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The Red Night Trilogy #3
Het land in het Westen
The Western Lands is the eagerly awaited new novel by the most visionary American novelist of the twentieth century—a haunting Book of the Dead for the nuclear age.
Every new work from the pen of William S. Burroughs is an important literary event. This is especially so in the case of The Western Lands. For in this novel, Burroughs completes a trilogy that began with Cities of the Red Night and The Place of Dead Roads, with a profound, revealing, and often astounding meditation on the themes of mortality, loneliness, nuclear peril—and the inextinguishable hope for an existence beyond bodily death.
The symbolic vehicle Burroughs uses here is ancient Egyptian mythology, a long-standing interest of his. "The Western Lands" of the title are the territory to which the Egyptians believed the souls of the dead made a hazardous pilgrimage in their quest for true immortality. The questers—Joe the Dead, Kim Carsons, the scribe Neferti, Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain—travel through an unmistakably Burroughs-esque universe of appalling danger and otherworldly beauty—now the back alleys of ancient Egypt, now bombed-out Berlin, now the Old West of the shootists. Their hallucinatory journeys express the author's belief that only through facing the most extreme dangers and testing the possibilities of biological mutation can man escape a dead-end world of blasted dreams and atomic finale. And presiding over all is the haunting figure of "the old writer," who shares in the fate of his characters in being finally unable to write himself out of Time, and into Space.
The Western Lands continues and extends one of the great literary odysseys of our time, adding to Burroughs's awesome literary style and black humor chilling touches of elegy and autobiography. It is at once Burroughs's most personal and most universal work, yet another masterwork from the reigning genius of the American literary avant-garde.
Every new work from the pen of William S. Burroughs is an important literary event. This is especially so in the case of The Western Lands. For in this novel, Burroughs completes a trilogy that began with Cities of the Red Night and The Place of Dead Roads, with a profound, revealing, and often astounding meditation on the themes of mortality, loneliness, nuclear peril—and the inextinguishable hope for an existence beyond bodily death.
The symbolic vehicle Burroughs uses here is ancient Egyptian mythology, a long-standing interest of his. "The Western Lands" of the title are the territory to which the Egyptians believed the souls of the dead made a hazardous pilgrimage in their quest for true immortality. The questers—Joe the Dead, Kim Carsons, the scribe Neferti, Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain—travel through an unmistakably Burroughs-esque universe of appalling danger and otherworldly beauty—now the back alleys of ancient Egypt, now bombed-out Berlin, now the Old West of the shootists. Their hallucinatory journeys express the author's belief that only through facing the most extreme dangers and testing the possibilities of biological mutation can man escape a dead-end world of blasted dreams and atomic finale. And presiding over all is the haunting figure of "the old writer," who shares in the fate of his characters in being finally unable to write himself out of Time, and into Space.
The Western Lands continues and extends one of the great literary odysseys of our time, adding to Burroughs's awesome literary style and black humor chilling touches of elegy and autobiography. It is at once Burroughs's most personal and most universal work, yet another masterwork from the reigning genius of the American literary avant-garde.
262 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
About the author
William S. Burroughs
377 books7,190 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 - 30 of 125 reviews
September 10, 2016
The Western Lands wraps up the Red Night trilogy with a more involved look at the pilgrimage thereto, intercut with crosscurrents from the Egyptian Book of the Dead and remembrances from the author’s own life, the mass of which merges into a hallucinogenic exploration of the potentialities inherent in our concept of the great beyond. Part memoir, part attempt to provide closure to the impossibly sprawling mythology he’s created, this book feels doubly relevant as we watch the story and W.S.B. himself galloping rapidly to their end:
"Forty years ago the writer had published a novel which had made a stir. [...] He still had the clippings, but they were yellow and brittle now and he never looked at them. If he had removed them from the cellophane covering in his scrapbook they would have shredded to dust. [...] Often in the morning he would lie in bed and watch grids of typewritten words in front of his eyes that moved and shifted as he tried to read [them], but he never could. He thought if he could just copy these words down, which were not his own words, he might be able to put together another book and then... yes, and then what?"
It is perhaps impossible to miss the autobiographical quality of this passage, though to dwell on this aspect is to miss the deeper connection implied between the dying writer and the countless other deaths realized in our vain quest for immortality. Whether one seeks eternal life through their artistic legacy or by literally questing for the holy grail that is the Western Lands, only one thing is sure -- “Life is very dangerous and few survive it.”
The word is out now that life after death is a real possibility, no longer a matter of unsubstantiated faith. As governments collapse and global catastrophe inches closer and closer, a “Great Awakening” washes over the land, and a mass of pilgrims as determined as they are desperate flock to heed the call:
"Just as the Old World mariners suddenly glimpsed a round Earth to be circumnavigated and mapped, so awakened pilgrims catch hungry flashes of vast areas beyond Death to be created and discovered and charted, open to anyone ready to take a step into the unknown, a step as drastic and irretrievable as the transition from water to land. [...] The pilgrimage to the Western Lands has started, the voyage through the Land of the Dead. Waves of exhilaration sweep the planet, awash in seas of silence. There is hope and purpose in these faces, and total alertness, for this is the most dangerous of all roads, for every pilgrim must meet and overcome his own death."
Kim is now en route to The Western Lands, along with Neferti, Hassan i Sabbah, and a host of others as they each attempt their own treacherous journey, fraught with every kind of danger imaginable. And while there is no shortage of deadly foes and lethal traps to be evaded or otherwise dealt with along the way, including (but certainly not limited to) the noxious “Breathers”, flying venomous scorpions, and Open Season duelists around every corner, perhaps the biggest impediment to progress on the pilgrim’s path is the sheer uncertainty of how best to proceed. As we are told at the outset of chapter seven:
"Today’s easy passage may be tomorrow’s death trap. The obvious road is almost always a fool’s road, and beware the Middle Roads, the roads of moderation, common sense and careful planning. However, there is a time for planning, moderation and common sense."
Sound advice to be sure (wherever one’s destination), but when the eternal soul is on the line, seekers generally seek for more direct guidance than that! Perhaps this explains why we remain so inclined to find our way within the context of this or that philosophy, science, or religion -- as ultimately flawed beings, flawed as we are in terms of even basic perception, it is perhaps unsurprising that we so often look to others for the way. Then again, this would also explain why so few (if any) of us ever succeed in reaching the Western Lands....
If you somehow missed the first two books in this series, reincarnate yourself at the beginning with Cities of the Red Night.
"Forty years ago the writer had published a novel which had made a stir. [...] He still had the clippings, but they were yellow and brittle now and he never looked at them. If he had removed them from the cellophane covering in his scrapbook they would have shredded to dust. [...] Often in the morning he would lie in bed and watch grids of typewritten words in front of his eyes that moved and shifted as he tried to read [them], but he never could. He thought if he could just copy these words down, which were not his own words, he might be able to put together another book and then... yes, and then what?"
It is perhaps impossible to miss the autobiographical quality of this passage, though to dwell on this aspect is to miss the deeper connection implied between the dying writer and the countless other deaths realized in our vain quest for immortality. Whether one seeks eternal life through their artistic legacy or by literally questing for the holy grail that is the Western Lands, only one thing is sure -- “Life is very dangerous and few survive it.”
The word is out now that life after death is a real possibility, no longer a matter of unsubstantiated faith. As governments collapse and global catastrophe inches closer and closer, a “Great Awakening” washes over the land, and a mass of pilgrims as determined as they are desperate flock to heed the call:
"Just as the Old World mariners suddenly glimpsed a round Earth to be circumnavigated and mapped, so awakened pilgrims catch hungry flashes of vast areas beyond Death to be created and discovered and charted, open to anyone ready to take a step into the unknown, a step as drastic and irretrievable as the transition from water to land. [...] The pilgrimage to the Western Lands has started, the voyage through the Land of the Dead. Waves of exhilaration sweep the planet, awash in seas of silence. There is hope and purpose in these faces, and total alertness, for this is the most dangerous of all roads, for every pilgrim must meet and overcome his own death."
Kim is now en route to The Western Lands, along with Neferti, Hassan i Sabbah, and a host of others as they each attempt their own treacherous journey, fraught with every kind of danger imaginable. And while there is no shortage of deadly foes and lethal traps to be evaded or otherwise dealt with along the way, including (but certainly not limited to) the noxious “Breathers”, flying venomous scorpions, and Open Season duelists around every corner, perhaps the biggest impediment to progress on the pilgrim’s path is the sheer uncertainty of how best to proceed. As we are told at the outset of chapter seven:
"Today’s easy passage may be tomorrow’s death trap. The obvious road is almost always a fool’s road, and beware the Middle Roads, the roads of moderation, common sense and careful planning. However, there is a time for planning, moderation and common sense."
Sound advice to be sure (wherever one’s destination), but when the eternal soul is on the line, seekers generally seek for more direct guidance than that! Perhaps this explains why we remain so inclined to find our way within the context of this or that philosophy, science, or religion -- as ultimately flawed beings, flawed as we are in terms of even basic perception, it is perhaps unsurprising that we so often look to others for the way. Then again, this would also explain why so few (if any) of us ever succeed in reaching the Western Lands....
If you somehow missed the first two books in this series, reincarnate yourself at the beginning with Cities of the Red Night.
November 8, 2019
The final book in the wild and crazy Red Night trilogy by one of America's greatest avant-garde authors. Here are just two quotes from a brilliant book that is full of such musings:
“It is inconceivable that Homo sapiens could last another thousand years in present form. People of such great stupidity and such barbarous manners. And what do years mean, apart from human measurement and perception? Does time pass if there is no one there to register it’s passing? Of course not, since Time is a figment of human perception.”
“Messages from headquarters? What headquarters? Every man for himself—if he's got a self left. Not many do.”
“It is inconceivable that Homo sapiens could last another thousand years in present form. People of such great stupidity and such barbarous manners. And what do years mean, apart from human measurement and perception? Does time pass if there is no one there to register it’s passing? Of course not, since Time is a figment of human perception.”
