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Exterminator!
Conspirators plot to explode a train carrying nerve gas. A perfect servant suddenly reveals himself to be the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Science - fantasy wars, racism, corporate capitalism, drug addiction, and various medical and psychiatric horrors all play their parts in this mosaiclike, experimental novel. Here is William S. Burroughs at his coruscating and hilarious best.
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
70 people are currently reading
2641 people want to read
About the author
William S. Burroughs
448 books7,040 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 166 reviews
January 13, 2010
By the time I hit 21 my impressions of William S. Burroughs included:
1. Al Jorgensen was a fan. I remember a picture of the two together.
2. Heroin.
3. Short guy with a hat.
4. Burroughs killing his wife while trying to shoot an apple off her head.
I’m not sure from where these impressions emerged. Ok, #1 can probably be attributed to a picture on the Wax Trax walls, if my memory serves me well, but the others impressions’ origins are lost. I didn’t add to my Burroughs schema until my folksinger brother mentioned his name in the same breath as Ginsberg. Now, I fucking hate Howl, or at least I did when I had to read the book in Debra Bruce’s godawful poetry class at Northeastern Illinois University in, oh, I’m going to say 1991. And the heroin guys I knew were dark and scary so I wasn’t attracted to shooting up. Ministry had gone all loud by then and everybody in Chicago knew Jorgensen was a prick.
I had nothing against short guys in suits and had no opinion on the wife/apple incident. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure that story was true.
So I stayed away from Burroughs for a couple decades until Tadpole and a couple others mentioned his work in a positive light. And then I saw Exterminator! on the shelves of a used bookstore in the Chicago suburbs. And then I read Exterminator! over a couple cold January days. I’m glad I did. Exterminator! is a good book.
I should qualify the last sentence. Exterminator! is a good book is 1) you don’t mind a writer who sometimes seems to hate women (angry lesbians show up every few pages), 2) you don’t mind tons of drug and young gay sex references, and 3) you don’t mind reading sentences like “Billy turns bright red he is fucking teeth bare bleeding this smell billow out his asshole.”
No typos in that last quote. I checked.
So why is The Exterminator! a good book? Well, I could see someone trying to imitate Burroughs by stringing together nonsense and curse words but Burroughs is much smarter and more controlled than any imitators. His prose contains startling windows of insight often in small, insignificant observations about how, for example, a mandrill might run for president or how one handles a room’s small objects can expand into a philosophy. Burroughs (and I’m not a Burroughs scholar here, so don’t yell at me) seems to live best on the line between quiet observation and braying, psychotic visions. So while a couple pages can pass with what seem like disjointed recurring images of Clancy the cop, someone named Audrey, and the number 23, after wading through the mire the reader is rewarded with a surprisingly and unexpected pulling together of seemingly loose ends. And while experimental fiction (I guess I would call this “experimental fiction”) is often dull and dreary Burroughs can be flat-out funny, especially when he takes on the voice of a straight man trying to figure out the surrounding world. Also, these pieces were published in the late sixties. There’s something very cool about Burroughs publishing these crazyass stories in the middle of the tie-dye era. Take that, hippies!
Oh, this book is technically a novel, according to the cover, but…um…maybe. I found The Exterminator! to be more of a loosely connected collection of stories encompassing political commentary, hallucinatory fantasies, and mental illness in full bloom. From what I understand The Exterminator! is not one of Burroughs’ major works, so I’m curious as to what, for example, Naked Lunch is like. I’ll check that out next.
1. Al Jorgensen was a fan. I remember a picture of the two together.
2. Heroin.
3. Short guy with a hat.
4. Burroughs killing his wife while trying to shoot an apple off her head.
I’m not sure from where these impressions emerged. Ok, #1 can probably be attributed to a picture on the Wax Trax walls, if my memory serves me well, but the others impressions’ origins are lost. I didn’t add to my Burroughs schema until my folksinger brother mentioned his name in the same breath as Ginsberg. Now, I fucking hate Howl, or at least I did when I had to read the book in Debra Bruce’s godawful poetry class at Northeastern Illinois University in, oh, I’m going to say 1991. And the heroin guys I knew were dark and scary so I wasn’t attracted to shooting up. Ministry had gone all loud by then and everybody in Chicago knew Jorgensen was a prick.
I had nothing against short guys in suits and had no opinion on the wife/apple incident. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure that story was true.
So I stayed away from Burroughs for a couple decades until Tadpole and a couple others mentioned his work in a positive light. And then I saw Exterminator! on the shelves of a used bookstore in the Chicago suburbs. And then I read Exterminator! over a couple cold January days. I’m glad I did. Exterminator! is a good book.
I should qualify the last sentence. Exterminator! is a good book is 1) you don’t mind a writer who sometimes seems to hate women (angry lesbians show up every few pages), 2) you don’t mind tons of drug and young gay sex references, and 3) you don’t mind reading sentences like “Billy turns bright red he is fucking teeth bare bleeding this smell billow out his asshole.”
No typos in that last quote. I checked.
So why is The Exterminator! a good book? Well, I could see someone trying to imitate Burroughs by stringing together nonsense and curse words but Burroughs is much smarter and more controlled than any imitators. His prose contains startling windows of insight often in small, insignificant observations about how, for example, a mandrill might run for president or how one handles a room’s small objects can expand into a philosophy. Burroughs (and I’m not a Burroughs scholar here, so don’t yell at me) seems to live best on the line between quiet observation and braying, psychotic visions. So while a couple pages can pass with what seem like disjointed recurring images of Clancy the cop, someone named Audrey, and the number 23, after wading through the mire the reader is rewarded with a surprisingly and unexpected pulling together of seemingly loose ends. And while experimental fiction (I guess I would call this “experimental fiction”) is often dull and dreary Burroughs can be flat-out funny, especially when he takes on the voice of a straight man trying to figure out the surrounding world. Also, these pieces were published in the late sixties. There’s something very cool about Burroughs publishing these crazyass stories in the middle of the tie-dye era. Take that, hippies!
Oh, this book is technically a novel, according to the cover, but…um…maybe. I found The Exterminator! to be more of a loosely connected collection of stories encompassing political commentary, hallucinatory fantasies, and mental illness in full bloom. From what I understand The Exterminator! is not one of Burroughs’ major works, so I’m curious as to what, for example, Naked Lunch is like. I’ll check that out next.
October 5, 2023
Wasn't sure if this was a collection of separate short stories or inter-linked stories making it more of a novel, and it feels more like the latter. One thing that I'm totally sure of, when you consider junkies, sexual psychoses, the seedy underbelly of characters flirting in a tenebrous world, is that you know you're in a William S. Burroughs book alright! Parts of it chewed me up and spat me out, but what really surprised me, and what I really wasn't expecting, was a rather sweet Christmas tale, about a charitable Priest giving up his fix to help a neighbour. I really wanted to read his autobiographical novella The Cat Inside, but this wasn't a bad substitute at all.
March 19, 2025
I hadn't read a Burroughs book since my student days. I enjoyed it. Disjointed and fantastical at points, but it made more sense than I remember. Especially interesting against the backdrop of the what's happening in the US today.
April 25, 2008
The closest to a short story collection by the cranky and hysterical William S. Burroughs. And the fact that he once had a job as rat and insect Exterminator is something like crazy. Who in their right mind would allow this guy into their home?
June 20, 2013
Exterminator! was a very rewarding read. Stepping into the labyrinth that is William S. Burroughs' imagination, memories and mind is a truly unique experience. Rarely have I read stories so beautifully written, so original and thrilling (Wind die. You die. We die., Twilight's Last Gleamings, The Coming of the Purple Better One, Seeing Red, They Do Not Always Remember), so weird (The Lemon Kid, Short Trip Home, Davy Jones, The Perfect Servant, Reddies), so thought-provoking (Astronaut's return, Johnny 23, The Discipline of DE, Friends, The End) and so moving (The "Priest They Called Him). What fascinates me most is the way the author makes this experimental novel autobiographical. I would not recommend this book to anyone, only to the adventurous reader with a particular bent (no pun intended) for the weird and the experimental.
July 15, 2022
So I read another book by crazy old William S. Burroughs. This was the first collection of short pieces of his that I read (although it is possible to see Naked Lunch as a collection of short pieces, which I think it was originally before Burroughs slapped them together into a book). This is also a less grotesque and disturbing book than that one, although one could hardly call it inoffensive. Basically this is typical Burroughsian, oneiric, grotesque satire, fired off in short bursts. And of course, some of it stood out and and some of it was just gobbleydegook phantasmagoria spewn out from a twisted psyche, and left me wishing I had something solid and discernible to look at, like a Wall Street Journal or Guinness Book of World Records. In fact, I disliked more than I liked and I wondered why I had picked up this book.
I got it because I had recently seen David Cronenberg's filmed version of Naked Lunch, and I was once again inspired by the mad creativity, the balls and guts of his writing. But I came across nothing new here, and it dawned on me that a major part of the Burroughs legend, in fact the predominant part, is his person and the strange life he led: heroin addiction, Harvard, the gay scene, North Africa, his affiliation with the Beats, and the William Tell scene with his wife. The movie certainly reinforces this perception.
There were a few pieces which grabbed me. Herein is one of the best pieces of Burroughs writing that I have encountered: "They Do Not Always Remember." A hilarious Chinese box of a story about Bill Lee (Burroughs's alter ego) in a Mexican plaza where he encounters a strange man. A cop comes over and taps Lee on the shoulder and they have a coffee together and he tells Lee that the man was once his partner, a great cop, now no longer right in the the head. Then the other guy returns and claims to be an agent of the Mexican FBI, and then Lee claims to be an American DEA agent, and then another guy appears and taps Lee on the shoulder. . .
Another one I liked was "Exterminator!", an apparently realistic account of working as an exterminator. "Johnny 23" is about a polite, serious fellow who tries to eliminate the differences between himself and others by concocting a virus that will turn other people into him, but the virus turns out to be deadly to everyone in the world except himself. "Wind Die. You Die. We Die." is another good one, a semi-mythical exploration featuring a tropical resort island, a horrible female monster, an attack by aliens on a typical American town, and some strange office scenes. "End of the Line" is a good spy farce (Burroughs seems fond of spies, secret agents, and cops, or at least the images they present).
I also liked the bizarre myth making of "Astronaut's Return": the white race was created by a nuclear explosion 30,000 years ago in which the only survivors were a group of marginal slaves who became albinos because of the radiation. "Twilight's Last Gleamings" is an obnoxious satire on a Hollywood movie in which a psychic FBI agent is pursuing a group of sociopaths led by a folksy meteorologist who want to blow up a train full of nerve gas. They fail, but a truck driver on acid slams into the train, releasing the nerve gas and killing countless people.
I got it because I had recently seen David Cronenberg's filmed version of Naked Lunch, and I was once again inspired by the mad creativity, the balls and guts of his writing. But I came across nothing new here, and it dawned on me that a major part of the Burroughs legend, in fact the predominant part, is his person and the strange life he led: heroin addiction, Harvard, the gay scene, North Africa, his affiliation with the Beats, and the William Tell scene with his wife. The movie certainly reinforces this perception.
There were a few pieces which grabbed me. Herein is one of the best pieces of Burroughs writing that I have encountered: "They Do Not Always Remember." A hilarious Chinese box of a story about Bill Lee (Burroughs's alter ego) in a Mexican plaza where he encounters a strange man. A cop comes over and taps Lee on the shoulder and they have a coffee together and he tells Lee that the man was once his partner, a great cop, now no longer right in the the head. Then the other guy returns and claims to be an agent of the Mexican FBI, and then Lee claims to be an American DEA agent, and then another guy appears and taps Lee on the shoulder. . .
Another one I liked was "Exterminator!", an apparently realistic account of working as an exterminator. "Johnny 23" is about a polite, serious fellow who tries to eliminate the differences between himself and others by concocting a virus that will turn other people into him, but the virus turns out to be deadly to everyone in the world except himself. "Wind Die. You Die. We Die." is another good one, a semi-mythical exploration featuring a tropical resort island, a horrible female monster, an attack by aliens on a typical American town, and some strange office scenes. "End of the Line" is a good spy farce (Burroughs seems fond of spies, secret agents, and cops, or at least the images they present).
I also liked the bizarre myth making of "Astronaut's Return": the white race was created by a nuclear explosion 30,000 years ago in which the only survivors were a group of marginal slaves who became albinos because of the radiation. "Twilight's Last Gleamings" is an obnoxious satire on a Hollywood movie in which a psychic FBI agent is pursuing a group of sociopaths led by a folksy meteorologist who want to blow up a train full of nerve gas. They fail, but a truck driver on acid slams into the train, releasing the nerve gas and killing countless people.
January 30, 2013
When I first sunk my teeth into this book, I was not so sure it was going to be a good 'un.
The first few 'vignettes' / short stories in Exterminator! are not that great actually but the book gets better and better and better.
I would give the first 5-10 vignettes only about 3 stars on average but then somewhere along the line, bang! we are suddenly graced with the brilliance of WSB's presence and his great sardonic humour is as acerbic, witty and brilliant as ever here!
I do get the feeling though, like some other reviewers of Burroughs' work have pointed out before, that he was immensely pessimistic (some might argue realistic?) about mankind, to the point of becoming "le misanthrope" redolent of Moliere.
There are also early signs even here during a relatively early work of Burroughs of his latter-day environmentalism and humanism, which is celebrated in novels such as Ghost of Chance and The Cat Inside, two books, incidentally, which I read just last month and hence still fresh in my mind.
There are moments when Burroughs comes across as abrasively repetitive such as the 'nigger-hating sheriff' character who seems to make an appearance in almost every Burroughs novel. I felt like saying, "ok William, we get the point".
While I was reading Exterminator! I caught myself wondering whether some Americans might not be offended by the grotesque picaresque send-ups of American society which Burroughs creates in these short stories. Or do they see his sardonic humour as a grave warning of impending danger? And to give credit where it is due, Burroughs is quite right and quite justified in sounding the alarm. If anything, times have gotten worse.
Remember that back in 1962 at the height of Cuban missile crisis, we were only moments away from possible nuclear disaster.
One of the funniest moments in this book is when a Burroughs' character says that "we need to watch the commies. or else our children will all be speaking Chinese". At the time, this was an accurate portrayal of American political paranoia and hysteria. These days I hate to say, it might be slightly more 'real', well for me at least as I sit in an office in Tokyo and write this.
In summary, some of the short stories in here present nothing all that new that we haven't seen before from Burroughs but there are a few real diamonds to be found here.
The first few 'vignettes' / short stories in Exterminator! are not that great actually but the book gets better and better and better.
I would give the first 5-10 vignettes only about 3 stars on average but then somewhere along the line, bang! we are suddenly graced with the brilliance of WSB's presence and his great sardonic humour is as acerbic, witty and brilliant as ever here!
I do get the feeling though, like some other reviewers of Burroughs' work have pointed out before, that he was immensely pessimistic (some might argue realistic?) about mankind, to the point of becoming "le misanthrope" redolent of Moliere.
There are also early signs even here during a relatively early work of Burroughs of his latter-day environmentalism and humanism, which is celebrated in novels such as Ghost of Chance and The Cat Inside, two books, incidentally, which I read just last month and hence still fresh in my mind.
There are moments when Burroughs comes across as abrasively repetitive such as the 'nigger-hating sheriff' character who seems to make an appearance in almost every Burroughs novel. I felt like saying, "ok William, we get the point".
While I was reading Exterminator! I caught myself wondering whether some Americans might not be offended by the grotesque picaresque send-ups of American society which Burroughs creates in these short stories. Or do they see his sardonic humour as a grave warning of impending danger? And to give credit where it is due, Burroughs is quite right and quite justified in sounding the alarm. If anything, times have gotten worse.
Remember that back in 1962 at the height of Cuban missile crisis, we were only moments away from possible nuclear disaster.
One of the funniest moments in this book is when a Burroughs' character says that "we need to watch the commies. or else our children will all be speaking Chinese". At the time, this was an accurate portrayal of American political paranoia and hysteria. These days I hate to say, it might be slightly more 'real', well for me at least as I sit in an office in Tokyo and write this.
In summary, some of the short stories in here present nothing all that new that we haven't seen before from Burroughs but there are a few real diamonds to be found here.
December 3, 2024
I dunno, I wanted to like it and appreciate it a lot more than I actually liked and appreciated it. I completely understand how influential and transgressive these loosely affiliated naughty and satirical texts are both in substance and form, but they just don't hit me the way J. G. Ballard's or later Kathy Acker's texts do. Much of the satire and Burroughs's writing in general always comes off as slightly puerile and a bit self-satisfied. It never quite blows my mind like I think it thinks it's blowing my mind. Still, there were a few lovely moments scattered about these fragments and I liked guessing how the texts were linked, sometimes through the repetition of a phrase or maybe the theme of an exterminator (from bugs to spies to cops to soldiers to drugs?). All-in-all the novel was vaguely entertaining, occasionally through provoking, but also made me sigh fairly often wishing for something more. I think the people Burroughs inspired were mostly better than he was so his own writing kind of suffers through the comparison.
December 8, 2022
what an..... interesting read. or unique I should say. I don't even know where to start with this one.
Exterminator! is a collection of short "stories" by the author. With any collection of pieces, some were better than others. Some didn't make a lot of sense overall to me, but I could see why they may be a favorite for others.
If you've never read William S. Burroughs work before, this style of writing may make as much sense to you. But this is his norm and also why a lot of readers enjoy his work.
If you're interested in "experimental" types of work, this would be it.
Exterminator! is a collection of short "stories" by the author. With any collection of pieces, some were better than others. Some didn't make a lot of sense overall to me, but I could see why they may be a favorite for others.
If you've never read William S. Burroughs work before, this style of writing may make as much sense to you. But this is his norm and also why a lot of readers enjoy his work.
If you're interested in "experimental" types of work, this would be it.
October 6, 2011
I liked this book much more than Burrough's "Naked Lunch". Firstly, it's not written in that airtihgt vocabuLary wich is understandable only to author and a few drug addicts. It has a pretty decent fable in a form of short stories. We can see, as we progress through the book, that the characters are pretty much the same, although with different names. But what I liked the most about the book is the way Burroughs speaks about humanity and revolution. He says so much with such simple terms its like his language is guided by the principle less is more, but with many naturalistic poetic images that can't leave anyone resigned. Reader is at least shocked with his apocalyptic images of a man decomposing into its animalistic nature. Revolution is welcomed as a whole new concept, removed from political influences and watched through the prism of a way people act in desperation. Short stories, seemingly unrelated but with same motives, put in a different time and space. One of the best literal (layman) critics of modern society without much philosophizing. Burroughs really captured the cruel reality of people real motives and multiplied that with images of potentized horror that will make you nauseus but also aware of his thoughts.
September 29, 2020
Habitually, reviewers will dismiss a piece of art as “meaningless” when in effect that piece is beholden to enough overlapping meanings that they cancel eachother out. Burroughs’ writings are a prime example, “Exterminator!” especially. Written with rigorous experimentation and curtly spliced narrative threads, it dismantles the novel, reducing it to a scatterbrained collage of short stories, poetry, cut-ups, and comic musings which commonly interrupt themselves and spin new fabrics unbound by physics, logic, or morality. Many chapters read as prototypical Burroughs jargon (the jargon of a veritable genius), compensating for their absence of tradition with the sex mad homoerotic fanaticism and intoxicated hallucinogenic “once a junky, always a junky” reveries we’ve come to expect from the man. The pervasive sexuality is predictable to those acclimated to the Burroughsverse, but there’s usually no knowing what the guy’s gonna throw at you next, especially when he’s working with the loosest format imaginable. Here is Burroughs’ free form improvisational corner, home of perverse poetics and alien associations. Enter at your own risk!
May 13, 2014
Manageable, entertaining Burroughs hallucinations. Amazing what organizing into chapters does.
July 14, 2022
George Orwell believed that language was uniquely capable of being used as a tool of psychological abuse and control, if one did not wield said-tool carefully. Author William Burroughs seemed to take things a step further, regarding the word itself as inherently evil, one of the main ways for the human virus to perpetuate itself. In Burroughs’ weltanschauung, the word is a mimetic mind virus, and the author is driven as much by their selfish genes as something as abstract as ego. (Burroughs didn’t care for Freud, but that’s a subject for another day).
So if there’s a force within everyone (as Burroughs asserted) not working to their advantage, and that thing always tries to get out, why write? Why give said-monster the chance to escape containment, going from the box in one’s brain into the Underwood on the desk, and from there out into the world?
Burroughs dedicated his life to finding a way to write that would disrupt, interrogate, or even dismantle this force that he thought was constantly playing some kind of cosmic joke on us. Exterminator! is filled with vignettes in which he wrestles with his conscious mind, American history, his sexuality, his fame, colonialism, addiction, and a roach powder intended to clear the bedbugs from mattress ticking.
Narratives begin, then trail off, or outright explode, as if Burroughs treated the page like a screen that needed to be torn to expose the reality behind it. Descriptions of characters are given—from unsavory bureaucrats to untamable and beautiful savages, only for said-characters to disappear into mist after being so sharply delineated in a handful of words.
Burroughs’ universe is at time embarrassingly Manichean and puerile. There are the racist redneck sheriffs and square-jawed vice cops on one side, and the Rousseauan yage-preparing natives and free-spirited hippies on the other. One would almost be tempted to call Burroughs a naïve idealist, except he lingers over the young bodies and sometimes even leers in a way that makes one realize that, contra the seeming gulf between him and Bukowski, Burroughs, like Hank, is very much a dirty old man. He may admire the way of life of the natives, but, like a literary Larry Clark, he’s there first and foremost to see svelte and twinkish lads walking around with their shirts off.
And still there’s a lot to admire here, the Proustian descriptions of redbrick buildings lining the leafy streets of his St. Louis childhood, the evocation of the Roaring Twenties that makes one understand why Burroughs always spoke so highly of Fitzgerald. It’s also strangely bone-chilling how Burroughs is able to evoke a kind of haunted and hollow postindustrial world of flophouses and public toilets and junkies trapped in some kind of perpetual noir New York that exists outside of time and space, where every night drunks get rolled and yegs working the subway hop turnstiles to escape swinish, reactionary cops.
I loved his stuff as a teenager, but, like with Hunter Thompson, a lot of that was down to his pop cultural footprint, and how it transcended all the writings he left behind. I wonder how many of his fans are out there like that, those who like the idea of the guy with the fedora and the junk habit who hung with Warhol and Cobain, rather than the guy who wrote a sometimes unreadable exegetical monster metatext filled with redundant sex fantasies and oversimplified political dichotomies, occasionally livened up by rare flashes of stellar prose.
There’s a part of me that wishes he had just continued writing in the same vein as he did for his first two published books, Junkie and Queer. His style—hardboiled, lean, beautifully minimalist—was perfectly adapted for a modern storyteller who no doubt had undergone an inexhaustible number of strange experiences everywhere from Tangiers to Mexico City, and had the imagination to match the skill and experience.
I know for a fact, from interviews he did, that Burroughs dug noir/pulp writing and straightforward mystery, and that he could have more than held his own against the major practitioners of his day or any other day. Still, he chose his own path, and however alienating and sometimes misanthropically inhospitable it feels, you gotta respect that. Recommended.
So if there’s a force within everyone (as Burroughs asserted) not working to their advantage, and that thing always tries to get out, why write? Why give said-monster the chance to escape containment, going from the box in one’s brain into the Underwood on the desk, and from there out into the world?
Burroughs dedicated his life to finding a way to write that would disrupt, interrogate, or even dismantle this force that he thought was constantly playing some kind of cosmic joke on us. Exterminator! is filled with vignettes in which he wrestles with his conscious mind, American history, his sexuality, his fame, colonialism, addiction, and a roach powder intended to clear the bedbugs from mattress ticking.
Narratives begin, then trail off, or outright explode, as if Burroughs treated the page like a screen that needed to be torn to expose the reality behind it. Descriptions of characters are given—from unsavory bureaucrats to untamable and beautiful savages, only for said-characters to disappear into mist after being so sharply delineated in a handful of words.
Burroughs’ universe is at time embarrassingly Manichean and puerile. There are the racist redneck sheriffs and square-jawed vice cops on one side, and the Rousseauan yage-preparing natives and free-spirited hippies on the other. One would almost be tempted to call Burroughs a naïve idealist, except he lingers over the young bodies and sometimes even leers in a way that makes one realize that, contra the seeming gulf between him and Bukowski, Burroughs, like Hank, is very much a dirty old man. He may admire the way of life of the natives, but, like a literary Larry Clark, he’s there first and foremost to see svelte and twinkish lads walking around with their shirts off.
And still there’s a lot to admire here, the Proustian descriptions of redbrick buildings lining the leafy streets of his St. Louis childhood, the evocation of the Roaring Twenties that makes one understand why Burroughs always spoke so highly of Fitzgerald. It’s also strangely bone-chilling how Burroughs is able to evoke a kind of haunted and hollow postindustrial world of flophouses and public toilets and junkies trapped in some kind of perpetual noir New York that exists outside of time and space, where every night drunks get rolled and yegs working the subway hop turnstiles to escape swinish, reactionary cops.
I loved his stuff as a teenager, but, like with Hunter Thompson, a lot of that was down to his pop cultural footprint, and how it transcended all the writings he left behind. I wonder how many of his fans are out there like that, those who like the idea of the guy with the fedora and the junk habit who hung with Warhol and Cobain, rather than the guy who wrote a sometimes unreadable exegetical monster metatext filled with redundant sex fantasies and oversimplified political dichotomies, occasionally livened up by rare flashes of stellar prose.
There’s a part of me that wishes he had just continued writing in the same vein as he did for his first two published books, Junkie and Queer. His style—hardboiled, lean, beautifully minimalist—was perfectly adapted for a modern storyteller who no doubt had undergone an inexhaustible number of strange experiences everywhere from Tangiers to Mexico City, and had the imagination to match the skill and experience.
I know for a fact, from interviews he did, that Burroughs dug noir/pulp writing and straightforward mystery, and that he could have more than held his own against the major practitioners of his day or any other day. Still, he chose his own path, and however alienating and sometimes misanthropically inhospitable it feels, you gotta respect that. Recommended.
February 5, 2022
Maybe not the best pick for my first dip into Burroughs. I can see how Burroughs' work inspired stuff like Col. Gentleman in the Venture Bros., so I appreciate that. Still this collection was absolutely gross: I never want to read that much about quivering buttholes and rectal mucus ever again.
December 21, 2023
A series of thematically connected short stories by Burroughs which are all tied together by the idea of extermination. This could be via law men of a certain type, wealthy oppressors, drugs funneled into the hands of those whom certain people want dead, etc. It’s Burroughs’ usual ideas but in a short story format. Makes for a more easily digestible read than some of his other works, that’s for sure, but I do prefer many of his novels (though this is still a great work).
October 28, 2024
Lettura difficile, allucinatoria, imprescindibile
June 22, 2015
I used to have this down as a five star book. I went to reread it, and it was a lot worse than I remembered. Part of this is just context, in more than one way; the first time I read Exterminator! was basically all in one go late at night in a tent while camping. I read it in a (non-literal) fever, gulping the whole thing down. Re-reading it now, which I did over the course of a few days commuting on the subway and bus, I didn't get as caught up in it as before (and before Burroughs or anyone else insinuates that I'm more in the grip of Control now, or something, I should add that I was much more so back then anyway, both in terms of what I did for work and my own personal politics/understanding of the world). Somehow that first time through my brain was able to just shove aside and ignore my abhorrence of all the anti-Semitism, misogyny, rape, child sexualization (it's not like I enjoyed the repeated phrase "young boys need it special" that first time through, but how did I not just spit out the whole book), racism and so on throughout. I guess maybe on some level I bought into the bullshit Burroughs spreads here about "subversive" art (which, honestly, even if some of this was at the time, it's possible to outlive your context, you know?), but I'm sure even then I was aware there's a big gap between censorship and thinking it's fine and dandy to normalize fucking kids. Also, while I did know about Burroughs murdering his wife Joan Vollmer, I didn't know about a lot of the other shit he and Ginsberg got up to. And yes, I think that is a valid part of how I feel about this and Burroughs' other books; another writer's Burroughs references actually prompted me to write about it recently, and I stand by what I say there.
So why two stars? Well, the parts that aren't horrifying for the wrong reasons here are really fucking good! You can't give zero stars here, and Exterminator! is legitimately more worthwhile than books that are just as awful but more poorly written. The bit on the discipline of DE begged to be expanded on, the language is often startlingly vivid (even in the shitty sections, of course) and I was still stopped in my tracks by "Do you begin to see there is no face there in the tarnished mirror?" Nobody's saying Burroughs had to be a saint or only write about nice things to write good books or be worth reading, it's actually a pretty fucking low bar for him to meet. And he doesn't come remotely close to meeting it. I'm not reluctantly pretending I dislike it for external reasons; it's genuinely, authentically cringe inducing and awful.
So why two stars? Well, the parts that aren't horrifying for the wrong reasons here are really fucking good! You can't give zero stars here, and Exterminator! is legitimately more worthwhile than books that are just as awful but more poorly written. The bit on the discipline of DE begged to be expanded on, the language is often startlingly vivid (even in the shitty sections, of course) and I was still stopped in my tracks by "Do you begin to see there is no face there in the tarnished mirror?" Nobody's saying Burroughs had to be a saint or only write about nice things to write good books or be worth reading, it's actually a pretty fucking low bar for him to meet. And he doesn't come remotely close to meeting it. I'm not reluctantly pretending I dislike it for external reasons; it's genuinely, authentically cringe inducing and awful.
February 19, 2021
The Exterminator (not to be confused with the short story collection Exterminator!) is an experimental and rather short book created in partnership with Brion Gysin. It is a fairly rare book, which is why many of the reviews here don’t apply to this book, but rather “Exterminator!” (It’s an easy mistake!). There is a lot of nonsensical writing in here, but I enjoyed reading it. There were several moments during my reading where a phrase would stick out to me. It is important to note that the cut up method Burroughs often used is a big aspect of this book, and therefore I wouldn’t recommend this book to someone who doesn’t know Burroughs style, start with something else first! If you know Burroughs you will quickly recognize the style and voice of this work. There is a lot going on here but upon first reading the themes that stuck out to me the most were viruses, drug use/addiction, and sex. If you ever run across this book, check it out, at times it even comes across as a bit prophetic, or too on the nose. Overall, interesting but complex read with lots to unpack.
4/5
4/5
July 23, 2024
Extravagantes es lo menos que se puede decir de los variados experimentos cute-paste escritos por Burroughs, del que durante mucho tiempo fui fan acérrimo. Segrega una locura ofensiva y directa a través de imágenes memorables de epidemias dantescas o bichos ultra venenosos, mientras desarrolla singulares diálogos, en especial, del mítico Doctor Benway. Si trato de recordar los argumentos de "Nova Express" o "El almuerzo Desnudo", se me viene a la cabeza una sola mescolanza, caótica y depravada, mas de lo poco que estoy seguro es que "Exterminador" es el mejor de todos, el que más me gustó.
Aquí logré realmente dejarme llevar, sin tratar de buscar una trama unificadora, disfrutando hasta las carcajadas aquellas escenas apocalípticas de virus inmundos y fatalidades varias, sueltas por la población. Si han de leer alguno, intenten con éste.
El viejo Bill tiene una extraña habilidad para crear imágenes del caos en movimiento, una absoluta desintegración de valores y la consecuente putrefacción del ser humano, todo contado como si fuera lo más normal del mundo, muy freak.
Aquí logré realmente dejarme llevar, sin tratar de buscar una trama unificadora, disfrutando hasta las carcajadas aquellas escenas apocalípticas de virus inmundos y fatalidades varias, sueltas por la población. Si han de leer alguno, intenten con éste.
El viejo Bill tiene una extraña habilidad para crear imágenes del caos en movimiento, una absoluta desintegración de valores y la consecuente putrefacción del ser humano, todo contado como si fuera lo más normal del mundo, muy freak.
September 26, 2014
2.5/5
No spoilers.. I don't know what I just read.
I can only give it 2.5/5 becaues I only could follow 50% of the book. Probably the most awkward book I have ever read.
Puposeful ignorance of all punctuation. Creating very confusing paragraph structure as he will switch character's/scenes mid-'sentence'. The writing style changes almost every short story.
I began to wonder if I had any intellect while reading this because I would stop at the end of the paragraph and have forgotten everything I had just read only seconds ago.
It's like the words on the page turn into ants and scatter in all directions that you can't retain what you just read , you're mind is just running around like someone stepped on an ant hill. The literary style is complete confusion and chaos.
The parts I could follow and retain were at times very poetic and often graphic.
This was my first foray into Burroughs... honestly it was a painful one.
No spoilers.. I don't know what I just read.
I can only give it 2.5/5 becaues I only could follow 50% of the book. Probably the most awkward book I have ever read.
Puposeful ignorance of all punctuation. Creating very confusing paragraph structure as he will switch character's/scenes mid-'sentence'. The writing style changes almost every short story.
I began to wonder if I had any intellect while reading this because I would stop at the end of the paragraph and have forgotten everything I had just read only seconds ago.
It's like the words on the page turn into ants and scatter in all directions that you can't retain what you just read , you're mind is just running around like someone stepped on an ant hill. The literary style is complete confusion and chaos.
The parts I could follow and retain were at times very poetic and often graphic.
This was my first foray into Burroughs... honestly it was a painful one.
November 5, 2015
My first Burroughs, but given his reputation I had a good idea of what to expect, and I was proven mostly right. Frenetic, jumbled, paranoid and gleefully profane. Apparently an "experimental novel", though it reads more like a collection of vaguely-connected short stories with a vague sense of progression. It was a very fun read, and full of surprises - a guide for efficient life habits, pornography that explodes the faces of FBI agents, police brutality at a student protest and gay youths transforming into wolves. Also a plot about an exterminator and heroin I think. I'm not sure, and I don't really mind. It was good.
January 6, 2017
Mosaic-like novel, eh? Well, this has been an interesting voyage back into the world of Burroughs. It was more like short stories honestly, some of them coherent and which I really liked, some of them a heroin filled, shape-shifting, intergalactic, junky nightmare, (which I still liked in a weird and incoherent way). Not as good as junky but better than Naked Lunch, thanks for another wild ride Mr. Burroughs. I look forward to our next encounter? Maybe? Not sure. But either way, I'm sure it'll prove to be interesting!
June 20, 2017
Not a fan. I didn't realize that this would be an experimental novel when I picked it up. It was a hodge podge of various threads and stream-of-conscious writing that was very hard to follow and pull out a coherent narrative. There were chapters that had sparks of narrative brilliance, but these were the exception rather than the rule. It read much more like poetry to me than it did a novel. I guess Burroughs's writing was too smart for me to figure out overall. I appreciate poetry when I know its poetry, but when I sit down to read a novel, I expect coherent narrative.
November 15, 2016
"There is something wrong with the whole concept of money. It takes always more and more to buy less and less. Money is like junk. A dose that fixes on Monday won't fix on Friday. Any platform that does not propose the basic changes necessary to correct these glaring failures is a farce. The lies are obvious. The machinery is laid bare." -1973
Read
May 20, 2022I don’t know how to rate a book so unique.
It’s a web, you see, a shared apocalypse… stitched together by Burroughs’ comma-less prose.
Once you get the hold of it, once you see what it’s doing, this book rewards you an experience irreducible to a number, a rating… and even words.
It’s a web, you see, a shared apocalypse… stitched together by Burroughs’ comma-less prose.
Once you get the hold of it, once you see what it’s doing, this book rewards you an experience irreducible to a number, a rating… and even words.
March 6, 2008
Full of the usual Burroughsian revolutionary vitriol. Thank words that Burroughs wrote so much.
November 24, 2015
A fantastic fever-dream...
March 29, 2018
Commas are good. I wish I’d seen more of them in this book.
October 5, 2021
Naively ignorant (until now) that Jeff Bezos, the richest **** in the world owns Goodreads (thank you Doctor Mike). Alas, my innocent pleasures (Yea right, you’re about to review Burroughs!?!?) Jeff, I brought this dogeared book from the op shop. I hear you treat your employees like shit.
‘Exterminator’ - Short chapters that don’t advance a synthesized narrative but land like excerpts from a whole library of books, a library in the genres of sci fi, horror, espionage, spirituality, self-help and pulp fiction. Some of the chapters sport yet greater ruptures, possibly the product of Burroughs application of Dada cutup techniques. Grammar falls away into endless misshapen sentences. The stories are always sickly dark. MUCH sex and violence. Objects and phrases from one story will pop up in a later story, or is my dementia playing up? No, surely not, though that may sometimes be the effect, a readers déjà vu.
In the book’s first chapter, the exterminator of the title delouses houses, a connoisseur of finest poisons for killing cockroaches. Seventy pages later, teargas is raining down on the yippies of the Chicago '68 riots. Burroughs doesn’t feel the need to labour the relationship; the writing style of each section is radically different - from hardboiled drama to on-the-ground reportage, science fiction pornography to cutup poetry.
‘Exterminator’ - Short chapters that don’t advance a synthesized narrative but land like excerpts from a whole library of books, a library in the genres of sci fi, horror, espionage, spirituality, self-help and pulp fiction. Some of the chapters sport yet greater ruptures, possibly the product of Burroughs application of Dada cutup techniques. Grammar falls away into endless misshapen sentences. The stories are always sickly dark. MUCH sex and violence. Objects and phrases from one story will pop up in a later story, or is my dementia playing up? No, surely not, though that may sometimes be the effect, a readers déjà vu.
In the book’s first chapter, the exterminator of the title delouses houses, a connoisseur of finest poisons for killing cockroaches. Seventy pages later, teargas is raining down on the yippies of the Chicago '68 riots. Burroughs doesn’t feel the need to labour the relationship; the writing style of each section is radically different - from hardboiled drama to on-the-ground reportage, science fiction pornography to cutup poetry.
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