is condeming the usage of that used by multimedia COrp to affect society and then that would link in with consciousness and um the whole macro micro idea of his work...alien vs subjctive experience? am i missing the point, is this the point? and the gap between him and someone like joyce is the lack of any stable mode of reference as mediated throuigh techniques like the cut up technique, ?
its very encouraging having texts suggested tooo, thanking you all.