2 May 2009
My zine contributions:
1. William Southpark Burroughs
2. Burroughs on iTunes
3. Prices of Burroughs Texts
4. Ghost of Chance Footnote Piece
5. Cut Up Review and Notes
Pointless post. Just realized that I put my name on the sheets
1 May 2009
For the possessive, is it " Burroughs' " or " Burroughs's "?
Each has a squiggly red line below it so I don't know.
28 Apr 2009
Life story in six words or less...
the stash: future junky of the western lands.
25 Apr 2009
Arango, Tim. "Bet Your Bottom Dollar on 99 Cents." The New York Times. 7 Feb 2009. [available through Proquest].
quotation:
Regardless, the marketplace power of .99 seems undeniable. But why?
Academics have offered a variety of psychological explanations. One study, by Robert M. Schindler, a professor of marketing at the Rutgers School of Business, found that consumers "perceive a 9-ending price as a round-number price with a small amount given back." Researchers have also found that prices ending in .99 communicate "low prices" to consumers.
At the University of Chicago, for instance, researchers found that when the price of margarine dropped from 89 cents to 71 cents at a local grocery chain, sales improved 65 percent, but that when the price feel to 69 cents, sales rose 222 percent, according to Kenneth Wisniewski, an author of the study.
And Professor Schindler, in a study at a women's clothing retailer, found that the one-penny difference between prices ending in .99 and .00 had "a considerable effect on sales," according to his study, with items whose prices ended at .99 outselling those ending at .00.
Prices of various Burroughs texts purchased within the calendar year 2009:
Junky, $14.00
The Yage Letters Redux, $15.95
Naked Lunch, $14.00
The Soft Machine, $12.00
The Ticket That Exploded, $14.00
Nova Express, $14.00
Cities of the Red Night, $15.00
The Place of Dead Roads, $15.00
The Western Lands, $15.00
My Education, $15.00
Last Words, $12.00
Ghost of Chance, $11.00
The Adding Machine, $12.95
With these thirteen texts across six different publishers (Penguin, City Lights, Grove Press, Picador, Serpent's Tail, and Arcade Publishing), the "immortal" author William S. Burroughs resists the "99 cents" moniker of 20th century advertising and 21st century consumerism. These whole dollar prices (with two exceptions) do not--nor should they attempt to--hypnotize the American consumer into impulse buys of canonical literature. Burroughs does not seek out his reader for immortality; instead, the prospective adept comes to Burroughs either through collective intelligence or personal inquiry. Burroughs will not appear on Top Ten lists, Bargain Books racks, Oprah's Book Club selections, or even most University Syllabi (with "The Burroughs Machine" as a notable and appreciated exception). As Burroughs was/is not intended for everyone, these ".00" prices result in a selective readership produced from literary investigation. According to NY Times economics, these non-.99 prices could be one cause to Burroughs operating as a background process. However, rather than being constrained by this pricing choice, the ignorance of .99 consumerism allows Burroughs to transcend commodification and challenge literature's status quo. A Burroughs text remains only a reading product until the cover is opened, when the Burroughs text evolves into a reading process.
Unfortunately, however, this distinction is only available at the manufacturer's suggested retail prices. At a book warehouse like Amazon.com, these .00 prices are undercut by the benefits of bulk purchases: The Western Lands is available for $16.00 $10.88, Nova Express is on sale for $14.00 $11.20, etc. The two exceptions, The Yage Letters Redux and The Adding Machine, are not novels like the other texts: the former consists of over 1/3 scholarship whereas the latter is a collection of "non-fiction" essays. Still, the books at least have the ending ".95," a four-penny undercut of the "99 cents" consumerism trademark.
23 Apr 2009
mission: find the Western Lands
2008-? Economic "Crisis" in The Western Lands:
"Put it like this, country simple, hayseed simple. A country is bankrupt. No gold whatsoever in the coffers, and they are issuing paper money without anything to back it up. So the bottom falls out and the money isn't even good shithouse paper. Nothing to back it up. No gold" (96).
Newton's Third Law of Physics in The Western Lands:
"The Healing Helper is a calm gray presence with a kind, unhappy face, for he has taken on much pain. But he is deft and quick. Pain dissolves beneath his fingers, and sickness loosens its hold. He brings a smell of clean bandages, dawn wind in fever dreams, sleep after sleepless night.
"For every Helper, there is a corresponding demon or adversary. Many play both roles. There are old demons wracked with the pain of toothless, impotent hate, who live only to injure, occupying evil old caretakers and doormen" (103).
20 Apr 2009
William Seward Hall/"Kim Carsons" via South Park Studio.
15 Apr 2009
Under the "Footnotes as a literary device" section of the Footnote Wikipedia page, William S. Burroughs is blatantly robbed of credit for his innovative footnote techniques in Ghost of Chance. In this novella, Burroughs transposes his literal "cut up method" of manipulating prerecorded content to a formal cut up of context, a manipulation of reading habit structure.
The footnote device appears after the last word of page 7. Footnote 1 reinforces the habit structure of reading a page from top to bottom. However, as footnote 1 spans onto page 8, the footnote pause extends into blatant disruption. After finishing reading the footnote, the reader jumps back to the top, an unsettling cut up of typical reading. This interruption of the page can also occur on a single page like footnote 3 (17). The break comes in the middle of the page, forcing the reader to jump down and then return. However, since the footnote appears as a smaller superscript character, the "3" can easily hide among longer and larger words. Unable to resume progress, the footnote must be searched for and subsequently found. This search can both waste time and/or cause forgetfulness.
The footnote device in Ghost of Chance evolves from an interruption to the rhythm of reading to a textual disjunction. Footnote 6 (25) does not continue the thought process of the prior sentence/paragraph but instead distracts the reader from the narrative. Not only does Burroughs cut up reading with footnote, he cuts up his footnotes with the ellipses, a trope of literal Cut Up found in Naked Lunch among other texts. No longer functioning as a separate supplement to the original material, footnote 6 becomes its own narrative filled with juxtaposed yet vivid imagery. Eventually, however, footnote 6 does directly refer back to the original narrative with its concluding sentence, "The great god Pan is dead." This shared line represents an equality between narrative and footnote, visualized by the equal space for each on page 25. The equality is only temporary, as the narrative-footnote tension escalates into a complete role reversal with footnote 11 (43-44). Looking at each page of the footnote (as footnote 11 spans two pages), the footnote clearly dominates the narrative on both pages. Page 43 has 5 lines of text and 31 lines of footnote; page 44 has 4 lines of text and 33 lines of footnote. With this exchange, Burroughs challenges the reader's preconceptions not just of the footnote but also of the text itself. As an author challenging the conventions of reading structure, Burroughs "tamper[s] with the prerecordings, which could result in altering the prerecorded future" (Footnote 2, page 8). The footnote becomes the narrative. Like footnote 6, footnote 11 is itself cut up with ellipses. This trope is not simply repeated but also advanced, as footnote 11 ends with an incomplete sentence and an ellipses: "no one to look after those who cannot or will not look after themselves..." The passage directly challenges readers to be responsible for reading autonomy.
Burroughs manipulates the footnote from its allusion/referential function to a rhetorical device that deliberately and thoroughly cuts up the reading of Ghost of Chance. Despite repetitious footnote documentation, however, Burroughs never footnotes a footnote. It is not that the footnote is sacred, but rather that such repeated manipulation would serve no utility.1 Importantly, though, Ghost of Chance ends with a footnote--a plea to prevent the extinction of the various lemurs on Madagascar. Burroughs encourages reader responsibility--the ability of the reader to respond to the Madagascar lemur extinction with financial support for the Duke University Primate Center. Here, in the last of 14 footnotes, Burroughs enables the footnote to narrative while simultaneously extending beyond the Ghost of Chance text.
1 The footnote emphasis is not on the end-product of cut up (a potentially infinite game of authorial one-ups-manship by a cut up of the cut up of the...) but rather on the active process of cutting up (a disruption of reading habit structure).
14 Apr 2009
Ghost of Chance cut up my reading of The Place of Dead Roads, so it is only apropos that yesterday's post cut up my progress in finishing the latter novel. To return to the Picador Publishing Trilogy:
While reading Cities of the Red Night, notable characters disappeared, reappeared, died, merged, and engaged in prolific sexual activity. A semi-descriptive guide is of invaluable service to enumerate the characters of CotRNed. This information is located in an earlier post from approximately 3 weeks ago. Appropriately, the reading of The Place of Dead Roads continues this enumeration theme. When reading TPoDR, significant (Proper Noun) locations are referenced, occupied, attacked, blown up, and occupied. Like before, a semi-detailed list is of indispensable utility to tally the locations of TPoDR. The following neither claims to be authoritative, chronological, complete, or thorough nor should it attempt to do so. It is, however, entirely authentic. Words like "this" are quotations from, margin numbers are "chapters" in, and blank lines are a part transition in the Picador edition of The Place of Dead Roads.
