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The Nova Trilogy #3
The Ticket That Exploded
In The Ticket That Exploded, William S. Burroughs’s grand “cut-up” trilogy that starts with The Soft Machine and continues through Nova Express reaches its climax as inspector Lee and the Nova Police engage the Nova Mob in a decisive battle for the planet. Only Burroughs could make such a nightmare vision of scientists and combat troops, of ad men and con men whose deceitful language has spread like an incurable disease be at once so frightening and so enthralling.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1962
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3799 people want to read
About the author
William S. Burroughs
453 books6,942 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 154 reviews
March 11, 2025
“Myself am Hell: which way I turn is Hell.”
John Milton
I read this one while soaking in the hellish psychedelic mud bath of the seventies, to which treatment I strenuously objected.
It's like the type of sleazy cops and crooks B-film that Beelzebub screens in an endless loop in the stinking lower Chambers of Dis, I believe.
It explains my postgraduate education by Sleaze Immersion at the Royally Awful Hospital!
The docs thought that healing only happened by immersion in the Lowest filth.
That is Burrough's method too…
Only he - a true genius - uses it as a parody of the Establishment.
***
This is why I adore Burroughs (but in small doses)! He gives us the scary straight goods on what makes our political masters' methodology work...
In its highly dysfunctional way.
***
Modern Civilisation is dystopian. Why? Because it makes its citizens hate themselves.
The only reason Burroughs is a must-read is that the System inflicted such deep self-hatred on him that he WOKE UP:
For he cariacatures our button-down masters so well that we don't hate them any more than we already hate ourselves -
He creates a level playing field!
And that, above all else, is his benison here.
John Milton
I read this one while soaking in the hellish psychedelic mud bath of the seventies, to which treatment I strenuously objected.
It's like the type of sleazy cops and crooks B-film that Beelzebub screens in an endless loop in the stinking lower Chambers of Dis, I believe.
It explains my postgraduate education by Sleaze Immersion at the Royally Awful Hospital!
The docs thought that healing only happened by immersion in the Lowest filth.
That is Burrough's method too…
Only he - a true genius - uses it as a parody of the Establishment.
***
This is why I adore Burroughs (but in small doses)! He gives us the scary straight goods on what makes our political masters' methodology work...
In its highly dysfunctional way.
***
Modern Civilisation is dystopian. Why? Because it makes its citizens hate themselves.
The only reason Burroughs is a must-read is that the System inflicted such deep self-hatred on him that he WOKE UP:
For he cariacatures our button-down masters so well that we don't hate them any more than we already hate ourselves -
He creates a level playing field!
And that, above all else, is his benison here.
December 21, 2017
Lust for life
I got a lust for life
I got a lust for life
- Iggy Pop, Lust for Life
Reviewing, cutting, looking slowly back at 1962 o͝orˌtekst, 1967 Endetext, fold, refold, oragami fold, cut, paste, recut, film and redact. So? Start again. From the bigbanging. - there are no good words- I wrote silences - review the story of two halves, two texts, living text, breathing review Here comes Johnny Yen again/With the liquor and drugs - 'Better than 'the real thing?' - there is no real thing - reviewing the review, before the end, I'm not sure the cut-up review will work. Abandon all holes, ye whosorifices here. Mother smother may I must I smother mother this May. And the flesh machine/He's gonna do another striptease. I've naked lunched and snacked on soft machines. I've dined on queers and feasted on exterminators! These all do their part, they have all left me full and slightly sick. Puppy sick. Sick. sick./[sic]poopy. I'm not sure my form or pattern or strategy will add much to the Universe. I'm not sure it will subtract either. It will (like a Luxor light on New Years) attract only non-native moths, that feed the non-native bats, that feed the non-native owls, circling the giant urban a$$hole of the Las Vegas universe. Boys will be boys and boys, 'Boys we've been sublimated.' I'm worth a million in prizes/With my torture film.I'll redraft this draft, re-view this review, and post it toast it on Audible. I'll come at Amazon from two directions. Equally futile F body. I'll let DearGODreads swallow my early editions. I'll let Audible carry my post-review drip penicillin. Clock. clock. Tap. tap. Tock. tock. Written before on 'the Soft Typewriter' - transparent quivering substance the body is two halves stuck together around - Jeff B3zos - Lizard king. Owns my words. Licking the metallic air. Sells me your word drones. Shed your skin. Barter, trade, and consume all words made flesh - No good - No bueno - Departed have left no address - It's all done with tape recorders. Well I am just a modern guy/Of course I've had it in the ear before Listen again. Listen harder. Escape to and from the Nova. But never dream of leaving the word horde.
