Lenny Bruce of Literature

...In this later book Burroughs has clearly decided that these abilities are not crucial The book hits no lower than the cortex, although infrequently he does give in and permit himself a feint at the tinny-bone "Glob glob glob" "I presume that is pulp talk for yes " It is nothing like the glorious old days The zestful appeal of Naked Lunch is sadly gone Science, suspect there (witness Dr Ben-way), has come to have far greater worth here Burroughs seems to be more than ever under the spell of chemistry, medicine, recording technology, they have almost assumed a value for their own sake He saw fit to include as a postscript a long-lash manual for get the most out of your tape recorder...

...In any discussion of Burroughs there is an ugly specter abroad, the fear that Burroughs, because he is offbeat and vaguely futuristic, may turn out to have anticipated things to come Either the times well bend to him or he has seen the outcome of current dilemmas Therefore, tread lightly, be wary of the haggard seer It is difficult to understand why Burroughs is so disquieting for this particular reason when much better ones exist, if he accepts the role of prophet it is only because the gambit has been forced upon him...

...Bradley Mr...

...Those who see Burroughs' idio-synciasies as augury might argue that the tunes have already caught up with him Marshall McLuhan, with his slogan, "The medium is the message," appears to have provided a philosophical tether for Burroughs' writing And the un-rules of the new Hippy arts—• music, lighting, participative sculpture, apparel, poster arts—sseems to parallel the rough-and-ready style Burroughs promoted 15 years ago But just the converse is true In many ways the times have outstripped him...

...It's all done with recorders," Burroughs inserts into a speech near the end of this book Things were better when the old gentleman did it with mirrors...

...Martin's elegy on the last page "I am the stale Billy " The Ticket That Exploded is a poor relative of Burroughs' masterpiece...

...acne, Burroughs' ghoulish voice is heard saying, "Play it back in the streets You must not deviate tromp these instructions Play it back m the streets " Next comes a jumble of mechanically modified street sounds, then the voice again this time in a lower more sinister register "That's how the word gets around " The word without association lines, we assume In this book, as in Nova Express and The Soft Machine, Bui roughs is resolutely prodding us to examine the tyranny of language It is an admirable cause, though one slightly mired by the fact that his own replies to this concern have been unsatisfying Whether it is his aim or not, Burroughs creates a word environment much like, say, the lighting environments of the Hippies at the other pole For some, at least, the Hippies have managed to produce catharsis, they have gone beyond technique to art Burroughs' method-ridden prose denies this satisfaction, either because of his inability to breathe life into his theories or because language contains innate resistance to such exploitation and the theories are therefore unworkable He leaves his readers speculating instead of feeling—a mistake for an artist...

...A reader who troubles to work his way twice through Naked Lunch will find it difficult to forget a whole phalanx of the most startling characters in literature Years later, Dr Ben way will still be performing his mad operations, the purple-assed baboon will continue to be ejected from the restaurant, Willy the Disk will oblige the narcosis again and again As eccentric as the style first appears, in the end Burroughs has convinced us it is the only way of putting forth characters so perverse, routines so outrageously comic, outlooks so brazenly undisciplined The start point of it all, remember was the attempt to delight his friends Burroughs supposed an audience of people who could be touched by his obvious genius at tabulation and his carefully metered talent with satire He knew how to keep them on their toes...

...Burroughs is not gaming when he fashions his pages He is deadly sober, dedicated to the point of being exhortative, about his efforts with recording devices and word mixing Behind the one-time satirist still lurks the reformer On a tape-letter he once sent to an acquaint...

...What The Ticket That Exploded does have is technique—lopts of it Burroughs likes to talk about his theories of language, to give out hints about the prose, which looks so torturous to so many readers Through some alchemy, however, he always manages to equate language with words, and this makes his theories empty at their worst, amateurish at their best "Break down the association lines of words," he harangues, never speaking about what linguists would call levels below the word—mmorphemes, phonemes-nod levels above instructions, sentences, discourses Yet these are all bonds as insidious as the word...

