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William S. Burroughs' "The Revised Boy Scout Manual": An Electronic Revolution
Before the era of fake news and anti-fascists, William S. Burroughs wrote about preparing for revolution and confronting institutionalized power. In this work, Burroughs’ parody becomes a set of rationales and instructions for destabilizing the state and overthrowing an oppressive and corrupt government. As with much of Burroughs’ work, it is hard to say if it is serious or purely satire. The work is funny, horrifying, and eerily prescient, especially concerning the use of language and social media to undermine institutions. The Revised Boy Scout Manual was a work Burroughs revisited many times, but which has never before been published in its complete form. Based primarily on recordings of a performance of the complete piece found in the archives at the OSU libraries, as well as various incomplete versions of the typescript found at Arizona State University and the New York Public Library archives, this lost masterpiece of satiric subversion is finally available in its entirety.
146 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 10, 2018
39 people are currently reading
675 people want to read
About the author
William S. Burroughs
449 books7,019 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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August 7, 2022
More to the point would be to discover how the old scanning patterns could be altered so that the subject liberates his own spontaneous scanning pattern.
This was a gift, an actual one: from a friend, though Bezoshah was the medium, the conduit. It could be interpreted that I clung to it like a talisman yesterday. There is a Stand on Zanzibar vibe to it but Burroughs is the prescient one, a prophet of the meme and the meh. This could be regarded as field manual for the nihilists in our midst and the Visigoths at the gate. It is a sidelong glance at the power of images and our collective vulnerability in terms of being soft targets. I'm hoping today offers a better self-image.
This was a gift, an actual one: from a friend, though Bezoshah was the medium, the conduit. It could be interpreted that I clung to it like a talisman yesterday. There is a Stand on Zanzibar vibe to it but Burroughs is the prescient one, a prophet of the meme and the meh. This could be regarded as field manual for the nihilists in our midst and the Visigoths at the gate. It is a sidelong glance at the power of images and our collective vulnerability in terms of being soft targets. I'm hoping today offers a better self-image.
Read
April 5, 2016No siempre es fácil discernir la frontera entre un argumento serio y lo que no pasa de ser una broma. No es algo casual o extraño. Existen ideas tan extravagantes, extremas o argüidas desde una perspectiva tan peculiar que, incluso pensamiento racional mediante, es imposible discernir su pretensión última. Y está bien que así sea. Hay ideas que sólo funcionan como sátiras, como medias verdades, como retrato de aquel que las recibe, no de quien las emite.
Pensemos en el punk. Sátira seria, broma que en realidad no pretende hacer reír, movimiento de marketing que, a través de la ironía, pretende llegar hasta cierta forma de verdad que no se puede decir hablando «en serio»; un aspaviento tan extremo, brutal y juvenil, un esputo tan absurdo, que funciona como argumento racional o llamada a la acción inmediata, pero sólo como un eco secundario. Como un juego llevado al límite. Si bien es cierto que algunos anularon todo su poder al hacerlo explícito, cuando no literal —pretendiendo ganar en subversión, como si la subversión no fuera aquello que el común de los mortales no puede explicar—, también es cierto que su espíritu no ha muerto: en los Sex Pistols o en The Damned sigue existiendo ese gesto mínimo, ese jódete acompañado de una carcajada y un abrazo, que resulta ininteligible para cualquier persona que se pretenda racional, razonable y apegada a las normas del buen comportamiento.
Manual del Boy Scout revisado es, en cierto modo, como el punk. Ya lo señala en su prólogo Génesis P. Orridge, pero es una noción confusa: William S. Burroughs sí creía en el poder último de sus ideas. No era ironía, pues el creía en la magia, la revolución y la destrucción de la sociedad. Y si bien puede tomarse a broma, sería un error. Es un libro mortalmente serio. Mortalmente serio, pero que marcaría las pautas teóricas, el marco de pensamiento desquiciado, que permitiría después la gran broma del punk.
Eso no excluye que la obra de Burroughs pueda definirse como broma. Está tan fuera de todos los límites de lo razonable que no se puede defender sin una carcajada al final, sin pretender que todo ha podido ser una broma pesada. Aunque no lo sea. Aunque el propio Burroughs nunca lo considerara así.
Es sólo el principio del terror. Algo llevado más allá del pensamiento, la mirada hacia un universo alternativo de una mente alucinada; y con todo, lúcida: aquí tenemos un retrato de política guerrillera para el presente en forma de metáfora desquiciada. Y eso no es algo que tomarse a risa.
