yeah yeah i know there are so many mad geniuses in the beat movement. burroughs however is the godfather of all. this book is the bible of burroughs interviews as well as his thought. there are a few interviews with his other beat cronies but most of them are just naked burroughs. some of the interviews are a little dry but i wouldn't cut a one of them.few could write with more imagination than w.s. and even less could say it better or be more thoughtful or provacative. god i miss him. to read burroughs is to never again think the same. what freud and jung etal claimed to know of the psyche only burroughs truly explored.long may he wave. i highly recommend this book. then after you get this read then tackle is compilation word virus

Very interesting book by the son of the guy that wrote Naked Lunch. The son is also a junky and he ends up in a rehap institute. A nice discussion of the life of a junky and a new perspective on the after-effects of the beat generation without being judgmental or the least bit preachy. While it's not high literature, it is very well written and worth a chance.

Tytell's book Naked Angels is divided into three sections, one each for Jack Kerouac, A. Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. Each section can be read independently of the others, for those just interested in one writer.

I was most interested in the chapter on Burroughs, and here is an appraisal:

A short introductory chapter on Burroughs gives biographical background. The Burroughs section of Naked Angels is entitled "The Black Beauty of William Burroughs," and is a 29-page exploration of Burroughs' writing, with useful comparisons to other writers, such as Poe, Baudelaire, and Nabokov. Tytell analyzes the work Burroughs published from 1953-1973, omitting or including only the slightest references to minor works. Early works which went unpublished for years, such as Queer and Interzone, are not discussed. The book has an index and bibliography. Tytell's book is not wholly given over to Burroughs, but as an introduction to the writer, it serves as well as any other.

If you have read the section on Naked Angels dealing with Burroughs, and you are eager for a more complete investigation of his life, turn to Ted Morgan's book LITERARY OUTLAW, which I believe to be the most thorough and fascinating biography of Burroughs.

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Burroughs got used to being a black sheep early in his life, one gets the feeling. So he's willing to throw rocks at anyone. Certainly, an author whose main readership must have been well on the left had a lot of balls to go and rip the skin off that most untouchable of liberal sacred cows, Franklin Roosevelt.

In this book of short essays, Burroughs demonstrates not only his scathing gift for wild satire, but also his striking intelligence and insight. His essay SECTS AND DEATH begins with the incisive proposal that the purpose of art is to show us "what we know and do not know that we know." He sells this idea fairly convincingly in about two paragraphs, and those goes on to the main target of the piece, the Church and other cults, whose mission (he claims) is to prevent us from becoming aware of "what we know and do not know that we know."

The title piece is an hilarious and deeply offensive recounting of how FDR filled the government with typical Burroughs fantasy-characters, the most frightening kind of human dregs. (If you ever wondered where Hunter S. Thompson came from, this piece ought to convince you that he is Burroughs literary off-spring.)

In between, he zips off a little reminisence about when he decided he did NOT want to be president (before birth)...

It is Burroughs at his best: sober, coherent, and still utterly untamable. Needless to say, this stuff is not for the faint of heart.

Get ready for the reissue of Charles Gatewood's 1975 classic, Sidetripping! Gatewood was begining to explore the edges in the late 60s and early 70s, lurking alongside any events happening on the city streets: protests, marches, fairs, parades, celebrations. New Orleans and NYC provided moist atmospheres for expression, much of that 'caught' here by Gatewood. While on assignment for Rolling Stone in London, Gatewood got to hang with Burroughs and Gysin. That meeting fruited into Burroughs providing the text. To compliment the images perfectly, read the words in your head using Burroughs distinctive, grating rasp.

Skerl's book is a volume in the Wayne's United States Authors Series. This slender volume is an attempt to write a reader-friendly introduction to Burroughs' writing and a non-specialist's analysis of Burroughs' literature, as well as to delineate Burroughs' spot in the larger canon, our outside it. It is well written and would serve as an excellent source to supplement Ted Morgan's biography LITERARY OUTLAW.

Skerl's thesis is that Burroughs' fiction is an expression oriented within hipsterism as a world-view. The book has a bibliography and an index. Bibliography also includes a selection of journal articles the author finds of value.

All in all, this would be a nice supplement to LITERARY OUTLAW by Ted Morgan, if the reader wishes to have a reasonable academic analysis of some of Burroughs' fiction.

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A book consisting largely of senseless, desultory, inept prurience. Save for Burroughs and Ballard, the editors presume much in claiming for these nobodies a place approaching the original Lovecraft's style and wit. No Bloch or Clark Ashton Smith here, these are all lurid, incontinent emulators of weird fiction, and undeserving of that rubric. What's curious is that Lovecraft influenced many a great author, from Michel Houellebecq to Will Self. Why be laden with posers and third-raters? I returned this book with in 24hrs. or receiving it. Buyer be warned.

This anthology, overall, is IMHO quite horrible. There are so many disgusting sexual references and appearances of excrement that one wonders if it was a requirement for the stories' acceptance for the book... In particular, "Walpurgisnachtmusik" brings to mind the ludicrous over-use of the [f word] in the first 10 minutes of Tarantino's "From Dusk Till Dawn."

