Download or read book The Adding Machine written by William S. Burroughs and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sheer pleasure. . . . Wonderfully entertaining."--Chicago Sun-Times Acclaimed by Norman Mailer more than twenty years ago as "possibly the only American writer of genius," William S. Burroughs has produced a body of work unique in our time. In these scintillating essays, he writes wittily and wisely about himself, his interests, his influences, his friends and foes. He offers candid and not always flattering assessments of such diverse writers as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett, and Marcel Proust. He ruminates on science and the often dubious paths into which it seems intent on leading us, whether into outer or inner space. He reviews his reviewers, explains his famous "cut-up" method, and discusses the role coincidence has played in his life and work. As satirist and parodist, William Burroughs has no peer, as these varied works, written over three decades, amply reveal.
Download or read book Understanding William S Burroughs written by Gerald Alva (Al) Miller and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2020-02-05 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through critical readings Gerald Alva Miller, Jr., examines the life of William S. Burroughs and the evolution of his various radical styles not just in writing but also in audio, film, and painting. Although Burroughs remains tied to the Beat Generation, his works prove more revolutionary. Miller argues that Burroughs, more than any other author, ushered in the era of both postmodern fiction and poststructural philosophy. Through this study Miller situates Burroughs within the larger countercultural movements that began in the 1950s, when his novels became influential because of their examination of various control systems (from sex and drugs to global or even intergalactic conspiracies). Understanding William S. Burroughs begins by considering his early, straightforward narratives. Despite being more stylistically conventional, they broke new ground with their depictions of junkies, gay people, and others marginalized by society. The publication of Naked Lunch shattered all literary paradigms in terms of form and content. Naked Lunch and the cut-up novels, recordings, films, and art that followed constitute one of the twentieth century's most sustained and methodical aesthetic experiments, placing Burroughs alongside Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, and Thomas Pynchon in terms of both innovation and influence. Burroughs eventually turned his attention toward imagining methods of using the control "machinery" against itself. Often considered his masterpiece, the Red Night Trilogy of the 1980s ranges across time and space, and life and death, in its quest to discover the ultimate form of freedom. His antiestablishment stance and virulent attacks on various types of oppression have caused Burroughs to remain a highly influential figure to each new generation of authors, artists, musicians, and philosophers. The hippies, punks, and cyberpunks were all heavily indebted to the man whom many people called el hombre invisible, and his works prove more relevant than ever in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book William S Burroughs and the Cult of Rock n Roll written by Casey Rae and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William S. Burroughs's fiction and essays are legendary, but his influence on music's counterculture has been less well documented—until now. Examining how one of America's most controversial literary figures altered the destinies of many notable and varied musicians, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll reveals the transformations in music history that can be traced to Burroughs. A heroin addict and a gay man, Burroughs rose to notoriety outside the conventional literary world; his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, was banned on the grounds of obscenity, but its nonlinear structure was just as daring as its content. Casey Rae brings to life Burroughs's parallel rise to fame among daring musicians of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, when it became a rite of passage to hang out with the author or to experiment with his cut-up techniques for producing revolutionary lyrics (as the Beatles and Radiohead did). Whether they tell of him exploring the occult with David Bowie, providing Lou Reed with gritty depictions of street life, or counseling Patti Smith about coping with fame, the stories of Burroughs's backstage impact will transform the way you see America's cultural revolution—and the way you hear its music.
Download or read book Last Words written by William S. Burroughs and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laid out as diary entries of the last nine months of Burroughs's life, "Last Words" spans the realms of cultural criticism, personal memoir, and fiction. Classic Burroughs concerns--literature, U.S. drug policy, the state of humanity, his love for his cats--permeate this poignant portrait of the man, his life, and the creative process.