“Messages from headquarters? What headquarters? Every man for himself—if he's got a self left. Not many do.”
May 23, 2023
All the filth and horror, fear, hate, disease and death of human history flows between you and the Western Lands. Let it flow!
Behind the gonzo is the Menippean and behind that is something earnest. Confessional and deprecating, Burroughs succeeds when he isn't overburdened with toxicology and endless penises. I nearly gasped at occasion on how beautiful the prose was only to encounter a taxonomy of small arms and blow guns. There's a nod to Carson McCullers which I didn't expect. It possibly knocked me knee deep in Burrough's river of shit, okay some of it made its way into my mouth. I meditated and all was forgiven. The Egyptian Book of the Dead features prominently as does some sort of tropical Hajj. Centipedes feature in a bizarre notion of molar responsibility and Pre-Columbian sacrifice.
Behind the gonzo is the Menippean and behind that is something earnest. Confessional and deprecating, Burroughs succeeds when he isn't overburdened with toxicology and endless penises. I nearly gasped at occasion on how beautiful the prose was only to encounter a taxonomy of small arms and blow guns. There's a nod to Carson McCullers which I didn't expect. It possibly knocked me knee deep in Burrough's river of shit, okay some of it made its way into my mouth. I meditated and all was forgiven. The Egyptian Book of the Dead features prominently as does some sort of tropical Hajj. Centipedes feature in a bizarre notion of molar responsibility and Pre-Columbian sacrifice.
September 27, 2014
Sheer genius.
As other reviewers have pointed out, the conclusion to the trilogy is not as sex-charged as the other novels. This is a real masterpiece. The narrative structure uses a blend of Egyptian mythology (Book of the Dead) and the craziness of a not-too-far-off world. Well, let's not hope not. So in this sense, I couldn't help but feel that Burroughs is writing this as a kind of warning.
I absolutely loved Cities of the Red Night and thought to myself at the time, 'There is no way Burroughs is going to top this one. No way'. But lo and behold, he has. This book is unbelievable.
It was easily the best book I read in 2011 and with all the turmoil and mad weather patterns currently going on in the world, the pre-apocalytpic tone throughout the book seems to be so relevant to present times. Just like Kerouac was ahead of his time in terms of style (spontaneous bop prosody), Burroughs has penned an eerily accurate portrait of what kind of world we might be heading for - if you can decode all the metaphors in the book. I couldn't in one reading and that is why I'm going to read it again.
This has to be the coolest book I have ever read, even better than Marching Powder. I'm currently reading The Wild Boys which is somewhat disappointing compared to this novel.
As other reviewers have pointed out, the conclusion to the trilogy is not as sex-charged as the other novels. This is a real masterpiece. The narrative structure uses a blend of Egyptian mythology (Book of the Dead) and the craziness of a not-too-far-off world. Well, let's not hope not. So in this sense, I couldn't help but feel that Burroughs is writing this as a kind of warning.
I absolutely loved Cities of the Red Night and thought to myself at the time, 'There is no way Burroughs is going to top this one. No way'. But lo and behold, he has. This book is unbelievable.
It was easily the best book I read in 2011 and with all the turmoil and mad weather patterns currently going on in the world, the pre-apocalytpic tone throughout the book seems to be so relevant to present times. Just like Kerouac was ahead of his time in terms of style (spontaneous bop prosody), Burroughs has penned an eerily accurate portrait of what kind of world we might be heading for - if you can decode all the metaphors in the book. I couldn't in one reading and that is why I'm going to read it again.
This has to be the coolest book I have ever read, even better than Marching Powder. I'm currently reading The Wild Boys which is somewhat disappointing compared to this novel.
April 3, 2012
William S. Burroughs is one of my visionary writers. That means I believe he did something like what the prophets did at one time. They saw and wrote things that were not entirely comprehensible, but those writings reveal things about life and were usually a critique of society. Other writers I consider to be in this category are Plato, William Blake, John Milton, Arthur Schopenhauer, Henry David Thoreau, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Philip K. Dick.
If you are going to read only one book by William S. Burroughs I would recommend that it be either "Naked Lunch" or "The Western Lands". Actually, I recommend adults to read both. "Naked Lunch" is the book that Burroughs is remembered for. It captures the author in his prime. However, it is a vulgar book that will be justifiably offensive to many people. Still, I believe it and the rest of William S. Burroughs' work to be literature and worth reading.
"The Western Lands" is Burroughs at the end of his career as a writer. He did write a famous book a long time ago and he was living in Kansas, not a railroad car, when he wrote the book. "The Western Lands" will give the reader a taste of Burroughs without having to endure unrestrained vulgarity and offensive scenes. That is not to say the book is devoid of vulgarity and patently inoffensive. It is still Burroughs, and worth reading, but it is a kinder, gentler Burroughs.
When I read the description of the journey of the 7 souls I thought, 'huh?' and chalked it up to being another of those incomprehensible things that I read that someone else believed.
Lately, I have been reading Arthur Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Representation". The book claims the human soul has a minimum of two parts, 1. The intellect and 2. self-knowledge, and maybe there are more. We also have The Will separate from the soul. That makes at least 3 parts to what we think of as our immaterial selves or our souls.
Reading Schopenhauer's long work makes the multi-part soul imaginable if not plausible. I still think, 'huh?' But I am not nearly so dismissive as I was. Schopenhauer gives me a renewed appreciation of the much shorter idea described in Burroughs' "The Western Lands".
If you are going to read only one book by William S. Burroughs I would recommend that it be either "Naked Lunch" or "The Western Lands". Actually, I recommend adults to read both. "Naked Lunch" is the book that Burroughs is remembered for. It captures the author in his prime. However, it is a vulgar book that will be justifiably offensive to many people. Still, I believe it and the rest of William S. Burroughs' work to be literature and worth reading.
"The Western Lands" is Burroughs at the end of his career as a writer. He did write a famous book a long time ago and he was living in Kansas, not a railroad car, when he wrote the book. "The Western Lands" will give the reader a taste of Burroughs without having to endure unrestrained vulgarity and offensive scenes. That is not to say the book is devoid of vulgarity and patently inoffensive. It is still Burroughs, and worth reading, but it is a kinder, gentler Burroughs.
When I read the description of the journey of the 7 souls I thought, 'huh?' and chalked it up to being another of those incomprehensible things that I read that someone else believed.
Lately, I have been reading Arthur Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Representation". The book claims the human soul has a minimum of two parts, 1. The intellect and 2. self-knowledge, and maybe there are more. We also have The Will separate from the soul. That makes at least 3 parts to what we think of as our immaterial selves or our souls.
Reading Schopenhauer's long work makes the multi-part soul imaginable if not plausible. I still think, 'huh?' But I am not nearly so dismissive as I was. Schopenhauer gives me a renewed appreciation of the much shorter idea described in Burroughs' "The Western Lands".
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August 8, 2016Tek kada sam počeo da čitam ovaj treći deo trilogije (“Gradovi crvene noći” i “Mesto mrtvih puteva”), video sam koliko je Barouz zapravo imao velikog uticaja na moj stil pisanja.
Gradovi crvene noći su me oduševili, verovatno zato što je to prvo delo ovog autora sa kojim sa imao zadovoljstvo da se upoznam (čak sam i film Goli ručak pogledao posle čitanja ove knjige).
Zapadne zemlje nastavljaju tradiciju totalno trpoznog ludiranja kroz banalnost mediokritetskog sveta koji nam naši očevi redovno oktroišu i borbu kreativnih duhova i umetničkih duša da nađu svoj deo kosmosa koji nije zatrovan običnim ljudima. U ovom romanu autor pokušava da uz pomoć likova iz prva dva dela trilogije pronađe put u besmrtnost.
Knjiga je prepuna totalno blesavih i šašavih ideja. Meni je gotovo svaki pasus davao ideju za po jedan roman.
Istovremeno ova knjiga može da se čita kao besmisleno trabunjanje nadrogiranog autora koji je pati od nedostatka inspiracije ili zdravog razuma.
Od svih delova trilogije najsličnija je Golom ručku, sa istim brojem buba i mnogo većom količinom pederisanja.
Zapadne zemlje nisu za svakoga. Neki će da ih vole, neki će da ih mrze, ali niko neće da ostane ravnodušan. A to je ono najbolje što umetnost može da pruži.
Gradovi crvene noći su me oduševili, verovatno zato što je to prvo delo ovog autora sa kojim sa imao zadovoljstvo da se upoznam (čak sam i film Goli ručak pogledao posle čitanja ove knjige).
Zapadne zemlje nastavljaju tradiciju totalno trpoznog ludiranja kroz banalnost mediokritetskog sveta koji nam naši očevi redovno oktroišu i borbu kreativnih duhova i umetničkih duša da nađu svoj deo kosmosa koji nije zatrovan običnim ljudima. U ovom romanu autor pokušava da uz pomoć likova iz prva dva dela trilogije pronađe put u besmrtnost.
Knjiga je prepuna totalno blesavih i šašavih ideja. Meni je gotovo svaki pasus davao ideju za po jedan roman.
Istovremeno ova knjiga može da se čita kao besmisleno trabunjanje nadrogiranog autora koji je pati od nedostatka inspiracije ili zdravog razuma.
Od svih delova trilogije najsličnija je Golom ručku, sa istim brojem buba i mnogo većom količinom pederisanja.
Zapadne zemlje nisu za svakoga. Neki će da ih vole, neki će da ih mrze, ali niko neće da ostane ravnodušan. A to je ono najbolje što umetnost može da pruži.
September 15, 2019
Overall I'd say this is one of the authors more accessible and entertaining works, and while still retaining an air of abstraction, temporal distortion and general twistedness, it is markedly more coherent than his earlier fiction. The cut and paste technique along with copious amounts of gay sex and drug use are absent.
The themes dealt with include; Egyptian mythology, centipede worship, vampirism and toxicology.This is interspersed with stream of consciousness and dream recall writing that help to give it an edge over more traditional fiction and helps break up the shifting narrative.