The ONLY reason I don't condemn it entirely is that there ARE a few good things in here. Most notable is Coulthart's graphical adaptation of "The Call of Cthulhu," an excellent adaptation indeed. Some others stand out- Lumley's "The Night Sea-Maid Went Down" (a reprint, admittedly), Conway's "Black Static" (just ignore the unpleasantness at either end), Webb's "The Sound of a Door Opening," Moore's "The Courtyard" (again, dodge the few unpleasant bits, which seem especially superfluous here), and Mitchell's "Ward 23." Campbell's "Potential" is tolerably good, as well.

In short, if you can buy this book cheap, it's probably worth it; otherwise, give it a pass until you CAN find it cheap. If nothing else, buy it for the Coulthart segment, the one part that Lovecraft might have truly considered a tribute...

Within the confines of Lovecraftian tributes there are sometimes successes that combine elements of the fantastical with the bizarre, mixed results that couple the failings of one author with the successes of another, or - in the most rare instances - there are failures that can be found utterly without merit. These are the wonderful worlds that we throw ourselves into whenever purchasing a set of names attributed to a larger creator, and its something I normally fear because I've touched the eye of the proverbial oven one too many times. Still, within The Starry Wisdom, you have something of the middle man of the bunch, giving you pieces of the lore that are actually well-written and concise, as well as pieces that have no redeeming qualities, however. Unfortunately that is the lifeblood of many collected pieces, however, and everything has to be taken as such because of this. Happily, though, I have to say that there are some things in the book that I wouldn't want to be without.

Of all the stories within the chronicled tales here, there is an artistic adaptation of Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu done by John Coulthart that is immaculately done. The quality of the work is fantastic and captures the visions within the madness so very well. Few things merit praise as much as this does, and it truly makes the book worth buying by itself. Still, there are other noteable contributions that add to this as well, including a little Robert M. Price (A Thousand Young), some Brian Lumley (The Night Sea-Maid Went Down), David Conway (Black Static), Ramsey Campbell (Potential), William S. Burroughs (Wind Die, You Die, We Die) and a little Allan Moore (The Courtyard). There are also pieces from Grant Morrison (Lovecraft in Heaven), James Havoc and Mike Philbin (Third Eye Butterfly), Henry Wessel (From This Swamp), JG Ballad (Prisoner of the Coral Deep), Dan Kellet (Red Mass), Simon Whitechapel (Walpurgisnachtmusik), DF Lewis (Meltdown), John Beal (Beyond Reflection), CG Brandrick and DM Mitchell (The Exquisite Corpse), Micheal Gira (Extracted From the Mouth of the Consumer, Rotting Pig), Adele Olivia Glawell (Hypothetical Materfamalias), Don Webb (The Sound of a Door Opening), Rick Grimes (Pills Fro Miss Betsy), Peter Smith (The Dreamers in Darkness), Stephen Sennitt (Nails), and DM Mitchell (Ward)that can be hit-or-miss depending on what you demand from your authors. Many of these titles have come and gone through various books in the past, some more than others, and there are many that I really didn't like in the set. Still, the illustrated portion of the book was done in ways that made it seems so wondrously worth obtaining and I'm glad I put it into my collection because of it.

For fans of HP Lovecraft's works, then you might want to look into these titles - provided that you don't own them already. I would also suggest picking it up because of the reason I listed before, noting that the illustrated portions of the book are something done in the most commendable of ways. Even if you aren't a fan of Lovecraft but you love some of the things doe with his ideas, then this would be worth at least looking into because of the tendrils making sweet music in the background of nightmarish dreams. To a point, depending on your ownership already, it comes recommended.

Hyatt has canned another ham for his pantry. The Iraqi Information Minister is more credible. Unfortunately associating yourself with 'Cool' people isn't enough to convince people you are likewise 'Cool.' Ignorance is luminous. So remember, if you hear a quiet 'Aye' in the dark side of your mind, it might not be the Fonz. It could be this guy trying to sell you another sad book.

An excellent collection of essays on psychology, rebellion, magick and more.

Do you treasure freedom like I do?

Rebels and Devils is a compendium of delightful madness and rebellion, a tome of playful but serious insurgence and individualism that upholds many of the raucous and wise tenets of freedom upon which this great country (U.S.) was founded.

If you like excessive government control and the systematic suppression of our basic inalienable rights, then please stay away. If you treasure the outdated notions that socialism is good for liberals and good for us all then go chew on something else.

If you want highly intelligent, incisive delivery of facts and figures and experiential methods for achieving more freedom, then read this book!

If you are proud to be an intelligent American or any other creature of independent thought and action, then you must have a copy in your library and read it often.

All the best...