I got a lust for life
I got a lust for life
- Iggy Pop, Lust for Life
Reviewing, cutting, looking slowly back at 1962 o͝orˌtekst, 1967 Endetext, fold, refold, oragami fold, cut, paste, recut, film and redact. So? Start again. From the bigbanging. - there are no good words- I wrote silences - review the story of two halves, two texts, living text, breathing review Here comes Johnny Yen again/With the liquor and drugs - 'Better than 'the real thing?' - there is no real thing - reviewing the review, before the end, I'm not sure the cut-up review will work. Abandon all holes, ye whosorifices here. Mother smother may I must I smother mother this May. And the flesh machine/He's gonna do another striptease. I've naked lunched and snacked on soft machines. I've dined on queers and feasted on exterminators! These all do their part, they have all left me full and slightly sick. Puppy sick. Sick. sick./[sic]poopy. I'm not sure my form or pattern or strategy will add much to the Universe. I'm not sure it will subtract either. It will (like a Luxor light on New Years) attract only non-native moths, that feed the non-native bats, that feed the non-native owls, circling the giant urban a$$hole of the Las Vegas universe. Boys will be boys and boys, 'Boys we've been sublimated.' I'm worth a million in prizes/With my torture film.I'll redraft this draft, re-view this review, and post it toast it on Audible. I'll come at Amazon from two directions. Equally futile F body. I'll let DearGODreads swallow my early editions. I'll let Audible carry my post-review drip penicillin. Clock. clock. Tap. tap. Tock. tock. Written before on 'the Soft Typewriter' - transparent quivering substance the body is two halves stuck together around - Jeff B3zos - Lizard king. Owns my words. Licking the metallic air. Sells me your word drones. Shed your skin. Barter, trade, and consume all words made flesh - No good - No bueno - Departed have left no address - It's all done with tape recorders. Well I am just a modern guy/Of course I've had it in the ear before Listen again. Listen harder. Escape to and from the Nova. But never dream of leaving the word horde.
June 5, 2016
Having read this all the way through I can state confidently that I had absolutely no idea what was going on. And yet, at the same time, I sort of did. My understanding was somehow behind the story rather than in the story itself. The book seems to be about how the human visual imagination is really an invasion of alien messages, so the moment you 'see' something in your mind's eye you are actually submitting to outside control.
To combat this in a book, a text can't have a narrative that presents a story flow that can be visualized by the reader in linear time. So the meaning of the text has to accumulate in disconnected chunks. Something like this at any rate. I am probably talking gibberish...
To combat this in a book, a text can't have a narrative that presents a story flow that can be visualized by the reader in linear time. So the meaning of the text has to accumulate in disconnected chunks. Something like this at any rate. I am probably talking gibberish...
March 12, 2013
If you don't like the idea of reading paragraph after paragraph about catapulting streams of jism, then maybe this book is not for you. But the Ticket That Exploded is about so much more than torrential ejaculations... it's about melting your head right down to your shoulders. There is a kind of zen state that becomes necessary to read Burroughs sometimes, you have to really let the sickness flood over you and understand that it is not the author that is sick, but instead you, you with your fear and your rules. Burroughs is reprograming you. Erasing fear and sensitivity to bullshit. This book is a shaman guiding you through the spirit world of your anxiety.
