I'll have to re-read them as it's been an age, but Harris mentions "thinking machines" in Queer and an "electronic brain" that goes berserk in Naked Lunch.
The Nova Trilogy
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- back before the whole fucking shithouse goes up! breakthrough in grey room coordinate points cut word lines from a land of grass without mirrors happy cloak hassan i sabbah image is virus izzy the push mr bradley mr martin nova crimes shift coordinate points stay out of the garden of delights terminal sewer the caustic enzymes of woo the centipede gods the insectoids the mayan caper the nova mob the old man of the mountain the orgasm death gimmick the ovens of minraud the subliminal kid the vegetable people the word broken pounded twisted exploded in smoke this is war to extermination towers open fire trak utilities undifferentiated tissue uranian willy
I'll have to re-read them as it's been an age, but Harris mentions "thinking machines" in Queer and an "electronic brain" that goes berserk in Naked Lunch.
IdleRich
IdleRich
When I was in Serbia read a Ballard short story about a future in which poetry is created by machines. Poets set the parameters such as length, metre etc and the thing creates just that. Poetry made by humans that doesn't fit the template is laughed at and rejected. And there are a load of flying poisonous stingrays but that's not so relevant here.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Dunno, flying poisonous stingrays sounds quite burroughsian
They're apparently a focus of The Ticket That Exploded. I've got a copy hopefully arriving tomorrow, so will report back.
This looks potentially interesting, but I'm wary of it being some dry academic thing that sucks all the life out of him.
William S. Burroughs's Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Ticket That Exploded) remains the best-known of his textual cut-up creations, but he committed more than a decade of his life to searching out multimedia for use in works of collage. By cutting up, folding in, and splicing together newspapers, magazines, letters, book reviews, classical literature, audio recordings, photographs, and films, Burroughs created an eclectic and wide-ranging countercultural archive.
This collection includes previously unpublished work by Burroughs such as cut-ups of work written by his son, cut-ups of critical responses to his own work, collages on the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, excerpts from his dream journals, and some of the few diary entries that Burroughs wrote about his wife, Joan.
William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century also features original essays, interviews, and discussions by established Burroughs scholars, respected artists, and people who encountered Burroughs. The essays consider Burroughs from a range of perspectives--literary studies, media studies, popular culture, gender studies, post-colonialism, history, and geography.
Could cut up Prynne and Burroughs and compile "A Note on Thinking Metal,".
He looks like he's playing dub or doing a set at Cafe Oto here.
I've always gotten the impression Ballard was much keener on Burroughs than Burroughs was on him, although Burroughs was apparently pretty steely and difficult to impress in general.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Imagine being his son and coming home from school, all pleased with a story you've written.
His actual son publicly accused him of ruining his life.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, I think he killed himself after saying one of his dad's mates abused him, something like that?
Him going to live with his father in Tangier when he was 13 sounds as though it went about as well as you'd expect.
"When Billy was 13, his grandparents asked William S. Burroughs to take Billy back. He agreed, and Billy was sent alone by air to Tangiers, Morocco, to live with his father. In Tangiers, Billy was introduced to marijuana, and men attempted to rape him. By his father's own admission, the visit was a failed attempt to rehabilitate their relationship."
"When Billy was 13, his grandparents asked William S. Burroughs to take Billy back. He agreed, and Billy was sent alone by air to Tangiers, Morocco, to live with his father. In Tangiers, Billy was introduced to marijuana, and men attempted to rape him. By his father's own admission, the visit was a failed attempt to rehabilitate their relationship."
IdleRich
IdleRich
Then died of course.
The virus attack is primarily directed against affective animal life – Virus of rage hate fear ugliness swirling round you waiting for a point of intersection and once in immediately perpetrates in your name some ugly noxious or disgusting act sharply photographed and recorded becomes now part of the virus sheets constantly presented and represented before your mind screen to produce more virus word and image around and around it’s all around you the invisible hail of bring down word and image –
The section in Nova Express called 'A Distant Thank You' is really good. Seems to be a conversation between an upper class couple who hire Burroughs and Ian Sommerville to remodel their property. A complete change of tone, almost leisurely.
From there you get a section with a lot of cut up Eliot followed by a section where he does various characters on a ship, including a bloke with a speech impediment.
"Bathdarths - Thons of bidth - Bathdarth - thon bidth - Methodith Epithcopal God damn ith - "
Wonder whether he stuck the Eliot between the two to draw attention to the fact he was doing voices.
From there you get a section with a lot of cut up Eliot followed by a section where he does various characters on a ship, including a bloke with a speech impediment.
"Bathdarths - Thons of bidth - Bathdarth - thon bidth - Methodith Epithcopal God damn ith - "
Wonder whether he stuck the Eliot between the two to draw attention to the fact he was doing voices.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
I like this From a Land of Grass without Mirrors section - seems to be about Agent Lee's drug withdrawal dreams, fighting off the nova criminals that come to tempt him back into addiction.
Re: the talk of colours/synaesthesia in the Rimbaud thread, I'm guessing the colour grey when it comes up in NE represents resistance, sobriety that can defeat all the luridly colored attacks from nova criminals, in the same way that cutting up words and silence can prevent them from taking over your wavelength? (Breakthrough in grey room)
Does that sound right?
Re: the talk of colours/synaesthesia in the Rimbaud thread, I'm guessing the colour grey when it comes up in NE represents resistance, sobriety that can defeat all the luridly colored attacks from nova criminals, in the same way that cutting up words and silence can prevent them from taking over your wavelength? (Breakthrough in grey room)
Does that sound right?