The themes dealt with include; Egyptian mythology, centipede worship, vampirism and toxicology.This is interspersed with stream of consciousness and dream recall writing that help to give it an edge over more traditional fiction and helps break up the shifting narrative.
January 3, 2025
I love Burrough's style but this baroque novel is like someone relating an intricate dream after seeing say, a week or two of Pasolini and Jadorowsky film (Actually, I have a book of Burroughs' actual dreams--"My Education" very short and far more quotidian than The Western Lands.) I made the mistake of getting this out on audio, which is great for the cadence of Burrough's prose but murder on the sensibility--the slow, real-time description of the psycho surgeons operating on a host of animals and producing suitably grotesque "hybrids" was my bridge too far. Can't take the prolonged immersion in the gore. Though I love the writing, and enjoyed the Egyptian Book of the Dead journey for as long as I could, this is a must read on the page.
August 20, 2025
Broke my ankle in the Duad trying to pull off a toe deep Heraclitus.
Here we have, among many other far more pressing things I will not go into, the best argument available that William S. Burroughs would be begrudgingly partial to an episode of Stargate SG1. Now, Burroughs died 2nd of August 1997, and the first episode aired 27 July 1997. Neferti claims on the kick of the bucket, that our chances at immortality are a billion to one, reasonably good biological odds. Same chance for a deathbed viewing of egyptology laced sci-fi fit for the unwashed masses. I had a thing for the show as a kid, and a thing for Burroughs as a kid too. Both endure, obviously one more than the other, as wholesome comforts to me. How unfortunate.
As someone who adores cats and is interested in a rehearsal of my post-death prospects of making it through eschatological customs, highly suspect baggage and forged passports in tow, all the way to the Western Lands, this acerbically chuckle-to-yourself funny paranoiac provides me with an essential liturgy. The way is long; and every path leads to a dead end. I like those odds.
Here we have, among many other far more pressing things I will not go into, the best argument available that William S. Burroughs would be begrudgingly partial to an episode of Stargate SG1. Now, Burroughs died 2nd of August 1997, and the first episode aired 27 July 1997. Neferti claims on the kick of the bucket, that our chances at immortality are a billion to one, reasonably good biological odds. Same chance for a deathbed viewing of egyptology laced sci-fi fit for the unwashed masses. I had a thing for the show as a kid, and a thing for Burroughs as a kid too. Both endure, obviously one more than the other, as wholesome comforts to me. How unfortunate.
As someone who adores cats and is interested in a rehearsal of my post-death prospects of making it through eschatological customs, highly suspect baggage and forged passports in tow, all the way to the Western Lands, this acerbically chuckle-to-yourself funny paranoiac provides me with an essential liturgy. The way is long; and every path leads to a dead end. I like those odds.
March 25, 2020
"The road to the Western Lands is by definition the most dangerous road in the world, for it is a journey beyond Death..."
In the world according to William Burroughs, even the afterlife is subject to governmental control. Just as the pharaohs attempted to monopolize immortality, so do our present day leaders, through petty, everyday controls and restrictions all the up to the deployment of the ultimate soul destroyer - the atom bomb.
Fighting the system is Margaras, the White Cat: a fearsome spirit, Hunter, Tracker, supreme assassin. Also Margaras Unlimited, a 'secret service without a nation'. For its agents such as Neferti and a reincarnated Kim Carsons, everything and everyone is fair game, e.g. blackmailing ex-Naxis in hiding.
Amoral yes, but remember the motto of Hassan-i-Sabbah, the master of the order of the Assassons - or rather let Burroughs remind you, as he tends to do in each of his publications:
"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."
Indeed, HIS actually appears as a character this time, on the lam in Egypt during his missing years there, evading his enemies, but also looking for the way into the Western Lands, a way to circumvent the Anubis Gates.
All the author's spare but powerfully descriptive prose is on display; few writers can conjure up time and place so swiftly and so sensually with just a few lines. The use of cut-up passages is rare but effective, the nasty homoerotic passages virtually edited out entirely.
Then there is the humor, always a strong point. Many examples could be quoted, this is typical:
"Good. Then these letters of safe conduct are for you. Does this town boast a hotel?"
"We do not boast, but there is the Hotel Splendide."
This is the final part of a trilogy of novels which taken together pretty much round out the whole of literary outlaw Burrough's paranoid, unique vision of the world, aided here by his recent discovery of Egyptian theology via Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings, where he found a whole new set of controls and escapes to play around with.
It's not exactly a narrative trilogy - in fact, Burroughs can hardly keep a coherent story going for much more than 20-30 pages tops before it implodes into an orgy of sodomy and revenge fantasies - but it's certainly a trilogy in theme and phrase, with the same preoccupations and quotations returning again and again.
If I would recommend one of Burroughs' works to a new reader, it would probably be this one, despite being the last book in a trilogy.
In the world according to William Burroughs, even the afterlife is subject to governmental control. Just as the pharaohs attempted to monopolize immortality, so do our present day leaders, through petty, everyday controls and restrictions all the up to the deployment of the ultimate soul destroyer - the atom bomb.
Fighting the system is Margaras, the White Cat: a fearsome spirit, Hunter, Tracker, supreme assassin. Also Margaras Unlimited, a 'secret service without a nation'. For its agents such as Neferti and a reincarnated Kim Carsons, everything and everyone is fair game, e.g. blackmailing ex-Naxis in hiding.
Amoral yes, but remember the motto of Hassan-i-Sabbah, the master of the order of the Assassons - or rather let Burroughs remind you, as he tends to do in each of his publications:
"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."
Indeed, HIS actually appears as a character this time, on the lam in Egypt during his missing years there, evading his enemies, but also looking for the way into the Western Lands, a way to circumvent the Anubis Gates.
All the author's spare but powerfully descriptive prose is on display; few writers can conjure up time and place so swiftly and so sensually with just a few lines. The use of cut-up passages is rare but effective, the nasty homoerotic passages virtually edited out entirely.
Then there is the humor, always a strong point. Many examples could be quoted, this is typical:
"Good. Then these letters of safe conduct are for you. Does this town boast a hotel?"
"We do not boast, but there is the Hotel Splendide."
This is the final part of a trilogy of novels which taken together pretty much round out the whole of literary outlaw Burrough's paranoid, unique vision of the world, aided here by his recent discovery of Egyptian theology via Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings, where he found a whole new set of controls and escapes to play around with.
It's not exactly a narrative trilogy - in fact, Burroughs can hardly keep a coherent story going for much more than 20-30 pages tops before it implodes into an orgy of sodomy and revenge fantasies - but it's certainly a trilogy in theme and phrase, with the same preoccupations and quotations returning again and again.
If I would recommend one of Burroughs' works to a new reader, it would probably be this one, despite being the last book in a trilogy.
January 4, 2008
More of a memoir than the final book of a trilogy. After reading The Place of Dead Roads and Cities of the Red Night I was slavering for the end of the series. From colonial privateerism, to manifest-destiny cowboys, this imagined sexual mystic outlaw history of the nationalistic push "west" or "out" and the counter-push "in" and against one's society would have a fascinating conclusion in the Egyptian struggle for immortality.
This book seriously lacks the kinetic intensity of its predecessors, however, and burroughs frequently "digresses" (yes you can say such a thing). Though characters and themes are present from the previous books, they are more memories. He drops the ball on the sexual language theme. To top it off, this book offer far less opportunities to go beat off than one expects.
Really a great memoir, of an author talking to his characters, despite the fact that it doesnt really belong in the series.
This book seriously lacks the kinetic intensity of its predecessors, however, and burroughs frequently "digresses" (yes you can say such a thing). Though characters and themes are present from the previous books, they are more memories. He drops the ball on the sexual language theme. To top it off, this book offer far less opportunities to go beat off than one expects.
Really a great memoir, of an author talking to his characters, despite the fact that it doesnt really belong in the series.
August 16, 2014
As with all of Burroughs work there are so many themes that could be expanded on and made into separate novels - if only the author lived to complete all his ideas.... The Western lands scatters across all of the author's interests, ancient Egypt, time travel, Arabian assassins, weapons, erotic imagery, medical manipulations... If I were to choose one theme, one novel, possibly extracted from this, his last major work, then it would be a novel based on the expedition to capture the giant centipede, along with the correspondence from Dean Ripa, Snake expert - A kind of Yage letters with the centipede as the holy grail of disgust...
Burroughs in this trilogy is a great travel writer. A travel writer not just through places, but through time and space and outer space. A literary map-maker. His eye for detail and imagination for the absurd make this an interesting journey.
But be warned. If a linear plot is required or if you are new to Burroughs the Western Lands is not the best place to look.
Burroughs in this trilogy is a great travel writer. A travel writer not just through places, but through time and space and outer space. A literary map-maker. His eye for detail and imagination for the absurd make this an interesting journey.
But be warned. If a linear plot is required or if you are new to Burroughs the Western Lands is not the best place to look.
June 8, 2015
This is a beautiful book. Burroughs is much calmer here than in his famed Nova trilogy which actually makes his satire even sharper as he himself seems to be coming from a more stable position in his own life. Now he's more comfortable to transition into more straight forward digressions on mortality and Egyptian mythology musings. Not for everyone of course (being Burroughs, there are of course multiple sections with bizarrely graphic sexual violence and perhaps more information on centipede venom than the average reader could care for) but this is essential for anyone with an interest in WSB.
June 2, 2026
William S. Burroughs had a renaissance of sorts in the 1980s with the publication of The Red Night Trilogy, one of those love ‘em or hate ‘em books with little room for any opinions in between. But it wasn’t really the trilogy that spurred a low-but-sustained-blip on the public radar screen, it was selected texts from this, the final volume, that led to avant-garde jazz, hip-hop, and other artists, most notably Laurie Anderson, connect with his voice and words. Together, they drew people in. Music combined with Burroughs reading excerpts aloud in his unique staccato seemed meant for each other. In small doses like these, Burroughs could shine.