May 30, 2019
Maybe this goes without saying but William Burroughs' cut-up pieces are so aggressively anti-narrative that they're openly hostile to the reader. The reader has no purchase on the plot (what little plot there is) and, more than that, the plot has no purchase on itself. Because of the very cut-up process, no aspect of the novel can develop; rather, there are small stretches of comprehension padded by great stretches of experimentation. This makes for a work that takes a lot of work to read, which wouldn't be so bad - most really good books are hard to read, and worth reading because they're hard - except that this particular work doesn't seem to want to be read. This kind of thing, it should be said, isn't entirely without precedent or merit. At points this recalls Acker, Pynchon, and even Joyce, who all tried out different ways of presenting language on the page and so, by extension, of presenting pages themselves. Their experiments with form all suggest a common frustration with the rigidity of that same form (i.e., the novel), further suggesting a frustration with cultural structures that enforce conformity of all sorts. This is (often) what is meant when a novel that's too hard for anyone to read is called subversive-it challenges the social order. The artist whose work this novel is most reminiscent of, though, is Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein's montage experiments parallel Burroughs' cut-up method, an approach meant to explore the meaning of the unexpected juxtaposition. For Burroughs, whose method was built upon the assumption that all language (both speech and text) is prerecorded, and so can only be rearranged, these rearrangements exist along a spectrum of meaning but cannot be wholly original or perfectly meaningful. I'm really sympathetic to this theory and approach, and this kind of stuff is what I think makes the Beats interesting and proto-postmodern in their views on language and signification and meaning-making, and yet for all my appreciation of subversion and sympathy of approach I find this next to unreadable. This may well be what the novel wants.
February 19, 2011
But if you're reading this then you probably expect a challenge anyway. What it means. Smell of rancid tide flat--police drama strangely flickers in and out, much channels are playing. picture. The unnerving documentary on parasitic Machine, however this strangely analogous to Doctor. Imagine that without proper documentation. Channel-change static bursts to foil religious mind-control Now imagine what, and poisonous insects of the amazon--a sci-fi cable box. Doctor Benway less noticeably playing a variety of sex films. traveling agent attempting the Soft belies the strange. No Dalek has only 20 channels. Imagine that these channels are strange religious sacrifices. I found myself. Imagining at every regulated drug usage text of almost-coherence contained despite the punctuation mark. Who, and a film about junkies, sex films--if anything; I don't know, nor do I really care. A time among those--capital punishment boys undressing fever dreams of the poisonous insects of the Soft Machine. The text of The However Searching for a book is to flicker in and out of the presence liked it just the same.An Amazon, a sci-fi police drama, who flickers against sexual gratification--a convoluted search indeed. Among channels in Naked Lunch, the best description I can give randomly every few seconds.
Now imagine what all this would look like when the TV was set to jump. A blatant narrative in this junk-sick rectal mucous (sorry).
Now imagine what all this would look like when the TV was set to jump. A blatant narrative in this junk-sick rectal mucous (sorry).
August 19, 2015
Strange thing happened while reading. For the first time I felt genuine empathy for a book, not the words in the book but the actual tree the book was made of. Not that Burroughs is bad. He is innovative and funny and when he's in a good mood he moves his cut-up experiments toward poignancy. I will read more. But the significant enjoyment I got from this was outweighed by the perhaps false but nonetheless overwhelming impression that I was wasting my time.
November 12, 2024
It's like a 230-page slow-motion nightmare taking place under water. William S. Burroughs's The Ticket That Exploded: The Restored Text is not for readers who demand a tightly reasoned and wholly comprehensible book. You will encounter whole pages that appear to make no sense, but are crudely poetic and cogent nonetheless. If you accept the author's world at the outset, you can enjoy The Ticket That Exploded; otherwise, you will be at sea.
December 2, 2007
The one William S. Burroughs book that causes the fan base to be afraid, really afraid. Burroughs at his most out there - those who have a fear of experimental writing - stay far away. This is a live bomb ticking slowly and it may explode in your hands! For those who are not afraid, this is really good. Burroughs at his most dry, and distain for the real square's world most intense work.
April 4, 2015
This work needs to be approached as a piece of conceptual art or an occult manual... those seeking storytime may find it somewhat hard going.
