|   Genius or hack? (Off-topic) | J
Apr 19, 2002 4:26 AM | | Or junkie queer? I've often read all this stuff about how great William Burroughs is but never saw all that much in the writing. I wanted to. But I'd say the same of On The Road, which I thought was supposed to be so frickin' good. I came to the conclusion that Kerouac was just Jacking Off. How clever of me, ha ha. But I just wasn't all that impressed & though I never finished Dharma Bums I thought it was a load of poopy, at least the stuff I did get to. But Burroughs...I think his life reads better than his writing. Am I wrong? I couldn't make it through Naked Lunch. And boy, I wanted to like the Beats. But there is this little piece here that I thought was one of the most amazing things I've ever read:
Rock and Roll adolescent hoodlums storm the streets of all nations. They rush into the Louvre and throw acid in the Mona Lisa's face. They open zoos, insane asylums, prisons, burst water mains with air hammers, chop the floor out of passenger plane lavatories, shoot out lighthouses, file elevator cables to one thin wire, turn sewers into the water supply, throw sharks and sting rays, electric eels and candiru into swimming pools (the candiru is a small eel-like fish or worm about one-quarter inch through and two inches long patronizing certain rivers of ill repute in the Greater Amazon Basin, will dart up your prick or your asshole or a woman's cunt faute de mieux, and hold himself there by sharp spines with precisely what motives is not known since no one has stepped forward to observe the candiru's life-cycle in sito), in nautical costumes ram the Queen Mary full speed into New York Harbor, play chicken with passenger planes and busses, rush into hospitals in white coats carrying saws and axes and scalpels three feet long; throw paralytics out of iron lungs (mimic their suffocations flopping about on the floor and rolling their eyes up), administer injections with bicycle pumps, disconnect artificial kidneys, saw a woman in half with a two-man surgical saw, they drive herds of squealing pigs into the Curb, they shit on the floor of the United Nations and wipe their ass with treaties, pacts, alliances. |
| Yes | Troy
Apr 19, 2002 7:03 AM | | I agree with everything you said. Burroughs is much more interesting as a personality than his writing ever was. Give me Hunter Thompson anytime.
Kerouac? I just read "On the Road" for the 1st time a few months ago and was shocked at it's amateurishness. A product of a different time? Yeah, perhaps, but I expected much more soul and insight into the spirit of the American highway, not the diary of a slacker teenaged wino. |
| Both... | jack70
Apr 19, 2002 7:38 AM | | Burroughs would be tough to like a whole lot unless you were in your formative teens or early 20's. He's alot like JD Salinger or Hesse in that way. The large number of people who dismiss and berate him... well... changing an Islamic fundamentalist to Christianity would be easier than changing their opinions. There are people who like death-metal too... to each his own. Does it have value? Probably not a lot, but if you like it, so what. Remember, he was in the 50's... way different culture than today. Personally I thought all the other beats were mostly crap... WSB was a bit like watching animals fight... it was disturbing, exciting, and made you aware of a few things new to you (as a teen). He was an original... many people also dismiss Jackson Pollack because his work is not technically that demanding... but he was the first to open that door, and should at least be recognized for that. WSB should be too. All art and technology owes so much to what came before it, little unknown augmentations... but it's lost on most people unless you study something thoroughly.
Some of his interviews and stuff (check out the book The Job w/ Daniel Odier) are interesting, even if you think he's wacked (which he is) and some of his ideas are unique. The guy was out there at warp 9.9. I'm glad I experienced him back in my younger days. He's certainly got more to offer than 90% of the pop-crap idiots on the tube, movies, or best-seller-lists today, even if you abhor some of his ideas. |
| |
