The Ticket That Exploded

version

version

Well-known member
Re-reading the intro and already got hit with an overlap/synchronicity: Harris mentions Irving Rosenthal asking Burroughs about a reference to 'Johnny's So Long at the Fair' in Naked Lunch and Burroughs replies, "Come now Irving, You have heard that tune a thousand times. We all have."

I could've sworn I'd read that line somewhere recently and realised it was similar to something I'd quoted in the Boomkat review of those old wax cylinder recordings in 'artifacts / fog of war':

"Thomas Edison's cylinder phonograph gives everything a distinct feel - you've all heard his 1877 "Mary had a little lamb" skit - "
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Love Mary? - Fuck the shit out of me

With just a photograph, Mary, you know i love you through sperm

The truth in sunlight, Mary

Music seems to whisper Louise Mary on the pissoirs

Still I feel the the thrill of you spurting out through the orgasm seems to whisper:: "Louise, Mary, swamp mud" - In the blood little things you used to do - recorder jack-off - Substitute mine - Bye Bye body halves
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
"Sarah began teaching young boys and girls in a small school not far from her home [in Newport, New Hampshire] ... It was at this small school that the incident involving 'Mary's Lamb' is reputed to have taken place. Sarah was surprised one morning to see one of her students, a girl named Mary, enter the classroom followed by her pet lamb. The visitor was far too distracting to be permitted to remain in the building and so Sarah 'turned him out.' The lamb stayed nearby till school was dismissed and then ran up to Mary looking for attention and protection. The other youngsters wanted to know why the lamb loved Mary so much and their teacher explained it was because Mary loved her pet. Then Sarah used the incident to get a moral across to the class:

Why does the lamb love Mary so? Mary so, Mary so?
Why does the lamb love Mary so? The eager children smiled,
Mary loves the lamb, you know, Lamb, you know, lamb, you know,
Mary loves the lamb, you know The teacher’s happy smile.[2]
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Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Innocent nursery rhymes and romantic love songs spliced into the basest pornographic fantasies.

"YOU KNOW HOW CATCHING TUNES ARE."
 
version

version

Well-known member
Everything seems to glow in this book, moreso than I remember in the others. He's always talking about things being phosphorescent, but here, in the 'winds of time' section, it feels like watching an undersea sequence of luminous fish. Everything's translucent, lots of blues. 'Glowie' nowadays of course being online slang for a government agent... Everything's so fluid too. Sliding around in time and space. The part where it drops into a police procedural, the conversation about 'Genial' and people being murdered with tape recorders found at the scene of the crime, made me think of Borges and Lovecraft and Poe. The detective being called in and the bizarre case laid out for him.

Benny Bunter said:
Burrough's pure hatred of Christianity too.
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Apparently that's a prominent part of the Ghost of Chance novella I mentioned in the other thread. He goes off on a rant about Christ trying to monopolise the miracle market.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
I think the Burroughs quote that comes up the most, certainly the one I've read or heard him drawl out the most, is the one about doing business with a religious son of a bitch.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
version said:

k-punk: MEN ARE FROM VENUS

k-punk.abstractdynamics.org

Cutting-Up | June 16, 1967
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"The prose is incantatory ---- and it is a mistake to read it as if it is a novel. Hear it as if it is being read out aloud. Use the hyphens (---) as precise instructions on how to pause ---"

Agree with this, especially with the heavily cut-up sections, you should read it aloud to get the full effect. In fact, I don't know if I'd be able to get through it at all just reading it silently.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
version said:
Apparently that's a prominent part of the Ghost of Chance novella I mentioned in the other thread. He goes off on a rant about Christ trying to monopolise the miracle market.
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"The D.S. was contemplating the risky expedient of a 'miracle' and the miracle he contemplated was silence. Few things are worse than a miracle that doesn't come off."

And in the notes:

"An earlier typescript defines a miracle: "that is doing something that would appear miraculous to nervous systems incapable of thinking outside channels laid down by the corrupt colonists - Miracles are always an emergency operation"
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
It's strange, but in many ways he's on the same turf as traditional Christianity's conception of earthly sin and punishment, and that's probably why he resented it so much. I'm not always sure it's that different, fundamentally.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Well obviously it is very different, but still can't shake the feeling that he's a moralist at heart (I think we've had this conversation before)
 
Murphy

Murphy

cat malogen
Benny Bunter said:
The Ugly Spirit - aka Mr Bradly Mr Martin, aka Mr and Mrs D - actually gets arrested by the Nova Police in Ticket, along with Sammy the Butcher. "Operation completed -- planet out of danger." It's an oddly positive moment in the book.

The cut-ups and tape experiments were definitely a form of self-administered therapy for him. Apparently, soon after discovering them he sacked off the psychoanalyst he was seeing in Paris and violently rejected Freud. Unfortunately, it also lead him down a dodgy path of anti-semitism and Scientology for a while, as you mention.
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there’s an audio clip of Brion Gysin somewhere about Mr Ugly Spirit as the bomb but I can’t find it, might be in The Process but I’m not home (the bit about “there are no brothers”)

not forgetting the Ugly Spirit of Burroughs as pre-European indigenous American demon, hence sweat lodge rite .. and I have to rep Sheffield

IMG_6141.jpeg
 
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