August 29, 2009
Burroughs' 2nd cut-up novel (if I have the chronology right) & the beginining of what's, for me, his strongest period. After writing my quickie 'review' of "Naked Lunch" in wch I mentioned Balch's "Towers Open Fire", I moved onto this one & 'randomly' opened to page 110 to read:
""This way - To the Towers" - Ali pointed to an office building that dominated the square - Kiki ran toward the building covered now by tower fire - Hands pulled him into a doorway - On the roof of the building was a battery of radios and movie cameras that vibrated to static - A green creature with metal claw hands was giving orders to a group of partisans who manned the gun tower - From the radio poured a metallic staccato voice -
""Photo falling - Word Falling - Break through in Grey Room - Towers, open fire" -"
Yep, Burroughs was in his stride of having a breakthrough in the brain w/ this one. Unlike "Naked Lunch", this no longer seems like a collection of notes but a coherent report from a parallel universe where the true faces of the enemy are revealed. My having opened to this page where "Towers, open fire" is written isn't just an indication of Burroughs' repetitiveness of certain phrases - it's also an indication of how magikal it all seems, of how oddly one can link into the writing - a proclamation for the effectiveness of Burroughs' formal strategies for breaking thru into deep levels of the mind.
""This way - To the Towers" - Ali pointed to an office building that dominated the square - Kiki ran toward the building covered now by tower fire - Hands pulled him into a doorway - On the roof of the building was a battery of radios and movie cameras that vibrated to static - A green creature with metal claw hands was giving orders to a group of partisans who manned the gun tower - From the radio poured a metallic staccato voice -
""Photo falling - Word Falling - Break through in Grey Room - Towers, open fire" -"
Yep, Burroughs was in his stride of having a breakthrough in the brain w/ this one. Unlike "Naked Lunch", this no longer seems like a collection of notes but a coherent report from a parallel universe where the true faces of the enemy are revealed. My having opened to this page where "Towers, open fire" is written isn't just an indication of Burroughs' repetitiveness of certain phrases - it's also an indication of how magikal it all seems, of how oddly one can link into the writing - a proclamation for the effectiveness of Burroughs' formal strategies for breaking thru into deep levels of the mind.
December 28, 2023
Burroughs cut-up yöntemiyle anti romanın en iddialı örneğini veriyor. Cut-up anlam arandığında sonsuza dek zamanımızı tüketebilecek bir yöntem. Kesip eklediği, metni adeta enstalasyona çevirdiği bu metinde ne anlatıldığı hakkında herhangi bir fikrim yok. Bitirdikten sonra ne düşüneceğimi bilmiyorum bile. Neden devam ettiğimi sorarsanız okuma sürecinin kafa karışıklığını sevdiğimi söyleyebilirim. Metin benden nefret edercesine kendini saklıyor. Anlatmaya giriştiği şeyler asla gelişmiyor. Burroughs kalemi zehirli olan bir yazar. Anlatmak istemediğinde bile okunabilir olması onun yeteneğini gösteriyor.
September 24, 2019
I’m not sure the restored text combined with the cut up method does a lot for anyone but the hardened scholar; but I did find this novel significantly more narrative driven than The Soft Machine. Perhaps I’m wrong but it does make the book more interesting. Found myself occasionally disappointed when the narrative would disappear into cut up because I was actually enjoying the story. But I think that’s part of the point of the whole technique.
January 18, 2016
What happens in this book? Why, the cock flipped out and up rectal musk of KY jelly slides the green fingers of the fish boy into autoerotic tape manipulation causes an overlay of the physical forms in St. Louis, joe. Less a story and more a set of junkie koans to meditate upon in your search for the transformative power of the Word. Because in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, twisted in Burrough's thin, gnarled fingers into a vicious demiurge plumbing the darkest desires and depths of your psyche.
September 22, 2015
I was going to do this whole review in Burroughs' cut up technique, but I'm too lazy. This was a tough read for me. I loved Junky, Queer, and of course, Naked Lunch, and maybe I expected something along those lines. The story seems to be about mind and body control through orgasms and splicing of tapes and I have to say Burroughs has a fucking dirty dirty dirty mind and I'm not sure what he was on at the time, but whatever the drug was, I'd congratulate his dealer. Good job.
I really liked the dirty parts and all the jizz and blue ejaculations etc etc etc, but there comes a time in a girl's day when liters of sperm seem to be a little much. Anyway, bottom line, if you like sci-fi, and I mean, CRAZY IMAGINATIVE AND LYRICAL sci-fi, this book is good for that. If you enjoy boys, again, climb right in, but if you're looking for paragraphs and actual completed sentences, you might feel a little lost, um, let's say around page three.
He's a genius, no doubt about it. The story where he explains control with tape splicing and how he can have an argument without even being in the room with the person, proves it. I thought that was brilliant. Burroughs' imagination is fascinating.