...Lenny Bruce of Literature THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED By William Boroughs Give Press 217 pp $5 00 Reviewed by JIB FOWLES Fete-lance writer and instinct at the New School William Burroughs, the old funnyman, has done it again??still another book report of his ongoing experiments m manner and technique An earlier, slighter version of this book was published m Paris m 1962, it was surely not withheld from the American market for its scatology, which Burroughs has almost single-handedly inured us to through his earlier works Perhaps its belated release is due to a crude sense of spacing on the part of his publishers, or perhaps author or publisher hesitated, sensing the honesty in a line from Mr...

...While both Burroughs and the Hippies have deserted the middle ground of our culture, they have taken quite different exits Burroughs travelled downward into decay and dispersion, yet he always looked back He was the Lenny Bruce of literature, the nasty strength of Naked Lunch comes from satire of the blackest sort The ventures of the Hippies, on the other hand, are upward and without hindsight They have disregarded all else to urge personal (at most tribal, never societal) and spiritual quests, attempts at transcendence which in Eastern religions might lead to a sense of cosmic oneness An analog of their temperament is the successful fusion of several musical styles by popular groups, with the pointed inclusion of Indian music...

...The irony is that Burroughs can do little to alter his own "association lines " The cold, patrician word choices which worked so well for him when he was deadpanning routines in the Naked Lunch make the newer book more spiritless than it need be Being less cogent, The Ticket That Exploded could certainly have used a fresher vocabulary to take up the slack...

...amount of publicity, are certainly offensive in theory, the mark of a talentless book-maker—tHough he protests that his cut-up units have been carefully selected Burroughs' writing, though, is somewhat more successful than his theories and devices would indicate In The Ticket That Exploded the product of his cut-up techniques (if they were actually used then, and I assume they were) is not noxious, for the segments which appear are less than haphazard In fact, there is little which is not topical, a rehearsal of the vocabulary that is to come or has been seen before "Open white shirt," for example (which I imagine gleaned from matched columns of the St Louis Post-Dispatch), continually pops up and begins to take on an odd, pleasing relevance And while Burroughs huffs and puffs about words alone, his writing reveals an intuitive knowledge of larger language units (if not of smaller units) that he constantly manipulates What Burroughs is trying to do is not to destroy the "association lines of words" but to keep all language from being taken over by the enemy—the bureaucracies, in particular He rips language out of their hands, the words and clauses may suffer tor it but they do belong to him afterward...

...In the Hindu terms Hippies like to toy with, they are Vicinities while Burroughs is the grossest Saliva Burroughs' demeaning heroin experiences can be readily contrasted with the Hippies' use of less toxic and more elating drugs Burroughs' sardonic railing attitudes were meaty enough in the '40s and early '50s, when all could agree that mankind was its own worst enemy and should be taught a thing or two, but they were bad esthetic prophesy and are rapidly becoming incidental to present-day art Burroughs realizes the latest turns, he scans the newspapers In a recent article he tried to discuss...

...Burroughs tends to be incomprehensible about the next step It is easy to conclude that his proclamations about language are absurd and, if we are already prejudiced against his style, just more gunk Beyond this, his cut-up techniques, which have received an unnecessary...

...personal redemption and salvation for the "young folks," although he encased it in a lecture about drug misuse Something akin to this kind of second thought has effectively neutralized The Ticket That Exploded It is almost as if Burroughs felt he had made the wrong wager m Naked Lunch and subsequently wanted to cover his bets If this is true, then he is mistaken, he has surrendered the vitriolic stance he exploited so well in Naked Lunch before finding anything to replace it He no longer works at eliciting laughter or indignation, neither does he dare go soaring with the youngsters Maybe he is simply getting old and milder No matter what the causes, the book lacks vim, and decisively so...

...Junkie aside, Burroughs' intentions have not been those of a "writer" He is probably as chary of that label as he is of "prophet" —or he certainly should be By report, Naked Lunch derived from letters sent to various friends, including everyone's friend, Allen Ginsburg The letters contained hilarious anecdotes, "routines" Magnificent and scabrous play lets, the products of a corrupt adult life (which was the basis of the earlier and straightforward Junkie) and a devious imagination, they were strung together to make the backbone of the book...

...Naked Lunch...

...Having launched his attack on words...