1. Boulder Cemetery: appointment shoot-out
Overlook Hotel: hotel key found in Hall's pocket.
Manhattan City Bank: Carsons' gang attempted a hold up
Bleecker Street: shoot-out inspired a Carsons poems
Mesa Top:
2. Sangre de Cristo Mountains: located to the east, dusk and blue shadows
Jemez Mountains: located to the west, thunderclouds and rain
Saint Lous: in night sky, Kim's father points to Betelgeuse
Dead Ass Saloon: shoot-out in front, Kim shoots his horse Strawberry
Jemez Basin: crater of an extinct volcano; Kim camps on south slope
3. Saint Louis: where Kim may have been the most unpopular boy in town
Saint Albans: lightning strikes cornice of old school building outside of
North Lights (wonder of nature): Kim sees them from the crater
Paris: bartender fashioned a weapon from his breath
Alamust: General killed by gardener for "planning a campaign against the Old Man's fortress at Alamut"
Garden of Eden: might be produced by plant virus once it gets its root in human soil
Place of the Half Humans: one of Kim's Cloud Stations
4. Portland Place...
...Skinker Boulevard
5. Western Lands: land of Egyptian immortality that Johnsons are trying to take over
6. Olive Street in Saint Louis: house here owned by dying/dead Mortimer Carsons (Kim's father)
Saint Albans: a "little postcard town" cluster of red brick buildings
BRADY'S STORE: "long low building with a galvanized iron roof"
7. Dead Boy Creek: on railroad bridge over DBC, a boy Kim's age teaches Kim to fly
Big Thicket: Kes trades with people of B.T. that drink only milk
Jehovah: the town target of Kim's "first adolescent experiment with biologic warfare;" their "horrid church spoiled his sunsets"
8. Lee Yen Chinese Restaurant: Kim shoots man in booth behind him
Dodge City: Bat Masterson asks Kim leave here
Clear Creek: where Kim and Chinese boy will rendezvous in one month
Nugget Saloon: after not being served two beers as an "Injun lover," Kim and Red Dog kill 6 (including barkeep)
9. Cottonwood Junction: gets off stage going W to go N to Clear Creek [20 miles]
Pecos Bridge: setting for Kim's "shootist" photographs
Fort Johnson: could be Kim's Alamut; with Clear Creek, Kim's base of ops for 2 years
10. Ecuador: Chris appropriates sjrunken head from here
Overlook Hotel: in morning, Tom takes tennis racket and slays some pigeons
Venus: Kim has vivid dreams of and "intended to write a guidebook"
11. Waghdas: City of Knowledge, Hart/Heart's "The Most Dangerous Place on Earth"
Fort Johnson: "Mass Suicide of Massive Hoax?" of the Wild Fruits, the Johnson family gang
12.
13. Raton Pass: "one of the more desolate spots on the globe"
Black Hawk: "a sepia haze of gaseous gold covers the town, farted up from the bowels of the earth"
Marseilles & Montreal: superb bean casseroles, but neither could touch Salt Chunk Mary's
14. Tony Faustus's Restaurant: where Kim orders walloyed pike, "perhaps the most toothsome freshwater fish in the world"
Johnsonville: a communications center to be built on land in Mound Builder area of Illinois across the river from Saint Louis
15. Great Pyramid: on top of here, Kim experiences consummate expertise with Nubian guide
Patagonia: feeling of sadness and "loneliness" from a desolate windswept slope
Santa Lucia Restaurant: in NYC circa 1910, reconsideration of Mafia policy
16.
17. The Western Lands: paradise, "an actual place at the end of a very dangerous road" that can be reached
18. Manhattan, New Mexico: running out of everything, have to make a run to town, site of THE MANHATTAN AMBUSH
19. Hyde Park (London): Jim to have meeting with Tony Outwaite
Empress Hotel: 23 Lillie Road near Gloucester Road Station, room reserved not paid
Prince of Wales Pub: where Kim has fallen from favor
England: "God save the queen and a fascist regime"
Earl's Court: Kim produces a blackout with a tape recorder
Paris: Kim loves it at first sight, Kim spent 3 years here
20. Linguistic Institute located outside Paris: verified Kim's guess that language operates on the virus principle of replication
Outskirts of Ganymede: "an oasis village in the highlands," location of Kim's point of entry
Ganymede Hotel: a facade of marble pillars from some ancient settlement "at the end of a long crooked street"
Timbuktu: area of superior sunsets, "owing to a suspension of red dust in the Timbuktu area"
21. Hotel Continental: Kim unpacks his typewriter and writes until 3:00 A.M.
22. THE MARKET: weapons, smells, occult, clothing, biologic and chemical, and functioning museum
23. The Red Lands: road through to the larynx people, road ending in scrub and cactus
24. Evening Star: the first settlement on Planet Venus
"Trough City": location of the centipede-spawning troughs; Kim/Marbles/Guy burn it down!
25. Sea of Silence: at the top of the hill it stretches away into the distance
Los Alamos Ranch School: cottonwoods along an irrigation ditch; a cluster of buildings & roads, it looks like a little village resort
The Place of Dead Roads (283): found by starting in a City of Dead Streets
26. Tangier: earthquakes, riots, floods, fires, hurricanes and tornadoes caused by Jim traveling back in time
Gay Paree: Kim "indulges in an orgy of identity shifts"
Paris: "please stay the same" (3x)
Slobski Institute:
27: New World: place to return to
Old World: place to come from
Westbury Street, London: shopping for M-5 suit
Fort Johnson: end of the line
Boulder Cemetery: appointment between "Kim Carsons" and Mike Chase on September 17, 1899
Dead Roads of Kim Carsons:
a) 4 calle Larachi, Tangier
b) 24 Arundle Terrace in London
What would be left after "nuclear attack"?
Paris--Eiffel Tower; London--White's; New York--Statue of Liberty; Saint Louis?--Nothing but the arch: GATEWAY TO THE WEST
P.S. I hope The Western Lands doesn't disappoint as the third entry in a trilogy. I'm hard pressed to think of any third film better than its predecessor second film: neither Star Wars, not Indy Jones, not LOTR, not Pirates, not X-men, not Riddick, not Godfather, not Spider-man, not Ocean's, not Matrix, not Back to the Future.
But, this is literature, not film. And, this man is Burroughs. I have faith confidence.
13 Apr 2009
I can't find my copy of Naked Lunch (film). I shall invoke the agents of Humwawa for devious enlightenment.
Over the weekend, my friend got high on subject experience and stopped mid-reading of The Place of Dead Roads and picked up his $11.00 copy of Ghost of Chance purchased from Webster's bookstore circa January 2009. This novella is the first and one of the few Burroughs texts (possibly including the original Yage Letters, but certainly not the steroid Redux version) that can be ingested during a single session, preferably from 3:30-5:00 AM. Ghost of Chance is similar to and yet different from every other Burroughs text read so far, and as such should be addressed in light of "The Burroughs Machine." My friend wishes this short text was on the syllabus, but any interested Burroughs adept should have no problem obtaining and perusing Ghost of Chance, as 14 footnotes permeate it.
Tomorrow: a post will be added evaluating Ghost of Chance and its uh deliberate footnote rhetoric. Thesis: In Ghost of Chance, Burroughs "cuts up" reading not in content like that of Naked Lunch's "...", but rather in habit structure with the footnote and its manipulation of the reading process. Written by: Naes Williams, Ghostwritten by uh The Stash.
11 Apr 2009
EXTERMINATE ALL RATIONAL THOUGHT
I bought this movie when I was an innocent high schooler because it is #220 in The Criterion Collection, "a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films." I came to Naked Lunch (film) as a Burroughs virgin. It intimidated my friends while it simultaneously turned me on. Unforunately, I didn't get it. Now, after 12+ weeks of our WSB seminar, this film DEMANDS a second viewing. I want to include a possible Naked Lunch film piece (300-500 words) into the zine, perhaps from the perspective of an amateur Burroughs adept with a B.A. in American Popular Culture. However, in light of my previous diatribe against the REVIEW (an obvious manifestation of the WORD as virus), I am increasingly hesitant to write in any review format. Conceivably a fictional homage inspired by a film based on a book? Never enough Naked Lunch.
10 Apr 2009
Mos Def, "Fear Not of Man": All over the world hearts pound with the rhythm/ Fear not of men because men must die
I had a dream that I finally can remember, despite waking up with an intense Money Boy headache and intermittently watching of BASEketball. Despite inspiration from The Place of Dead Roads and a heavy dose of subjective experience, it lacks a shootist character and his detailed paraphernalia. I don't remember how it started, nor how it ended. It went something like this:
Surrounded by hundreds of individuals like myself on the field of Beaver Stadium, I was distracted by something or someone and found myself alone inside when the horn rang for the game to begin. This was not a game of passé football, but a unique individual competition where persons grabbed ahold of 6-7 foot cylindrical metal poles suspended in the air. The top of the poles were connected to a massive interlocking grid that teeter-totter according to relative weight distribution. Stuck on the ground, I found a giant plastic ball that obviously contained some hidden goodies. I grabbed the container, but then a vast army of other individuals dropped down and attempted to steal my prize. One girl in particular was quite close. To stop her, I Steven-Seagal-flipped the ball backwards over my head and knocked out the greedy bish. I opened the ball and found a Snuggie and a Halloween costume of the Dunkaroos kangaroo. Oh, and there was a red Santa hat that read something like: "We're fucking serious, like Obama."