Download or read book Interzone written by William S. Burroughs and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1990-02-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1954 William Burroughs settled in Tangiers, finding a sanctuary of sorts in its shadowy streets, blind alleys, and lowlife decadence. It was this city that served as a catalyst for Burroughs as a writer, the backdrop for one of the most radical transformations of style in literary history. Burroughs's life during this period is limned in a startling collection of short stories, autobiographical sketches, letters, and diary entries, all of which showcase his trademark mordant humor, while delineating the addictions to drugs and sex that are the central metaphors of his work. But it is the extraordinary "WORD," a long, sexually wild and deliberately offensive tirade, that blends confession, routine, and fantasy and marks the true turning point of Burroughs as a writer-the breakthrough of his own characteristic voice that will find its full realization in Naked Lunch. James Grauerholz's incisive introduction sets the scene for this series of pieces, guiding the reader through Burroughs's literary evolution from the precise, laconic, and deadpan writer of Junky and Queer to the radical, uncompromising seer of Naked Lunch. Interzone is an indispensable addition to the canon of his works.
Download or read book Call Me Burroughs written by Barry Miles and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years ago, Norman Mailer asserted, "William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius." Few since have taken such literary risks, developed such individual political or spiritual ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media. Burroughs wrote novels, memoirs, technical manuals, and poetry. He painted, made collages, took thousands of photographs, produced hundreds of hours of experimental recordings, acted in movies, and recorded more CDs than most rock bands. Burroughs was the original cult figure of the Beat Movement, and with the publication of his novel Naked Lunch, which was originally banned for obscenity, he became a guru to the 60s youth counterculture. In Call Me Burroughs, biographer and Beat historian Barry Miles presents the first full-length biography of Burroughs to be published in a quarter century-and the first one to chronicle the last decade of Burroughs's life and examine his long-term cultural legacy. Written with the full support of the Burroughs estate and drawing from countless interviews with figures like Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and Burroughs himself, Call Me Burroughs is a rigorously researched biography that finally gets to the heart of its notoriously mercurial subject.
Download or read book Cursed from Birth written by William S. Burroughs. Jr. and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2006-08-23 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Being the son of counter-culture author William S. Burroughs is bound to be a trial. After all, the man who frequented lesbian dives and had a fascination with firearms couldn't possibly make that great of a father. Perhaps inevitably, William Jr. (called Billy) referred to himself as "cursed from birth" and in the book of the same name editor David Ohle collects parts of Billy's third and unfinished novel Prakriti Junction, his last journals and poems, and correspondence and conversations to recreate this tortured life. Endowed with the sufferings — but not the patience — of Job, Billy's life was often characterized by tragedy and frustration, although there were also pockets of success and levity. More than just the memoir of a casualty of the Beat Generation, Cursed From Birth provides rare insight in Billy's father, as well as his scene, friends, and times. It also provides an all-too-familiar story of familial difficulties that anyone with difficult parents can understand and appreciate.
Download or read book William S Burroughs vs The Qur an written by Michael Muhammad Knight and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Michael Muhammad Knight sets out to write the definitive biography of his “Anarcho-Sufi” hero and mentor, writer Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), he makes a startling discovery that changes everything. At the same time that he grows disillusioned with his idol, Knight finds that his own books have led to American Muslim youths making a countercultural idol of him, placing him on the same pedestal that he had given Wilson. In an attempt to forge his own path, Knight pledges himself to an Iranian Sufi order that Wilson had almost joined, attempts to write the Great American Queer Islamo-Futurist Novel, and even creates his own mosque in the wilderness of West Virginia. He also employs the “cut-up” writing method of Bey’s friend, the late William S. Burroughs, to the Qur’an, subjecting Islam’s holiest scripture to literary experimentation. William S. Burroughs vs. the Qur’an is the struggle of a hero-worshiper without heroes and the meeting of religious and artistic paths, the quest of a writer as spiritual seeker.
Download or read book Queer written by William S. Burroughs and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an enigma - both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel, Burroughs' only realist love story and a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies that paved the way for his masterpiece, Naked Lunch. Set in Mexico City during the early fifties, Queer follows William Lee's hopeless pursuit of desire from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene. As Lee breaks down, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges; a maniacal mix of self-lacerating humor and the Ugly American at his ugliest. A haunting tale of possession and exorcism, Queer is also a novel with a history of secrets, as this new edition reveals.
Download or read book The Wild Boys written by William S. Burroughs and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wild Boys is a futuristic tale of global warfare in which a guerrilla gang of boys dedicated to freedom battles the organized armies of repressive police states. Making full use of his inimitable humor, wild imagination, and style, Burroughs creates a world that is as terrifying as it is fascinating.