Pensemos en el punk. Sátira seria, broma que en realidad no pretende hacer reír, movimiento de marketing que, a través de la ironía, pretende llegar hasta cierta forma de verdad que no se puede decir hablando «en serio»; un aspaviento tan extremo, brutal y juvenil, un esputo tan absurdo, que funciona como argumento racional o llamada a la acción inmediata, pero sólo como un eco secundario. Como un juego llevado al límite. Si bien es cierto que algunos anularon todo su poder al hacerlo explícito, cuando no literal —pretendiendo ganar en subversión, como si la subversión no fuera aquello que el común de los mortales no puede explicar—, también es cierto que su espíritu no ha muerto: en los Sex Pistols o en The Damned sigue existiendo ese gesto mínimo, ese jódete acompañado de una carcajada y un abrazo, que resulta ininteligible para cualquier persona que se pretenda racional, razonable y apegada a las normas del buen comportamiento.
Manual del Boy Scout revisado es, en cierto modo, como el punk. Ya lo señala en su prólogo Génesis P. Orridge, pero es una noción confusa: William S. Burroughs sí creía en el poder último de sus ideas. No era ironía, pues el creía en la magia, la revolución y la destrucción de la sociedad. Y si bien puede tomarse a broma, sería un error. Es un libro mortalmente serio. Mortalmente serio, pero que marcaría las pautas teóricas, el marco de pensamiento desquiciado, que permitiría después la gran broma del punk.
Eso no excluye que la obra de Burroughs pueda definirse como broma. Está tan fuera de todos los límites de lo razonable que no se puede defender sin una carcajada al final, sin pretender que todo ha podido ser una broma pesada. Aunque no lo sea. Aunque el propio Burroughs nunca lo considerara así.
Es sólo el principio del terror. Algo llevado más allá del pensamiento, la mirada hacia un universo alternativo de una mente alucinada; y con todo, lúcida: aquí tenemos un retrato de política guerrillera para el presente en forma de metáfora desquiciada. Y eso no es algo que tomarse a risa.
December 30, 2020
Como última reseña de 2020 traigo un ensayo, un texto incendiario de William S. Burroughs: el «Manual revisado del Boy Scout». Un tesoro que te quema en las manos y hará las delicias de los espíritus más rebeldes y antisistema, además de las de los seguidores de Burroughs. Es el God Save the Queen de los Sex Pistols antes de los Pistols, es el Anarchist Cookbook antes de ese .txt que te descargaste de Internet a mediados de los 90. Para muchos es la obra irreverente, desvergonzada e irrespetuosa de un punki que lo era sin saberlo; para otros (además de todo lo anterior) un ensayo de valor incalculable.
Este manual fue escrito en 1970, pero Burroughs destruyó el manuscrito. Eso sí, dejó grabado en cintas dicho contenido y se las legó a Genesis P-Orridge. En el prólogo, ella misma relata cómo conoció a Burroughs y cómo se hizo con dichas cintas, prometiendo no publicar nada de su contenido sin la aprobación del tito Bill. Fue en 1982 cuando consintió su publicación, cosa que hizo V/Vale en la revista Re/Search de San Francisco.
La edición es una maravilla: guardas negras de calidad, textos bicolor, fotografías e ilustraciones antiguas. La portada incluye la guinda del pastel: la ilustración de Mario Rivière (colaborador habitual en La Felguera) que muestra a un Boy Scout saludando y empuñando una botella rota (¡a que te rajo!).
Se trata de un texto en forma de divertido golpe directo al sistema de antes y de ahora. Muchas de las ideas y críticas que aparecen plasmadas en este Manual revisado del Boy Scout son reconocibles en nuestros días, cincuenta años después de que la imaginación de Burroughs se pusiera a echar humo y terminase escupiendo este ensayo.
«Es una ley muy antigua: destruye los ídolos y destruirás la estructura social. Los ídolos no suelen ser tan fáciles de encontrar».
Reseña completa en https://denmeunpapelillo.net/manual-r...
Este manual fue escrito en 1970, pero Burroughs destruyó el manuscrito. Eso sí, dejó grabado en cintas dicho contenido y se las legó a Genesis P-Orridge. En el prólogo, ella misma relata cómo conoció a Burroughs y cómo se hizo con dichas cintas, prometiendo no publicar nada de su contenido sin la aprobación del tito Bill. Fue en 1982 cuando consintió su publicación, cosa que hizo V/Vale en la revista Re/Search de San Francisco.
La edición es una maravilla: guardas negras de calidad, textos bicolor, fotografías e ilustraciones antiguas. La portada incluye la guinda del pastel: la ilustración de Mario Rivière (colaborador habitual en La Felguera) que muestra a un Boy Scout saludando y empuñando una botella rota (¡a que te rajo!).
Se trata de un texto en forma de divertido golpe directo al sistema de antes y de ahora. Muchas de las ideas y críticas que aparecen plasmadas en este Manual revisado del Boy Scout son reconocibles en nuestros días, cincuenta años después de que la imaginación de Burroughs se pusiera a echar humo y terminase escupiendo este ensayo.
«Es una ley muy antigua: destruye los ídolos y destruirás la estructura social. Los ídolos no suelen ser tan fáciles de encontrar».
Reseña completa en https://denmeunpapelillo.net/manual-r...
October 11, 2018
When I saw there was a "new" Burroughs book, it went straight to the top of my want list. Reading Burroughs was a life-changing thing to me in my early 20s, and the thought of something of his I hadn't read (more than two decades after his death) had me excited. It turns out this novel is a compilation of three recorded versions and various published excerpts that the editors carefully compiled into something that makes sense (at least to the extent that anything from Burroughs makes sense). The book begins as a sort of guide to a successful revolution, which the reader might well take seriously (that, the most disturbing thing). It then goes off into Burroughesque tangents about sci-fi elements, sexuality, and the oft-discussed cut-up method and how it might be used as a weapon. It's a fascinating read. Maybe not Burroughs's best, but good stuff for the Burroughs fan. Some parts will seem a bit familiar. The "From Here to Eternity" routine that appeared on the Spare Ass Annie album is in here, for example. In any case, it's worthwhile read, and I recommend it for any Burroughs fan.
January 20, 2022
Un alegato a la revolución punk insurrecionalista. Es cierto que hay que tener en cuenta la época de los autores de esta generación, pero deberían haberse hecho mirar un poco lo de la misoginia.
June 21, 2021
In the early 1970s, William S. Burroughs was mostly writing articles for underground newspapers and pornographic magazines like Mayfair. The hippie scene was winding down and urban guerilla movements like the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the Angry Brigade, and the Red Army Faction were springing up all over the place. Burroughs had just voluntarily left the Church of Scientology because of their authoritarian and potentially fascist overtones and was trying to maintain his status as a writer and counter-cultural icon. He began work on a manifesto to explain his unorthodox world viewto the younger generation. He never completed the project but parts of it were sold as spoken word pieces on cassettes and other fragments were published in scattered places. These pieces were put together as The Revised Boy Scout Manual: An Electronic Revolution and recently published in paperback. The finished product serves as a good, but incomplete, overview of his ideas.
The opening sections of this short work lay out strategies for overthrowing the established order and explain a variety of weapons, both conventional and unconventional, that can be used in the pursuit of building a free society. These passages are seasoned with little bits of Burroughs’ acerbic humor and eventually make a transition into fantasy vignettes that read like the fiction Burroughs is famous for. A smooth transition is made from realistic-sounding essay writing to the gallows humor of his dark scenarios. Readers who are less experienced with Burroughs’ writing style may get disoriented and wonder whether they should even take this prose seriously. The answer is both yes and no or at least the intent of his writing is serious while the realized result is fiction. But that is how Burroughs always operated. He melted the boundaries of reality like hot candle wax dripping into a pool of molten lava. He didn’t merely think outside the box; he did everything he could to destroy whatever box it is you are in when you think.
There are key ideas to this revolution. One is that ten percent of the human race has to be killed but it has to be the ten percent that is responsible for controlling and oppressing everybody else. His idea that ten percent of the population controls ninety percent of society prefigures, by forty years, the contention of the failed Occupy Wall Street movement that one percent of the population controls ninety percent of the wealth. Political activists of our day should take note because they are not as unique or original as they think they are. To add to this idea, Burroughs points out that genocides and mass murders have historically been acts of violence perpetrated by the powerful elite against the masses of common people and this is a pattern that needs to be reversed. Another component of this revolution is M.O.B. which means “mind own business”. When governments and police do not allow people to live freely then they are not doing as such; M.O.B. is to be the cornerstone law of a newly liberated humanity. The result of the revolution will be communal societies, some of which will be located on the beaches of Ecuador or in the dense jungles of the Amazon River basin. It is not surprising that Burroughs’ preoccupation with power, domination, and control made an impression on the mind of a young Michel Foucault who cited him as an influence on his philosophy of biopolitics.
The rest of the book suggests ideas for experiments using film and audio. By the 1970s, Burroughs wished to expand on his practice of cut-ups to apply it to other, more current forms of media. A lot of the tape splicing he describes are now common practices in editing sound, music, and video. Some people have claimed his hypotheses are silly, ridiculous, and impossible but they may be misunderstanding the concept of experimentation. That particular word means to try something new and see what happens. The outcome may or may not be predictable but you really can not know until it is tried. Most experiments fail. Sometimes the intend outcome is not realized but serendipity occurs and a new method of doing things is accidentally discovered. In the end these tape recorder experiments had a profound influence on music and other arts. Burroughs used tape loops and sampling long before hip hop artists did and his philosophical ideas had a directed impact on industrial and punk music in the 1970s.
Another aspect of revolution Burroughs explores is the presence of language. He briefly explains how language can be used as a mechanism of control. He also writes about the encoding of meaning in words by the speaker and the decoding of its meaning by the listener; he makes suggestions for experiments with language scramblers to determine if a listener can unscramble distorted messages subconsciously. This is a crude take on semiotics but it explains some passages from his novels that read like disorientating gibberish; some of his texts were scrambled using cut-ups and montage and it is up to you to decide if you can derive some meaning from it. Burroughs also suggest eliminating the words “the”, “either/or”, and “is” from the English language. He describes the way “is” causes distortions in our perceptions of reality. This sounds like an idea lifted from Martin Heidegger’s An Introduction to Metaphysics but actually it is inspired by the General Semantics theory developed by the linguist Alfred Korzybski in the 1940s. In any case, these ideas anticipate the philosophies of poststructuralism and deconstruction by at least a few years.
A lot of people have criticized William S. Burroughs for believing in things that are simply not true. They also overlook the fact that he was primarily a writer of fiction and fiction, by definition, is not true. But good fiction makes statements about truth. The Revised Boy Scout Manual should be read as a fictional document, maybe even as comedy or satire, but keep in mind what it actually says about the world we live in. It is some of Burroughs’ most clear and direct writing and does a good job of explaining his theories in a way that can clarify some of the confusing and opaque passages of his difficult prose.
The opening sections of this short work lay out strategies for overthrowing the established order and explain a variety of weapons, both conventional and unconventional, that can be used in the pursuit of building a free society. These passages are seasoned with little bits of Burroughs’ acerbic humor and eventually make a transition into fantasy vignettes that read like the fiction Burroughs is famous for. A smooth transition is made from realistic-sounding essay writing to the gallows humor of his dark scenarios. Readers who are less experienced with Burroughs’ writing style may get disoriented and wonder whether they should even take this prose seriously. The answer is both yes and no or at least the intent of his writing is serious while the realized result is fiction. But that is how Burroughs always operated. He melted the boundaries of reality like hot candle wax dripping into a pool of molten lava. He didn’t merely think outside the box; he did everything he could to destroy whatever box it is you are in when you think.
There are key ideas to this revolution. One is that ten percent of the human race has to be killed but it has to be the ten percent that is responsible for controlling and oppressing everybody else. His idea that ten percent of the population controls ninety percent of society prefigures, by forty years, the contention of the failed Occupy Wall Street movement that one percent of the population controls ninety percent of the wealth. Political activists of our day should take note because they are not as unique or original as they think they are. To add to this idea, Burroughs points out that genocides and mass murders have historically been acts of violence perpetrated by the powerful elite against the masses of common people and this is a pattern that needs to be reversed. Another component of this revolution is M.O.B. which means “mind own business”. When governments and police do not allow people to live freely then they are not doing as such; M.O.B. is to be the cornerstone law of a newly liberated humanity. The result of the revolution will be communal societies, some of which will be located on the beaches of Ecuador or in the dense jungles of the Amazon River basin. It is not surprising that Burroughs’ preoccupation with power, domination, and control made an impression on the mind of a young Michel Foucault who cited him as an influence on his philosophy of biopolitics.
The rest of the book suggests ideas for experiments using film and audio. By the 1970s, Burroughs wished to expand on his practice of cut-ups to apply it to other, more current forms of media. A lot of the tape splicing he describes are now common practices in editing sound, music, and video. Some people have claimed his hypotheses are silly, ridiculous, and impossible but they may be misunderstanding the concept of experimentation. That particular word means to try something new and see what happens. The outcome may or may not be predictable but you really can not know until it is tried. Most experiments fail. Sometimes the intend outcome is not realized but serendipity occurs and a new method of doing things is accidentally discovered. In the end these tape recorder experiments had a profound influence on music and other arts. Burroughs used tape loops and sampling long before hip hop artists did and his philosophical ideas had a directed impact on industrial and punk music in the 1970s.
Another aspect of revolution Burroughs explores is the presence of language. He briefly explains how language can be used as a mechanism of control. He also writes about the encoding of meaning in words by the speaker and the decoding of its meaning by the listener; he makes suggestions for experiments with language scramblers to determine if a listener can unscramble distorted messages subconsciously. This is a crude take on semiotics but it explains some passages from his novels that read like disorientating gibberish; some of his texts were scrambled using cut-ups and montage and it is up to you to decide if you can derive some meaning from it. Burroughs also suggest eliminating the words “the”, “either/or”, and “is” from the English language. He describes the way “is” causes distortions in our perceptions of reality. This sounds like an idea lifted from Martin Heidegger’s An Introduction to Metaphysics but actually it is inspired by the General Semantics theory developed by the linguist Alfred Korzybski in the 1940s. In any case, these ideas anticipate the philosophies of poststructuralism and deconstruction by at least a few years.
A lot of people have criticized William S. Burroughs for believing in things that are simply not true. They also overlook the fact that he was primarily a writer of fiction and fiction, by definition, is not true. But good fiction makes statements about truth. The Revised Boy Scout Manual should be read as a fictional document, maybe even as comedy or satire, but keep in mind what it actually says about the world we live in. It is some of Burroughs’ most clear and direct writing and does a good job of explaining his theories in a way that can clarify some of the confusing and opaque passages of his difficult prose.
March 11, 2025
Todos sabemos que William S. Burroughs es una de las figuras más influyentes y polémicas de la literatura contracultural del siglo XX. No solo desafió las normas literarias establecidas, sino que también cuestionó todas las estructuras sociales y políticas de su tiempo. Hacer una mención de sus libros es complicado por la gran cantidad de temas y publicaciones que tuvo. “El almuerzo desnudo”, “Yonqui” y “Queer” son quizás la trilogía con la que mejor podemos entender su propuesta, pero su interés en lo social y político también estuvo muy marcado en sus libros, y este libro del que hablaré es una muestra de ello.
El libro "Manual Revisado del Boy Scout", que La Felguera Editores recupera en esta segunda edición, es una completa sátira, una provocación política y un llamado a la rebelión absoluta contra el "establishment". Este texto permaneció oculto durante años y fue escrito en paralelo a "Los chicos salvajes" (1969), esos años históricos repletos de tensiones y movimientos revolucionarios en todo lugar del mundo.
El final de los años ’60 y principios de los ’70 fueron testigo de un mundo que necesitaba un cambio. Manifestaciones masivas contra la guerra en Vietnam, las guerrillas nacientes en América Latina y los intensos movimientos contraculturales en Occidente mostraban un futuro de una posible rebelión global contra los que usurpan el poder. Burroughs, siempre crítico, veía esa atmósfera crucial como su momento ideal para derribar lo establecido: ese mundo dominado por sistemas políticos, policiales y sociales corruptos, que perpetuaban una hipócrita democracia que aún se mantiene.
Para William S. Burroughs, la preocupación no era cómo llamar a la revolución; su interés era realmente cómo lograrla y de qué forma. Burroughs veía en las guerrillas urbanas que comenzaban a aparecer que solo tenían ideales, pero les faltaban armas innovadoras y una visión de cómo la tecnología podía servir como trampolín para lograr el éxito. Por eso este libro nace realmente en grabaciones con la misma voz del autor; para él, la voz y la tecnología son el arma necesaria para dar ese primer paso. Es la artista experimental Genesis P-Orridge quien logra convencerlo, luego de días y días en los que Burroughs se negaba a mostrar el manual, para que esas grabaciones se transcribieran y naciera este libro, que es una maravillosa mezcla de un pensamiento como el de Bakunin, Abbie Hoffman y el mismísimo Mao Zedong. Este manual fue clave en el inicio del movimiento punk en Londres. El grito de "A TOMAR POR EL CULO LA REINA" (antes de que los Sex Pistols escribieran su himno "God Save the Queen") era un grito de guerra contra las instituciones y el reinado. Burroughs, siempre pendiente de los movimientos contraculturales, enviaría él mismo una carta a los Sex Pistols mostrando su apoyo al mensaje de la canción.
Burroughs diseñó un libro perfectamente armado como un manual terrorista, un libro que, al utilizarse de la manera correcta por medio de la palabra y la violencia sonora y armada, destruiría a los que mantienen el poder. El uso de la palabra en todos los textos del autor siempre ha sido un arma. Eso lo tenemos muy claro quienes hemos leído casi toda su obra, pero es aquí el lugar donde quizás el pensamiento más caótico de Burroughs se muestra, llegando a ser, en muchos momentos, un fin utópico e imposible de lograr.
Algo que resalta en el inicio del manual es cómo William S. Burroughs menciona la independencia de Venezuela y cómo, según su visión, Simón Bolívar no pudo lograr lo que deseaba por errores que cometió al dejar muchas de las leyes y normas que los mismos españoles ya habían institucionalizado. El interés del autor obviamente iba más allá de lo que muchos creen al leer quizás su principal trilogía literaria.
Lo que sí es claro es que, de alguna u otra manera, este libro tan pequeño y al mismo tiempo poderoso mantiene una vigencia hoy en día más que la primera vez que se publicó. Leer a un William S. Burroughs libre, con un pensamiento radical y con una fuerte tendencia anarquista, resulta un placer absoluto. La traducción, como siempre, de Javier Calvo logra subir un nivel a la edición, como también La Felguera, cuidando cada detalle en fotografías, diseño y edición.
El libro "Manual Revisado del Boy Scout", que La Felguera Editores recupera en esta segunda edición, es una completa sátira, una provocación política y un llamado a la rebelión absoluta contra el "establishment". Este texto permaneció oculto durante años y fue escrito en paralelo a "Los chicos salvajes" (1969), esos años históricos repletos de tensiones y movimientos revolucionarios en todo lugar del mundo.
El final de los años ’60 y principios de los ’70 fueron testigo de un mundo que necesitaba un cambio. Manifestaciones masivas contra la guerra en Vietnam, las guerrillas nacientes en América Latina y los intensos movimientos contraculturales en Occidente mostraban un futuro de una posible rebelión global contra los que usurpan el poder. Burroughs, siempre crítico, veía esa atmósfera crucial como su momento ideal para derribar lo establecido: ese mundo dominado por sistemas políticos, policiales y sociales corruptos, que perpetuaban una hipócrita democracia que aún se mantiene.
Para William S. Burroughs, la preocupación no era cómo llamar a la revolución; su interés era realmente cómo lograrla y de qué forma. Burroughs veía en las guerrillas urbanas que comenzaban a aparecer que solo tenían ideales, pero les faltaban armas innovadoras y una visión de cómo la tecnología podía servir como trampolín para lograr el éxito. Por eso este libro nace realmente en grabaciones con la misma voz del autor; para él, la voz y la tecnología son el arma necesaria para dar ese primer paso. Es la artista experimental Genesis P-Orridge quien logra convencerlo, luego de días y días en los que Burroughs se negaba a mostrar el manual, para que esas grabaciones se transcribieran y naciera este libro, que es una maravillosa mezcla de un pensamiento como el de Bakunin, Abbie Hoffman y el mismísimo Mao Zedong. Este manual fue clave en el inicio del movimiento punk en Londres. El grito de "A TOMAR POR EL CULO LA REINA" (antes de que los Sex Pistols escribieran su himno "God Save the Queen") era un grito de guerra contra las instituciones y el reinado. Burroughs, siempre pendiente de los movimientos contraculturales, enviaría él mismo una carta a los Sex Pistols mostrando su apoyo al mensaje de la canción.
Burroughs diseñó un libro perfectamente armado como un manual terrorista, un libro que, al utilizarse de la manera correcta por medio de la palabra y la violencia sonora y armada, destruiría a los que mantienen el poder. El uso de la palabra en todos los textos del autor siempre ha sido un arma. Eso lo tenemos muy claro quienes hemos leído casi toda su obra, pero es aquí el lugar donde quizás el pensamiento más caótico de Burroughs se muestra, llegando a ser, en muchos momentos, un fin utópico e imposible de lograr.
Algo que resalta en el inicio del manual es cómo William S. Burroughs menciona la independencia de Venezuela y cómo, según su visión, Simón Bolívar no pudo lograr lo que deseaba por errores que cometió al dejar muchas de las leyes y normas que los mismos españoles ya habían institucionalizado. El interés del autor obviamente iba más allá de lo que muchos creen al leer quizás su principal trilogía literaria.
Lo que sí es claro es que, de alguna u otra manera, este libro tan pequeño y al mismo tiempo poderoso mantiene una vigencia hoy en día más que la primera vez que se publicó. Leer a un William S. Burroughs libre, con un pensamiento radical y con una fuerte tendencia anarquista, resulta un placer absoluto. La traducción, como siempre, de Javier Calvo logra subir un nivel a la edición, como también La Felguera, cuidando cada detalle en fotografías, diseño y edición.
September 4, 2017
El interés de este libro no reside en la calidad literaria del mismo, sino en las circunstancias sociales y económico-políticas que rodean su escritura, así como en las particularidades de Burroughs como escritor. Una curiosidad que merece la pena leer por las cuestiones que deja en el aire. Un relato duro sobre la anarquía
October 31, 2018
I hate Burroughs, so went in knowing I'd probably not have a great time. I found the first half really interesting, but kind of petered out halfway through. Also, probably didn't need more pages of 3 people doing a forward and an afterword than the actual text.
September 17, 2014
Burroughs'un dünyasından orijinal v for vendetta teknikleri
July 27, 2025
“Pueden parecer las palabras de un yonki paranoico…porque lo son….” Es parte de la dedicatoria que le escribí a mi novio cuando le regalé este libro. Me mantengo. Me meo con este tío, pero me esperaba más, no te sé decir por qué. Nunca hay que poner muchas expectativas en los hombres, mucho menos en este.
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September 15, 20213) Sahte rahiplerin peşine düşmeye gerek yok. Kilisenin toprakları ve malları kamulaştırılır. Okullarda dini eğitim verilmeyecek; Katolik olmayı cazibesiz ve dezavantajlı hale getirin yeter.
March 31, 2024
es complicado dar una puntuación a este libro, dado que se trata de un manifiesto anarquista y revolucionario que tan pronto asusta como da risa
Es excesivamente preciso describiendo cómo fabricar armas caseras y cómo matar para asegurar el caos, tanto que resulta cómico en algunas partes
un libro muy raro y rápido de leer que, por cierto, nada tiene que ver con los scouts ni con “escultismo para muchachos”, ni siquiera los menciona
El prólogo y la nota de los editores son interesantes para conocer más sobre el autor y cómo ha llegado a publicarse este ensayo revolucionario
Es excesivamente preciso describiendo cómo fabricar armas caseras y cómo matar para asegurar el caos, tanto que resulta cómico en algunas partes
un libro muy raro y rápido de leer que, por cierto, nada tiene que ver con los scouts ni con “escultismo para muchachos”, ni siquiera los menciona
El prólogo y la nota de los editores son interesantes para conocer más sobre el autor y cómo ha llegado a publicarse este ensayo revolucionario
December 1, 2018
The thing about material published posthumously, is that sometimes it didn't get published in a more timely fashion for a reason.
January 7, 2019
TL;DR Burroughs envisions meme culture.
February 29, 2020
¡A tomar por culo la reina!
November 18, 2019
This manual is a bit of a Frankenstein project, as it has existed in various forms and under different titles, and in different mediums. At times the story of how this book was constructed is more interesting than the actual material by Burroughs. This “definitive” version is cobbled together from eight different print sources and the transcripts from three 90 minute tapes called either The Revised Boy Scout Manual or An Electronic Revolution, along with a few paragraphs originally published in The Job.
Ostensibly, this is a manual to discuss becoming a terrorist (or “radical”) and proper action to take to destroy the system. As per usual in a Burroughs book, it degenerates into revenge and sex fantasies, then blathers on about some cut-up sound techniques to affect reality and drive people in a certain direction. Much of this has been stated by him before in other books. As such, perhaps the first thirty pages of the book is the most interesting.
Whether this is meant to be a serious work is a lightly debated topic on those who read Burroughs. Whether he meant it to or not, it’s completely impractical and thus doesn’t matter. As usual, he shows his love for the pseudo-science of L. Ron Hubbard and Wilhelm Reich, so much of his “combat” techniques are mired in their insanity. Who knows if he believed it? Perhaps in his more drug addled moments it all seemed plausible, but if so, he certainly took none of the actions discussed in this book while sober. However the emotions behind the words are most certainly authentic.
Ostensibly, this is a manual to discuss becoming a terrorist (or “radical”) and proper action to take to destroy the system. As per usual in a Burroughs book, it degenerates into revenge and sex fantasies, then blathers on about some cut-up sound techniques to affect reality and drive people in a certain direction. Much of this has been stated by him before in other books. As such, perhaps the first thirty pages of the book is the most interesting.
Whether this is meant to be a serious work is a lightly debated topic on those who read Burroughs. Whether he meant it to or not, it’s completely impractical and thus doesn’t matter. As usual, he shows his love for the pseudo-science of L. Ron Hubbard and Wilhelm Reich, so much of his “combat” techniques are mired in their insanity. Who knows if he believed it? Perhaps in his more drug addled moments it all seemed plausible, but if so, he certainly took none of the actions discussed in this book while sober. However the emotions behind the words are most certainly authentic.
December 4, 2019
All the Burroughs themes are here, sometimes the exact language from his other works. He did say, after all, that all his books comprise one big book. This is really a how-to for revolutionaries though sometimes it's hard to tell if he's serious or ironic. Both I suspect, juxtaposed. In V. Vale's afterword, he says that one should think twice before being seen reading this on a plane or carrying through Customs. Good thing I finished it on a train! I don't think anyone saw or noticed.
In my senior year at UC Berkeley, I did my thesis on Burroughs and Naked Lunch and Junky, which I had read in Professor Ron Lowensohn's (sp) seminar on the Beat Generation. I wrote the paper on a Windows 3.1 machine and saved the files on 3.5 floppies. Gone the way of the Dodo and I have no extant copy of that work, which I greatly regret. It was my first 20pp. paper and I was not a very good writer, but I finished and professor generously awarded me a B or B+, I can't remember. My thesis was basically that Burroughs's fiction was real in the sense that it was giving its readers instructions and information about how to deal with life and operate in the world. The Revised Boy Scout Manual is the embodiment of that thesis. In the words of Burroughs himself, "Research along these lines is necessary. "
In my senior year at UC Berkeley, I did my thesis on Burroughs and Naked Lunch and Junky, which I had read in Professor Ron Lowensohn's (sp) seminar on the Beat Generation. I wrote the paper on a Windows 3.1 machine and saved the files on 3.5 floppies. Gone the way of the Dodo and I have no extant copy of that work, which I greatly regret. It was my first 20pp. paper and I was not a very good writer, but I finished and professor generously awarded me a B or B+, I can't remember. My thesis was basically that Burroughs's fiction was real in the sense that it was giving its readers instructions and information about how to deal with life and operate in the world. The Revised Boy Scout Manual is the embodiment of that thesis. In the words of Burroughs himself, "Research along these lines is necessary. "
March 25, 2025
Introducción Genesis P-Orridge: paciencia cultural/artistica - carcajada como arma
Nota de Editores: Burroughs creia en la destruccion de la estructura/sistema - cut ups - temia del poder de su obra (perder residencia)
Manual:
Armas y tacticas revolucionarias: caseras - 5 puntos a destruir
LDA: sin atacar peces gordos para que estos aparezcan
AAA: no policias no militares para generar recelo
Artefactos explosivos: medios de transporte
Armas biologicas: traslado de especies
Guerra biologica: virus e inmunizacion
Infrasonidos y radiacion de orgones
Perturbacion, agitacion y subversion: organizacion aparente
Plan General:
Se crea Partido Republicano Ingles centrado en aspectos economicos, rechazando a la Corona
Se crean panfletos caricaturescos - Corona aumenta represion (horca y latigazos)
PRI condena panfletos y comienza a intervenir pandillas
Se inician LAA - Corona crea sistema autoritario de puntos
Campana de conspiraciones
Ataques directos a oligarquia - abdicar
Manual metaforico/ejemplificador
Para que limitarse con la violencia?, disfrutad de ella
Atacar y destruir permitiendo que la masa siga con su vida cotidiana
Nota: 6.5/10
Nota de Editores: Burroughs creia en la destruccion de la estructura/sistema - cut ups - temia del poder de su obra (perder residencia)
Manual:
Armas y tacticas revolucionarias: caseras - 5 puntos a destruir
LDA: sin atacar peces gordos para que estos aparezcan
AAA: no policias no militares para generar recelo
Artefactos explosivos: medios de transporte
Armas biologicas: traslado de especies
Guerra biologica: virus e inmunizacion
Infrasonidos y radiacion de orgones
Perturbacion, agitacion y subversion: organizacion aparente
Plan General:
Se crea Partido Republicano Ingles centrado en aspectos economicos, rechazando a la Corona
Se crean panfletos caricaturescos - Corona aumenta represion (horca y latigazos)
PRI condena panfletos y comienza a intervenir pandillas
Se inician LAA - Corona crea sistema autoritario de puntos
Campana de conspiraciones
Ataques directos a oligarquia - abdicar
Manual metaforico/ejemplificador
Para que limitarse con la violencia?, disfrutad de ella
Atacar y destruir permitiendo que la masa siga con su vida cotidiana
Nota: 6.5/10
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 23, 2020
This is certainly a volume for Burroughs completists, and not for the casual reader -- stick to the well-known novels if that's you. This is the first publication of the complete "manuscript" of the Manual, assembled from recordings and fragments, and it's a sort of hodge-podge of revolutionary guidelines interspersed with more typical "routines" from WSB. The theories of strategies, weaponry, and alternative ways of fighting back against tyrannical systems can be interesting, but can also make for some slow, didactic pages. Overall, I'd mark this as more of a bibliographical curiosity than an essential work, despite having more than a few gems within.
April 21, 2019
Reprints material out of print for some time, during the period from the early '60s until his bunker period of the late '70s and early '80s. Political tracts and rants, with highly implausible plots for revolutionary overthrow of—well, what've you got? In the context of today's political scheming, Burroughs offers—avant la lettre—methods for creating fake news. But for the left! . . . Mainly a catalog of cranky utterings, with just enough misogyny to imbue the whole with a reek.
April 28, 2019
An augur of social media:
"And now the question as to whether scrambling techniques could be used to spread healthful and pleasant messages. Perhaps. On the other hand the scrambled words and tape act like a virus in that they force something on the subject against his will. More to the point would be to discover how the old scanning patterns could be altered so that the subject liberates his own spontaneous scanning pattern."
"And now the question as to whether scrambling techniques could be used to spread healthful and pleasant messages. Perhaps. On the other hand the scrambled words and tape act like a virus in that they force something on the subject against his will. More to the point would be to discover how the old scanning patterns could be altered so that the subject liberates his own spontaneous scanning pattern."
June 1, 2019
let us forget this little work for a second. it is a prime example of the drudgery of the posthumous money hunt. now, don't get me wrong, I love Burroughs because of his dedication to the destruction of systems of control. he has elements in his writing that I fundamentally disagree with, but it is his main focus on the breakdown of control that is what has always endeared me to him.
August 22, 2022
The header here; "Before Anti-Fascists..."
So you know Antifa was born in 1918 by Italian Anarchists.
Anyway, Revised Boy Scout Manual is a cynical, sometimes unsettling guide to taking over a small, preferably island nation.
There hasn't really been a chance to try it out but, over the next decade.... who knows
So you know Antifa was born in 1918 by Italian Anarchists.
Anyway, Revised Boy Scout Manual is a cynical, sometimes unsettling guide to taking over a small, preferably island nation.
There hasn't really been a chance to try it out but, over the next decade.... who knows
June 26, 2021
A revolutionary manual from the unhinged imagination of William Burroughs. Still as forward looking and modern as the day he spoke these words. A recording of a performance in the late 1970s and early 1980s
November 5, 2022
Extrêmement bizarre (pas vraiment surprenant vu l'auteur). Des passages semblent assez visionnaires d'autres sont juste lunaires et c'est parfois très compliqué d'en tirer quelque chose. Même en ayant l'habitude de lire des ouvrages en anglais celui là demande pas mal d'efforts.
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July 22, 2023Impossible to review or quantify a numerical rating on. Weird manual for arms, biologic, and psychic warfare. Lots of cool, interesting shit in here. Really don't want to say more because the experience needs to be had by the individual.
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