This dream neither had no meaning when I woke up nor does it have any meaning when I write about it. But, it was entertaining.
8 Apr 2009
Do you like fish dicks?
Yeah, I like fish sticks.
You're a gay fish!
Personal writings for contribution to our zine:
a) thorough directions and demonstration of The Yage Letters Redux "Cut Up Review" with expository rationale (info from 18 Feb-25 Feb posts)
b) the consumer cost for purchasing entrance into The Burroughs Machine including posts about Burroughs on iTunes, Burroughs in print, and drugs costs in Burroughs (info from 24 Mar post and 2 future posts).
c) maybe something else.
Items to be posted to my wiki within the next 1-72 hours:
1. Composite "Cut Up Review" of The Yage Letters Redux in both single- and multi-font formats. Provide directions (possibly a photograph?) with loose directions detailing exact composite.
2. Post about how Burroughs' texts resist ubiquitous $0.99 rhetoric of capitalism across publishers (mini-essay format similar to description of Burroughs in/on iTunes).
3. Quantify drugs (opium, weed, et al.) in their appearances throughout Junky and convert 1950's prices into relative costs of 2000's.
4. Dream Post (blatant lack thereof); in fitting Burroughs fashion, once the writing of dreams is attempted, said dreams can't be remembered: karma of the 9 minute SNOOZE.
5. Describe each Burroughs test we've read so far in a single sentence or haiku. I have an example for Naked Lunch but I don't want to spoil subsequent entertainment.
6. Episode of This American Life that exemplifies Burroughs Cut Up.
3 Apr 2009
"The Word," Track 6 from Rubber Soul (1965) by The Beatles:
Say the WORD and you'll be free
Say the WORD and be like me
Say the WORD I'm thinking of
Have you heard the WORD is love?
It's so fine, It's sunshine
It's the word, WORD
In the beginning I misunderstood
But now I've got it, the WORD is good
---
Spread the WORD and you'll be free
Spread the WORD and be like me
Spread the WORD I'm thinking of
Have you heard the WORD is WORD?
It's so fine, It's sunshine
It's the WORD, WORD
Everywhere I go I hear it said
In the good and the bad books that I have read
...
Give the WORD a chance to say
That the WORD is just the way
It's the word I'm think of
And the only word is WORD
It's so fine, It's sunshie
it's the WORD, love
---
Over the length of "The Word" track (2:44), the word "WORD" appears 25 separate times, for an average of one "word" per 6.56 seconds. Repetition beyond recognition, a mantra of Burroughsian allusion. "Word" is itself common noun signifier that neither has nor has ever had any definite signified representation. As such, ironically, "word" is a practical example and definition of itself.
WORD at the Oxford English Dictionary (Online) includes 13 separate definitions, with several distinct varieties under each definition. These petty differences can be resolved with great concision: "word" = word. However, to avoid systemic confusion and glocal panic among the Burroletariat, the OED provides us with many, many words to define one single word. Inefficient, but temporarily necessary.
Burroletariat: (bərōliˈte(ə)rēət) noun [treated as sing. or pl.] the class of unfortunate people without a working knowledge of William S. Burroughs. (definition by absence/negation).
25 Mar 2009
Pangram Mantra:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
[a b c d e(3) f g h(2) i j k l m n o(4) p q r(2) s t(2) u(2) v w x y z]
24 Mar 2009
William S. Burroughs on iTunes?! Tell me more!
Prior to its revision of music track pricing, iTunes offered single tracks at $0.99. This cost may initially unsettle the average consumer, but a per-use cost analysis demonstrates that the prices are more than reasonable. If one listens to a particular song 3 times a week for 4 weeks, the price of the song shrinks to under $0.15 per use. iTunes offers cheap music entertainment whose cost diminishes ad infinitum. However, since the average track lasts roughly 3:00-3:30 in length, the average hour of music entertainment costs over $2.00 for the first play. By contrast to these overpriced costs for individual tracks, iTunes does offer comparatively inexpensive audio compilation albums featuring none other than William S. Burroughs.
Released between 1990 and 2008, four William S. Burroughs albums are available for digital download in the Music>Comedy section: Dead City Radio, Spare A*s, The Mask of the Red Death, and A Spoken Breakdown. Priced at $9.99, each album offers from 15:48 to over an hour of Burroughsian entertainment. Although almost $10.00 sounds steep for 15:48 of voice, The Mask of the Red Death is a sound-effect laden recitation of Edgar Allen Poe in a style only Burroughs could articulate. In addition, iTunes offers lazy capitalist readers the opportunity to consume an audiobook version of Naked Lunch: The Restored Text for the slightly expensive one-time cost of $17.95. Due to Burroughs' untimely death of natural causes in 1997 (complications from a heart attack), Mark Bramhall narrates this 2009 production. Again, although the $17.95 audiobook costs $3.00 higher than the $14.00 text, the audiobook mp3 files span 10 hours, 23 minutes. In the per-use analysis, Burrough's book costs under $2.00 per hour, a price comparatively cheaper than an hour of "flavor of the week" pop music. While Burroughs intends us as audience to read his literary texts, his recurrent destruction of reading's habit structure (through the...for example) would likely support collective reading by listening to a voice separate from one's own. Removing this attention burden from the reader enables one to be a participant-observer in the reading process. This audiobook of Naked Lunch challenges focused attention of reading by allowing multitasking; the portability of the ubiquitous iPod furthers this multitasking functionality. Whereas one once could not read Burroughs while driving or working out, the audiobook version now allows Burroughs to be Cut Up into a new Collage of experiences.The recording of Burroughs material can transform into a background soundtrack that both interrupts silence and complicates other activities. Naked Lunch running as a background process cuts up the comfortable silence of habitual boredom. The "shuffle" option in iTunes cuts up and reassembles Naked Lunch into one of any number of endless chapter sequences. Consequently, no two experiences of Naked Lunch resemble one another even though the material remains the same content. The audiobook format and shuffle option enables the Cut Up Method to translate seamlessly into computer technology. iTunes, a free download for Mac and PC, extends the Cut Up Method ad finitum.
However, despite these new contexts to experience Burroughs, the Naked Lunch audiobook must remain a complement to--and not replacement of--the original Naked Lunch book experience. Burroughs' intentions as author, rather than literary nostalgia, requires reading as the initiation into the Cut Up experience.
20 Mar 2009
While reading The Red Night of Cities, notable characters disappeared, reappeared, died, merged, and engaged in prolific sexual activity. A semi-descriptive guide is of invaluable service to enumerate the characters of Red, The Night of Cities. The following neither claims to be authoritative, chronological, complete, or thorough nor should it attempt to do so. It is, however, entirely authentic. Words like "this" are quotations from the Picador edition of Cities of the Red Night.
Farnsworth: District Health Officer.
Ali: "smoky black with sharp features."
Yen Lee: head of scouting party, "astral travel" (out-of-body exploration).
Doctor Pierson: infected during hospital epidemic, saved by his established morphine addiction, diagnoses of Virus B-23.
Captain Strobe: hung in Panama City, 1702, yet survived by escape plan.
Noah Blake & Friends (from Boston?): hired as overpaid deckhands by Captain 'Opium' Jones on The Great White.
Clem Williamson Snide: "private asshole"/investigator, nonlinear order of non-sequential time on tape recorder.
Mr. Green: hires Snide to search for his son Jerryin Spetsai, killed with his wife in car crash.
Jerry Green: a "person impersonator," drug pusher (C), gay, found decapitated but preserved with red rash.
Peter Winkler: ran English Pub in London, Dr. Peterson's diagnosis of scarlet fever, Snide's of virus.
Captain Strobe & Transvestite Boys of The Siren: prearranged capture of Captain Jones's ship.
Kelley: quartermaster of The Strobe, revived after failed hanging, good luck charm
Jim/Jimmy Lee: Snide's assistant, together practice "sex magic."
Adam North: the "perfect witness" of Jerry Green's death, retarded "twin" of Jerry's, interrogated.
Hans: the "handsome stranger" gunsmith in Port Roger, his sex allows Noah to create new weapons.
Dink Rivers: the American "student and instructor in body control."
Skipper Nordenholz: captain of The Strobe, speaks "almost perfect" English
Juanito: ... ...
John Everson boy: "clean-cut American boy" lost on Mayan archaeology dig, experienced identity transplant
Howard Benson: "small-time pusher," killed by MARTY with bloody pipe
Kiki: gay bartender that describes Jerry to Snide, accompanies Snide & Jim to Mexico
Captain Graywood: O'Brien's boss in New York
O'Brien: informs Snide of Jerry's recovered head, plants a fake to discover conspirators
Lupita (from Junky): hosts free drug/sex party.
Iguana twins: smooth greenish skin, black eyes, a "reptilion grace," female pays Snide to find originals of color books.
Sergeant Gonzalez ("snarling buck-toothed two-hundred-pound hulk) & Corporal Hassanovitch ("rat-faced gypsy"): kicked two soldiers to death for sodomy.
Fathers Domingo & Gomez: "dogs of the Inquisition," shot in stomach by Noah.
City Commandate: position of power post-Port Roger capture, revolving door of authority.
Rodriguez: "hawk-faced youth," literate, "staff officer material"
Blum (Austrian/Jewish) & Krup (Prussian/German): hire Snide for screenplay/original books
Krup von Nordenholz: new C.O., "Nazi war criminal," renames ship The Billy Celeste-->characters begin to cross/blur.
Marty: met in "Double G," enevually "will be owning a big chunk of lower Manhattan."
Toby: smells, spends Christmas Eve alone in the YMCA, reads The Time Machine, asks Santa for ability to time travel.
Noah Blake: travels time, rents Camel shack, buys goods to do some "fixing up."
Guy Star: meets Noah at the Saloon Hotel, helps fix Camel shack, night sex with Noah.
Arn: English boy with a "corrupt insinuating leer."
Audrey (Clem Snide): performs hit on an Italian that runs a cigarette store, implanted with separator (ability to be in two places at once).
Dimitri: early agent of Law, discovers Jerry's body, later plans riots in Ba'dan, briefs men.
Heroids: law officers addicted to heroin to ensure allegiance.
Green Guards: pot-bellied eunuch police of Yass-Waddah.
General Darg: commands the Paries, attempts to quell insurgents, reports false intel back to Empress of Yass-Waddah.
Audrey's hospital visit-->Cities of the Red Night as a dream? time travel without knowledge of actions.
Doctor Dimitri: ... ...
"Mr." Pierson: American Consul in Greece, finds Virus B-23 in boys, Jerry the original carrier.
"Composite" cities:
A. Djemalfnaa of Marrakesh
B. Mercado Mayorista of Lima
C. Tamaghis
Cities of the Red Night:
1. Tamaghis (open)
2. Ba'dan (games/commerce)
3. Yass-Waddah, Fun City (females)
4. Waghdas (university)
5. Naufana (illusion)
6. Ghadis (illusion)
Only one-way progression through the cities, 1->2->3->4->5->6.
19 Mar 2009
The below note has recently become null and void. The stash has acquired new access to his old wiki page after creating a new account. For all of the unappreciated updates on biotelemetrica 2.0, it's better than the pithy mycompwiki operating system.
Note: Due to the Temporary nature of Temporary Autonomous Zones, The Stash's wiki content has been spliced ( and therefore cut-up) by the incessant need to upgrade over at pbwiki. The Stash's screed has now been philtred down to pure 100 percent wyrd virus. To grok The Stash's past posts (BMH, or Before Migration Here) with full youtubeness, please dial your browser to The Stash's old Stash, here: http://biotelemetrica.pbwiki.com/the+stash
Already, this editor has "WARNED" me, so I sense another cut up coming....- mobius
13 Mar 2009
A Delayed Response to 24timespersecond. My apologies, not regrets.
The number "24" (twenty-four) is significant in various ways prior to and independent of the post-9/11 propaganda television show, 24 (2001-present). That show operates on simple-minded American Republican "patriots" that champion America while denying the reality of our growing American Empire. However, despite my ability to pontificate annoyance with the FOX product, I enjoy the "real-time" process that the show utilizes. Now Playing: The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (1969).
One can search for disambiguated 24 to find over a dozen (half 24) different uses of 24 in American popular culture. Our 24-hour clock attempts to dictate time as a linear progression of equal units. However, there is no 24th hour to our clock. In military time, the 24:00 designation does not exist; instead, the clock resets to 0:00. 24 is similar to a limit in Calculus: it is approached, but never reached. For another use of 24 in time, consider the NBA's 24 second shot clock that defines the pace of professional basketball. This defined offensive duration, though enforced by zebra officials, must be recognized as both a limitation and a possibility at the same time. The Phoenix Suns encourage the Run-and-Gun offense of 7 seconds or less, shooting/scoring considerably inside the 24 second rule. Conversely, Dwayne Wade of the Miami Heat has made several Buzzer Beater shots, a phenomenon that extents scoring outside both the micro 24 second rule and the macro 12 minute quarters. This accepted rule, like other rules of sport (hesitant to include government laws), operates as a continuous possibility-limitation duality.
Although Burroughs neither refers to the 24 hour daily clock nor the 24 second shot clock, his description of "spliced 24 times per second" alludes to this possibility-limitation duality inherent to time and its various divisions. In particular, Burroughs may refer to the 24 frames per second standard (23.976 if you want to be a technical nerd) of conventional film at a movie theatre. When frames shift, each frame refreshes in its entirety, though each frame is not entirely clear. Film uses motion blur to fool the human eye into perceiving fluid motion from a progression of still images. (TV and video games operate at higher fps but I don't want to get into the reasons why). Although the human eye has a natural comfort with the 24 Hz wave, this rate is only one of many that can be perceived both by technology and humans. High-end SLR cameras can capture photographs at a fast shutter speed upwards of 1/500 seconds, allowing the photographer to freeze fluid action. On the other hand, photographs with slow shutter speeds blur action, resulting in pictures like those of blurred car lights. What do these polemics of action show? Our world is undeniably connected yet infinitely divisible on a spectrum independent of quantitative linear time. Burroughs' Cut Up Method is one method of division that inevitably results in connection.
9 Mar 2009 Notes from My Couch (circa 17 Feb) [authentically reproduced despite illegible letter printing]
Info for the wiki?
Nothing is free-->the consumerism of ART through replication in simulation. With recordable technology (audio, photography, then combination of video) artistic forms based upon sensory perceptions of sight and sound.
Milton's Novelty Lost; Burrouhgs' Novelty Regained: Novelty of art with "unique" distinction disappeared with audio/visual simulation and gift shop replication. The novelty of traditional art is only temporary, as it is soon exploited for profit by capitalist consumerism-->unless art EMBRACES replication of capitalism!
Example: 1. There is no "the" (definite one) American flag, only "a" (indefinite replication) American flag.
Nothing is sacred: concerts, plays, live art production. The "live" productions of music, from individual Bruce Springsteen to collective Live 8 concerts, are now mass-produced and currently in-stock on Amazon.com. (hyperlinks in blue)
White Noise by Don DeLillo--because of these replications, we neither experience a) the art or b) the novelty. The technology of/in capitalism prevents us from ever experiencing novelty; novelty is not allowed to exist. Capitalism has outsourced art into manufactured replication. Even Philadelphia's own Please Touch Museum, a beacon of novel subjective experience for young children, has a gift shop. The proper noun "Please Touch" inevitably yields the "please buy" of common capitalism (with atypical courtesy).
Even works of academic production--lectures, dissertations, and notes can be replicated online. Browse through our University Libraries page for specific details.
Does problem have its roots with technology, the creation of language, or the Written Word?
Is it true that Art cannot exist outside of the Capitalism Machine? NO! THERE IS A SOLUTION! If the art is not intended as a single, novel entity, but rather as a detailed process. Art as process isintended to be replicated, reproduced, and reprogrammed-->and thus circumvents the replication limitations of capitalism and puts the creative process in the hands of the viewer, now participant-observer.
We all know an example of this artistic evolution: BURROUGH'S CUT UP TECHNIQUE!!
Burroughs' "text" (like Naked Lunch) now contains both product and process, a necessary evolution of literary endeavors
6 Mar 2009
Access granted to new wiki Stash. Will retroactively post posts of the past 3-5 days in the next 1-2 days.
WATCHMEN IN THEATERS NOW!
25 Feb 2009
Page 1 of postponed Review Cut-Up:
It is a sign of the times, I suppose.
Oliver Harris, an acknowledged paradox at the heart of university, can devote his scholarly endeavor to the question, "How much were they even his?"
Burroughs, as a case history of the novel from within CAN sustain a large reputation among weak-minded.
Authorship as such IS worthy of serious consideration.
A third of this masterpiece, Naked Lunch.
From fragments OF scholarly reconstruction, The Yage Letters advocated mechanical procedures--the cut up and learn, for example.
Throughout his career, he liked to collaborate with Press.
THE deeper meaning of THE YAGE LETTERS wouldn't have seen the light of day without the hyperinflation.
There is, it seems, no subject: it's as though the book mainly consists of Burrough's epistles.
THE source of brilliant visions ARE unable to be realized WITHOUT THE psychadelic substance prepared from the bark of Burroughs.
Burroughs might have achieved little without the pieces by Allen Ginsberg, which read like the oceanic feeling, because of the book cover.
Burroughs established this transcendent significance--the decomposition of authorship--early in his career.
Burroughs and his ilk believed that wisdom continued to be revised.
Altering one's mind with chemicals--lazy Lunch.
And then, the main effect of the hallucinogenic yage: THE transcendently powerful nausea, if rigorously edited, researched, and analyzed, does not emerge from THE "epistolary novel" emerging from Burroughs.
Much of this very short and slight book OF THE purportedly telepathic drug yage IS Burrough's reaction to the corruption.
-----
Page 2 of rainchecked Review Cut-Up:
Burroughs IS an example of how bad writing chance helped to assemble his literary output--not to remember writing.
In the 1960's, he is devoted to the professor's minute and the fold in for composing literary works to be published in THEIR present forms.
(we AND other artists).
You imagine teachers writing the no doubt aptly named Fuck You Bill!
And, of course, many of his works AND scholarship were utilized to explicate the boosterism of Allen Ginsberg.
In an age of academicS, Burroughs himself is rather like the drug yage--HE does not find his scholar without an added ingredient to potentiate him.
His quest for a South American literary catalyst reports OF Ginsberg AND Gysin, together with a few interjected--attempts to describe his first experience.
THIS approach, not the composition of books, IS egotism natural to youth.
He ascribes his books AS issued knowledge THAT results from the process of published scholarship that recurs throughout much of history.
The Yage Letter Redux appears to have been the book that earlier editions called and "insight into the nature and purpose of THE trip to Sotuh America in search of pages.
With a travelogue which is mildly diverting, IT makes minor corrections to the text and adds TO THE discomfort of tropical Colombia.
-----
Page 3 of overdue Review Cut-Up:
THE previously unpublished material in appendixes Burrough might condem as an example of imperialistic notes--a scholarly virtue VICE that might have been expected of a middle-class Lunch.
Since it is clearly Burroughs transplanted to a frontier town in the Amazonian revisions, however, Yage Letters Redux is the Midwestern housewife THAT would have searched for work.
Try this experiment: read (of course, a matter of conjecture).
Read Burroughs' putative search for wisdom.
Recast the entire book with self-examination (to be found here?).
Found here is not an act of academic hubris.
Suppose that the marvellous amount of research IS private property.
You have to be a deviant or a sort of person with a pessimistic streak for thought.
Burroughs was not just a worthy subtitle of this slender book.
-----
Page 4 of post-past-late Review Cut-Up DOES NOT EXIST. The cut-up of the fourth quadrant did not make sense to me and would not make sense to you. And, not coincidentally, page "3" ends in a unique experiment of instruction atypical to book reviews. I am not sure if I will leave these sentences in this order or rearrange them; or leave every sentence or cut out those I aesthetically disagree with. Thoughts? Comments? Querries?
I hope to compile a Microsoft Word document and subsequently an Adobe Acrobat file and post them to this wiki, my precious.
How To Understand What You Read After You Have Read It:
1. New sentences begin on new lines to allow for ease of reading.
2. "words like this" are from the negative review written by Antony Daniels
3. "words like this" are from the positive review by the RealityStudio Hive Mind
4. "WORDS LIKE THIS" are of my own (the stash) authority. I have attempted to only insert linking words (verbs/adjectives/pronouns/prepositions/conjunections) of 5 characters or less when necessary for sentence readability. Two exceptions to this rule: A) "The Wind" was changed to "The Yage Letters"; B) "virtue" changed polarity to "vice."
24 Feb 2009
Failure to blog new wiki posts caused primarily by $15 purchase of SEGA's classic The House of the Dead 2 (on Wii) from the dying Circuit City.
Will post some Cut-Up within 24 hours.
18 Feb 2009
Damn it feels good to be a healthy gansta.
Does anyone watch Nip/Tuck on FX? I added it to my TV digest a couple weeks ago; it's pretty decent. Last night, one of the two main doctors (the actor that doesn't play the laughable Doctor Von Doom in the regrettable Fantastic Four films) traveled to an Native American reservation in the Arizona desert and drank ayahuasca. After a montage of vomitting, Dr. Sean Something proceeds to feel himself turn into a tree. I watched the episode with three others of the 18-34 demographic. However, as I was the only student actively engaged with William LeeBurroughs, I understood the context of yagé and explained it. Yet, who was there to explain ayahuasca to the other approx. 3.1 million confused American viewers. As of today, this Season 5, Episode 6 entitled "Budi Sabri" remains absent from the FX Online Episode. I'll check again and embed a link when it becomes available.
I feel capitalistic inferiority because of this wiki's lack of advertising sponsorship.
Perhaps the only cure to brainwashing advertising is the YouTube satire art. (YouTube remains mostly capitalism free, at least for now. After Google bought YouTube for $1.65 Billion, it began to experiment with "embedded-in-video" advertisements. Freedom still isn't free).
One of my roommates, a Special-Edition-DVD addict, routinely references the Review Authority of IMDb's Top 250 films. The "authoritative" list is nothing more than an amalgamation of biased user-determined "votes" on an arbitrary "scale" of 1-10. Here is a screenshot of the registraion page:
[screenshots transfer the ATP for a mouse click to that of a "pg dn" button push].
Pre-mature close of Mozilla Firefox browser. Please, "Restore Session."
William Burroughs and the Mothers of Addiction: "Help, I'm a junky! Help, I'm a junky!"
Will later support this free sample with research of possible history of Bill Burroughs and Frank Zappa simultaneous subjective experience.
Back to the annoyance with IMDb.com and how this information relates to Burroughs and our possible zine mag...
IMDb allows random users with unverified authority not only to arbitrarily "rate" films that one loves/hates/love-hates, but allows such users to add a personal "review" to said numerical evaluation. Further developing the Internet's virus of artificial interconectivity, other users are allowed to vote (yes/no) on the usefulness of the initial review.
THE DIGITAL WORD VIRUS IS UPON US. CACHE YOUR WEBSITES TO RETAIN RATIONAL THOUGHT.
Perhaps some of us enjoy film reviews (I enjoy fiction), but the worst manifestation of the Review Virus comes with reviews of literature--words about WORDS!
Published reviews, both on the back cover of paperback texts and in nonadjacent media (TV, newspapers, World Wide Web) alters the book experience for potential readers. Readers no longer read such advertised books for the quality of the information within, but only to affirm or deny the previously absorbed critical review. However, with the advent of the ME-Internet, everyone is granted the keyboard podium and allowed the opportunity to review anything, even reviews of reviews. The cycle persists, a consequence of digital capitalism. Reviews are the Bulldogs of the Capitalism Machine that force us to judge a text without any direct knowledge of what a text may or may not be. Just as focused attention alters an experience, so does distracted attention--attention focused on evaluating the review rather than interpretting the material.
This Review Word Virus must be dealt with NOW (not accepted 2 week standard shipping because it is free-ninety-nine) in the Burroughs Butcher Shop of Words through the Cut-Up Method.
Perhaps a half-dozen critical reviews of The Yage Letters: Redux can be found online. Here are my two guinea-pig reviews:
1. Favorable: Hosted on RealityStudio, a Burroughs communit blog. It champions scholar Oliver Harris and the necessity of the "Redux." No single author listed--very William Lee.
2. Unfavorable: "All Bark, No Bite" by Antony Daniels. The review trashes all things Burroughs, including Yage Letters and Oliver Harris.
Which review present valuable information? Which review is loaded misinformation? I suppose both and niether.
To understand the "truth" of the Burroughs review, these polemic reviews must be Cut-Up together and reexamined together to achieve authority through dialectic. The resulting text, cut by scissors and rewoven by staples (who has tape anymore? honestly) is a potentail avenue for my zine contribution. Reviews have been formatted and reassembled; Cut-Up is almost complete. However, as one review is twice the length of the other, I may be unsatisfied with the result and subsequently determine another course of action. Nevertheless, such review cut-up will be undertaken. To explain how this "anti-review" functions, I will have to include appendix information (an attrophied preview?) explaining the process. This activities report cannot be evaluative, as the original work must stand for itself. I think I'm done for the night.
Unrelated Appendix:
On 17 October 2008, uber-critic Roger Ebert published a written review of the independent film Tru Loved. In the review, Ebert admits to watching only 8 minutes of the film. The public backlash to this critic faux-pas was incredible, leading Ebert to publish an apology (an effective review retraction) and a subsequent new review. Apparently, even reviews are now reviewable.
What controversy. I call party foul.
11 Feb 2009
USA 2 - 0 Mexico
Michael Bradley 43', 90' & he's the coach's son.
I wonder what a William Burroughs III could have produced under the direct tutelage of El Hombre Invisible.
Possibile contributions to our Burroughs mega-zine:
After reading, participating in (to be wiki'd later), and critically analyzing the purpose, process, and success of Burroughs' Cut-Up Method, I am interested in the manifestations of découpage in other artistic media, particularly music. Someone in class identified "mash-up" DJs, a la Girl Talk, as descendants of Burroughs' publically innovative technique. However, with the advent of the Digital Age and computers, these DJs do not create their own material pre-"mash-up." Instead, they only get involved in artistic creation by manipulating the tracks of others with computer programs like Digidesign's Pro Tools or Adobe's Audition. This assessment of "assisted creativity" is not intended as criticism against mashup DJs (Smash Your Head's combination of Elton John and Biggie Smalls defies genres), but rather a reason to champion Burroughs' "double creativity"--creating both the original content and its Cut-Up end representation.
