the WILLIAM SEWARD BURROUGHS thread

[version]

There's some thing Harris put together that's heavy block capital stuff like that called BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS.

BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS by William S. Burroughs – RealityStudio

A Never-Before-Published Cut-Up Masterpiece BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS is the most important new publication by William S. ...

realitystudio.org

 

[Benny Bunter]

Commas would have ruined nova express

 

[jenks]

no one really understands that stuff. i think i asked on here and no one knew.

I teach them frequently and wonder why I bother. I get about one student a year who understands them and loves them.

 

[version]

I sometimes like the way lists can look separated by semicolons.

 

[luka]

prynne is hopelessly addicted to this one ;
whatever it's called. ive pretty much given up on punctuation beyond full stops. its uneccessary.

 

[version]

Another one you get in Burroughs, although infrequently, is the double colon.

 

[Benny Bunter]

 

[luka]

ive talked a bit before about how the sentence seems to be becoming obsolete. just strings of keywords now.
a lot of reading is done by computers anyone. eg your job applications.
self motivated earnest loving bubbly personality devoted

 

[version]

This sort of thing's one of the reasons I was arguing he isn't as samey as you think he is when you aren't reading him. A book full of block capitals and em dashes reads very differently to a book full of ellipses and relatively straight, mixed-case sentences.

Some might respond you're nitpicking for the sake of variation, but a writer like Burroughs is very conscious of the effects of language and writing and deliberately draws your attention to it. What at first seems like a minor variation can become quite pronounced if you get into his mindset.

 

[version]

prynne is hopelessly addicted to this one ;
whatever it's called. ive pretty much given up on punctuation beyond full stops. its uneccessary.

That's a semicolon.

 

[Benny Bunter]

All I can say is that reading Burroughs came as light relief straight after reading Wyndham Lewis

 

[version]

When I was reading Nova Express the other day, I realised this is what Pynchon's doing in the 'Kenosha Kid' section of Gravity's Rainbow. It suddenly seemed so obvious he was doing Burroughs. You've got the repetition of a phrase with different parts stressed along with a character called "The ... Kid". It's Burroughs.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I picked up a copy of gravity's rainbow in a used bookshop the other day but I can't be arsed to start reading it yet.

 

[entertainment]

ive talked a bit before about how the sentence seems to be becoming obsolete. just strings of keywords now.
a lot of reading is done by computers anyone. eg your job applications.
self motivated earnest loving bubbly personality devoted

the terms of communication are coming to be defined by the image.

language adapts to survive as text-images

 

[luka]

the terms of communication are coming to be defined by the image.

language adapts to survive as text-images

yeah thats a nice way of putting it

 

[version]

I picked up a copy of gravity's rainbow in a used bookshop the other day but I can't be arsed to start reading it yet.

It's worth reading, but those big books are a commitment. I've been sticking to shorter ones this year.

 

[Benny Bunter]

the terms of communication are coming to be defined by the image.

language adapts to survive as text-images

That's why I like to do screenshots of poems or whatever to share, no one wants to read copy and pasted text

 

[Benny Bunter]

It's worth reading, but those big books are a commitment. I've been sticking to shorter ones this year.

I will do it one day, but too soon after reading ulysees

 

[version]

ive talked a bit before about how the sentence seems to be becoming obsolete. just strings of keywords now.
a lot of reading is done by computers anyone. eg your job applications.
self motivated earnest loving bubbly personality devoted

Yeah, imagine using full sentences in a search engine. Ridiculous.

 

[luka]

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