tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3259386991508935093.post9083134395332384150..comments2024-03-24T12:14:08.296-04:00Comments on THE DAILY BEAT: Curation #107 from my Kerouac bookshelf: The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead by William S. BurroughsRick Dale, author of The Beat Handbookhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17721559977431022390noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3259386991508935093.post-49941245366400303972018-08-08T12:28:11.140-04:002018-08-08T12:28:11.140-04:00Rick--you're CERTAINLY "cool enough"...Rick--you're CERTAINLY "cool enough" to get Burroughs but truth be told, his work is tough because (paradoxically) you're someone with an extensive reading history. Reading Burroughs' works--particularly the cut-ups--is like having your entire nervous system (and reading cognition processes) rewired to an uncomfortable degree. The idea of "control"--whether exercised through drugs, social convention, political-economic pressure, or even language--is central to understanding WSB's work. How do you tackle reading texts that at their very core are attempts by the writer to NOT exert "viral" control over the reader through the always-already-givens of language, sentence structure, ideology, etc? How do you model revolutionary praxes in something other than dour political screeds? Maybe a more important question is this: WHY deconstruct reading processes I've spent decades trying to perfect? Maybe reading 'The Wild Boys' (or 'Naked Lunch' or the Nova Trilogy) is simply not worth the effort.<br /><br />Reading Burroughs has nothing really to do with being cool--it's more a question of a willingness to (in a paraphrase of Burroughs) dismantle the "is of identity."<br /><br />A couple of recommendations--try LISTENING to Burroughs's works, preferably read by the author. The humor of the routines and the jagged, cinematic narrative cuts often come through with greater clarity in audio form. Also, you may find scholarly addenda to Uncle Bill's works by someone like Oliver Harris to be helpful. His introductions to some of the "restored" Burroughs novels are really wonderful. Bear in mind that this places you smack dab in the middle of the whole 'whose text am I reading' problem (isn't foregrounding someone else's interpretation submitting to another form of control?), but such an approach may be a more gradual and comfortable means to a valuable end...<br /><br />Best of luck!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com