Burroughs’ writing, on the other hand, is much like an elaborate kaleidoscope; enjoy the whole and don’t get bogged down trying to figure out the mechanics. In this valedictory narrative, for those few who make the journey and remained dazzled through end, Burroughs outdoes himself. After traveling through time, space, geography and destroying any notion of the concepts and categories we use to get through daily life. So the final novel took on the only thing left: the afterlife. And Burroughs manages to create a journey, a process, without an end, one that is another dimension that oddly looks familiar.
I haven’t read all of Burroughs’ work, but enough. I’ll admit to having moments of doubt in the first two volumes, Cites of the Red Night and The Place of the Dead Roads , but all of them were erased when I completed this final volume. A passage from the opening pages is enough to understand how a reader like me can become hooked:
Burroughs’ writing, on the other hand, is much like an elaborate kaleidoscope; enjoy the whole and don’t get bogged down trying to figure out the mechanics. In this valedictory narrative, for those few who make the journey and remained dazzled through end, Burroughs outdoes himself. After traveling through time, space, geography and destroying any notion of the concepts and categories we use to get through daily life. So the final novel took on the only thing left: the afterlife. And Burroughs manages to create a journey, a process, without an end, one that is another dimension that oddly looks familiar.
I haven’t read all of Burroughs’ work, but enough. I’ll admit to having moments of doubt in the first two volumes, Cites of the Red Night and The Place of the Dead Roads , but all of them were erased when I completed this final volume. A passage from the opening pages is enough to understand how a reader like me can become hooked:
The President, with his toadies and familiars, is now five hundred feet down in solid rock with enough fine foods, wines and liqueurs to last two hundred years, and the longevity drugs to enjoy them all. (Held off market, in the interests of national security.)
A teen-aged President appears on national TV, his well-cut suit hanging loose on his skinny frame, to pipe out adolescent treble, alternately pompous and cracking:
“We categorically deny that there are any [crack] so-called Fountain-of-Youth drugs, procedures or treatments [crack] that are being held back from the American people [crack].” He flashes a boyish smile and runs a comb through his abundant, unruly hair. “And I categorically dismiss as without foundation rumors that I myself, the First Lady, my fag son and my colleagues in the Cabinet are sustaining ourselves by state-of-the-art vampiric technology, drawing off from the American pimples [crack giggle] so-called ‘energy units’!”
His hair stands up and crackles, and he gives the American people the finger and barks out:
“I got mine, fuck you! Every crumb for himself.”
October 9, 2025
3.5/5
O Burroughs einai idiofyia.
To finale tis trilogias den einai toso seksoualika fortismeno,oso ta alla vivlia tou siggrafea.H afigimatiki domi perilamvanei ena meigma aigyptiakis mythologias kai tin trela enos oxi kai toso makrinou kosmou.Etsi, den mporousa para na skeftw pos o Burroughs egrapse afto to mythistorima ws proeidopoihsh.Me oli tin anataraxi kai tin klimatiki allagh,o apokalyptikos tonos tou vivliou einai sxetikos me tin simerini epoxi.
O Kim vrisketai pleon kathodon pros tis Dytikes Xwres,parea me allous opou o kathe enas tous epixeirei to diko tou ypoulo taksidi,gemato me kathe eidous kindyno.Kai enw panta paramonevoun oi exthroi kai oi thanatifores pagides pou prepei na apofefxthoun h na antimetopistoun stin poreia,to megalytero empodio einai h avevaiotita gia to pos tha proxwrisoun kalytera.
H entasi sto telos tou vivliou,exei tis rizes tis ston thanato aftis tis oramatikis fonis,oso akatanoiti kai an itan:’’O ilikiomenos siggrafeas zouse se ena paroplismeno vagoni fortigou trenou dipla se ena vouno me paliosidera plai sto potami…Htan vrady Xristougennwn kai eixe arxisei na nyxtwnei.O siggrafeas eixe molis perpatisei tetrakosia metra mexri enan stathmo anapafsis fortigwn o opoios servire zesta santouits galopoulas me ladoksido kathos kai saltsa.Opos epestrefe sto spiti me to santouits sto xeri,akouse to klapsourisma mia gatas’’.
To vivlio periexei anaminseis apo tin zwh tou siggrafea,yperoxo xioumor kai to kleisimo mias apisteftis mythologias
O Burroughs einai idiofyia.
To finale tis trilogias den einai toso seksoualika fortismeno,oso ta alla vivlia tou siggrafea.H afigimatiki domi perilamvanei ena meigma aigyptiakis mythologias kai tin trela enos oxi kai toso makrinou kosmou.Etsi, den mporousa para na skeftw pos o Burroughs egrapse afto to mythistorima ws proeidopoihsh.Me oli tin anataraxi kai tin klimatiki allagh,o apokalyptikos tonos tou vivliou einai sxetikos me tin simerini epoxi.
O Kim vrisketai pleon kathodon pros tis Dytikes Xwres,parea me allous opou o kathe enas tous epixeirei to diko tou ypoulo taksidi,gemato me kathe eidous kindyno.Kai enw panta paramonevoun oi exthroi kai oi thanatifores pagides pou prepei na apofefxthoun h na antimetopistoun stin poreia,to megalytero empodio einai h avevaiotita gia to pos tha proxwrisoun kalytera.
H entasi sto telos tou vivliou,exei tis rizes tis ston thanato aftis tis oramatikis fonis,oso akatanoiti kai an itan:’’O ilikiomenos siggrafeas zouse se ena paroplismeno vagoni fortigou trenou dipla se ena vouno me paliosidera plai sto potami…Htan vrady Xristougennwn kai eixe arxisei na nyxtwnei.O siggrafeas eixe molis perpatisei tetrakosia metra mexri enan stathmo anapafsis fortigwn o opoios servire zesta santouits galopoulas me ladoksido kathos kai saltsa.Opos epestrefe sto spiti me to santouits sto xeri,akouse to klapsourisma mia gatas’’.
To vivlio periexei anaminseis apo tin zwh tou siggrafea,yperoxo xioumor kai to kleisimo mias apisteftis mythologias
July 2, 2017
Not with a bang, but with a whimper, som man brukar säga. Den har sina briljanta partier men författaren beskriver sin "writer's block" från och till, och det märks kanske på slutresultatet, som inte flödar lika fritt och galet som de tidigare böckerna, utan snarare stapplar fram.
Det blir förstås ingen upplösning. Burroughs anarkism riktar sig förstås mot makten, i både världen men också i själva narrativet. De stora historierna dekonstrueras, och detta gäller även hans egen mytologi. Finns verkligen the western lands (fortfarande)? Den profetisk-gudomliga Hassan i Sabbah omskrivs här istället genom sin mänsklighet. Han är ingen världsfrånvänd mästare, ingen Gud på ett moln, utan han riskerar sitt eget liv tillsammans med varje lärjunge han tar sig an.
Burroughs var före sin tid. 20 år innan lolcatz för han här fram katter som det bästa som finns i livet. Motsatsen är tusenfotingar. Den som tycker tusenfotingar är gulliga på samma sätt som en normal människa tycker katter är gulliga, han är en artförrädare som bör avrättas på plats, menar Burroughs.
Det blir förstås ingen upplösning. Burroughs anarkism riktar sig förstås mot makten, i både världen men också i själva narrativet. De stora historierna dekonstrueras, och detta gäller även hans egen mytologi. Finns verkligen the western lands (fortfarande)? Den profetisk-gudomliga Hassan i Sabbah omskrivs här istället genom sin mänsklighet. Han är ingen världsfrånvänd mästare, ingen Gud på ett moln, utan han riskerar sitt eget liv tillsammans med varje lärjunge han tar sig an.
Burroughs var före sin tid. 20 år innan lolcatz för han här fram katter som det bästa som finns i livet. Motsatsen är tusenfotingar. Den som tycker tusenfotingar är gulliga på samma sätt som en normal människa tycker katter är gulliga, han är en artförrädare som bör avrättas på plats, menar Burroughs.
Read
April 2, 2025encerrando aqui a maratona do william s. burroughs.... muitas coisas a se pensar
Read
July 12, 2022No recollection. (Nice cover art though, I do remember that.)
August 3, 2024
just finished this final chapter in a continued saga that read like a conclusion to a large body of work. a few books were published after THE WESTERN LANDS (TWL), namely, THE CAT INSIDE and MY EDUCATION. but it’s easy to think of those as a postscript to a confession that goes all the way back to JUNKIE or QUEER, and especially NAKED LUNCH.
TWL is the last entry in a trilogy that started with CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT (CRN) and THE PLACE OF DEAD ROADS (PDR), but to talk about these books it’s important to understand burroughs’ project; a practice he initiated with NL. the aim is to illustrate that to free yourself, you have to master your fears, and he offers instructions along the way on how to do so. citing the title of an earlier novel, our naked lunch is the thing “at the end of your fork you refuse to look at”. with the first two novels of this trilogy we go on adventures - CRN trips through the 18th century and the enlightenment, satirizing many of the principles associated with the pursuit of revolution. PDR rambles into the 19th century, playfully rummaging through the american west before our current era of endgame capitalism.
