the WILLIAM SEWARD BURROUGHS thread
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- battle instructions blue desert of silence crab men! from a land of grass without mirrors kill the priests most distasteful thing i ever stood still for my ice my perfect ice rub out the words sacred sewers of death smash the control images the heavy metal kid the mayan caper the word broken pounded twisted exploded in smoke trak utilities uranian willy
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Come to think of it, I think I've read soft machine before - does it have some of the naked lunch characters in it like Dr Benway?
Jungle invades the weed grown parks where armadillos infected with The Earth Eating Disease gambol through deserted kiosks and Bolivar in catatonic limestone liberates the area - Candiru infiltrate causeways and swimming pools - Albinos blink in the sun - Rank smell of rotten rivers and mud flats - Swamp delta to the sky that does not change - Islands of garbage where Green Boys with delicate purple gills tend chemical gardens - Terminal post card shrinking in heavy time. Muttering addicts of the orgasm drug, boneless in the sun, eaten alive by crab men - Terminal post card shrinking in heavy time.
It's a blur from reading a big chunk of it with no sleep, but I'm sure his name pops up at some point. It was intended as a sequel to NL and some of the material was stuff which was written at the same time or didn't make it or was cut from NL.
woops
is not like other people
i reckon so yeah.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Isn't Benway one of his recurring characters who crops up in most of his stories? I think he stands for an aspect of Burroughs's own character - the corrupt doctor with a pocket full of morphine ampoules, hustling pregnant women in the street for abortions.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
The amazing intro (so long flatfoot!) and the Dr Benway routine are the bits that burned into my brain. Huge wtf moment the first time I read them.
Willy the Disk with his mouth full of hair feeding on junkies was one that stuck with me.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Robert Bigelow is like the millionaire seeking the key to eternal life in Mesoamerican codices
Luke and I went through Nova Express a while back, might be of interest whenever you get round to it. Better than Soft Machine, imo.
The Nova Trilogy
I've only ever read The Soft Machine, but I've got a copy of Nova Express on the way as I've heard it's probably the best of the three and one of Burroughs' best in general. There's a recording of him reading a section of it which I listened to over and over for a while without realising it was...
www.dissensus.com
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Nice one. I'll be reading Nova Express first cos it arrives on Monday. I listened to that Last words of Hassan thing you posted in there, sooo good.
The Last Words of Hassan Sabbah
Oiga amigos! Oiga amigos! Paco! Enrique!
Last words of Hassan Sabbah,
The Old Man of the Mountain!
Listen to my last words, anywhere!
Listen all you boards, governments, syndicates, nations of the world,
And you, powers behind what filth deals consummated in what lavatory,
To take what is not yours,
To sell out your sons forever! To sell the ground from unborn feet
forever.
I bear no sick words junk words love words forgive words from Jesus.
I have not come to explain or tidy up.
What am I doing over here with the workers, the gooks, the apes, the
dogs, the errand boys, the human animals?
Why don’t I come over with the board, and drink coca-cola and make it?
Explain how the blood, and bones, and brains of a hundred million
more or less gooks went down the drain in green piss!
so you on the boards could use bodies, and minds, and souls that
were not yours, are not yours, and never will be yours.
You have the wrong name and the wrong number!
Mr Luce Getty Lee Rockefeller
Don’t let them see us, don’t tell them what we are doing!
Not the cancer deal with the Venusians, not the green deal –
don’t let that out,
disaster, automatic disaster.
Crab men! Tape-worms! Intestinal parasites!
Like Burroughs, that proud American name?
Proud of what exactly? Would you all like to see exactly what
Burroughs has to be proud of?
The Mayan Caper, the Centipede Hype,
Short-time racket, the Heavy-metal gimmick?
All right, Mister Burroughs, who bears my name and my words buried
all the way
for all to see,
in Times Square, in Piccadilly,
Play it all, play it all, play it all back!
Pay it all, pay it all, pay it all back!
Listen to my last word, any word
Listen, if you value the bodies which you would sell
all souls forever, short time,
minutes to go, blue heavy-metal people –
don’t let that out,
Are these the words of the all powerful boards, syndicates,
of the earth?
The great banking families, French, English, American,
squeezing the air.
You want Hassan Sabbah to explain that,
to tidy that up.
You have the wrong name and the wrong number.
for this you have sold your sons forever?
the ground from unborn feet forever
And you want the name of Hassan Sabbah on your filth deals
To sell out the unborn?
I rub out all the formulaes and directives of the Elders of Minraud forever
I rub out the word forever.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
A million million times better than anything Ginsberg and Kerouac put together ever did
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Is this where the term 'heavy metal' came from, or is that just a myth?
Basically done with The Soft Machine now and liked it a lot more this time around. It's an experiment so there are moments where it falls flat, but the language and imagery's so potent I can look past its failings.
Something that became more obvious was how much heavier it is on atmosphere and description than it is ideas, particularly in comparison to Nova Express. There are still plenty of ideas, but there isn't the bird's eye view of the techniques and conspiracy you get in the later book. It's mostly dense description of drugs, sex acts, tropical disease and exotic locales. He's attacking language, control systems, but he isn't telling you that's what he's doing or why he's doing it yet. You're just gripping the wreckage, watching it play out up close.
Having recently read The Drowned World, at times I couldn't help feeling I was reading some festering copy of the Ballard where the steaming pools and jungles had completely overpowered the narrative and started thrusting through the pages, vines cracking apart sentences. Almost surprised the thing didn't start bleeding and leaking pus and spores in my hand.
A summer book. Improved by reading in the heat.
Something that became more obvious was how much heavier it is on atmosphere and description than it is ideas, particularly in comparison to Nova Express. There are still plenty of ideas, but there isn't the bird's eye view of the techniques and conspiracy you get in the later book. It's mostly dense description of drugs, sex acts, tropical disease and exotic locales. He's attacking language, control systems, but he isn't telling you that's what he's doing or why he's doing it yet. You're just gripping the wreckage, watching it play out up close.
Having recently read The Drowned World, at times I couldn't help feeling I was reading some festering copy of the Ballard where the steaming pools and jungles had completely overpowered the narrative and started thrusting through the pages, vines cracking apart sentences. Almost surprised the thing didn't start bleeding and leaking pus and spores in my hand.
A summer book. Improved by reading in the heat.
I dunno who coined it, but he often gets the credit. It comes up a bunch of times in The Soft Machine.