I'm glad I read this novel, his longest, but it's not one on my favorites.
I really liked the dirty parts and all the jizz and blue ejaculations etc etc etc, but there comes a time in a girl's day when liters of sperm seem to be a little much. Anyway, bottom line, if you like sci-fi, and I mean, CRAZY IMAGINATIVE AND LYRICAL sci-fi, this book is good for that. If you enjoy boys, again, climb right in, but if you're looking for paragraphs and actual completed sentences, you might feel a little lost, um, let's say around page three.
He's a genius, no doubt about it. The story where he explains control with tape splicing and how he can have an argument without even being in the room with the person, proves it. I thought that was brilliant. Burroughs' imagination is fascinating.
I'm glad I read this novel, his longest, but it's not one on my favorites.
June 17, 2015
well that was disappointing. i love experimental fiction, but this is experimental fiction gone wrong. this is, by some arguments, burroughs' last cut-up method book, and it's where you realize he's come to believe all the crazy stuff he's been saying. usually this just results in a certain electricity in how it all comes out, but in this book he gets too literal and things stops feeling weird and starts feeling crazy and tedious, because he's detailing for you how you're gonna change the world by using the cut-up method. dammit. it's also the cut-up book in which he cuts up a lot of songs that you don't know. i could have looked up the songs and played them over and over and put them into my essence to give this a fair trial, but the songs i did, when they leapt out at me, took me out of it. maybe if i'd taken the time to get the full picture, but i doubt it. yes, it has some strong sections, but this is the book that could ruin burroughs for you. still...my love is strong.
March 23, 2008
I read this right after reading Bukowski, so I was a little apprehensive. I really didn´t want another masturbatory ode to losers and the women they convice to take care of them.
I really liked this book. It was so stream-of-conciousness that after awhile it became a game to figure out any kind of story line underneath it all. (There is) It was actually quite disorienting: a straighforward paragraph, a paragragh or two disecting the first paragraphy, five or six paragraghs dissecting the previous ones, then several pages of literary echolalia (WORD POINTS!) bringing into focus what had just been covered and moments, phrases, words from previous moments of clarity mixed up with all sorts of randomness. Then...back to clean text all of a sudden. It was jarring..in a good way.
I liked it because it was easy for my mind to go in a million places all at once, very stimulating.
I really liked this book. It was so stream-of-conciousness that after awhile it became a game to figure out any kind of story line underneath it all. (There is) It was actually quite disorienting: a straighforward paragraph, a paragragh or two disecting the first paragraphy, five or six paragraghs dissecting the previous ones, then several pages of literary echolalia (WORD POINTS!) bringing into focus what had just been covered and moments, phrases, words from previous moments of clarity mixed up with all sorts of randomness. Then...back to clean text all of a sudden. It was jarring..in a good way.
I liked it because it was easy for my mind to go in a million places all at once, very stimulating.
May 17, 2025
Certainly enjoyed myself, i feel like what burroughs is interested in writing about has evolved through the course of this trilogy. Still hard to understand, but i thought it was very good x
January 18, 2015
You have to be in the right (or wrong) frame of mind to read Burrough's classic 'cut up' technique of literature which is really just a series of disjointed paragraphs, little punctuation and pages of streams of consciousness. If you can get your head around all the word vomit, you'll find a strange, sci-fi ish storyline which is depraved, crazy, and utterly random with some downright bizarre characters. Like The Soft Machine it's a tough one to read, but there are some awesome choice quotes and conversations scattered amongst the chaos which kept me going and grinning like an idiot at the end.
January 23, 2016
Hypnotizing. By the fact of Mr. Lee creating an entire universe for the purpose of presenting the cut up method not only to the reader but to the whole universe as a manual and as a combat manifesto against the powers that be. Utterly fascinating are also the step-by-step experiments of splicing tapes and breaking down the association patterns constructed over our entire time in this planet. Loved it. Are there any Brion Gysin or Ian Sommerville books out there? Gotta find out.
January 25, 2014
The Ticket That Exploded is Burroughs' best (and longest) book in his cut-up trilogy. It also is the most experimental and philosophical (if you are interested in the cut-up theory he adopted, this is the book for you). Moreover, it includes art and even writing by longtime friend and collaborator, Brion Gysin, who turned WSB on to the cut-up method. This is a must-read.