TWL continues this journey, but it is timeless. it reads like a book of the dead; an exploration of the body, rather than a society or an era. to pass beyond the boundaries of experience and our perceived limitations, we must examine not only the fears that influence action, but also the source of experience: the human (and animal) body. we are schooled in mummification the definitions and uses of insect/animal poisons, bodily functions, and diseases. mysterious agents guarding the gateway to the western lands are killers well versed in the use of these weapons. this is the territory we must master to enter the western lands – the ultimate destination/liberation beyond the door of death.
i want to say that the journey is not an easy one, nor is the text an entertaining ride through a fun-filled fantasy world. burroughs’ fiends and friends may dwell in the realm of nightmare, but as many societies have suggested, demons are angels that challenge us to free ourselves of fear. in TWL they are also the protectors of secrets.
my interest is not especially to dwell in these dark fantasies, but to understand the ideas of this truly radical artist and adapt them in my own life and work. i have always been curious about things i don’t understand or don’t especially enjoy on first encounter, but after repeated visits they become important and influential works. this is the third time i’ve read TWL and at age 65, (much older than my first exposure), it made more sense than ever. i also want to say that once you can move comfortably in his narratives, there is a fierce sense of humor that can leave the reader aching with laughter.
there’s also a lot going on here with time and memory and how the mind organizes. in this final trilogy, which some critics have referred to as a return to narrative after the cut-up trilogy that includes NOVA EXPRESS, THE SOFT MACHINE, and THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED, the element of collage is present more in structure than in the splattered language constructions of the cut-ups. and, as jean-luc godard put it, since “all cinema is documentary”, perhaps all literature is autobiography - a not-so fictional map of the writer’s experience.
and so, familiar characters from CRN and PDR appear sprinkled throughout. joe the dead, kim carsons, the old writer, and william seward hall inevitably appear and disappear, only to re-emerge as the autobiographical persona neferti. WSB’s persona can’t help but find a way into the text, where, rather than being restricted to chronology, he writes “routines'' (a la NL) that are grouped in chapters. time and place ultimately becomes irrelevant (thereby making them universal) as we move easily through the past, present, and future. in this complex maze of battle waged against the mechanisms of control and institutions of oppression, these last novels offer a history of burroughs’ ideas and urges, an atlas of consciousness and desires that are his, and perhaps, our own.
for anyone interested in reading burroughs, but have not yet dipped their toe into the mix, i would strongly recommend going back to the beginning (JUNKIE) and work your way through chronologically.
TWL is the last entry in a trilogy that started with CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT (CRN) and THE PLACE OF DEAD ROADS (PDR), but to talk about these books it’s important to understand burroughs’ project; a practice he initiated with NL. the aim is to illustrate that to free yourself, you have to master your fears, and he offers instructions along the way on how to do so. citing the title of an earlier novel, our naked lunch is the thing “at the end of your fork you refuse to look at”. with the first two novels of this trilogy we go on adventures - CRN trips through the 18th century and the enlightenment, satirizing many of the principles associated with the pursuit of revolution. PDR rambles into the 19th century, playfully rummaging through the american west before our current era of endgame capitalism.
TWL continues this journey, but it is timeless. it reads like a book of the dead; an exploration of the body, rather than a society or an era. to pass beyond the boundaries of experience and our perceived limitations, we must examine not only the fears that influence action, but also the source of experience: the human (and animal) body. we are schooled in mummification the definitions and uses of insect/animal poisons, bodily functions, and diseases. mysterious agents guarding the gateway to the western lands are killers well versed in the use of these weapons. this is the territory we must master to enter the western lands – the ultimate destination/liberation beyond the door of death.
i want to say that the journey is not an easy one, nor is the text an entertaining ride through a fun-filled fantasy world. burroughs’ fiends and friends may dwell in the realm of nightmare, but as many societies have suggested, demons are angels that challenge us to free ourselves of fear. in TWL they are also the protectors of secrets.
my interest is not especially to dwell in these dark fantasies, but to understand the ideas of this truly radical artist and adapt them in my own life and work. i have always been curious about things i don’t understand or don’t especially enjoy on first encounter, but after repeated visits they become important and influential works. this is the third time i’ve read TWL and at age 65, (much older than my first exposure), it made more sense than ever. i also want to say that once you can move comfortably in his narratives, there is a fierce sense of humor that can leave the reader aching with laughter.
there’s also a lot going on here with time and memory and how the mind organizes. in this final trilogy, which some critics have referred to as a return to narrative after the cut-up trilogy that includes NOVA EXPRESS, THE SOFT MACHINE, and THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED, the element of collage is present more in structure than in the splattered language constructions of the cut-ups. and, as jean-luc godard put it, since “all cinema is documentary”, perhaps all literature is autobiography - a not-so fictional map of the writer’s experience.
and so, familiar characters from CRN and PDR appear sprinkled throughout. joe the dead, kim carsons, the old writer, and william seward hall inevitably appear and disappear, only to re-emerge as the autobiographical persona neferti. WSB’s persona can’t help but find a way into the text, where, rather than being restricted to chronology, he writes “routines'' (a la NL) that are grouped in chapters. time and place ultimately becomes irrelevant (thereby making them universal) as we move easily through the past, present, and future. in this complex maze of battle waged against the mechanisms of control and institutions of oppression, these last novels offer a history of burroughs’ ideas and urges, an atlas of consciousness and desires that are his, and perhaps, our own.
for anyone interested in reading burroughs, but have not yet dipped their toe into the mix, i would strongly recommend going back to the beginning (JUNKIE) and work your way through chronologically.
March 9, 2014
Tărîmurile Vestice este volumul care încheie trilogia Cut up. Aparuta în 1987, cartea este scrisă de un Burroughs bătrîn, “ajuns la capătul cuvintelor, a ceea ce se poate face din cuvinte”. Romanul este considerat testamentul lui Burroughs ceea ce nu este departe de adevăr, deoarece în aceste pagini poate fi aflat un Burroughs agonizînd, un Burroughs care încearcă să împace cu ajutorul cuvintelor îmbătrînirea cărnii şi toate durerile fizice si psihice cumulate pînă la această vîrstă.
Este cel mai greu de digerat roman din toate cele şase ale sale citite de mine pînă acum. Deşi nu mai este la fel de pornografic şi violent ca cele anterioare, cuvintele sunt mult mai apăsătoare datorită mesajului şi imaginilor care de această dată au o factură psihologică. Este un adevărat drum către purgatoriu, drumul către o viaţă veşnică înspăimîntătoare şi rigidă, o viaţă veşnică conformă cu viaţa dusă în această dimensiune şi realitate. Impresia pe care o lasă la un moment dat romanul este aceea că Burroughs este, de fapt, toate personajele sale, toate acele personalităţi ce sunt în căutarea tărîmurilor vestice sunt bătrînul ce acum trăieşte înconjurat de pisici într-o rulotă, aşteptînd inevitabilul. Senzaţia că personajele din carte sunt avataruri ale autorului şi că Burroughs se dematerializează luînd alte corpuri pentru a săvîrşi o călătorie iniţiatică este pregnantă, dar nu poate fi spus categoric acest lucru. Obişnuit să lucreze cu senzaţii, să producă deliruri şi fantezii narcotice, autorul se joace cu toată paleta de cunoştinţe a cititorului, dărîmînd, conform stilului său inconfundabil, tarele etice, religioase si proclamînd în loc un spaţiu dincolo de realitate, atemporal, menit a pune în aplicare toate pornirile şi dorinţele din timpul vieţii. Drumul e plin de magic şi grotesc, de rituri uitate şi păgîne, un fel de drum ce pare a fi călătoria finală a corpului alături de suflet, pentru ca într-un final, corpul sau sufletul să fie purificat, o purificare ciudată şi barbară, o purificare prin violenţă şi cruzime, o purificare comandată şi guvernată de forţe oculte şi politice.
Tărîmurile Vestice poate fi considerat o epopee în adevăratul sens al cuvîntului, aventurile personajelor aducînd aminte de Ulise şi Ahile iar bătrînul ajuns la capătul cuvintelor, poate fi comparat cu Homer. Deşi Burroughs nu este orb pare a scrie din inerţie, o forţă exterioară lui impune aşternerea cuvintelor pe hîrtie, acesta fiind rolul său final din tragedia umană, izvorîtă din toate substanţele toxice consumate pînă la acest moment.
După mine, Burroughs plăteşte tributul final drogurilor prin această carte, plăteşte tributul lumilor construite din fuga dementă a narcoticelor prin mintea şi venele sale. Nu este un om sfîrşit, Burroughs a ajuns la sfîrşit iar acum derulează genericul pentru a da o ultimă explicaţie acestei lumi pe care s-ar putea să nu o fi acceptat vreodată.
“Vreau să ajung în Tărîmurile Vestice – chiar înaintea ta, peste pîrîul bolborosind. E un canal îngheţat. E cunoscut ca Duad, îţi aminteşti? Tot jegul şi oroarea, frica, ura, boala şi moartea istoriei umane se scurge între tine şi Tărîmurile Vestice. Las-o să se scurgă! Pisica mea Fletch se întinde în spatele meu pe pat. Un copac cu dantelă neagră pe un cer gri. O străfulgerare de bucurie.
Cît îi ia unui om să inveţe că el nu poate, că nu poate să vrea ceea ce el vrea?
Trebuie să fii în Iad ca să vezi Paradisul. Întrezăriri ale Tărîmului Mortului, străfulgerări ale unei bucurii serene fără timp, o bucurie la fel de bătrînă precum suferinţa sau moartea.”
Recenzie publicata pe http://razvanvanfirescu.wordpress.com/
Este cel mai greu de digerat roman din toate cele şase ale sale citite de mine pînă acum. Deşi nu mai este la fel de pornografic şi violent ca cele anterioare, cuvintele sunt mult mai apăsătoare datorită mesajului şi imaginilor care de această dată au o factură psihologică. Este un adevărat drum către purgatoriu, drumul către o viaţă veşnică înspăimîntătoare şi rigidă, o viaţă veşnică conformă cu viaţa dusă în această dimensiune şi realitate. Impresia pe care o lasă la un moment dat romanul este aceea că Burroughs este, de fapt, toate personajele sale, toate acele personalităţi ce sunt în căutarea tărîmurilor vestice sunt bătrînul ce acum trăieşte înconjurat de pisici într-o rulotă, aşteptînd inevitabilul. Senzaţia că personajele din carte sunt avataruri ale autorului şi că Burroughs se dematerializează luînd alte corpuri pentru a săvîrşi o călătorie iniţiatică este pregnantă, dar nu poate fi spus categoric acest lucru. Obişnuit să lucreze cu senzaţii, să producă deliruri şi fantezii narcotice, autorul se joace cu toată paleta de cunoştinţe a cititorului, dărîmînd, conform stilului său inconfundabil, tarele etice, religioase si proclamînd în loc un spaţiu dincolo de realitate, atemporal, menit a pune în aplicare toate pornirile şi dorinţele din timpul vieţii. Drumul e plin de magic şi grotesc, de rituri uitate şi păgîne, un fel de drum ce pare a fi călătoria finală a corpului alături de suflet, pentru ca într-un final, corpul sau sufletul să fie purificat, o purificare ciudată şi barbară, o purificare prin violenţă şi cruzime, o purificare comandată şi guvernată de forţe oculte şi politice.
Tărîmurile Vestice poate fi considerat o epopee în adevăratul sens al cuvîntului, aventurile personajelor aducînd aminte de Ulise şi Ahile iar bătrînul ajuns la capătul cuvintelor, poate fi comparat cu Homer. Deşi Burroughs nu este orb pare a scrie din inerţie, o forţă exterioară lui impune aşternerea cuvintelor pe hîrtie, acesta fiind rolul său final din tragedia umană, izvorîtă din toate substanţele toxice consumate pînă la acest moment.
După mine, Burroughs plăteşte tributul final drogurilor prin această carte, plăteşte tributul lumilor construite din fuga dementă a narcoticelor prin mintea şi venele sale. Nu este un om sfîrşit, Burroughs a ajuns la sfîrşit iar acum derulează genericul pentru a da o ultimă explicaţie acestei lumi pe care s-ar putea să nu o fi acceptat vreodată.
“Vreau să ajung în Tărîmurile Vestice – chiar înaintea ta, peste pîrîul bolborosind. E un canal îngheţat. E cunoscut ca Duad, îţi aminteşti? Tot jegul şi oroarea, frica, ura, boala şi moartea istoriei umane se scurge între tine şi Tărîmurile Vestice. Las-o să se scurgă! Pisica mea Fletch se întinde în spatele meu pe pat. Un copac cu dantelă neagră pe un cer gri. O străfulgerare de bucurie.
Cît îi ia unui om să inveţe că el nu poate, că nu poate să vrea ceea ce el vrea?
Trebuie să fii în Iad ca să vezi Paradisul. Întrezăriri ale Tărîmului Mortului, străfulgerări ale unei bucurii serene fără timp, o bucurie la fel de bătrînă precum suferinţa sau moartea.”
Recenzie publicata pe http://razvanvanfirescu.wordpress.com/
January 12, 2026
William S. Burroughs’ Cities Of the Red Night trilogy was his most thematic literary project. The first novel in the series used pirates as a central theme while the second, The Place of Dead Roads, drew on cowboys, outlaws, and the Western genre. Both books portrayed the world as a rotten and unjust place. The protagonists set out to establish utopia as a solution to the problems of human existence. They also allude to the need for humans to eventually escape from planet Earth since the whole place is doomed to self-destruction. Since humans aren’t physically or psychologically evolved for life in space, and possibly never will be, the only means of escape from the rottenness of humanity is in death. But for Burroughs, who actually had a strong desire to live, the afterlife stands as the only option available. That is where The Western Lands begins. Only this time, the theme isn’t pirates or outlaws; it is Egyptian mythology.
The novel begins with the self-referential William Lee Hart, a solitary writer living in a boxcar converted into a home on the bank of a river. This should tell you immediately that the whole book is autobiographical in the way that only William S. Burroughs can be autobiographical. I actually would argue that all his novels are autobiographical, but that is a matter for another essay.
The concepts of ancient Egyptian religions are introduced in the beginning too. According to The Book Of the Dead via Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, every living body has seven souls that perform various functions to whoever they inhabit. One is the director or managers of the other souls, one is a body double, another is a shadow self that hinders what the other souls are trying to accomplish. These souls are separate beings that don’t always work together for a common purpose and in fact, sometimes they are at war with one another.
The discerning reader can recognize that the seven souls are represented by different characters in this novel although Burroughs doesn’t make it clear which characters match with which souls. True to the nature of his writing, the links are slippery, ephemeral, and difficult to grasp and hold on to. It doesn’t matter so much though because the characters in his novels are rarely developed beyond what they do upon their initial appearance in the narratives. They tend to be more like spirits or elements, floating through the world in a haze of hallucinations which says a lot about how Burroughs experienced the world. But what the seven souls and their representation all come down to is the relationship between the author and his literary personas. The people written into the prose are all personifications or projections of different sides of the author. Jack Kerouac wrote about the different sides of his personality through the brothers in The Town and the City, Ken Kesey wrote about two sides of his personality with the two brothers in Sometimes a Great Notion, and Dostoyesky examined three sides of his psyche through the three main characters in The Brothers Karamazov. Here Burroughs is driving the point home that authors, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, mostly only write about themselves.
This novel also begins with some references back to early works of this author. The passage where arguments break out in a film engineering studio refers back to the subversievely chaotic attempt at broadcasting the American national anthem fron a television studio in Naked Lunch. The gun fight that opens and closes The Place of Dead Roads is rewritten here too. From there, the book goes on to examine themes previously introduced and repeated throughout the entire catalog of Burroughs’ writings. A rebel secret agent establishes an espionage agency that acts independently of any nation. Their purpose is to sow chaos throughout the world with riots, bombings, and assassinations. An escaped Nazi officer runs black market operations, surviving by impersonating Arabs, Jews, and Mexicans. Exotic weaponry is described excessively in a way that could possibly be considered pornographic in its details. Also there are drugs, sex, inhuman creatures produced asexually, sewers, violence, men who ejaculate while being hung, hideous centipedes, and everything else you would associate with Burroughs by the end of his career.
One memorable passage involves a team of seven men tangentially related to the medical and veterinarian professions even though none of them are actually doctors. But they all have skills that could be useful for a medical experiment. One of them is an expert in building ships in bottles. They are given the task of disassembling wild animals, rearranging the parts, and then randomly putting them together with the intention of creating new forms of nature. This is a kind of self-satire in which Burroughs repurposes his cut up method of writing by applying it to the unfortunate creatures in the laboratory. This is emblematic of the author’s whole purpose: to take the mind into inconceivable territories, dismantling reality, and recreating it in new ways that would never be possible with with conscious intent.
Another memorable passage involves patients in a hospital burn ward who start a riot because the uncaring doctors refuse to give them painkillers as part of their treatments. This could be representative of Burroughs’ experience of morphine or heroin withdrawal in a society in which those drugs are illegal and sometimes unobtainable when the pain of withdrawal is at its most intense.
Yet another passage keys you in to Burroughs’ way of thinking by writing about a literary critic as practicing black magic with the intent to kill the author. The critic posts reviews of books without reading them, but then a mysterious dog shows up and follows him around. Soon after, he is dead. The same dog appears for a spy and a member of high society. The dog is revealed to be a spirit from ancient Egyptian mythology who arrives to lead an individual to the doorway of death. The critic reveals a way of approaching Burroughs’ work by showing how he is both a literary critic and a black magician at the same time. It’s like seeing one man though two different angles so that the angles interact and cut into each other, covering and revealing parts of the man while making it possible to see the whole figure for what he is. It’s like the paintings of Cezanne with his experiments in shifting visual planes and angles.
Then there is the Egyptian mythology itself. Some passages are scenes of a pharaoh’s life and his interaction with Egyptian priests. Wars between Pagans and monotheists break out because for the Pagans, life after death is a privilege that has to be earned whereas for the monotheistic religions that later turned into Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, any person, no matter how insignificant, is capable of attaining life in Heaven just as long as they have faith in God. These monotheistic religions are portrayed as a ruse to make human society more conformist and easier to manage by the priests and kings whose ultimate goal is the enslavement of the whole human race. But the Pagan priests enslaved their societies too, just in different ways. Burroughs doesn’t appear to take any definite stance on which version of the afterlife is best although he does express more contempt for the monotheistic religions. His comments on Islam are quite harsh.
Then there are the mummies. Burroughs explains how the process of eviscerating, wrapping, and pickling dead bodies is a method of making batteries. Yes, batteries. The soul that survives in the afterlife needs a life force to sustain itself. Previous to death, that life source is the living body. Therefore the body is mummified to remain a supplier of life force to the soul the way a rechargeable battery keeps a light bulb shining. But since the mummified body is dead it needs to draw life force from someplace else and that source is the souls of the living. Therefore mummies are a type of vampire that drains life out of the living. If you ever want to read an anti-mummy rant, look no further. No one ever argued that Burroughs isn’t unique. After thinking through this, you might consider it to be another commentary on drug addiction. A junky under the influence of opiates is little more than a breathing mummy. A junky in withdrawal is like a person having the life force sucked out of them. The addiction is like a spirit that survives by sucking all the life out of the junky.
At some point, the narrative moves on from ancient Egypt to modern Cairo and then off to the city of Waghda. Readers of the previous two books in the trilogy will recognize Waghda as the last city out of seven you must pass through before embarking on a journey to the Western Lands, the land of the dead, the land of the afterlife, so called in Egyptian mythology because the sun sets in the West. Waghda is located near the crater where an alien spaceship once crashed, unleashing the virus that infected the larynxes of primates and evolved to become human language. The crater is now inhabited by a tribe of people who can’t escape and are close to starvation but sustain themselves by keeping their souls alive by smoking an herb and playing music. Mixed up in all this is a long explication of the science of virology that reads like a university professor’s lecture. It examines the links and similarities between viruses and humans. This is typical of Burroughs. He starts with a new train of thought and it ends in some place you never could have predicted.
Waghda is a city inhabited by a large population of lower class people who indulge in all manners of vice, especially those involving sex and drugs. A small population of upper class puritans lives there and hopes to one day exterminate all the lower class people who they regard as vermin. Yet again, this is another place with exotic weapons and people with magic powers. One man uses magic to find a guide to take him to the edge of the Western Lands. But somewhere in Waghda there are imprisoned animals and when a lion escapes it gets out to the edge of the city where it sneaks up behind a man. The man’s friend tries to shoot the lion but shoots his friend instead. Then he goes home and cries to his mother because he feels so guilty. It’s hard not to see a parallel between this passage and Burroughs’ shooting of his wife Joan Vollmer. It’s like the author is taking one last literary opportunity to express the misery he felt after killing his wife while trying to diminish the responsibility he had in the accident. Meanwhile, as the aforementioned individual is leaving the outskirts of Waghda, he contemplates how the world is a violent, dangerous place where somebody or something is always trying to kill you.
The narrative circles back to William Lee Hart in his boxcar home, writing and poring over books with pictures of wild animals. He identifies with and admires the most unusual looking animals in the book, a definite statement on how alien Burroughs felt as a member of the human race. As an old man, he begins to detach from the previous parts of his life, letting go of memories of the dream machine and pretending to be an intergalactic secret agent as if they are nothing more than scraps of ideas he no longer needs. Death is a process of leaving behind former aspects of himself. The tone is one of resignation and finding peace with himself in solitude, away from the human rabble, writing articles he expects no one will ever read and not caring. Then a mysterious cat appears and then disappears. Hart vanishes when he tries to find the missing cat. The implication is that the cat is a spirit who has come to lead him to the threshold of death.
So what The Western Lands presents us with is an elderly author looking back on his life and commenting on his literary works. It’s an exercise in meta-narrative and self-reflection/explication that is easier to see by readers familiar with his work and life, but not necessarily easy to interpret. An interpretation might be more mundane than you would think considering how opaque a lot of Burroughs’ writing is. Simply put, he sees human society as a shithole and the older he gets, the less he wants to engage with it. But he takes great delight in creating his own world, one in which linear time and causality are irrelevant and anything, including magic, is possible. To be trite about it, literature and art are the ultimate means of liberation from the world and there isn’t any alternative. “All is permitted, anything is possible,” are the words he puts in the mouth of Hassan I Sabbah, the Old Man Of the Mountains and leader of the Ismailite sect known as the Assassins or the Hashishim as they are sometimes called. Burroughs explicitly says in this novel that he is an incarnation of Hassan I Sabbah and he controls the characters in his writing the way the Old Man Of the Mountain controlled his followers. He is the Guiding Soul overseeing the other six literary souls, the personas created by the author. As for the immortality of the author in the Western Lands or the afterlife, isn’t this just another way of saying that the author’s soul lives on after their death through the books they write? Life in the Western Lands is a privilege to be gained after a lifetime of preparation in a human body. The Book Of the Dead was written to prepare the seeker for the journey to the afterlife and The Western Lands is a document that shows how the author did what he could to earn the privilege of dwelling there.
The novel’s biggest shortcoming is the way Burroughs introduces the concept of the seven souls, starts to make it clear that different characters represent different souls, and then dissolves the theme into the chaos that happens throughout the rest of the book. Either the theme just gets dropped altogether, or I just didn’t work hard enough to draw connections between the souls and the characters. In any case, that is a difficult task considering that so much of this book is like being blasted in the face with a firehose of vomit, diarrhea, animal guts, sewage, toxic sludge, and anal mucous. And William Burroughs is the only author I know of to date who has dedicated any serious literary space to the subject of anal mucous, though I do think J.G. Ballard briefly mentions the subject in The Atrocity Exhibition. Then again, Burroughs constantly expressed contempt for linearity in narratives so this problem of narrative dilution may be an intentional writing technique.
William S. Burroughs died ten years after The Western Lands was published. It not only closes out the themes introduced in the Cities Of the Red Night trilogy, but it also acts as a final statement about the man’s life and works. It’s his last major effort to explain what all of it was about, but Burroughs being Burroughs, the explanation may be just as confusing as what he wants to explain. Like his other books, all the disturbing ideas and imagery are undercut by a mind that sees beauty in nature, creativity, the unfamiliar, and the incomprehensible, a beauty that can only be achieved through art and its interaction with the real world. There is always a sad optimism in his writing that tells us a better world is possible if only we listen to right people, find the right formula, and mind our own goddamn business. But we do none of that and so condemn ourselves to the scumpits of human society instead. The tone at the end of this book is one of clinical detachment and resignation with a bit of magic thrown in. One thing is certain: there’s never been an author like William S. Burroughs and there never will be again. If he was successful at anything it was in creating new visions of the world and its possibilities that you will never be able to access anywhere else.
The novel begins with the self-referential William Lee Hart, a solitary writer living in a boxcar converted into a home on the bank of a river. This should tell you immediately that the whole book is autobiographical in the way that only William S. Burroughs can be autobiographical. I actually would argue that all his novels are autobiographical, but that is a matter for another essay.
The concepts of ancient Egyptian religions are introduced in the beginning too. According to The Book Of the Dead via Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, every living body has seven souls that perform various functions to whoever they inhabit. One is the director or managers of the other souls, one is a body double, another is a shadow self that hinders what the other souls are trying to accomplish. These souls are separate beings that don’t always work together for a common purpose and in fact, sometimes they are at war with one another.
The discerning reader can recognize that the seven souls are represented by different characters in this novel although Burroughs doesn’t make it clear which characters match with which souls. True to the nature of his writing, the links are slippery, ephemeral, and difficult to grasp and hold on to. It doesn’t matter so much though because the characters in his novels are rarely developed beyond what they do upon their initial appearance in the narratives. They tend to be more like spirits or elements, floating through the world in a haze of hallucinations which says a lot about how Burroughs experienced the world. But what the seven souls and their representation all come down to is the relationship between the author and his literary personas. The people written into the prose are all personifications or projections of different sides of the author. Jack Kerouac wrote about the different sides of his personality through the brothers in The Town and the City, Ken Kesey wrote about two sides of his personality with the two brothers in Sometimes a Great Notion, and Dostoyesky examined three sides of his psyche through the three main characters in The Brothers Karamazov. Here Burroughs is driving the point home that authors, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, mostly only write about themselves.
This novel also begins with some references back to early works of this author. The passage where arguments break out in a film engineering studio refers back to the subversievely chaotic attempt at broadcasting the American national anthem fron a television studio in Naked Lunch. The gun fight that opens and closes The Place of Dead Roads is rewritten here too. From there, the book goes on to examine themes previously introduced and repeated throughout the entire catalog of Burroughs’ writings. A rebel secret agent establishes an espionage agency that acts independently of any nation. Their purpose is to sow chaos throughout the world with riots, bombings, and assassinations. An escaped Nazi officer runs black market operations, surviving by impersonating Arabs, Jews, and Mexicans. Exotic weaponry is described excessively in a way that could possibly be considered pornographic in its details. Also there are drugs, sex, inhuman creatures produced asexually, sewers, violence, men who ejaculate while being hung, hideous centipedes, and everything else you would associate with Burroughs by the end of his career.
One memorable passage involves a team of seven men tangentially related to the medical and veterinarian professions even though none of them are actually doctors. But they all have skills that could be useful for a medical experiment. One of them is an expert in building ships in bottles. They are given the task of disassembling wild animals, rearranging the parts, and then randomly putting them together with the intention of creating new forms of nature. This is a kind of self-satire in which Burroughs repurposes his cut up method of writing by applying it to the unfortunate creatures in the laboratory. This is emblematic of the author’s whole purpose: to take the mind into inconceivable territories, dismantling reality, and recreating it in new ways that would never be possible with with conscious intent.
Another memorable passage involves patients in a hospital burn ward who start a riot because the uncaring doctors refuse to give them painkillers as part of their treatments. This could be representative of Burroughs’ experience of morphine or heroin withdrawal in a society in which those drugs are illegal and sometimes unobtainable when the pain of withdrawal is at its most intense.
Yet another passage keys you in to Burroughs’ way of thinking by writing about a literary critic as practicing black magic with the intent to kill the author. The critic posts reviews of books without reading them, but then a mysterious dog shows up and follows him around. Soon after, he is dead. The same dog appears for a spy and a member of high society. The dog is revealed to be a spirit from ancient Egyptian mythology who arrives to lead an individual to the doorway of death. The critic reveals a way of approaching Burroughs’ work by showing how he is both a literary critic and a black magician at the same time. It’s like seeing one man though two different angles so that the angles interact and cut into each other, covering and revealing parts of the man while making it possible to see the whole figure for what he is. It’s like the paintings of Cezanne with his experiments in shifting visual planes and angles.
Then there is the Egyptian mythology itself. Some passages are scenes of a pharaoh’s life and his interaction with Egyptian priests. Wars between Pagans and monotheists break out because for the Pagans, life after death is a privilege that has to be earned whereas for the monotheistic religions that later turned into Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, any person, no matter how insignificant, is capable of attaining life in Heaven just as long as they have faith in God. These monotheistic religions are portrayed as a ruse to make human society more conformist and easier to manage by the priests and kings whose ultimate goal is the enslavement of the whole human race. But the Pagan priests enslaved their societies too, just in different ways. Burroughs doesn’t appear to take any definite stance on which version of the afterlife is best although he does express more contempt for the monotheistic religions. His comments on Islam are quite harsh.
Then there are the mummies. Burroughs explains how the process of eviscerating, wrapping, and pickling dead bodies is a method of making batteries. Yes, batteries. The soul that survives in the afterlife needs a life force to sustain itself. Previous to death, that life source is the living body. Therefore the body is mummified to remain a supplier of life force to the soul the way a rechargeable battery keeps a light bulb shining. But since the mummified body is dead it needs to draw life force from someplace else and that source is the souls of the living. Therefore mummies are a type of vampire that drains life out of the living. If you ever want to read an anti-mummy rant, look no further. No one ever argued that Burroughs isn’t unique. After thinking through this, you might consider it to be another commentary on drug addiction. A junky under the influence of opiates is little more than a breathing mummy. A junky in withdrawal is like a person having the life force sucked out of them. The addiction is like a spirit that survives by sucking all the life out of the junky.
At some point, the narrative moves on from ancient Egypt to modern Cairo and then off to the city of Waghda. Readers of the previous two books in the trilogy will recognize Waghda as the last city out of seven you must pass through before embarking on a journey to the Western Lands, the land of the dead, the land of the afterlife, so called in Egyptian mythology because the sun sets in the West. Waghda is located near the crater where an alien spaceship once crashed, unleashing the virus that infected the larynxes of primates and evolved to become human language. The crater is now inhabited by a tribe of people who can’t escape and are close to starvation but sustain themselves by keeping their souls alive by smoking an herb and playing music. Mixed up in all this is a long explication of the science of virology that reads like a university professor’s lecture. It examines the links and similarities between viruses and humans. This is typical of Burroughs. He starts with a new train of thought and it ends in some place you never could have predicted.
Waghda is a city inhabited by a large population of lower class people who indulge in all manners of vice, especially those involving sex and drugs. A small population of upper class puritans lives there and hopes to one day exterminate all the lower class people who they regard as vermin. Yet again, this is another place with exotic weapons and people with magic powers. One man uses magic to find a guide to take him to the edge of the Western Lands. But somewhere in Waghda there are imprisoned animals and when a lion escapes it gets out to the edge of the city where it sneaks up behind a man. The man’s friend tries to shoot the lion but shoots his friend instead. Then he goes home and cries to his mother because he feels so guilty. It’s hard not to see a parallel between this passage and Burroughs’ shooting of his wife Joan Vollmer. It’s like the author is taking one last literary opportunity to express the misery he felt after killing his wife while trying to diminish the responsibility he had in the accident. Meanwhile, as the aforementioned individual is leaving the outskirts of Waghda, he contemplates how the world is a violent, dangerous place where somebody or something is always trying to kill you.
The narrative circles back to William Lee Hart in his boxcar home, writing and poring over books with pictures of wild animals. He identifies with and admires the most unusual looking animals in the book, a definite statement on how alien Burroughs felt as a member of the human race. As an old man, he begins to detach from the previous parts of his life, letting go of memories of the dream machine and pretending to be an intergalactic secret agent as if they are nothing more than scraps of ideas he no longer needs. Death is a process of leaving behind former aspects of himself. The tone is one of resignation and finding peace with himself in solitude, away from the human rabble, writing articles he expects no one will ever read and not caring. Then a mysterious cat appears and then disappears. Hart vanishes when he tries to find the missing cat. The implication is that the cat is a spirit who has come to lead him to the threshold of death.
So what The Western Lands presents us with is an elderly author looking back on his life and commenting on his literary works. It’s an exercise in meta-narrative and self-reflection/explication that is easier to see by readers familiar with his work and life, but not necessarily easy to interpret. An interpretation might be more mundane than you would think considering how opaque a lot of Burroughs’ writing is. Simply put, he sees human society as a shithole and the older he gets, the less he wants to engage with it. But he takes great delight in creating his own world, one in which linear time and causality are irrelevant and anything, including magic, is possible. To be trite about it, literature and art are the ultimate means of liberation from the world and there isn’t any alternative. “All is permitted, anything is possible,” are the words he puts in the mouth of Hassan I Sabbah, the Old Man Of the Mountains and leader of the Ismailite sect known as the Assassins or the Hashishim as they are sometimes called. Burroughs explicitly says in this novel that he is an incarnation of Hassan I Sabbah and he controls the characters in his writing the way the Old Man Of the Mountain controlled his followers. He is the Guiding Soul overseeing the other six literary souls, the personas created by the author. As for the immortality of the author in the Western Lands or the afterlife, isn’t this just another way of saying that the author’s soul lives on after their death through the books they write? Life in the Western Lands is a privilege to be gained after a lifetime of preparation in a human body. The Book Of the Dead was written to prepare the seeker for the journey to the afterlife and The Western Lands is a document that shows how the author did what he could to earn the privilege of dwelling there.
The novel’s biggest shortcoming is the way Burroughs introduces the concept of the seven souls, starts to make it clear that different characters represent different souls, and then dissolves the theme into the chaos that happens throughout the rest of the book. Either the theme just gets dropped altogether, or I just didn’t work hard enough to draw connections between the souls and the characters. In any case, that is a difficult task considering that so much of this book is like being blasted in the face with a firehose of vomit, diarrhea, animal guts, sewage, toxic sludge, and anal mucous. And William Burroughs is the only author I know of to date who has dedicated any serious literary space to the subject of anal mucous, though I do think J.G. Ballard briefly mentions the subject in The Atrocity Exhibition. Then again, Burroughs constantly expressed contempt for linearity in narratives so this problem of narrative dilution may be an intentional writing technique.
William S. Burroughs died ten years after The Western Lands was published. It not only closes out the themes introduced in the Cities Of the Red Night trilogy, but it also acts as a final statement about the man’s life and works. It’s his last major effort to explain what all of it was about, but Burroughs being Burroughs, the explanation may be just as confusing as what he wants to explain. Like his other books, all the disturbing ideas and imagery are undercut by a mind that sees beauty in nature, creativity, the unfamiliar, and the incomprehensible, a beauty that can only be achieved through art and its interaction with the real world. There is always a sad optimism in his writing that tells us a better world is possible if only we listen to right people, find the right formula, and mind our own goddamn business. But we do none of that and so condemn ourselves to the scumpits of human society instead. The tone at the end of this book is one of clinical detachment and resignation with a bit of magic thrown in. One thing is certain: there’s never been an author like William S. Burroughs and there never will be again. If he was successful at anything it was in creating new visions of the world and its possibilities that you will never be able to access anywhere else.
May 1, 2026
EVEN LUST IS DEAD.
Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise aimed to engage the writer in public refutation by outrageous misrepresentation and falsifications. For example, here is a critic on a writer who has spent six years on a book: “This slovenly potpourri, obviously thrown together in a few weeks.”
A rule that is almost always valid: never refute or answer a critic, no matter how preposterous the criticism may be and even if the critic resorts to actual misquotation. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader’s full attention.
There are other tricks: the use of generalities like “the man in the street” and the editorial “we” to establish a rapport of disapproval with the reader and at the same time to create a mental lacuna under cover of an insubstantial and unspecified “we”. And the technique of the misunderstood word: pack a review with obscure words that send the reader to the dictionary. Soon the reader will feel a vague, slightly queasy revulsion for whatever is under discussion.
Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise aimed to engage the writer in public refutation by outrageous misrepresentation and falsifications. For example, here is a critic on a writer who has spent six years on a book: “This slovenly potpourri, obviously thrown together in a few weeks.”
A rule that is almost always valid: never refute or answer a critic, no matter how preposterous the criticism may be and even if the critic resorts to actual misquotation. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader’s full attention.
There are other tricks: the use of generalities like “the man in the street” and the editorial “we” to establish a rapport of disapproval with the reader and at the same time to create a mental lacuna under cover of an insubstantial and unspecified “we”. And the technique of the misunderstood word: pack a review with obscure words that send the reader to the dictionary. Soon the reader will feel a vague, slightly queasy revulsion for whatever is under discussion.
November 5, 2024
I was searching my Gmail trying to find an old order from an online pharmacy when I came across an email I'd written to myself in 2008 The Western Lands.
From the email:
I have been reading, basically as light entertainment, William S Burroughs's 'The Western Lands.' One of the many fragmented dialogues is about what happens when it is found out the medical establishment has been suppressing the cure for cancer.
'And mutiny in the ranks: Doctor X a respected oncologist practising in a Midwestern city asks that his name be withheld: "I have seen it with my own eyes...the remission and complete cure of hitherto incurably cancerous conditions."'
'With the threat of cancer removed the medical centre seems a vast waste "Fifty years the fucking croakers kept the cure form the people."'
Conclusion from reading this 2008 email that mentions a book published in 1987:
Possibly Burroughs was ahead of his time in calling out the cynicism of the pharmaceutical industry. Also, I still write emails to myself.
From the email:
I have been reading, basically as light entertainment, William S Burroughs's 'The Western Lands.' One of the many fragmented dialogues is about what happens when it is found out the medical establishment has been suppressing the cure for cancer.
'And mutiny in the ranks: Doctor X a respected oncologist practising in a Midwestern city asks that his name be withheld: "I have seen it with my own eyes...the remission and complete cure of hitherto incurably cancerous conditions."'
'With the threat of cancer removed the medical centre seems a vast waste "Fifty years the fucking croakers kept the cure form the people."'
Conclusion from reading this 2008 email that mentions a book published in 1987:
Possibly Burroughs was ahead of his time in calling out the cynicism of the pharmaceutical industry. Also, I still write emails to myself.
December 12, 2016
Low grade Burroughs. Burroughs' masterpieces are driven by hallucinogenic fuel, e.g., heroin (Naked Lunch) and dreams (My Education: A Book of Dreams). Running on empty for this one, had to force myself to finish. Some flashes of brilliance (the encounter with the Bible lady, St. Humwawa, Chapter 8, "let go of the balloon," THE VALLEY). Unfortunately, the highlights were embedded in page after page of boring stuff that put me to sleep.
March 22, 2011
The final volume of Burroughs' final trilogy is a rumination on death, mortality and immortality, morality and ethics, and freedom. The western lands of the title comes from Egyptian mythology, but as with the previous book, The Place of Dead Roads: A Novel, there is a lot of the American west here, as well. Burroughs is concerned with the journey, migration, movement, not content to sit still, and not satisfied with a heaven that can be achieved without struggle.
January 1, 2013
Bill Burroughs exercises the aging writer's motif of confronting one's mortality here, using his Cities of the Red Night and Ancient Egyptian polytheism as a vehicle. He's still out to euthanize bigots and the ilk, but less pointedly. Rather, this is more of an autobiography that takes significant license with the medium. An enjoyable experiment.
Thing is, whenever I read Burroughs, I can't help but hear his broken voice in that offbeat pace, and it scares the bejesus outta me.
Thing is, whenever I read Burroughs, I can't help but hear his broken voice in that offbeat pace, and it scares the bejesus outta me.
May 10, 2008
The perfect book: as wise as it is wise assy, downright hilarious. WSB's timing got so much better as he got older; this is certainly his best book and a viable handbook to the after life. Methinks it the very best book I've ever read.
February 25, 2020
Burroughs wrote a number of similar book: Cities of the Red Night, etc. Only later were they presented as part of a series. The Western Lands of one of WSB's best, and represents a type of culmination and distillation.
Now classified as #3 of a trilogy.
Now classified as #3 of a trilogy.
September 1, 2007
I really like the old William Burroughs a lot before he got too obsessed with cats. This book is absolutely wonderful, sad, weird.
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