About the book:
The second volume of Burroughs's Nova Trilogy, in which the cut-up method is pushed furthest language itself becomes the subject and the weapon, as Burroughs attempts to dismantle what he saw as the control systems embedded in conventional prose. Not a novel in any traditional sense, but a sustained assault on the reader's assumptions about what narrative can and should do.
Essential Burroughs for readers who want to understand what the experiment was actually for.
Condition:
Excellent secondhand condition.
Mild wear to cover.
Follow the link below to view our other listings:
https://www.bobshop.co.za/seller/5375758/Orphan_Books
About the author: William S. Burroughs (19141997)
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, into a wealthy familyhis grandfather invented the Burroughs adding machineWilliam Seward Burroughs was a Harvard graduate who drifted through odd jobs, addiction, and exile before becoming one of the most radical voices of 20th-century literature. A central figure of the Beat Generation alongside Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, he lived a notorious life marked by heroin addiction, global wanderings (Mexico, South America, Tangier, Paris, London), and the 1951 accidental shooting of his wife Joan Vollmer, an event he later described as the catalyst that drove him to write.
Burroughs approached the novel as a weapona means to expose and subvert systems of control: governmental, linguistic, sexual, and viral. His prose is jagged, satirical, and hallucinatory, blending hardboiled noir, grotesque humor, science fiction, and occult paranoia. He famously collaborated with artist Brion Gysin to develop the cut-up technique, slicing and rearranging text to liberate language from linear meaning and reveal hidden messages.
Recurring preoccupations include addiction in all its forms (drugs, sex, power, language itself), the anatomy of control, viral ideas, homosexuality, and the seedy carnival of human vice. His work reads like dispatches from the edge of sanity: funny, horrifying, and strangely prophetic.
Major works include:
- Junky (1953)
- Naked Lunch (1959) his breakthrough, obscene, and groundbreaking masterpiece that faced obscenity trials
- The Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, Nova Express)
- Later novels such as Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, and The Western Lands
A major influence on postmodern literature, punk rock, cyberpunk, David Cronenberg, and countless countercultural artists, Burroughs remains a dark saint of experimental writingequal parts outlaw, visionary, and sardonic observer of the human condition. He spent his final years in Lawrence, Kansas, painting, collaborating with musicians, and maintaining his uncompromising stance until his death in 1997.
