what john berger's "ways of seeeing" does for our perceptions of the high-art visuallandscape, ben weissman's "dear dead person" does for the idiosyncratic daily events of life. what might first be pawned off as perverse becomes familiar and real, even to the most plain and ordinary white collared man who happens to own a dog and enjoy cookies. a very pleasant read that has much more boiling beneath the surface than the "fun" element that pervades each short story.

This book is NOT for the faint of heart. Easily the most twisted, funny, sick tome I've ever had the perverse pleasure of reading. A gem! A friend of mine first picked it up and was reading it while we were traveling - he kept rolling his eyes, gasping, groaning and laughing. I had to find out what the hoopla was all about. If you enjoy dark black humor and having the boundries pushed, read this book. It is a collection of short stories, each seemingly in worst taste than the previous. Amazing, disgusting and hilarious. Murder, mayhem, incest, cruelty and severe psychosis are the staples of Dear Dead Person. Weissman is truly one sick puppy - he would have been jailed or lynched for writing this 50 years ago! Read this book (and then rent the movie "Man Bites Dog")...and don't tell your psychologist.

One of the scenarios has--ah, I can't tell you

The one book by William S. Burroughs you should buy. The unique genius that William truly was-yes, indulgent, odd and unsettling at 80, but how great it would have been to have known him young and probably pretty in 1950-is best understood with the direction of J. Grauerholz, although a bourgeois beatnik, for sure, who did love him and is the world expert on him. Ira Silverberg is a true young publishing genius, the new Ferlinghetti, and most responsible for the book. My earlier review I withdraw. Although true, it did not reflect the genius and truth of William-and Jack, Allen, Anne, Philip, Lawrence, Gregory, Gary, even Neal and Huncke, et al. View their literature with a full and clear understanding of their weaknesses and that we, the readers, are almost certain to have less ability to 'drive-on' pass the drugs, sex, parties, confusion-to produce as they could or can. At least be warned. A lot of souls have been lost on the beat road.

Every book that anyone owns will, upon reflection, remind them of the period of their life in which they read the book. Sort of like music.

If I look at my bookcase, I can run my eyes over the spines of a hundred or so spines, and by extension, a hundred or so feelings given to me from those books.

'Word Virus' is by no means an exception to this rule. If anything, it proves it. Simply due to its extensiveness, and the complexity (or stupidity depending on how you look at it) of Burroughs' writing, it took me a few months to hack through in my final year of high school. Even now, the glaring red spine amongst my other books manages to evoke my feelings of that time even now.

But by god it's worth it. There is nothing more frightening than Burroughs' prose. Everything he writes cannot be understood intellectually, but rather emotionally. You read his words, trying to make head or tail of what is printed in front of you, but that's not the point. You just have to let his ideas, his experiments simply wash over you and you'll understand them in due course.

A true shining light in literature.

Belive the myth.

A very exspansive and definitive collection for the Burroughs enthusist. This does not have it all, but it does offer a generous portion of this man's work. Including the forementioned, in the other reviews, colaboration with Jack Kerouac. Grauerholz really put togther this labor of love. I'd recomend it for first timers as well as old time collectors. Inbetween each chapter biographical information pertinent to that era is included. Also features a cd spoken word sampler, that pulls material from the Giornio boxed set. I'd also recomend that hefty delight.

I've read several books by Indian authors and I am also of Indian descent, and I can say unequivocally that this is the worst book with an Indian theme that I have ever read. First it is incoherently paced with a lot of unnecessary coincidence and forced dialogue. The characters are not well defined, and new characters are either introduced or killed based on what is convenient for the plot. I also believe it is an inaccurate depiction of Indian life as well as growing up with Indian parents in the US. There is no sort of resolution in the book - no sense of what the characters have learned, how they've grown, what has changed them. All we know is that the central character is happy to be back in the US but annoyed that her ex-boyfriend has moved on.

If you want to read a truly good book that has Indian life and community as its backdrop, try Jhumpa Lahiri, or Chitra Divakaruni, or Manil Suri, or Rohinton Mistry, or the countless other Indian actors who deserve to be published far more than Ameena Meer

This book explores the lives of the children of two Indian Muslim brothers - one a famous Bollywood actor/lip syncer and the other, a professional settled in Boston. The set up and the parallel stories made the book a page turner but ultimately the characters were one dimensional and unrealistic. Also, the white/American characters are particularly badly written (they're portrayed as culture-less party boys and girls). For more interesting Pan-South Asian stories about those who grew up outside of India, try Meera Syal's books.

This is a breezy popular novel and great read with many insights into navigating the conflicts of Indian-American identity. An Indian-American returns to India and learns more about her country and herself. The story moves fast and entertainingly, and its affecting sensational content dramatises our understanding of the character's conflicts with superb insight. Such cross-cultural differences as sexual identity and male-female relationships are delineated with acuity and power. A scene of widow-burning, for example, brings home the senseless cruelty of this Indian practise with searing effect. The novel's depiction of upper-class dilemmas -- the worlds it reveals are those of the affluent well-born -- are particularly well-drawn, with appealing and entertaining wit. A must-read.