Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The West Is The Best., May 8 2002
By A Customer
Review: Contains highly condensed scenarios in past present and future time. Rarefied and raw dream and after-death encounters and conflicts, with unforgettable characters in a multitude of hilarious satiric black humor routines, will stab you in the ribs with a poisoned quill. Not for the squeamish, dogmatic or uninformed. ˇnovel biological mutations! Step right up. William S. Burroughs' examination of the function of the author is so candid and deeply moving that its authenticity can't be denied. The poems, "Breathe in your death" and "I WORK FOR THE BLACK HOLE,..." are, respectively, an exquisite cut-up and an informed, funny post-scientific verse. Who can award a Commander of Arts and Letters of this caliber less than 5 stars?
Like to offer a few simple pointers to help in navigating through this most accomplished and inspired of Burroughs' works. Starting with the title "The Western Lands," which in ancient Egyptian would read "Amenta," referring to the land of the dead who, by tradition, were always entombed to the west of Egypt. In present time, the most potent power accumulation is concentrated in the West. Suddenly you might recognize Western Culture as overwhelmed by material wealth, wielding the technology for total dominance/destruction, but metaphysically only "minutes away" from total bankruptcy. Burroughs wastes no words over this formula: spiritual bankruptcy = death. Species disappearing from the planet faster than the rising national debts.
Most important to understand, ladies and gentlemen, the possibility of much of his fiction as factual analogs. He delineates the 7 souls, Hollywood style, with deadly humor. The existence of Immortality isn't just the question of an eccentric old man. It's a question all civilizations face, and there's nothing frivolous about it when a dying culture sees it has no answers. Naturally, (profiting from the course of collapse) Nazis, Mafias, CIA, KGB and other boards and syndicates all have walk-on parts. All all all only to be topped and toppled by the inexorable expansion of the white light of Margaras (Skt.). The cat Margaras is the agent of total awareness and observation. Break this book open at any page and be amazed.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The West Is The Best., May 8 2002
By A Customer
Review: Contains highly condensed scenarios in past present and future time. Rarefied and raw dream and after-death encounters and conflicts, with unforgettable characters in a multitude of hilarious satiric black humor routines, will stab you in the ribs with a poisoned quill. Not for the squeamish, dogmatic or uninformed. ˇnovel biological mutations! Step right up. William S. Burroughs' examination of the function of the author is so candid and deeply moving that its authenticity can't be denied. The poems, "Breathe in your death" and "I WORK FOR THE BLACK HOLE,..." are, respectively, an exquisite cut-up and an informed, funny post-scientific verse. Who can award a Commander of Arts and Letters of this caliber less than 5 stars?
Like to offer a few simple pointers to help in navigating through this most accomplished and inspired of Burroughs' works. Starting with the title "The Western Lands," which in ancient Egyptian would read "Amenta," referring to the land of the dead who, by tradition, were always entombed to the west of Egypt. In present time, the most potent power accumulation is concentrated in the West. Suddenly you might recognize Western Culture as overwhelmed by material wealth, wielding the technology for total dominance/destruction, but metaphysically only "minutes away" from total bankruptcy. Burroughs wastes no words over this formula: spiritual bankruptcy = death. Species disappearing from the planet faster than the rising national debts.
Most important to understand, ladies and gentlemen, the possibility of much of his fiction as factual analogs. He delineates the 7 souls, Hollywood style, with deadly humor. The existence of Immortality isn't just the question of an eccentric old man. It's a question all civilizations face, and there's nothing frivolous about it when a dying culture sees it has no answers. Naturally, (profiting from the course of collapse) Nazis, Mafias, CIA, KGB and other boards and syndicates all have walk-on parts. All all all only to be topped and toppled by the inexorable expansion of the white light of Margaras (Skt.). The cat Margaras is the agent of total awareness and observation. Break this book open at any page and be amazed.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A repetition..., April 4 2002
By A Customer
Long after most of his beat friends had bitten the dust, Bill Burroughs kept plugging away, eventually holed up in a modest house in Lawrence, Kansas, still sharing his "apocalyptic vision" with the world.If only that vision had continued to evolve over the last, say, forty years. The main criticism of this, and almost every Burroughs work since "Naked Lunch" will be that his vision never grew past its initial basic idea: that modern social relations were still primitivistic, and that a better way could be found through extreme aloofness, suspicion, homosexuality. Cultivate a mercenary personality and share it with only your best boyfriend. Could Burroughs write a simple love-story that touched the heart -- I guess we'll never know, because it seems, since the promise of "queer" he never again tried. What we have here is the same space-age, doomsday meltdown that Burroughs has been writing since his first cut-up. Sure, he's added the odd touch (the postulation of seven souls, The vague Western Lands themselves) but he repeats himself constantly, right down to the phrasing, and imagery. Chronic social-disgust does not great art make. Yes, he still has the ability to shock in a dignified way, a cool quirk and nicely done, old boy. I'd pick this one up for one reason only: to watch a writer die. He wrote his death with this one, and you can achieve a degree of morbid satisfaction through its last 50-60 pages, as the writer withers away. But by then he's done nothing but avoid writing a fresh novel, by his consistent desertion of the storyline. If he sees it fresh, why can't he do a better job relaying it to the reader? Still, this guy died alone surrounded by a bunch of cats. That has its appeal, after all. Buy it after Junky, Queer, Naked Lunch, and the rest of the trilogy, but before you venture in cut-up territory. If you must.
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