05-03-2020, 09:35 AM
I went though a major Burroughs phase in the 80s, someone Laurie Anderson and the Beatnik movement turned me on to back then. I have fond memories of reading Burroughs with KB at the Eel river post-show as some sort of obtuse prank performance and having hippies sit and listen until they couldn't listen anymore. exterminator! one escaped me but was in Stacy's library from when she bought a bunch of penguin classics on sale. It's a collection of short stories although I read it like a novel, not realizing they weren't directly connected for quite some time, which in the Burroughs world almost makes sense because of his reoccuring themes. Many of these shorts get expanded into longer novels like the The Last Words of Dutch Schultz. This is a good sampler if you just want a taste of Burroughs and not invest in a full length mind-violating novel.
Man, Burroughs is still a crazy read. His grammar is insane, swinging from fragments to run-on sentences that last over a page in length. He ventures into the profane and forbidden without flinching - racism, graphic sex and violence, pederasty, hard drug addiction, dropping the n-word liberally. It's harsh and shocking, and his descriptions are so detailed that you know he's been there. He's like Stephen Colbert's Daily Show character, a caricature parody, or maybe not - comedy works best when there's an element of truth. He's also like Tom Waits, revealing a dirty grimy underworld that we all suspect exists. Somehow it works. It's his veracity and his intelligence - he was well educated, a junkie, a queer (titles of his first two books), a former exterminator and gun wielding lunatic. He reminded me that I need to express more grit in my own writing and bring out more of the eyewitness darkness that I've seen to keep my own truth and authenticity in my work.
Man, Burroughs is still a crazy read. His grammar is insane, swinging from fragments to run-on sentences that last over a page in length. He ventures into the profane and forbidden without flinching - racism, graphic sex and violence, pederasty, hard drug addiction, dropping the n-word liberally. It's harsh and shocking, and his descriptions are so detailed that you know he's been there. He's like Stephen Colbert's Daily Show character, a caricature parody, or maybe not - comedy works best when there's an element of truth. He's also like Tom Waits, revealing a dirty grimy underworld that we all suspect exists. Somehow it works. It's his veracity and his intelligence - he was well educated, a junkie, a queer (titles of his first two books), a former exterminator and gun wielding lunatic. He reminded me that I need to express more grit in my own writing and bring out more of the eyewitness darkness that I've seen to keep my own truth and authenticity in my work.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse