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Three Novels: The Soft Machine, Nova Express, the Wild Boys
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.
548 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1980
3 people are currently reading
232 people want to read
About the author
William S. Burroughs
448 books7,060 followersWilliam Seward Burroughs II, (also known by his pen name William Lee) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation.
Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation.
Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 28, 2011
The short version - I read this entire book over one weekend. I was snowed in during a blizzard in Linden, NJ and was suffering under a terrible fever, so I spent the majority of my time sleeping, wandering around in a delirium (usually at 4 am) or soaking in a cold tub. After reading each chapter, I would listen to the recordings of WSB reading that chapter, if they existed (thanks to that wonderful box set of recordings). I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the only complaint I had was that I had carefully and instinctively pieced together the atomized narrative strewn throughout the first book, only to have it spelled out in plain text at the beginning of the second. But I guess some people needed that roadmap - I was just annoyed because I'd already drawn it with mental crayons. No, not a book for everyone, and very challenging, but if you've ever wondered why Burroughs gets lumped into science fiction, these cut-up books are part of the reason. Inspiring and visionary stuff.
July 18, 2022
I've been a devotee of WSB since I was a teenager, and that's over 50 years ! I'm also a great fan of the 'cut-up method', invented by Tristan Zara and elaborated by Bryon Gysin and WSB himself. I read 'The Ticket that Exploded' back in the 80s, quickly followed up by 'Nova Express'. I was pretty much a speed-junky back then, so not only did I devour texts in record time, the fragmented nature of these books contents wasn't a problem for me either. In more recent years I read 'Cutting-up the Century' by Joan Hawkins. I'm something of a practitioner of the method myself, fragmenting and recombining my own (mostly musical) creations. It was with some excitement that I acquired a second-hand copy of the Grove Press's edition of three of the most famous cut-up novels in a single volume. This time it took me nearly 6 weeks to get through the three titles in this edition. Soft Machine pleased me greatly, Nova Express didn't conform with my (admittedly shaky) memory of it, and the Wild Boys was also slow going as I was keen to extract 'accurate' interpretations of the 'word dust', the fragments of words and images which pass the reader in a miasma of poetry and insalubrity. Sentence structure and punctuation frequently disappear altogether, and the exact sense of individual words can present a puzzle in such a chaotic context. Nevertheless, I enjoyed lumbering over the rough terrain of these texts. It's not all fragmented, WSB lapses into periods of hysterical humour, blinding lucidity and the 'malsain' darker subjects for which his writing is deservedly renowned. I've read 'The Naked Lunch' about a dozen times, including in the 'reconstituted' version so my familiarity with his style (and brilliance) is extensive. I'm not sure I'd recommend this edition to unaverted readers - it put put a lot of people off his œuvre. His work is famously dark and difficult, and these titles show his profound satirical bent along with his weakness for homoeroticism. I arrived at the concluding page weary and somewhat breathless - muddied and bloodied. Still, my admiration for WSB's brilliance ('genius' as Norman Mailer generously described it) undimmed and undaunted. It's some of his most difficult material, some of his funniest, and some of his most rewarding. If you follow my lead to this volume you cannot now claim to be unwarned. Just be sure to wear your wellingtons - it gets dirty and explosive in there !
September 10, 2020
Grove Press put together this volume of three novels by William S. Burroughs around the time he started touring America to give readings, a tour that culminated in The Nova Convention festival celebrating his work. For readers who are fascinated by his most famous books, Junky and Naked Lunch, this trio is the obvious next step for exploring the wilderness of this Beat Generation author’s mind. What we get here are The Soft Machine and Nova Express, the first and third books of The Nova Trilogy, and The Wild Boys, another short novel written in a similar style and addressing similar themes. The experience of reading these three novellas together is not just hallucinatory and disorienting but also disturbing, disgusting, sometimes beautiful, and often phantasmagorical. It is a dirty and entrancing nightmare, a subversive attack on the modern human condition that could possibly cause harm to your sanity.
The title The Soft Machine is a metaphor for the human body. In a sense this first book examines the fluid boundaries of the human flesh as a vehicle for consciousness. It starts in familiar Burroughs territory, the criminal underground of junkies and dealers and the shady cops who pursue them. But the descriptive narrative gets interrupted by his use of the cut-up technique; the story becomes jumbled and confusing and the reader starts to feel lost. There is lots of stuff about movies of men being hung and ejaculating when their necks snap amongst a whole heap of other vile images. When it comes back into sharper focus, the narrator is visiting a shaman in Panama. The shaman performs a ceremony that transports him back in time to an ancient Mayan village to inhabit the body of a field-working slave. The Mayan priests control the society until the narrator sneaks into their temple and alters their calendar so that crops get planted at the wrong time. The priests get killed and then all hell breaks loose. The village is subjected to a deadly heat ray, a giant centipede, green fish boys with purple gills and anything else you might expect to encounter when a calendar gets altered and the crops get planted at the wrong time. Then we are back in the confusion of cut-up territory with lots of gay sex scenes involving Central and South American young men.
Nova Express is a little more focused at times. There are plenty of cut-ups but the conflict between the Nova Mob and the Nova Police gets explained. There is also a giant corporation that controls the Earth. The Nova Mob are criminal vampire-type spirits that originate in other planets and enter peoples’ bodies at times when their consciousness is disrupted like when taking drugs or having orgasms. The abundant instances when men ejaculate while being hung from a gallows pole is an especially powerful time, making it easier for them to enter our planet. So basically the nameless corporate syndicate manipulates the minds of humans by using film and sound recordings. Notice these are the most significant components of television, the media, and nowadays the internet. Cut-ups are used to disrupt their lines of communication with the people they control. The Nova Mob creates chaos by disrupting these recordings and the Nova Police are trying to stop them. All this happens at a molecular level; recorded images, sounds, and language are shrunk to miniscule size and implanted into human cells where they later emerge in peoples’ mind screens in order to control them. Wait a minute...did William S. Burroughs, in the early 1960s predict digital technology? Isn’t that similar to the way microprocessors and microchips operate? Anyhow, the Nova Police try to apprehend the Nova Mob by administering apomorphine and restraining them with antibiotic handcuffs because the Nova Mob’s plan is to heighten all the social and political conflicts to incite a global nuclear holocaust, the ultimate planetary orgasm. It’s hard to tell what side Burroughs is on; he doesn’t appear to have any particular fondness for any of the characters involved in this mess with the exception of the young Latino boys who are constantly having sex with each other. And Burroughs dedicates more literary space to the subject of anal mucus than any other known author in history. OK take a breath; it’s a lot to take in but its fascinating all the same.
The Wild Boys is the odd story out. While some cut-ups are used, the narrative is more descriptive and sometimes more clear and easy to follow. Or do you just get more used to the literary technique by the time you get his far? The Wild Boys are a renegade gang of homosexuals in Morocco who indulge in heavy drug use and sexual orgies. They have expanded to a worldwide underground network and criminal cabal. The puritanical and hypocritical American establishment of rich WASPish evangelicals, military commanders, CIA agents, and politicians have set out on a mission to capture and exterminate them. Of course, the Wild Boys are too smart to allow that to happen. If gore and gay sex are things that bother you, this is not a book you should be reading.
William S. Burroughs may seem incomprehensible if looked at in the wrong light. Knowing the details of his unusual life may be a key to it all. Aside from being a gay heroin addict, he also wrote these books while he was a member of The Church of Scientology. The passages about time travel and the movement from one human body to another are direct references to the times he spent traveling in Central and South America in search of the hallucinogenic drug yage. But most importantly, knowing he was the grandson of William Seward Burroughs, the inventor of the adding machine and founder of The Burroughs Corporation says a lot about what is going on here. Burroughs had a contentious relationship with his family who rejected his lifestyle. Notice all the references to the bedroom with roses on the wallpaper in the suburbs of St. Louis; that is a direct reference to where he grew up. His corporate syndicate that controls the world could easily be seen as The Burroughs Corporation, a company that played a major role in the mechanization of American society during the Industrial Revolution. The adding machine was one of the first computers but they also invented the time clock and punch cards used in factories as well as being a major contributor to the industrialization of the military during World War II. IBM started as as one of their divisions and eventually splintered off. Burroughs use of non-linear narratives, psychological dissociation through the use of drugs, and randomly inserted elements from his use of the cut-up technique might be read as an attack on his family’s legacy and the role they played in the routinization and control of modern society. It is as if he wanted to tear this cybernetic society to shreds and see what comes next.
Another way of looking at this writing is that it may be a solopsistic fantasy of a man coming to terms with his drug addiction and homosexuality played out on a universal scale. The vampire spirits of the Nova Mob that control people at a biological level can easily be a metaphor for a heroin habit. The gay sex is a magical act that allows to bodies to inhabit the same space simultaneously while disrupting the boundaries of a rigidly gendered society. Like the poetry of William Blake or the painting of Hieronymus Bosch, his personal vision of cosmic conflict is both outside the understanding of ordinary thought but still close enough that we can see how it all works even if we don’t know what it all means. And all this is expressed by a highly articulate writer who just happened to have one of the most bizarre minds of the 20th century.
Whatever the case may be, this is not easy literature to approach. The plot of these books does not really hold the narrative together. Rather it hangs over the text like a blob of slimy eviscerated guts mixed with gallons of sperm, raw sewage, and vomit. Even those who are familiar and experienced with this literature might find these books to be abrasive and bewildering. The cut-ups do wear a little thin at times and the narrative isn’t even really a narrative. It is more like an altered state of consciousness where comprehension fades in and out as if you are watching a film reel that has been double exposed in some places or a movie on tv getting interference from another channel so that you can only understand bits and pieces of what is going on. Sometimes this writing degenerates into the literary equivalent of white noise or the static on the radio between stations.
Again, this is not easy or even pleasant reading but it is great art. You will not come away from it feeling the same as you did before reading it. Your mind may actually never be the same again.
The title The Soft Machine is a metaphor for the human body. In a sense this first book examines the fluid boundaries of the human flesh as a vehicle for consciousness. It starts in familiar Burroughs territory, the criminal underground of junkies and dealers and the shady cops who pursue them. But the descriptive narrative gets interrupted by his use of the cut-up technique; the story becomes jumbled and confusing and the reader starts to feel lost. There is lots of stuff about movies of men being hung and ejaculating when their necks snap amongst a whole heap of other vile images. When it comes back into sharper focus, the narrator is visiting a shaman in Panama. The shaman performs a ceremony that transports him back in time to an ancient Mayan village to inhabit the body of a field-working slave. The Mayan priests control the society until the narrator sneaks into their temple and alters their calendar so that crops get planted at the wrong time. The priests get killed and then all hell breaks loose. The village is subjected to a deadly heat ray, a giant centipede, green fish boys with purple gills and anything else you might expect to encounter when a calendar gets altered and the crops get planted at the wrong time. Then we are back in the confusion of cut-up territory with lots of gay sex scenes involving Central and South American young men.
Nova Express is a little more focused at times. There are plenty of cut-ups but the conflict between the Nova Mob and the Nova Police gets explained. There is also a giant corporation that controls the Earth. The Nova Mob are criminal vampire-type spirits that originate in other planets and enter peoples’ bodies at times when their consciousness is disrupted like when taking drugs or having orgasms. The abundant instances when men ejaculate while being hung from a gallows pole is an especially powerful time, making it easier for them to enter our planet. So basically the nameless corporate syndicate manipulates the minds of humans by using film and sound recordings. Notice these are the most significant components of television, the media, and nowadays the internet. Cut-ups are used to disrupt their lines of communication with the people they control. The Nova Mob creates chaos by disrupting these recordings and the Nova Police are trying to stop them. All this happens at a molecular level; recorded images, sounds, and language are shrunk to miniscule size and implanted into human cells where they later emerge in peoples’ mind screens in order to control them. Wait a minute...did William S. Burroughs, in the early 1960s predict digital technology? Isn’t that similar to the way microprocessors and microchips operate? Anyhow, the Nova Police try to apprehend the Nova Mob by administering apomorphine and restraining them with antibiotic handcuffs because the Nova Mob’s plan is to heighten all the social and political conflicts to incite a global nuclear holocaust, the ultimate planetary orgasm. It’s hard to tell what side Burroughs is on; he doesn’t appear to have any particular fondness for any of the characters involved in this mess with the exception of the young Latino boys who are constantly having sex with each other. And Burroughs dedicates more literary space to the subject of anal mucus than any other known author in history. OK take a breath; it’s a lot to take in but its fascinating all the same.