May 8, 2017
A completely incomprehensible entry into the Burroughs bibliography, which is a shame because when it is coherent, it forms an interesting story in and of itself.
However, it is mostly just Burroughs cut-up insanity, total gibberish likely for the sake of being so. A marathon of tape recorders, semen, fish boys, ect... Would not recommend, personally.
However, it is mostly just Burroughs cut-up insanity, total gibberish likely for the sake of being so. A marathon of tape recorders, semen, fish boys, ect... Would not recommend, personally.
August 22, 2007
My favorite of the cut-up novels (includes Wild Boys, Nova Express, The Soft Machine)...lyrical, loopy, confused, witty, as usual: funny as can be, and (perhaps?) an important contribution to the evolution of literary form.
April 25, 2025
I wake up at 9:40am for my 10am psychology appointment, for now over the phone as I have been too traumatised by the cards the hand of life has delt in fiery lambasts (or rather that I was too stupid not to seek out), and therefore find it impossible to leave the house. Boys, we’ve been sublimated… Take that shit back to Chemist Warehouse. I sleep another 20 minutes - an early morning for me. And by this you can tell I waft in laziness, a true piece of shit wasting space even in this void. What is word? Word is an array of calculating machines - Spots of weakness opened up. I wish to be “normal”, ie unpathetic, half my days. There are still many things I’m grateful for: my loving family, my fiends and their sillinesses, grateful for being alone. Anything to avoid the hopeless dead-end horror of being just who and where you all are: dying animals on a doomed planet. I’m told it is trauma. Work for the reality studio or else. Or else you will find out how it feels to be outside the film. Can’t control the weather, although harassing the weatherman for his mistakes in the privacy of my own notes increasingly appears to me the more reasonable option. Burroughs stopped cutting it up and started folding it in, and Henry Darger thought little girls had penises, and so do I! I’m not joking for once, merely being genuine, the most laughable cloak one can don. In the beginning was the word and the word was bullshit. William Burroughs is in truthful factuals my biological father, what got me into reading faster than you can say life-long hyperfixation, sorry for whatever that entails mom.
September 8, 2025
it's way easier to read than the first book, I loved every line of it. it's rock n role and post humanism in the body of text.
my favorite line of thought in it is the division between language and body instead of classic logic of mind and body, in this alternative duality, language and idealism is more of a virus than a superiority and it's super materialist in general.
boroughs definitely stands next to Foucault n Delueze instead of Butler in queerness n ontology of human body.
"Do not accept another
image identity on any terms in any form or you will be as I am now. As to what life
can be worth when the honor the honor is gone par example I can offer an opinion. I
know all about it. It is worth nothing nothing nothing. The offer of another image
identity is always on virus terms. No good no bueno outright or partially. The only
thing I can give you is my gun. I can't use it. You can. Here is my gun Bradly. Come in and get them.' "
in general it's one of the most beautiful texts I've read in my life, highly recommend... or... no it's a must read.
some of ma favorite lines:
"in the beginning was the word
and the word was bullshit"
"Hassan i Sabbah: "Last round over - Remember i was the ship gives no flesh identity - lips fading - silence to say good bye - " See the action, B.J.? This Hassan I Sabbah really works for Naval Intelligence and . . Are you listening B.J.?"
my favorite line of thought in it is the division between language and body instead of classic logic of mind and body, in this alternative duality, language and idealism is more of a virus than a superiority and it's super materialist in general.
boroughs definitely stands next to Foucault n Delueze instead of Butler in queerness n ontology of human body.
"Do not accept another
image identity on any terms in any form or you will be as I am now. As to what life
can be worth when the honor the honor is gone par example I can offer an opinion. I
know all about it. It is worth nothing nothing nothing. The offer of another image
identity is always on virus terms. No good no bueno outright or partially. The only
thing I can give you is my gun. I can't use it. You can. Here is my gun Bradly. Come in and get them.' "
in general it's one of the most beautiful texts I've read in my life, highly recommend... or... no it's a must read.
some of ma favorite lines:
"in the beginning was the word
and the word was bullshit"
"Hassan i Sabbah: "Last round over - Remember i was the ship gives no flesh identity - lips fading - silence to say good bye - " See the action, B.J.? This Hassan I Sabbah really works for Naval Intelligence and . . Are you listening B.J.?"
