Perhaps Burroughs' Best | The Place of Dead Roads: A Novel

fairly entertaining but not b's best | The Place of Dead Roads: A Novel | William S. Burroughs

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	• The Place of Dead Roads: A Novel William S. Burroughs Picador, 2001 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Hyperdimensional and ecstatically conceived

In "The Place of Dead Roads," the second volume of the "Cities of the Red Night" trilogy, Burroughs continues his scathing deconstruction of Western society, making a murderously funny mockery of hypocrisy and hum-drum normality. Written with a practiced mix of anger and nostalgia, "The Place of Dead Roads" is like a prison confession written in some other dimension, a rollicking synthesis of Burroughs tropes old and new. Join Kim Carsons on his nightmare quest to rid the planet of its addictions: it's a surreal and haunting literary journey, the last 100 pages of which witness Burroughs at his visionary best.

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Perhaps Burroughs' Best

In my opinion William S. Burroughs was one of the greatest authors of the 20th century.
In this masterpiece the author weaves an incredible series of vignettes, sometimes horrific, into a cohesive and powerful story.
Disturbing, surreal and powerful.

fairly entertaining but not b's best

the book starts off well with some deft writing on wild west style duels and guns--burroughs knows his shootin' irons. then there is some good stuff on dividing humankind (and et's too) into johnsons (the good) and non-johnsons (the bad, including the english, the arabs, the venusians, but not the french, who are johnsons.) along way are a few one-liner jokes so funny you have to slap your leg. and in the middle of the book are two wonderful
chapters, one evoking a feeling of loss, the next about a fake rural town peopled by fake rustics, johsonville, that is absolutely hilarious. and toward the end there's an astonishingly funny chapter on kim carsons, the gunslinging hero, being fitted for a proper english suit by an english tailor after entering the shop in a medieval cape that reeks of black palgue. and then near the end as well there's a proper bourroughs's list of the inner circles of hell, including bald, mid-aged men giving birth to centipedes from egg sacks on their heads. that is, there's b at his hallucinatory wildest here and there, but for too many pages there's just dull claptrap attempting to hold the sharper visions together in a ho-hum good vs evil (johnson vs non-) plot. not as stylistically even as b's more sober books such as junky and queer, and not as consistently stoned as naked lunch, but definitely readable.

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THE MASTER DOES IT AGAIN

WILLIAM BURROUGHS AT HIS BEST, PERIOD. DOING HIS VERY OWN VERSION OF NIETSZCHE'S "THE GENEALOGY OF MORAL", BURROUGHS TAKES US ON A TIME AND SPACE SPANNING TRIP TROUGH THE REALMS OF THE SLAVE-GODS, THE LANGUAJE VIRUS (EVER PRESENT IN BURROUGHS MITHOLOGY) AND THE INVADED WOMAN-VESSELS FOR THE CATHOLIC DECEASE, BURROUGHS PROVES ONCE MORE THAT HE CAN DO WHATEVER HE WANTS WITH LANGUAJE, A TRULY MASTERPIECE THAT EXPANDS SEVERAL UNIVERSES WIDE. DO NOT DARE TO MISS IT.

Burroughs at his Best

This may be the most accessible of all of Burrough's books, and proves his brilliant command of the language. He starts with an incredibly strong novel, and then takes us on a head trip through the joys and evils of modern civilization. Remarkably coherent, considering the ground that he covers. Like a few other things, you really can't explain it - just try it and you'll see.

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A good old-fashion shoot-out in the American West of the frontier days serves as the springboard for this hyperkinetic adventure in which gunslingers, led by Kim Carson, fight for galactic freedom. The Place of Dead Roads is the second novel in the trilogy with Cities of the Red Night and The Western Lands.

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