The Wild Boys is the odd story out. While some cut-ups are used, the narrative is more descriptive and sometimes more clear and easy to follow. Or do you just get more used to the literary technique by the time you get his far? The Wild Boys are a renegade gang of homosexuals in Morocco who indulge in heavy drug use and sexual orgies. They have expanded to a worldwide underground network and criminal cabal. The puritanical and hypocritical American establishment of rich WASPish evangelicals, military commanders, CIA agents, and politicians have set out on a mission to capture and exterminate them. Of course, the Wild Boys are too smart to allow that to happen. If gore and gay sex are things that bother you, this is not a book you should be reading.
William S. Burroughs may seem incomprehensible if looked at in the wrong light. Knowing the details of his unusual life may be a key to it all. Aside from being a gay heroin addict, he also wrote these books while he was a member of The Church of Scientology. The passages about time travel and the movement from one human body to another are direct references to the times he spent traveling in Central and South America in search of the hallucinogenic drug yage. But most importantly, knowing he was the grandson of William Seward Burroughs, the inventor of the adding machine and founder of The Burroughs Corporation says a lot about what is going on here. Burroughs had a contentious relationship with his family who rejected his lifestyle. Notice all the references to the bedroom with roses on the wallpaper in the suburbs of St. Louis; that is a direct reference to where he grew up. His corporate syndicate that controls the world could easily be seen as The Burroughs Corporation, a company that played a major role in the mechanization of American society during the Industrial Revolution. The adding machine was one of the first computers but they also invented the time clock and punch cards used in factories as well as being a major contributor to the industrialization of the military during World War II. IBM started as as one of their divisions and eventually splintered off. Burroughs use of non-linear narratives, psychological dissociation through the use of drugs, and randomly inserted elements from his use of the cut-up technique might be read as an attack on his family’s legacy and the role they played in the routinization and control of modern society. It is as if he wanted to tear this cybernetic society to shreds and see what comes next.
Another way of looking at this writing is that it may be a solopsistic fantasy of a man coming to terms with his drug addiction and homosexuality played out on a universal scale. The vampire spirits of the Nova Mob that control people at a biological level can easily be a metaphor for a heroin habit. The gay sex is a magical act that allows to bodies to inhabit the same space simultaneously while disrupting the boundaries of a rigidly gendered society. Like the poetry of William Blake or the painting of Hieronymus Bosch, his personal vision of cosmic conflict is both outside the understanding of ordinary thought but still close enough that we can see how it all works even if we don’t know what it all means. And all this is expressed by a highly articulate writer who just happened to have one of the most bizarre minds of the 20th century.
Whatever the case may be, this is not easy literature to approach. The plot of these books does not really hold the narrative together. Rather it hangs over the text like a blob of slimy eviscerated guts mixed with gallons of sperm, raw sewage, and vomit. Even those who are familiar and experienced with this literature might find these books to be abrasive and bewildering. The cut-ups do wear a little thin at times and the narrative isn’t even really a narrative. It is more like an altered state of consciousness where comprehension fades in and out as if you are watching a film reel that has been double exposed in some places or a movie on tv getting interference from another channel so that you can only understand bits and pieces of what is going on. Sometimes this writing degenerates into the literary equivalent of white noise or the static on the radio between stations.
Again, this is not easy or even pleasant reading but it is great art. You will not come away from it feeling the same as you did before reading it. Your mind may actually never be the same again.
August 22, 2008
A pretty rare find for my collection. I got it at a used bookstore for $2.
July 18, 2024
This is my first signed Burroughs since my other signed Burroughs' have went to the great Money Suck in the sky. (The fate of us all.) I said - I'm gonna read The Soft Machine. I'm gonna like it. I said the same thing about The Soft Machine when I was I was in high school and ga ga over the Beat Generation. I must be missing something. DNF. Both times. I just can't do it.