Prior to the One Billion+ Computers Devouring Earth's Resources, there were several variations of the "double creativity" Cut-Up technique present in popular music, particularly the 1970 double-disc album Bitches Brew by Miles Davis. Anyone who has heard the album and read Burroughs, or tried and then turned either off, can perceive the similarities between Bitches Brew and Naked Lunch. Just as one cannot read Naked Lunch like any other text (or even like the two earlier Burroughs texts we studied,) one cannot listen to Bitches Brew like one would listen to any other album (particularly Birth of the Cool in 1950 or Kind of Blue in 1959.) Unsurprisingly, because of their bizarre, uncomfortable aesthetics, neither piece would be experienced by today's American. It takes a particular person to read Naked Lunch; it takes a particular person to listen to Bitches Brew.
Bitches Brew was composed practically on-the-fly. The musicians (including THREE electric musicians and FOUR drum sets) had not rehearsed any material prior to recording. They were given various clues/suggestions on HOW to play, but not particularly WHAT to play. In fact, if you listen closely, you can hear Miles Davis snap his fingers during the song, dictating tempo in medias res. Burroughs and Davis may have initiated the creativity, but the actualization of both projects required a collective effort. The over-attention to the details of playing/listening during recording sessions allowed Miles Davis to challenge himself and fellow musicians in how music is played, almost creating a collective subjective experience in one of the Columbia Records' studios. One would have been able to classify the album as a live studio take except for the extent of edits cut after the recording sessions.
As it may be differently to perceive the post-production edits of a music ablum with no words, one can find a list at the bottom of Miles Beyond. That list details approximately twenty cuts--all in the title track "Bitches Brew." Through such an exhaustive analysis of creation and editting production, one can see how Miles Davis pioneered many techniques that mash-up DJs can take for granted.
I want to propose a comparison/contrast analysis, but such a categorization minimizes the possibilities of what similiarities and differences may arise. Not just have to read much of Burroughs and listen to much of Davis, but the real information that I'm looking for is the behind-the-scenes stories of their respective productions. Because the focus will be only on one Miles Davis album, a similar limitation may be useful with the evaluation of Burroughs' fiction, probably just Naked Lunch.
During both the reading/writing of primary resources (Naked Lunch and Bitches Brew) and analysis of secondary materials (essays, exegeses, articles), questions to consider:
How different were the two production techniques?
Is collective input necessary in the editing process?
If Burroughs is attempting to break us from the Habit Structure of the Word, is Davis intending a similar response? Does he succeed?
Burroughs works to alter the consciousness, particularly Word Silence Through Exhaustion. Does Davis attempt a similar goal?
How does music without words alter the Word Conscious? Does it at all?
If Burroughs was plagued by the Word Virus, could Davis have been perturbed by a Music Virus?
With portable music technology as a granted in society (iPods are ubiquitous; one can d/l anything for free) and the weight and money required to carry books (library cards are few and far between,) the end user's reliance on books has been replaced with that of music. Is the Davis method of music more readily accessible than the Burroughs method of words?
Also, what are the consequences of the Bitches Brew re-mastered release in light of the Naked Lunch "Restored Text" edition. Who has the authority to edit that which is already edited? And when should the editing end?
So many questions to consider. Thoughts, anyone???
VS. 
Unrelated Appendix:
Silence Word Authority with Logic Puzzles.
Anyone with an iPhone, I recommend checking out Blocked. It's cheaper than a Big Mac, but just as addictive.
8 Feb 2009
Much of our Yage Letters discussion centered around one paragraph from the 10 July 1953 "letter":
"All houses in the City are joined. Houses of sod with high mountain Mongols blinking in smoky doorways, houses of bamboo and teak wood, houses of adobe, stone, and red brick, South Pacific and Maori houses, houses in trees and houses on river boats, wood houses 100 feet long sheltering entire tribes, houses of old boxes and corrugated iron where old men sit in rotting rags talking to themsleves and cooking down Canned Heat, great rusty iron racks rising 200 feet in the air from swamps and rubbish with perilous partitions built on multileveled platforms and hammocks swinging over the void." (51)
[Retyping Burroughs, albeit on a HP laptop and not a typewriter, allows activity to counter passive reading--> the Type-Up Method of Reading.]
Burroughs directs us to recognize the construction of Word through both sentence content and structure. In class, we talked about the repetition of "houses" as a technique for Burroughs to "say everything at once," despite the limitations of language as a linear process. He challenges us to think about convential language in an unconventional way. Coincidentally, during the 1950's-1960's, jazz improvisation explored the bounds of linear monophonic instruments (that are typically restricted to playing only one note, i.e. trumpet, saxophone) in an attempt to expand music in a nonlinear dimension. With hours of dedicated practice, some musicians (like John Coltrane) succeeded in playing multiphonics, where two distinct notes can be heard simultaneously (usually, but not exclusively, harmoical notes). The multiphonic musician, like the writer Burroughs, comes one step closer to "playing everything at once." This comparison works both ways, Burroughs-to-multiphonics and vice versa. Just as the multiphonic musicians plays two/three/four notes instead of the traditional one, creating a Wall of Sound, Burroughs' above pargraph itself is a Wall of Words. More information about multiphonics can be found here: What is Multiphonics?
Here are a couple examples of multiphonics on saxophone:
In the video below, this particuar saxophone player emphasizes multiphonics as a technique of embellishment, an exageration that distorts the musicality of the lick/song. The distortion distracts one from the other notes, sounding like a demonstration of possibility without musical direction.
A more musically aesthetic approach to multiphonics can be heard in the below performance of "Sweden" by Swedish saxophonist Håkon Kornstad. His use of layering notes challenges musical convention by re-defining melody, rather than a sacrifice of multiphonic possibility for a single embellished attraction. As a explorer of writing, Burroughs embraces this latter freedom of expression; he uses new techniques of production (multiphonics/Cut-Up Method) to create avenues exploring "all human potentials." (50)
4 Feb 2009
@ Contessa
a consequence of Burroughs-as-Author attempting to break our comfortable reading cycle of literary analysis appears in.
The indifference/annoyance/disappointment with your reading of Burroughs' work is -->(my cut-up)
Avoiding your feelings or the emoticons of your alias, your situation (like that of mine [and probably like that of most others]) represents our "junk sickness" from our Burroughs-induced withdraw from Word Authority. Naked Lunch, like Junky and Yage Letters before it, challenges the accepted "generic Rydell High School" understanding of literature--desptire our fondness for Salinger's H. Caufield, Burroughs' encourages forces us to look beyond The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Junky had somewhat of a narrative, but had a disappointing third act (a la The Prestige) and no ending, although the NL introduction contends that Queer was to be its continuation. Yage Letters reflects upon our acceptance of the epistolary novel (like Shelley's Frankenstein) and challenges us to consider a permutation: the epistole as novel--a pre-post-modern deconstruction of the "novel" as such. Naked Lunch continues this mutation of presenting the W3rd in a format utterly confusing/appalling/innovative.
The satisfaction from Burroughs' texts may not come through the traditional pleasure from reading, but perhaps in our discussions and attempted Wiki exegeses. As provided by mobius (if I'm wrong, lemme kno), the Buddhist tradition suggests exhausting all possibilities of language in order to silence the chattering monkey. Burroughs' voluminous work (and incredible lexicon of Englo-American) is a physical realization of this metaphor. Burroughs writes all that he can write--about any/everything. Our reading of these texts grants us partial access to this silence-after-Word-bedlam. However, the best way (as demonstrated by Burroughs himself) seems to be writing, writing, writing. Writing challenges us to reconsider our Need of the Word through an exhaustion of written possibilites.
The English language has more words than any other language (and Webster's dictionary gets larger every year). What's a synonym for "exhaustive"? "Comprehensive" just doesn't do it for me. Thoughts?
3 Feb 2009
In Googling through the digital space of The Matrix, I found an extremely useful resource authored by Brian E. Schottlaender, University Librarian at UCSD.
His PDF text entitled Anything But Routine: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography of William S. Burroughs v. 1.0 is a massive documentation of all things Burroughs. The list is comprehensive (possibly exhaustive), easy to read, updated regularly, and searchable.
Just found a Rolling Stone interview/conversation between Burroughs and David Bowie.
May the eager beaver find other diamonds hidden in the HyperText Markup Language.
2 Feb 2009 (are the blogs finally becoming three-times-a-week-or-as-recommended-by-mobius)
"The Final Blog" on Junky
In his scholarly introduction, Oliver Harris extrapolates Heraclitus' assertion (through Plato) of the world in a constant state of flux (i.e. one never steps into the same river twice) and applies this argument to literature: "the truism that we never read the same novel twice." (xiii) Harris's argument is basically a three-pronged spork diagnosis the after effects of Word Virus:
1. changing societal factors alters the context in which the book is read, so our reading of Junky today is vastly different than that of 49 years ago.
