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
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Apparently it's from TS Eliot's translation of a poem called Anabasis by St John Perse.
Which I haven't read or know anything about so...
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
That's not necessarily contrary to what I thought it was though. That chapter seems to be him going through fevered withdrawal dreams, possibly after a recent relapse or near relapse?
When I read that bit, I thought he was moving through bodies.
Lee woke in other flesh the lookout different -
In The Soft Machine he's able to switch bodies and inhabit other people, 'The Mayan Caper' involves him taking a boy's body to move back in time then taking control of a priest.
Lee woke in other flesh the lookout different -
In The Soft Machine he's able to switch bodies and inhabit other people, 'The Mayan Caper' involves him taking a boy's body to move back in time then taking control of a priest.
Yeah, I'm re-reading it now and I think you're right. He's having withdrawal dreams and being bombarded with images. He also wakes up and shits himself, presumably because the opiate constipation's worn off.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Then he gets tempted by a sexual encounter but uses a grey screen or something and resists, arrests the nova criminal, who leaves behind an empty host body that's like a mannequin - or something like that (haven't got the book in front of me now )
It's remarkable how embedded he became in pop culture, music in particular. If there's any truth to the suggestion he was CIA then he's a seriously bizarre success story. His fingerprints are everywhere. Bunch of punks, poets and artists worshiping at the altar of a grey old bigoted Harvard man in a suit.
malelesbian
Femboyism IS feminism.
Does anyone remember the part in The Ticket that Exploded where he seems to describe audio sampling? Very prescient.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
A Distant Thank You - it's heavily cut up so hard to tell, but I'm thinking this section in NE appears to be primarily about colonialism, the New World. Any thoughts? Was thinking that similar themes are probably in his other work like soft machine.
Lots of stuff about the Mayans and Incas and the lemur people, and bulldozers
Lots of stuff about the Mayans and Incas and the lemur people, and bulldozers
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Aha, just seen this post. It really did put me in mind of one of those TV programs that are so popular nowadays where they redecorate someone's house, or they buy a property somewhere and do it over - but the "House" in this case seems to be an entire civilisation/ecosystem.
Again, so prescient.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
The bulldozers move in, everything gets swept away and chucked down a hole, and whatever remains of the indigenous fauna is turned into a zoo.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Didnt Burroughs think women were borne of some embryological genetic error or something? I heard him making that argument in a lecture, answering angry questions, but I don’t know if he was serious. This the sort of thing that came from Gysins influence?
He famously published an essay titled 'Women: A Biological Mistake?' where he argued humans were trapped at a larval stage and that the division of the sexes was arbitrary and they should perhaps fuse for the sake of evolution.
Here's a bit about Gysin's negative influence from Harris on The Soft Machine,
The 1961 Soft Machine included one brief but telling reference to "fraud Freud and Einstein," although this was dropped from later editions and little else would remain in his published work to indicate Burroughs' deplorable subscription to the International Jewish-Communist conspiracy.* Critics have preferred to turn a blind eye to it, but the anti-Semitism in his work at the time and an equally ugly misogyny were encouraged by Gysin, and represented the dark side of Burroughs' self-declared megalomania, his missionary conviction of having discovered the secret weapon to combat a conspiracy of conspiracies. The Burroughs of unchecked paranoia was no "Friendly Prophet."
*That this phrasing originates in openly anti-Semitic material is clear from several 1960 texts, including: "I RUB OUT THE WORDS OF MARX LENIN EINSTEIN FREUD FRAUD FOREVER. I RUB OUT THE WORD JEW FOREVER."
Here's a bit about Gysin's negative influence from Harris on The Soft Machine,
The 1961 Soft Machine included one brief but telling reference to "fraud Freud and Einstein," although this was dropped from later editions and little else would remain in his published work to indicate Burroughs' deplorable subscription to the International Jewish-Communist conspiracy.* Critics have preferred to turn a blind eye to it, but the anti-Semitism in his work at the time and an equally ugly misogyny were encouraged by Gysin, and represented the dark side of Burroughs' self-declared megalomania, his missionary conviction of having discovered the secret weapon to combat a conspiracy of conspiracies. The Burroughs of unchecked paranoia was no "Friendly Prophet."
*That this phrasing originates in openly anti-Semitic material is clear from several 1960 texts, including: "I RUB OUT THE WORDS OF MARX LENIN EINSTEIN FREUD FRAUD FOREVER. I RUB OUT THE WORD JEW FOREVER."
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
To what extent, do you think, was Burroughs into Scientology for the practical purpose of getting off the smack with their techniques, or was there some ideological attraction there? It's hard not to see a parallel between the Nova Criminals and Hubbard's Thetans.
william_kent
Well-known member
There was a book from about ten years ago that alleges WSB was “clear” but got kicked out of the “church” circa 1969
It’s on my amazon wish list but I still haven’t got around to buying or reading it, so I can’t comment any further
If I wasn’t on holiday and had access to my “stacks” I could probably stump up some quotes but early onset dementia and an inability to control this stupid apple device I brought with me precludes any of that
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Eh, I'd just enjoy my hols if I were you.