Retaking The Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization

by Davis Schneiderman (Editor), Philip Walsh (Series Editor)

William S. Burroughs is one of America's most influential and widely studied writers. A leading member of the Beat movement, his books and essays continue to attract a wide readership. His films, paintings, recordings and other projects that grew out of his literary production, together with his iconic persona as a counter-culture (anti-)hero, mean his work has become a broad cultural phenomenon. This collection of essays by leading scholars offers an interdisciplinary consideration of Burroughs's art. It links his lived experience to his many major prose works written from 1953 on, as well his sound, cinema and media projects. Moving beyond the merely literary, the contributors argue for the continuing social and political relevance of Burroughs's work for the emerging global order. Themes Burroughs and contemporary theory; debates on 'reality'; violence; magic and mysticism ; cybernetic cultures; language and technology; control and transformation; transgression and addiction; the limits of prose; image politics and the avant-garde.

328 pages, Paperback

First published July 21, 2004

About the author

Davis Schneiderman works include the novel Drain (TriQuarterly/Northwestern); the DEAD/BOOKS trilogy (Jaded Ibis), including the blank novel, Blank: a novel , with audio from Dj Spooky, and the forthcoming [SIC] (Fall 2013), with intro by Oulipian Daniel Levin Becker, images from Andi Olsen and audio from Illegal Arts acts Oh Astro, Steinski, Yea Big, and Girl Talk.

His Multifesto: A Henri d'Mescan Reader (Remix Edition), contains remixes from Matt Bell, Roxane Gay, Alissa Nutting, and others. He is editor of The &NOW AWARDS: The Best Innovative Writing (vols. 1 and 2).

Schneiderman’s work has appeared in numerous publications including Fiction International, Harpers.org, The Chicago Tribune, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, and Exquisite Corpse; he blogs for The Huffington Post and is a Contributing Editor for The Nervous Breakdown .

He is the Associate Dean of the Faculty and Director of the Center for Chicago Programs at Lake Forest College. He also Directs Lake Forest College Press/&NOW Books.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliantly insightful and revealing collection of essays by a host of contemporary academics on the works and thought of the late William S. Burroughs. Of particular interest in this collection are the essays that reposition Burroughs' insights into the notion of the control society, which Burroughs envisioned decades earlier in novels like Naked Lunch and the Soft Machine. Given the relevance of these issues for the individual in the 21st century, it seems that a second, closer reading of Burroughs' works is just the purgative that our shallow consumer culture needs in order to gain a fresh reassessment of the way things really are and where the appear to be heading.