That being said - The language is beautiful (if you're a protoplasmic, opiate addicted centipede, draining the life from a teenage boy via his buttox), his ideas are brilliant and frightening and so singular that Bill Burroughs will always stand on top of the mountain with other literary visionaries, and not just those of of the Beats. His influence on all forms of media is obvious and acknowledged.
I envy those who can sit and savor the language of these early 'cut ups.' I'm okay flipping through, reading a page here, a page there, but I think I may not be wired the right way - simply not able - to experience and appreciate the Nova Trilogy books the way I should.
I guess I'm just a Kerouac guy. Kerouac, along with Ginsberg, were both seminal influences on the stuff I wrote as a young man (high school and college years, late 1990 - early 200s), and I have a soft spot for them.
Also included in this omnibus in The Nova Express and The Wild Boys.
That being said - The language is beautiful (if you're a protoplasmic, opiate addicted centipede, draining the life from a teenage boy via his buttox), his ideas are brilliant and frightening and so singular that Bill Burroughs will always stand on top of the mountain with other literary visionaries, and not just those of of the Beats. His influence on all forms of media is obvious and acknowledged.
I envy those who can sit and savor the language of these early 'cut ups.' I'm okay flipping through, reading a page here, a page there, but I think I may not be wired the right way - simply not able - to experience and appreciate the Nova Trilogy books the way I should.
I guess I'm just a Kerouac guy. Kerouac, along with Ginsberg, were both seminal influences on the stuff I wrote as a young man (high school and college years, late 1990 - early 200s), and I have a soft spot for them.
Also included in this omnibus in The Nova Express and The Wild Boys.
November 25, 2007
Displays are primarily designed for Mary to read the letter several times to Mary 1923. His eyes flashed like wild, dying suns.
"The product should be returned to you as received by the repair center," said Mary to Mary 1923. His eyes flashed like wild, dying suns.
Mary never told Mary 1923 how poor she was. Poor Mary 1923, he never knew. His eyes flashed like wild, dying suns.
"You are a failure resulting from a shipping or transit accident," said Mary 1923, who was still out there on the burning zones.
At least I don't have to suffer alone, thought Mary.
"And you suffer alone," said Mary 1923, placing a wall plate (a) against wall (b) as a template to drill four holes 23.6 mm deep (c,d,e,f).
"Where did you get your trepanation degree, again? My head is over here!" said Mary. Mary 1923's eyes began to spontaneously combust. Tears of smoke.
"Scheisse!" said Mary 1923. "Improper installation may cause personal injury."
Neon chaos doesn't make for an ideal world, but it puts a cap to the merry-maker's night at A.J.'s Annual Party. The guests and their frigid offerings, this year all the guests were survivors of an Antarctic cruise ship disaster.
"Oh, mother, there'll be no telling what comes next."
"Right you are, daughter, now get me another glass of the official fluorescence," said the mother. "I'm dreadfully thirsty from all of that surviving." Her eyes flashed like wild, dying suns.
"Polar extremes are nasty things," said the mother, wriggling deeper into her coils of fox fur and sable. "I've always been uncertain about the nature in my own backyard. To think I took that trip to forget your nasty old father! Well, he's had his revenge from the grave, dirty old thing! Teach me to be a widow at such a young age!"
Epic TV with tilting monitor brackets came loose and fell from its perch forty feet in the sky and slammed into the crowd at A.J.'s Annual Party.
"Goddammit! Somebody call customer service," said A.J. eyes flashing like wild, dying suns.
"Number's out of order boss," said the Hardcypher Kid, trailing twisted phone jacks. Landlines were coming out his ears, ass and eyes.
"Drive me to St. Paul," said A.J. "Step on it and assume no responsibility! I'll cover the details!"
Customer service was a dungeon beneath the streets of St. Paul.
"This almost isn't worth the trouble," sniffed A.J. "But I'll be damned if I'll suffer this alone. Let's move in closer."
"We're not reaching the help window!" said a horrified H. Kid. "We've been at it for what seems days, boss!"
"I'll be damned! This is a near death experience," said A.J.
"No," said an enigmatic shadow at the shuttered window of customer service. "This is FDI. The full death indifference." His eyes flashing like twin, dying suns and Mary absolutely broken at Mary 1923's feet.
