The Ticket That Exploded
- Thread starter Benny Bunter
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- a series of oblique references baggy bumhole due to heroin blue notes of pan can't even con can't even hustle cool mineral silence cuntsville usa diseased metal drumbeats of ghost people fish boy garden of delights hypnotizing chickens i wrote silences it's a sick picture b.j. knees up to the chin meme falling open shirt flapping picking up junkies for bum sex rectal mucus silence to say good bye smoke up the path something called love the final ape of history the happy cloak the japanese sandman the other half there are no good words what you need will hollywood never learn? word falling photo falling writing machine
vershy versh
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"It is a precise operation - It is difficult - It is dangerous - It is a new frontier and only the adventurous need apply - But it belongs to anyone who has the courage and know-how to enter - It belongs to you -"
Benny Bunter
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I like how him and Gysin tried to promote the DIY aesthetic - "Go out and buy three fine machines on credit" - "Get the children exchanging tapes" - "Carry Corders of the world unite" etc
Benny Bunter
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Finished now. The last chapter's a weird mix of later stuff chopped into the middle of the original that's all good material, but maybe would have been better to separate it out.
The endings great though, quite sad and moving with all its good byes and adios's and farewells and melting into air
The endings great though, quite sad and moving with all its good byes and adios's and farewells and melting into air
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Feels like a sly self-reference with the mention of "calculating machines" at the top of p126 in the PMC edition.
en.wikipedia.org
Almost unbelievably, there was also a pharmaceutical company called 'Burroughs Wellcome' at one time that later became part of the company now known as GSK.
en.wikipedia.org
Burroughs Corporation - Wikipedia
Almost unbelievably, there was also a pharmaceutical company called 'Burroughs Wellcome' at one time that later became part of the company now known as GSK.
GSK plc - Wikipedia
vershy versh
Well-known member
"Burroughs, that proud American name? Proud of what, exactly? Would you all like to see exactly what Burroughs has to be proud of?"
Benny Bunter
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Benny Bunter
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Still haven't seen that film
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I've seen it a very long time ago. Wouldn't mind seeing it again. I think it's regarded as a mixed success in terms of getting across a book that, let's face it, is fundamentally unfilmable.
vershy versh
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Given how musical and sound-fixated the book is, I keep thinking of Caliban:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
This is the bit Tom McCarthy pulls out when he talks about communication networks in literature too, something very much in line with Burroughs' interests.
vershy versh
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A jarring moment reading earlier when he suddenly inserted "(Have you lost your dog?)" into a passage in 'The Black Fruit', the family dog having been put to sleep last Sunday.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I'm sorry to hear that, mate.
vershy versh
Well-known member
The bit where he keeps jumping between 1862 and 1962 is horrifying. The Orchid People fucking him to death in a stagnant pool full of diarrhea. Is this what D&G meant by "becoming orchid"?
🤪
🤪
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Two horrific bits that really stood out for me were the frogs, and that bit where Poo Poo the poodle morphs into a dummy with a face of green wax that scratches his face with its long yellow fingernails.
vershy versh
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That 'Black Fruit' section is one of the best. It's like that massive Clark Ashton Smith poem, The Hashish Eater, where he hammers the reader with this guy's drug trip visions of crypts and demons, palaces and forests.
In a world
Deep-wooded with the multi-colored fungi
That soar to semblance of fantastic palms,
I fall as falls the meteor-stone, and break
A score of trunks to atom powder. Unharmed
I rise, and through the illimitable woods,
Among the trees of flimsy opal, roam,
And see their tops that clamber hour by hour
To touch the suns of iris. Things unseen,
Whose charnel breath informs the tideless air
With spreading pools of fetor, follow me,
Elusive past the ever-changing palms;
And pittering moths with wide and ashen wings
Flit on before, and insects ember-hued,
Descending, hurtle through the gorgeous gloom
And quench themselves in crumbling thickets. Heard
Far off, the gong-like roar of beasts unknown
Resounds at measured intervals of time,
Shaking the riper trees to dust, that falls
In clouds of acrid perfume, stifling me
Beneath an irised pall.
In a world
Deep-wooded with the multi-colored fungi
That soar to semblance of fantastic palms,
I fall as falls the meteor-stone, and break
A score of trunks to atom powder. Unharmed
I rise, and through the illimitable woods,
Among the trees of flimsy opal, roam,
And see their tops that clamber hour by hour
To touch the suns of iris. Things unseen,
Whose charnel breath informs the tideless air
With spreading pools of fetor, follow me,
Elusive past the ever-changing palms;
And pittering moths with wide and ashen wings
Flit on before, and insects ember-hued,
Descending, hurtle through the gorgeous gloom
And quench themselves in crumbling thickets. Heard
Far off, the gong-like roar of beasts unknown
Resounds at measured intervals of time,
Shaking the riper trees to dust, that falls
In clouds of acrid perfume, stifling me
Beneath an irised pall.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
This is a great essay on the Nova trilogy by Alan Ansen (who was AJ in Naked Lunch, apparently)
Edit: not really on the Nova trilogy cos it was published before Nova Express' came out - it examines Naked Lunch, Soft Machine, Ticket and Dead Fingers Talk. Makes DFT sound really good actually, I'd sort of dismissed that one cos it's a compendium of previous material, but it's probably worth reading.
Alan Ansen, “After the Naked Lunch” (1964) – RealityStudio
Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting Alan Ansen, After the Naked Lunch, from ...
realitystudio.org
Edit: not really on the Nova trilogy cos it was published before Nova Express' came out - it examines Naked Lunch, Soft Machine, Ticket and Dead Fingers Talk. Makes DFT sound really good actually, I'd sort of dismissed that one cos it's a compendium of previous material, but it's probably worth reading.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Hey, don't knock it till you've tried it.