Download or read book Rub Out the Words written by William S. Burroughs and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William S. Burroughs was one of the twentieth century’s most iconoclastic literary and artistic figures, an inimitable writer whose groundbreaking work in novels such as Junky and Naked Lunch forever altered the shape of American culture. Now, in this long anticipated collection, editor Bill Morgan takes readers through Burroughs’ correspondence from the early sixties through the mid-seventies, in more than three hundred letters that document Burroughs’ steady drift away from the Beat circle and that witness an era in which he became the center of a new coterie of creative people who would establish his reputation as an influential artistic and cultural leader beyond the literary world, toward multimedia. Written to recipients such as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, and Burroughs’ son, Billy Burroughs Jr., these letters shed new light on the writer’s controversial artistic process and literary experimentation, as well as his complex personal life. Here are letters to new friends in North Africa and Eur-ope—partners in Burroughs’ expatriate life—including Paul Bowles, Ian Sommerville, Michael Portman, Alex Trocchi, and the surrealist artist Brion Gysin, who became a close confidant and whose “cut-up method” would deeply influence Burroughs’ writing. An intimate glimpse into the private life of an often misunderstood artist, Rub Out the Words is also an unforgettable portrait of one of the twentieth century’s most uncompromising literary personalities.
Download or read book The Soft Machine written by William S. Burroughs and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-02-24 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs revealed his genius. In The Soft Machine he begins an adventure that will take us even further into the dark recesses of his imagination, a region where nothing is sacred, nothing taboo. Continuing his ferocious verbal assault on hatred, hype, poverty, war, bureaucracy, and addiction in all its forms, Burroughs gives us a surreal space odyssey through the wounded galaxies in a book only he could create.
Download or read book Don t Hide the Madness written by William S. Burroughs and published by Mitten Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intense, compelling conversation between legendary Beat icons William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, featuring photos by Ginsberg, and details of Burroughs' shamanic exorcism of the demon that led him to shoot his wife and drove his work as a writer.
Download or read book Designing Sound written by Andy Farnell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-08-20 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practitioner's guide to the basic principles of creating sound effects using easily accessed free software. Designing Sound teaches students and professional sound designers to understand and create sound effects starting from nothing. Its thesis is that any sound can be generated from first principles, guided by analysis and synthesis. The text takes a practitioner's perspective, exploring the basic principles of making ordinary, everyday sounds using an easily accessed free software. Readers use the Pure Data (Pd) language to construct sound objects, which are more flexible and useful than recordings. Sound is considered as a process, rather than as data—an approach sometimes known as “procedural audio.” Procedural sound is a living sound effect that can run as computer code and be changed in real time according to unpredictable events. Applications include video games, film, animation, and media in which sound is part of an interactive process. The book takes a practical, systematic approach to the subject, teaching by example and providing background information that offers a firm theoretical context for its pragmatic stance. [Many of the examples follow a pattern, beginning with a discussion of the nature and physics of a sound, proceeding through the development of models and the implementation of examples, to the final step of producing a Pure Data program for the desired sound. Different synthesis methods are discussed, analyzed, and refined throughout.] After mastering the techniques presented in Designing Sound, students will be able to build their own sound objects for use in interactive applications and other projects
Download or read book Exterminator written by William S. Burroughs and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A man, dispirited by ageing, endeavours to steal a younger man’s face; a doctor yearns for a virus that might eliminate his discomfort by turning everyone else into doubles of himself; a Colonel lays out the precepts of the life of DE (Do Easy); conspirators posthumously succeed in blowing up a train full of nerve gas; a mandrill known as the Purple Better One runs for the presidency with brutal results; and the world drifts towards apocalypses of violence, climate and plague. The hallucinatory landscape of William Burroughs’ compellingly bizarre, fragmented novel is constantly shifting, something sinister always just beneath the surface.
Download or read book William S Burroughs Cutting Up the Century written by Joan Hawkins and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-17 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This definitive book on Burroughs’ decades-long cut-up project and its relevance to the American twentieth century, including previously unpublished works. 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. “A landmark in scholarship.” —Choice
Download or read book William S Burroughs The Revised Boy Scout Manual written by William S. Burroughs and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive version of William Burroughs' political satire masterpiece, published for the first time in its entirety.