2. after having read Junky the first time, every subsequent reading (assuming no amnesia) will refer back to and build upon this previous experience.
3. in the specific case of Junky (although not exclusive--consider the maleability of Melville's Type-e), the text itself has undergone alterations through censorships and subsequent restorations
Despite an argument defended by three situations, Harris fails to consider Word Virus in its manifestations PRIOR to reading the text. This editor (possibly all editors) suggests that the Junky text exists in its own separate universe and that the only way for one to access Junky is through the reading of the text. This limited interpretation fails on three separate instances: not recognizing the non-necessity of reading, claiming the text can exist independent of its public presentation, and not indentifying the symbiotic relationship between Junky and other Burroughs (or Ludlow!) texts (or vice versa). Some students in our class may or may not have participated in the deliberate non-reading of Junky, but I'm sure that we have all cheated reading on at least one book report. One can "read" a text (understand its purpose, how that purpose manifests, the efficacy of its purpose) without logging the hours required for reading. Not only is a text's information available through alternate means, but the access to a text is framed within its publication presentation(reviews, front/back covers, advertisements). Even though we may not consciously perceive it, the front cover of Junky (the combination of a male caricature and a syringe) deliberately affects our pre-conceptions of the novel without having opened the book. Our reponses to Junky may not have been altered by the reading of other Burroughs texts, but our class discussions focused on the comparison between Junky and Hasheesh Eater--a comparison that negated the blank reception of Junky.
This principle of continuing effect will be seen as we discuss subsequent Burroughs novels, as our reading of them has already been framed by our impressions of previous study.
A lingering question...is such a framework beneficial to our understandings? I say yes. Junky provided receptive framework of The Yage Letters--particularly in the consideration of yage as "the final fix" (which it is not nor can it be nor should it be). Similarly, Junky and The Yage Letters help to contextualize Naked Lunch. Without them, I wouldn't know where to begin. But, perhaps, I have already begun through absorbing NL in pop culture.
1 Feb 2009
In our discussions about Ludlow's Hasheesh and Burroughs' Junky, someone mentioned the James Frey controversy involving his fictitious memoir, A Million Little Pieces.
Regardless of your pro-/anti-Oprah persuasion, the South Park episode "A Million Little Fibers" lampons the situation of truth/fiction controversy and challenges us to consider the worth of history-in-fiction versus fiction-in-history. Word Authority is at it again, as the constraints of the arbitrarily-defined "memoir" limit the possibilities of describing subjective experience. Does subjective experience have to be valid to be recognized as authentic, or can it be imagined? The Frey controversy questions the impetus for subjective experience, suggesting that the "artist" should be granted a carte blanche for the creation of subjective experience.
Will post back later with a William S. Burroughs caricature from South Park Studios.
In the meantime, Watch "A Million Little Fibers" Online!!
I wonder what Trey Parker & Matt Stone could have done with either Ludlow's and/or Burroughs' text(s) as drugs for thought.
28 Jan 2009
From "Ten Years and a Billion Dollars" in The Adding Machine:
"So what is the difference between Hearst and a writer of fiction? I mean a real writer, like Beckett, Genet, Joyce, Hemingway, Conrad, Fitzgerald, Kafka..." (48).
Samuel Beckett (1906-89)
Jean Genet (1910-86)
James Joyce (1882-1941)
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1894-1940)
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
In his considerations about the Word Virus (not the word "virus"), Burroughs writes juxtaposes W.R. Hearst with "real writers" of fiction. He does not leave the term unsupported; he defines "real writer" with a possibly endless enumeration of male writers deemed worthy enough of the title. His list appears innocent enough, as most English-heads would agree that these 7 names belong on such a list, with one another. This label is only mentioned in passing, but Burroughs acknowledged its variability with his inclusion of a definition-through-example. I accept Burroughs' recognizing and associating with these established writers, but I cannot accept the usage of such an artificial label (particularly by Burroughs) and what this label attempts to signify: a quantifiable (and perhaps hierarchical) list of the "literary canon" i.e. "the texts of the Western World written by dead white males" i.e. the reading lists of our required literature survey courses (AND GRAD SCHOOL GRE'S).
Burroughs is entitled to his opinion, an opinion I respect because of his own body of literary production (including, most importantly, criticism). However, why am I (and we as a community) programmed to champion these seven figures? Is it our individual subjective perspectives subconsciously agreeing to recognize such "literary greatness" in the reading of these texts? Or, is there some subliminal educational propaganda at work compelling us to look to these figures as writer-dictators as the Authorities on Words?
Through his writing (at least so far), Burroughs informs us of Word Authority in an attempt to de-program our acceptance and reliance on it. Like this initial challenging of the Word status quo, we should reconsider the value of "real writer" as an unidentifiable signifier and subsequently abandon "the Western canon"--the label, not the texts. Recognizing and removing Word Authority necessitates the removal of the importance placed on such Authorities on Words like Joyce, Beckett, or even Burroughs. Such a removal does not advocate reading outside the box of the established Western canon, but rather a disestablishing of the arbitrary box label.
In ten years Colorado could stumble upon...One...Billlion...Dollars!
But, let's be real Bill Burroughs. Mo' $$$ = Mo' Problems.
We ain't go-in nowhere, we ain't goin' nowhere
We can't be stopped now, 'cause it's Word Virus for life.
R.I.P. B.I.G.
"Ten Years and a Billion Dollars" originally published in Frank, No. 4 (Summer–Autumn 1985).
26 Jan two-zero-zero-nine
@ our pretty faces, thanks for considering my questions and challenging what I wrote. In light of your response, I need to clarify an issue I didn't assert. I don't mind revising, but I don't want to concede the argument yet...
Ludlow's hasheesh and Burroughs' junk exist in the natural world (a confusing term; how about that which does not require our influence?). Although the hasheesh tincture and heroin doses are artificial manipulations, cannabis and opium are naturally occuring plant creations. However, by definition, the "junk experience" is one entirely of subjectivity, demanding a flexible variability in its effects (or withdraws) on its users: "People vary in the way junk sickness affects them." (Junky, 77) Through the guidance of The Hasheesh Eater and Junky, our class seems comfortable in accepting the subjective experience inherent to drug trips (but, of course, drugs are only one of many paths; the success of the drug path verifies the existence of subjective experience).
However...to sugggest that the natural world is entirely subjective is too strong of an assumption (almost selfish in prioritizing the human experience of nature as superior to any/all others). The natural world (as defined above) not only exists without our influence, but it exists before/above/below/after (interestingly, all pronouns) us. Here is my revised assertion: __The subjective human experience does not necessarily negate the objective existence of nature__.
mobius writes: Well, you can't prove a negative, but I think the point I would want to make here is that the division into an objective world and a subjective world is a heuristic one, a way of talking, a shortcut. But "Objective", to paraphrase Robert Anton Wilson and the Diamond Sutra, "is a word." So, yes subjective experience - which we find everywhere "we" look - seems to remove the possibility of objective experience of nature conceived as separable from human ( and other sentient organisms) interaction. This is why the Soviet biologist Vladmir Vernadsky seems to have coined the term "noosphere" - to refer to the effect of human attention on the environment. The effect of such attention on the environment - including that environment we walk around in most of the time called the "ego" or "self" or "ordinary consciousness" - can be rigorously tested, but for the most part these parts are self tests. Benjamin Libet's very intriguing and hard to fathom experiments on human consciousness and our perception of time seems to suggest that the "objective" world includes the subjective world within it, perhaps suggesting that our separation from that world is illusory. At the same time, the mere focusing of our attention on our focusing of attention ( meditation) also suggests that our intention has feedback effects
In this argument, the existence of junk must be separated from the experience of junk, as the latter exists only subjectively within us. As for the consideration of the world outside Plato's cave (or even within the cave itself), our interpretations exist subjectively, but the natural world also exists independent of our subjectivity (Is it safe to call this objective?). Two people once "hermetically sealed in central pennsylvania" (great image--but is there a need for a seal in Pennsyltucky?) that enter into the rest of the world will have subjective experiences of this new reality--but these varied interpretations do not negate the existence of the objective world. They are not guaranteed to experience the same reaction while seeing the Atlantic Ocean, but they are guaranteed to experience the same Atlantic Ocean.
mobius writes: Hmmm. "Alantic Ocean" is a word I grew up near. :) Where does it start and end? How long is the coastline of the East Coast, Objectively? See also Heraclitus, who ( according to Plato) said you never step in the same river twice, because the real Stuff of the World is Becoming.