"Well," said A.J. to the Hardcypher Kid. "This is just a slot of awful we've been fitted into. Next time, we'll use American lag bolts and American washers to secure the TV to the pylons. You can get Mary 1923 to help you."
"At least I won't suffer alone," said the H. Kid in a fierce dialtone.
Author's graceful note: If you are using the Low Profile Monitor Brackets (4), proceed directly to Step 23: Buying a TV to Fit your Low Profile Monitor Brackets. Stop immediately if you encounter any resistance in St. Paul.
"The product should be returned to you as received by the repair center," said Mary to Mary 1923. His eyes flashed like wild, dying suns.
Mary never told Mary 1923 how poor she was. Poor Mary 1923, he never knew. His eyes flashed like wild, dying suns.
"You are a failure resulting from a shipping or transit accident," said Mary 1923, who was still out there on the burning zones.
At least I don't have to suffer alone, thought Mary.
"And you suffer alone," said Mary 1923, placing a wall plate (a) against wall (b) as a template to drill four holes 23.6 mm deep (c,d,e,f).
"Where did you get your trepanation degree, again? My head is over here!" said Mary. Mary 1923's eyes began to spontaneously combust. Tears of smoke.
"Scheisse!" said Mary 1923. "Improper installation may cause personal injury."
Neon chaos doesn't make for an ideal world, but it puts a cap to the merry-maker's night at A.J.'s Annual Party. The guests and their frigid offerings, this year all the guests were survivors of an Antarctic cruise ship disaster.
"Oh, mother, there'll be no telling what comes next."
"Right you are, daughter, now get me another glass of the official fluorescence," said the mother. "I'm dreadfully thirsty from all of that surviving." Her eyes flashed like wild, dying suns.
"Polar extremes are nasty things," said the mother, wriggling deeper into her coils of fox fur and sable. "I've always been uncertain about the nature in my own backyard. To think I took that trip to forget your nasty old father! Well, he's had his revenge from the grave, dirty old thing! Teach me to be a widow at such a young age!"
Epic TV with tilting monitor brackets came loose and fell from its perch forty feet in the sky and slammed into the crowd at A.J.'s Annual Party.
"Goddammit! Somebody call customer service," said A.J. eyes flashing like wild, dying suns.
"Number's out of order boss," said the Hardcypher Kid, trailing twisted phone jacks. Landlines were coming out his ears, ass and eyes.
"Drive me to St. Paul," said A.J. "Step on it and assume no responsibility! I'll cover the details!"
Customer service was a dungeon beneath the streets of St. Paul.
"This almost isn't worth the trouble," sniffed A.J. "But I'll be damned if I'll suffer this alone. Let's move in closer."
"We're not reaching the help window!" said a horrified H. Kid. "We've been at it for what seems days, boss!"
"I'll be damned! This is a near death experience," said A.J.
"No," said an enigmatic shadow at the shuttered window of customer service. "This is FDI. The full death indifference." His eyes flashing like twin, dying suns and Mary absolutely broken at Mary 1923's feet.
"Well," said A.J. to the Hardcypher Kid. "This is just a slot of awful we've been fitted into. Next time, we'll use American lag bolts and American washers to secure the TV to the pylons. You can get Mary 1923 to help you."
"At least I won't suffer alone," said the H. Kid in a fierce dialtone.
Author's graceful note: If you are using the Low Profile Monitor Brackets (4), proceed directly to Step 23: Buying a TV to Fit your Low Profile Monitor Brackets. Stop immediately if you encounter any resistance in St. Paul.
October 31, 2015
Unless you just want this copy for the snazzy Gilbert & George cover, don't pay over the odds for this incomplete trilogy. This edition was my first foray into WSB, but after acquainting myself with his canon I realized that I somewhat cheated myself out of the experience of Soft Machine>Ticket>Nova as they were intended.
November 4, 2008
I really want to like William S. Burroughs but I just don't get him. I read the words, they go into my head, but I just can't follow what's going on. There is one chapter in the first of the three novels that I enjoyed.
not-read
November 1, 2010Continuing 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 that only he could create.
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