the WILLIAM SEWARD BURROUGHS thread

[Mr. Tea]

He's got this absolute obsession with the workings of the human body. There's so much on various poisons and practices and what they do to the nervous system, the brain, the blood. I can picture him looking at people and just seeing all the pathways in their body the way Neo looks at The Matrix and sees lines of code.

This is how ketamine makes me feel, and it's often made me wonder if that's a bit like what it felt like to be him all the time.

Ironically it's one of the few drugs he never (AFAIK) wrote about using.

 

[version]

It's both interesting and unsurprising that him, Ballard and Joyce all studied medicine then went on to become body-fixated novelists. The pen wielded like a scalpel.

 

[Mr. Tea]

It's both interesting and unsurprising that him, Ballard and Joyce all studied medicine then went on to become body-fixated novelists. The pen wielded like a scalpel.

The anatomy lecturer's heart sinks as he sees the student Joyce's hand shoot up, knowing full well the question is going to be about poo, farts, or bumholes...

 

[version]

Recently learned he was quite close friends with William Gaddis.

 

[version]

Pound gets a mention in this one:

"It sometimes happens that a communication can put one into such a tizzy of annoyance that Satori results. This is the Crank Satori, and one of the more difficult routes, as witness Ezra Pound."​

 

[version]

“Messages from headquarters? What headquarters? Every man for himself—if he's got a self left. Not many do.”

 

[version]

Reading his book of dreams, My Education. It's wank, tbh. I'll finish it, but I'm not seeing much value in it. I don't think I've ever found hearing about dreams particularly interesting. He even says himself it's boring listening to someone recount their dreams then he spends almost 200 pages boring the reader by doing it himself. Cheers, Bill!

 

[luka]

Yeah its awful that one. Brain shot to bits. Drooling about cats and lemurs

 

[version]

A lot of it's just standalone paragraphs where he says he meets Gysin or Ian Sommerville or some other friend in some garbled dream location based on hotels and countries he'd visited years ago.

 

[Mr. Tea]

A lot of it's just standalone paragraphs where he says he meets Gysin or Ian Sommerville or some other friend in some garbled dream location based on hotels and countries he'd visited years ago.

So it's basically his Grandpa Simpson phase?

 

[version]

So it's basically his Grandpa Simpson phase?

Yeah, it's really dull and feels like something published for the sake of it/because he needed the money.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, it's really dull and feels like something published for the sake of it/because he needed the money.

Well heroin isn't free, is it.