Comments on: Predicting a Pandemic: William Burroughs and COVID-19

By: Daurade

Daurade — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 17:07:06 +0000

Kenneth, that paranoia quote by Burroughs reminds me of something Woody Allen apparently said: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

By: P. D

P. D — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 01:53:21 +0000

Just a few days ago Google suspends engineer who claims its AI Lambda (a machine) is sentient, after a conversation with It.

Again Burroughs wrote in “Invisible generation”:

“the use of irrelevant response will be found effective in breaking obsessional association tracks all association tracks are obsessional get it out of your head and into the machines stop arguing stop complaining stop talking let the machines argue complain and talk a tape recorder is an externalized section of the human nervous system you can find out more about the nervous system and gain more control over your reactions by using the tape recorder than you could find out sitting twenty years in the lotus posture or wasting your time on the analytic couch.”

By: P. D

P. D — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 16:52:11 +0000

I’ve been a huge fan of Burroughs for years, and as you say, as time goes on I’ve noticed that many of his predictions come true or make sense now. I just came here looking for a passage that I cannot find in which Burroughs, more or less in 1962 I think in “The Ticket that exploted”, speaking of his theory that language is a virus (he said: “it is an organism with no internal function other than to replicate itself.”), And applying to religion he tells how some infected humans began to preach as a result of this “infection”… And this because although at first it was nothing more than a strange and funny idea, then in 1976, for example, a scientist named Richard Hawkins came along and published “The Selfish Gene”, which introduces the concept of “meme” as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. (…) Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme’s reproductive success.

So… that is to say that today scientists are working seriously -without even knowing it- on what William Burroughs had already thought and written decades ago. And it happens again that literature is always ahead of science, as it also happened with Jules Verne, etc. In short: I believe that all of Burroughs’s other theories that seem delusional are not, and should be taken seriously. Cheers!

PD: sorry for redaction. Im traslating from spanish.

By: Théophile

Théophile — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 20:23:14 +0000

A fantastic article, thank you.
I’ve always thought Burroughs’ Word as Virus theory echoed Lou Reed’s Why Do You Talk and was meant to be taken that way.

By: Brad

Brad — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 23:42:15 +0000

ReWriting death certificates to prove there is a pandemic…kill the word before … comorbidities….perm any ReWriting

By: David MacGowan

David MacGowan — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 19:47:59 +0000

Very interesting!!!

By: lee bellavance

lee bellavance — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 20:06:04 +0000

WOW. Lots of food for thought: the prophetic side of Burroughs, the layered intricacies of his works, etc. I found this piece interesting in light of a comment George Whitman made to me years ago when he toured me around Shakespeare and Co. As we got to the upstairs library, he remarked how much time Burroughs had spent there reading — Medical Textbooks!

By: Ashley Starkey

Ashley Starkey — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 04:41:47 +0000

Great research, very well written and most insightful.

By: MAT MARTIGAN

MAT MARTIGAN — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 17:18:30 +0000

Wonderful piece. Thank you.
-M-

By: Kenneth Allen Brown, Esq.

Kenneth Allen Brown, Esq. — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 14:06:32 +0000

Great essay. I think you have weaved together a compelling analysis demonstrating the continuing vitality of the work of Williams S. Burroughs. Well done.

I believe you left out the word “what” from the following quote:

‘A paranoid might be defined as someone who has some idea as to is actually going on.’