The junk high does not exist if we do not use junk, but the falling tree will make a sound even if we are not there to hear it.
mobius writes: I suggests you take up this "anthropic principle of perception" via the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Bohr suggests that we canly describe experimental systems that include an observer ( or measuring device, which is then observed) and that talk of the "objective world" is, well, talk :) And it is likely that encourages habits ( cf. Algebra of Need) of viewing the world as separable from the ecosystemic interaction with it, to no good effect in Burroughs view. That said, "Factualism" is an interesting place to take this insistence on the existence of the Objective world ( can't prove a negative!). Please post in response to factualism in Naked Lunch. PS: The "objective world" is the unreal world in Plato's view.
22 Jan 2009
In response to all-the-way-mae's comparison between Ludlow's The Hasheesh Eater and Plato's Allegory of the Cave, I must both disagree and agree with this juxtaposition.
Disagree: When Ludlow consumes the hasheesh bolus, the drug's effect on his understanding of reality is entirely subjective. Not everyone else in the world--not even just those on hasheesh--would agree that the single flight of stairs has turned into "infinity." It is only the user who perceives the change. By contrast, whereas Ludlow's change is caused by and within only his subjective experience, the cave prisoner's change demonstrates the influence of the objective (in that others would perceive the same new objects) outside world on the subjective experience of life. As Ludlow assumes and Burroughs later puts into words, "just because one person has a certain reaction doesn't necessarily mean that someone else will react in the same way." (Junky, 22). This variability is inherent to changes stimulated within one's own reality. However, this variability of understanding suggested by Ludlow cannot apply to the person who exits Plato's cave. Because the change in Plato's Allegory occurs in the observable/quantifiable/objective world, there is no "user" subject to a change in "subjectivity;" the change is obvious, apparent--and would be the same for the next person to exit the cave. (One could argue that as a human, one is a subjective "user" of the world, but this argument presumes that there is a human identity/experience independent of the world--not just an afterlife, but a life devoid of the world's presence--which is too must to postulate).
Agree: Taken outside the framework of the story itself, an independent reader (like myself) subjectively experiences Plato's Allegory of the Cave. I may read the story, laugh to myself, and decide, "Good story." Or I may disagree and lament, "Who is Plato? Boo this man!" Independent of my variable reaction, the necessity of the story to have a "user/reader" allows its impact to be subjective. On this level of text-as-experience, Ludlow and Plato compare and agree: regardless of the experiences described within either narrative, the meta-experience of the texts (through reading, eating, analyzing) is a __subjective experience__.
My question is...Does this "subjective experience" apply to all texts?
19 Jan 2009
Today we remember MLK, tomorrow BHO.
--> a side question...what's the next big Dream/"taboo" to be overcome as President: female or homosexual?
I acknowledge other downward wiki progressions, but I find it more useful to put the new material at the top. Less abuse of the "pg dn" key.
William S Burroughs' Junky
Bill Lee/Burroughs repeatedly mentions the distortions to the objective space/time continuum caused by the subjective experience of junk usage:
"When you look back over a year on the junk, it seems like no time at all.
Only the periods when you were sick stand out. You remember the first few
shots of a habit and the shots when you were really sick." (102)
The routine demanded by junk usage forces its user in a pattern lifestyle that fails to differentiate between Tuesday and Thursday or June and July. Although the "present time" usage of junk can cause an elongation of time during the its kick, the junk habit compresses the 31,556,926 seconds in a year into "no time at all." The only "stand out" seconds are the periods of sickness, the "experience of absence" we discussed last class (in connection with Hasheesh Eater).
A few sentences later, the narrator continues in his meditation on the inequality of junk experience represented in memories:
"Aside from junk itself, what you experience during a habit is flat, almost two-dimensional.
You can remember what happened if you take the trouble, but no memories come back
spontaneously from a habit period--except for the intervals of sickness." (102)
With such "flat...memories" of junk experience (not the subjective junk experience but the outside experiences enabled through junk), the Junky text (told through W. Lee) functions as a literary documentation (based on the authority of W. Burroughs' junk habits) of junk culture in New York/New Orleans/Mexico City. However, based on Junky (all the WSB I've read so far), I don't know how to classify Burroughs: is he a writer with a drug problem, or a drug addict with a writing problem?
More evidence that our seconds are unequal:
In advertising, some seconds cost more than others...
2009 Super Bowl Commercials: despite our economic downturn, the cost of a 30 second Super Bowl commercial rose $300,000. (But, does anyone really care about Steelers vs. Cardinals?)
For some, the subjective experience of long seconds is reversed into short years...
In building a monument-sized 10,000 year clock in Nevada, "The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking." The below graph best represents Long Now's understanding of time:
For better or for worse, life is subject to UNequal time.
14 Jan 2009
not a test.
will write more after r(eat)ing "hasheesh/hashish"
Fitz Hugh Ludlow’s The Hasheesh Eater (1857)
In his unwilling Preface, Ludlow decides against revision: “not one of the pages which make this book has ever been rewritten. It has been printed from the first draft.” Instead of attempting to take pride in his “one-take” writing, this self-imposed requirement of writing as progressively consecutive agrees with his general conceit of The Hasheesh Eater that “The progress of my narration will be in the order of time.” (Intro.) Ludlow is not merely writing a 500 word response paper or 160 character text message, but a 300+ page (Rutgers’s U.P. edition) autobiography of drug experience—at the age of 21. Not only am I impressed by his singular confidence in his written/typed debut, but also by the amount of “experience” (to borrow from Hendrix's Are You Experienced?) at his age of 21 (the same as me).
I must differ from Ludlow on two accounts. More often than not, I will compose my wiki posts in Microsoft Word and only add them to my on-line stash after revision and revision and revision (compulsive?). Secondly (and most unfortunately), as we live in a society bound by the Controlled Substances Act (1970), cannabis is a “Schedule I” drug.
By way of introducing him to hasheesh, Ludlow’s apothecary friend Anderson points toward “a row of comely pasteboard cylinders inclosing vials of the various extracts prepared by Tilden & Co.” (Chap. 1). Unfamiliar with the brand (not like Tylenol or Viagra), I googled (is it a word yet?) “Tilden,” finding a hyperlink to a page about Tilden’s Extract within the “Ludlow Library” that our text is found in. The Wikipedia page of Tilden's Extract was unsurprisingly short, but it included information from O.J. Kalant’s “Ludlow on Cannabis,” a relatively recent (1971) re-examination of the validity of Ludlow’s experiences. The full text to “Ludlow on Cannabis: A Modern Look at a Nineteenth Century Drug Experience” can be found HERE.
Kalant confirms that Ludlow’s early autobiography is his “fact of my speaking truths, so far as they can be spoken, out of my actual memory.” (Pref.) His commentary illuminates the accuracy of The Hasheesh Eater, and it also provides a very relevant comparison between Ludlow’s hasheesh and today’s marijuana/weed/Mary Jane/etc.:
Ludlow consistently talked of "hasheesh," but in fact he took the solid extract of Cannabis indica which
was roughly twice as potent as the crude resin and ten times as potent as marijuana. A rough calculation
shows that his intake was equivalent to about 6 or 7 marijuana cigarettes per dose, i.e., at the
hallucinatory rather than at the euphoriant level prevalent in contemporary North American use. (Kalant)
According to Kalant, Ludlow's overwhelming experiences in The Hasheesh Eater is due primarily to his “habitual intake of high doses of a very potent preparation.”
I wonder how many readers were inspired (at least by the first half of the book) to take the “Ludlow Challenge.”
Junk that I don't want to "delete," but I don't want "save":
26/1: (do we not all accept that the "age for the Earth and meteorites, and hence the Solar System, of 4.54 billion years with an uncertainty of less than 1 percent"? We have found scientific ways of quantifying such an amount of time, but these subjective discoveries can be extrapolated to the consensus that the earth once existed without us or our subjective experience).
Comments (5)
Anonymous said
at 4:46 pm on Jan 20, 2009
"a side question...what's the next big Dream/"taboo" to be overcome as President: female or homosexual?"
Atheist/otherwise non-religious is to me perhaps the most important and would be reflective of a generally improved society.
Anonymous said
at 10:40 am on Jan 22, 2009
I agree completely. It is not that a religion is evil, but bad people with their own agendas within the orginization, use their relationship with the government to exploit the general public. I do think that a gay president would have to be before an Atheist. America may not be ready for that one yet. The majority of rhetoric in the American political sphere, innaugarations, public announcements, seems to have been strongly enforced with Christian undertones. I think that maybe a gay president would be the probable first-candidate in this experiment.
Anonymous said
at 11:09 am on Jan 22, 2009
Since perceptions of homosexuality are so closely tied to Christianity,--though I can sort of feel this slowly shifting--it seems to me that if there were, say, an areligious president, someone uninterested in ascribing to a personal belief set concerning spirituality (perhaps this is what you meant by otherwise non-religious?), as opposed to an atheist president, this would be the most beneficial in both matters of church v. state and also homosexual rights. The optimum? A female areligious president, perhaps.
Anonymous said
at 2:46 pm on Jan 22, 2009
listen!, I agree. We should listen! to her.
Anonymous said
at 12:56 am on Feb 26, 2009
or a robot president.
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