This is the script for a very cool movie, that (to the best of my knowledge) does not exist. I enjoyed it although this is not a novel-it is just a movie script. I never have read a complete film script before, and was pleased with how straightforward this was. The text is very detailed, with action and sound separated into two columns on each page. Pictures of the characters are included as well, with a identification key appearing in the end. The story is captivating: a real mob boss is dying, and a police stenographer records what he has to say. Burroughs expatiates upon this actual account with a more or less linear fictional interpretation of Dutch's rise to power during the Prohibition. This would be a better movie- just not quite as cutting edge anymore, unless room for additional experimentation is allowed. Overall a very light and simple read, I finished this in two short sittings. If you are a fan of Burroughs I strongly encourage you to read this, it is much more approachable than some of his novels.

In his final journals, Burroughs spoke forebodingly of the "pure killing purpose" which characterized his formative influences, of the hammer-blow "realism" which Conrad or Stendhal seemed to have in spades, the power of an author to grab the reader by the throat and put them in an imaginary world more real than our burnt-out sphere could ever sustain, and this in only a few words, a scrap of dialogue, a well-honed descriptive fragment. Burroughs' own wager with such intense literary economy involved many volumes of spasmodic hit-and-miss fragmentary visions, a cine-fantastique for television-shrunk minds, moments of intense brilliance and humor rising from a frostbitten plain of cold narrative tundra. But *Dutch Schultz* is startling in its word-for-word attention-grabbing coherence, its creeping aura of sustained criminal imagination, not to mention the closest Burroughs ever came to writing a fiction of mounting suspense, one of the most idiosyncratic "potboilers" you will ever read.

Arthur Flegenheimer (a.k.a. Dutch Schultz) was gunned down in the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey in October 1935. Though he survived only two days after the shooting, a police stenographer was stationed at his bedside to record any incriminating evidence relating to the identity of his assassin(s). What was recorded in lieu of legal testimony was the fevered ramblings of the dying gangster, a "cut-up" of his youth and delinquent upbringing, his bloody rise to becoming Gotham's #1 racketeer, paroxysms of rage and grief at such a dark and brutal life. Happily for this reader, the obscurantism of the Burroughsian cut-up is constantly reworked into wonderful "dramatic" sequences, brass-knuckled wiseguy folklore soaked in the moneyed carnage of the mean streets.

Perhaps Burroughs' lack of explicit Control metaphors here (the Nova Mob, the Black Meat, et al.) made this text convenient for academic criticism to overlook, which is a shame, since it is one of his best shorter works, second only to *Ghost of Chance*(1991). The Arcade edition which I'm reviewing here, with its disquieting graphic design (headlines and period photographs of gangster-era Gotham City and environs), amplifies the text to a chilling degree, sending the reader on greased rails into the black-and-white phantasmagoria of 1930's American gangland.

Burroughs' script will never be filmed, of course, yet will always linger as an inspiration to overcome such contemporary disappointments as 1991's *Billy Bathgate*, where Dustin Hoffman as Dutch Schultz was surely great casting, but hardly a compensation for the film's slick expurgation of dirt-under-the-fingernails spittoon-juice gangster grunge.

This book is shallow and pretentious, the literary equivalent of a wine-and-cheese eater at a Soho gallery who cares more about being seen with the art crowd than exploring art. Caveney is the wine sipper, Burroughs the unfortunate artwork buried beneath Caveney's oh-so avant garde style. Rather than providing insight or information about his fascinating subject, Caveney pastes together a collage of hackneyed Burroughs images, and a few airy snippets of idolatrous prose. I got more pleasure from imagining how exciting a decent biography of Burroughs would be, than from reading this awful book.

Caveney's Gentleman Junkie, published in the United Kingdom under the title The Priest They Called Him, is the MTV Video of the Burroughs biographies.

The layout of the book is visually stunning, often placing images of Burroughs' paintings, Burroughs himself, Burroughs' friends, or collages of his work underneath, behind, along with, or beside the text. If you've read the Barry Miles biography of Burroughs, or Literary Outlaw by Ted Morgan, there is nothing here in the pre-1980 material that you haven't read already.

The chief virtue of Gentleman Junkie is the remarkable layout, which makes the book an artwork unto itself. The secondary virtue lies in the fact that it was published in 1998, many years after the Morgan and Miles biographies, and thus includes some info on an era those works missed. A list of Burroughs' works is appended, as is a skeletal index.

While this book is interesting to look at, I would recommend Ted Morgan's book LITERARY OUTLAW as a better biography of Burroughs.

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An excellent introduction to the life and work of American artist William Burroughs, it's especially notable for the beautiful design which incorporates snapshots, artifacts such as hat-cleaning receipts and Army reports, and washes of Burroughs' shotgun paintings which background each textured-paper page. This substantial hardback is reminiscent of Burroughs' own scrapbooks and penchant for the pastiche, its look and feel mimicking the experiments in randomness-- cut-ups and ballistics-- which (in)formed so much of his work. It is foremost a visual, tactile, and olfactory (new it smells like crayons) treat. The New York Times called this "an empty book," which is reason enough to love it. It's a pop biography, a primer on the grand-daddy of the beats. It's not deep, but as eye candy it's neat.