Starts off great....Then Plummets............. | Cities of the Red Night

A true vision of the future or past | Cities of the Red Night | William S. Burroughs

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	• Cities of the Red Night William S. Burroughs Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981 - 332 pages average customer review:based on 25 reviews
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highly recommended

Vivid Imagination Or Was It All The Drugs?

I can't say that I want to "Be Like Burroughs" because there were some instances in this novel Cities of the Red Night (and others) where I thought he was on the verge of losing his mind. The stories span from homo-erotic pornography to violent surrealism but his talent was obvious. There are political messages on the nature of freedom and individualism, however an average reader could easily be distracted by but all of the surreal imagery and sexual situations. Yet I recommend that you read Naked Lunch first before reading this book.

Starts off great....Then Plummets.............

Yes, here we trip through a group of 1700's pirates cruising the sea, and at first really enjoying the waves, the comradeship, the nature, the heavens, and just about anything else one may enjoy on such a trip..It is a nice hallucinatory, semi sci-fi trip until it...frankly goes from the dreamlike to the grotesque to the ...well, let's just say scatalogical, to keep it simple. No doubt this odd fellow could write, but whether you want to share his truly bizarre daydreams is problematic, to be kind. Sure, he was in the same crowd as Kerouac, but universes apart! Read all of Jack K. before tripping into Burroughs!

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A true vision of the future or past

Burroughs knew what he was talking about. This book along with the Place of Dead Roads was the final, most complete and coherant summation of the Burroughs vision/nightmare. Just by virtue of his personal style these books mix utopian essay, apocalyptic nightmare, gut wrenching horror, and valid cultural criticism. As far as experimental fiction goes, you won't find any more readable, in the Burroughs canon or anywhere else. A word of caution: these books are for thinking people; they are not brain dead entertainment with cutesy characters or happy endings. It is not easy reading. Burroughs regards the natural condition of humaity and civillization as ultimately dark and depraved. Few people want to believe that, and those who do may have a hard time coming to grips with such a pessimistic conclusion about human nature. Such a vision provokes and challengues us all. Those brave souls who, though cold, disoriented and terrified choose to light a candle with trembling hands and willingly descend the staircase into the forsaken cellar of Burroughs' mind will not return unscathed or unrewarded.

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Untramelled Genius

This is the most accessible William Burroughs novel ever written. It has more structure, cohesion and plot than most of his other works, so if you are a first time Burroughs reader this is the one to go for...Burroughs is a genius and a prophet of 20th Century literature. His writing pushes the boundaries of imagination,sexuality, social interaction and time. He is an alien soul injected into the dead body of a homosexual junkie. He started shooting up as a 1 yr old baby and by the age of 2 he was having anal sex with other babies in nightclub toilets. His stream of consciousness will transport you to planets and worlds that transcend human experience but also unveil the instincts that drive us to the edge of depravity and extinction. William Burroughs is in love with humanity and he knows how to show it. After all he did shoot his wife in the head xxx

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Bleeding Gums

Fierce symbolisms that rips out the guts of whitebread America. The most profound gem is Burrough's prediction of the AIDS crisis. He was able to capture in this book the symptoms he saw develop in the homosexual underground years before it was announced to the world at large.

While young men wage war against an evil empire of zealous mutants, the population of this modern inferno is afflicted with the epidemic of a radioactive virus. An opium-infused apocalyptic vision from the legendary author of Naked Lunch is the first of the trilogy with The Places of the Dead Roads and his final novel, The Western Plains.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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