what are you reading now?

S

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
you said:
Any tips on other books as massive and vibrant and downright biblical as Blood Meridian ( by other authors )??
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This might be obvious, but Flannery O'Connor is a good bet. She's like Cormac McCarthy, but with half the words. Southern Gothic O.G.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
its not underrated. saying burroughs final triology is his best work is almost consnsus opinion now. i love them but i dont think they are as good as the earlier work. more and more of his innate sentimentality creeps in which is endearing but also... i dunno, a weakness i suppose.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Just finished reading Burroughs' collected letters, mainly addressed to Ginsberg and Kerouac. Provides a really good insight into the writing and publication of Naked Lunch in particular. Easy to forget how up against it he was back then with that book. Its incredible that he managed to get it published at all really.
 
slim jenkins

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
Mr. Tea said:
dusky bum-boys.
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:D

The last trilogy is regarded as being more accessible and is, but only in relation to The Nova Trilogy. I liked Bill when he was being his most inaccessible. The cut-up labyrinth is endlesslessly fascinating to me. He later claimed to have gone too far with that medium, but even the relatively straight narrative passages of those last three novels would prove challenging to the average reader.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'll definitely go back to The Soft Machine at some point - at the moment though I'm enjoying the conceptual, rather than syntactic, toughness of Cities. Just started Book II, and it's going from weird to weirder... :)

I'm slightly surprised there isn't a dedicated Burroughs thread - or maybe there was years ago, and I missed it - as he's a kind of Dissensus patron saint.

Edit: oh, there was, but it only got 3 replies... http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?4223-the-WILLIAM-SEWARD-BURROUGHS-thread
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
who actualy loves burroughs and knows burroughs on dissensus? its not dubstep. theres about 5 of us. ive read and own everything cos im a sad fanboy, letters, interviews, every book published.... i love the man. hs my uncle. i reead very litte. sometimes months pass without me picking up a book but i will always love burroughs.
nb. i am a tiny bit drunk but i think it will stand by thigs in the morning.
 
bandshell

bandshell

Grand High Witch
I seem to be reading a chapter a week from The Soft Machine. I read some extracts to my mother. She wasn't really feeling it.

My dad's not really into Burroughs either. He says it reminds him of twats from uni with terrible hair and doc martins who never shut up about the VU.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Haha, for some reason I mentioned WSB to my mum on the phone a while ago. She hadn't heard of him, so I said "Just look him up on Wikipedia or something - you won't like him". Sure enough, I was right...but then I guess he wasn't really writing for straight, married, middle-aged, middle-class, white English mums. :cool:

(Subtext: he was writing for far-out radical kerazy counterculture beatnik drughead weirdos like, um, me...)
 
slim jenkins

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
luka said:
who actualy loves burroughs and knows burroughs on dissensus? its not dubstep. theres about 5 of us. ive read and own everything cos im a sad fanboy, letters, interviews, every book published.... i love the man. hs my uncle. i reead very litte. sometimes months pass without me picking up a book but i will always love burroughs.
nb. i am a tiny bit drunk but i think it will stand by thigs in the morning.
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(Sticks hand up like an enthusiastic kid at school who knows the answer to teacher's question) Me! Me!. As Mr Tea says, he should be a patron saint of this place, but then again, as you say, he's not dubstep (;)). I got the Bill bug from Beat explorations back in the late-70s. His work has endured, whereas I seldom read 'the others' these days. The novels aside, there's a lot of other interesting work he did for many small mags through the 60s. The Reality Studio site is a good source for those. I'm no great fan of Nirvana, but his influence on Rock bands started early with The Mugwumps ('63) being the first to take from him. Most famously Steely Dan and Soft Machine, of course.
 
bandshell

bandshell

Grand High Witch
slim jenkins said:
(Sticks hand up like an enthusiastic kid at school who knows the answer to teacher's question) Me! Me!. As Mr Tea says, he should be a patron saint of this place, but then again, as you say, he's not dubstep (;)). I got the Bill bug from Beat explorations back in the late-70s. His work has endured, whereas I seldom read 'the others' these days.
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I picked up Naked Lunch from a shop in town when I was 15 with no idea of what it was going to be like and was pretty stunned by it. Left it at my Dad's house for a few years.

Tried reading some Kerouac at that time and just got bored and gave up. Burroughs was always there, lurking, though. Felt like I had to read it at some point after my initial reaction.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
I like Conrad and Burroughs (though not a completist and haven't read any for years I have to admit) - what do I win?
Lord Jim is pretty easy and short though isn't it? It's not like Nostromo, that is quite slow.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Only Conrad I've read is Heart of Darkness but I thought it was pretty badass.

I read about half of On The Road and just got bored, it didn't seem to be going anywhere and I found the style quite annoying. For a 'cult classic' it seemed a bit, well, vacuous.

I reckon Burroughs is bigger here than luka thinks:

http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?11624-Resonance-tonight-Burroughs-special&
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?11214-When-Burroughs-Met-Bowie&
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?11175-William-Burroughs-on-Led-Zeppelin-(Arthur-Mag-1975)
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?10486-Bill-Burroughs-Kills-Another-Pop-Star!
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread...ughs-Throbbing-Gristle-Brion-Gysin-on-the-Bay
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?4223-the-WILLIAM-SEWARD-BURROUGHS-thread
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?3336-The-Burroughs-Archive

Slim responsible for two of them...
 
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craner

craner

Beast of Burden
Lord Jim did my head in as it rambled on and on, though this would produce its own reward, of course, as you stumble over stupendous chunks of superlative prose and leap around the room with excitement and joy; but then, again, and again, you must pay for this with long stretches of confusion, digression, extraneous detail and stories within stories which, from what I gather, become largely the technical and thematic point; also, you have to learn to cope with endless, exhausting sentences, like this one, which is rather the style for 1900 and so, you know, the only way to get through it and avoid losing the plot or generating a migraine is, I dunno, by sitting in a shaded room with a damp flannel on your forehead or something. I just went and read something else instead.
 
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