Hey,
Just curious, but does anyone here read Burroughs? I'm listening to a
section of _Nova Express_ that Burroughs read aloud, and had to read some
of _The Ticket That Exploded_ for class tonight. The stuff on the page is,
I find, really difficult, but hearing him read it is different . . .
horrific, monotonous, insectile, but somehow way more engaging.
I tried to read _Naked Lunch_ last summer, and it was so depressing and
oppressive that I stopped about halfway and read Orwell's _1984_ to cheer
me up. Man!
But the interesting thing is that lots of the articles I've seen consider
books like _The Ticket That Exploded_ and _Nova Express_ as "science
fiction". When I read that, I kind of cringed, but there definitely is a
kind of sfnal dystopia thing going on. Not that all dystopia need be SF but
it seems to me that a lot of Burroughs seems to want to address some things
that come up in other dystopic SF like _1984_, like the mechanization of
humanity, use of language to control people via "reprogramming"; it's not
hard SF, no, but I never considered it SF at all, though I can see why some
would say it. [I always slotted it in the "Beat" slot in my head.]
I guess I'm just curious whether others here have read much of him, and
whether you classify it at all, much more whether you think of it as SFnal
or at all.
Gord
