5.10.2009

One reason I love Burroughs so

This, from The Place of Dead Roads, just makes me smile deep inside while laughing out loud — the exquisite language with the relentlessly keen turn of phrase; the lists of impossible things, as if Borges had taken many more — and stranger — drugs; the surprising qualifications; the eloquence of multivalence:

"Kim is a slimy, morbid youth of unwholesome proclivities with an insatiable appetite for the extreme and the sensational. His mother had been into table-tapping and Kim adores ectoplasm, crystal balls, spirit guides and auras. He wallows in abominations, unspeakable rites, diseased demon lovers, loathsome secrets imparted in a thick slimy whisper, ancient ruined cities under a purple sky, the smell of unknown excrements, the musky sweet rotten reek of the terrible Red Fever, erogenous sores suppurating in the idiot giggling flesh. In short, Kim is everything a normal American boy is taught to detest. He is evil and slimy and insidious. Perhaps his vices could be forgiven him, but he is also given to the subversive practice of thinking. He was in fact incurably intelligent."

2 comments:

V said...

Someone once described a live Jimmy Hendrix performance as necessarily erotic - not sexualized, but erotic: thrilling down into the bowels, creating an irresistible urge to be part of it while propelling you deeper into life, into experience. That's Burroughs, time and time again.

jimbobway32 said...

This also is from The Place of Dead Roads I believe:

"He can feel Sinki's face nuzzling in like a red-haired wolf and Sinki's long thin pointed dick sticking up against his stomach and the two eyes one blue and one brown and the look out of them different and the sauna seemed to open up and he sawed red lights on the skyline like a forest fire at night and he knowed it was the North Lights from a picture in geography it's a wonder of nature."

I just LOVE his pacing here. I think Uncle Bill's trying to convey the fact that Kim's having an orgasm with his jumbled, breathy pace. This book, in particular, is REALLY special and unique even to the author. I could see how someone might not really like Burroughs, but could love this particular book.

The Posture of Things

You're shopping for a chair. As you browse the aisles, you note the variety — from backless computer chairs to high bar stools to plush ...