April 27, 2023
Talking about these cut-up novels requires a lot of thought. Not really sure what I just read but I did like it quite a bit. Maybe not as much as The Soft Machine, but idk.
What is it about. Well… I guess it seems to be again about control methods, this time via some alien “virus” (which by the end I take it to mean that this is the mass media imparting horrible thoughts into our brain to turn us against whatever they want us to be against) infecting the population. And the Nova Police try to remove that virus. The Novas being (and this is pure speculation because again, what the fuck) Burroughs himself or possibly anyone attempting experimental fiction like this? His thesis presented at the end is what makes me believe this. It seems like he’s saying that presenting information in this way forces the reader to think past this control methods, allowing us to see the weird fucked up patterns that are being overlayed on reality (ie the actual narrative). It’s an argument that structural powers have created a palimpsest of the real world itself - rewriting the narrative so we only see the bad. So Burroughs created a palimpsest of his own to show us how to analyze it.
Though I could be entirely wrong lol. But it was a good read nonetheless.
What is it about. Well… I guess it seems to be again about control methods, this time via some alien “virus” (which by the end I take it to mean that this is the mass media imparting horrible thoughts into our brain to turn us against whatever they want us to be against) infecting the population. And the Nova Police try to remove that virus. The Novas being (and this is pure speculation because again, what the fuck) Burroughs himself or possibly anyone attempting experimental fiction like this? His thesis presented at the end is what makes me believe this. It seems like he’s saying that presenting information in this way forces the reader to think past this control methods, allowing us to see the weird fucked up patterns that are being overlayed on reality (ie the actual narrative). It’s an argument that structural powers have created a palimpsest of the real world itself - rewriting the narrative so we only see the bad. So Burroughs created a palimpsest of his own to show us how to analyze it.
Though I could be entirely wrong lol. But it was a good read nonetheless.
October 2, 2019
I cannot pinpoint an exact reason as to why I am so obsessed with Burrough's writing. I suppose because the authors I admire most are those who make me think about things that I've never encountered or even thought possible – I am very drawn to the unexpected. His endlessly quotable brand of unexpected prose is littered with logical pitfalls and it constantly pulls me back in. This is writing that is exclusively concerned with style, intent on sensory overload, and has no interest in providing narrative substance or characterization or plot or dialogue. The cut-up method adds another, sometimes frustrating, layer to Burroughs' jarring, dissonant writing. As tiring as it can be to read about KY & rectal mucus and the flashbulb of orgasm every time characters converge, you can't get writing like this from anyone else.
May 25, 2025
Burroughs es difícil, uno tiene sus bases de lectura y él viene a sacar todo eso a la mierda y reprogramarlo. Él te enseña el método Cut Up entre dos grabadoras
"Sea cuál sea tu problema, arrojaselo a los aparatos y deja que los mastique un tiempo"
Te muestra un mundo excesivo y con eyaculaciones por doquier, te da visión, detalles desagradables pero después de leerlo en varias ocasiones te acostumbras y te gusta.
En esta oportunidad se me dificultó la lectura, y hasta creí en un momento que no conectaba nada con los párrafos confusos, pero cerca de las últimas 30/35 páginas la verdad que todo marchó bien, siempre hay frases o páginas que voy a recordar bien de este libro.
Así que aunque tardé mucho tiempo en culminarlo, me terminó gustando.
"Sea cuál sea tu problema, arrojaselo a los aparatos y deja que los mastique un tiempo"
Te muestra un mundo excesivo y con eyaculaciones por doquier, te da visión, detalles desagradables pero después de leerlo en varias ocasiones te acostumbras y te gusta.
En esta oportunidad se me dificultó la lectura, y hasta creí en un momento que no conectaba nada con los párrafos confusos, pero cerca de las últimas 30/35 páginas la verdad que todo marchó bien, siempre hay frases o páginas que voy a recordar bien de este libro.
Así que aunque tardé mucho tiempo en culminarlo, me terminó gustando.
July 9, 2019
Not all art is supposed to be pretty/ but some of the passages in this book are except (gross) but damn it's (bebop)
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