[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Genesis Angels: The Saga of Lew Welchlege provided the grist for much of the discon- and the Beat Generation.New York: Morrow, 1979.tent with urban America that would figure soprominently in the poet s mature work.In the Rod Phillips Western Lands, The 343The explanation of the seven souls providesWestern Lands, The William S.Burroughsa map of the book.In the opening storyline, Bur-(1987)roughs searches for an identity for his main char-The Western Lands is the final volume of WILLIAM S.BURROUGHS s cut-up trilogy that also includes CIT- acter, starting out with Carl Peterson and thenswitching to Kim Carsons.The setting is Berlin inIES OF THE RED NIGHT (1981) and The PLACE OFthe postwar period, where Kim becomes involvedDEAD ROADS (1984).In his acknowledgments, hewith an underground group known as Margarascredits Norman Mailer s Ancient Evenings (1983)for inspiration. Burroughs must have been ex- Unlimited, a secret service without a country, that specializes in disrupting the plans of the vic-cited to discover in Mailer s book a cosmologytor nations and wealthy ex-Nazis.Their agenda isthat was so close to his own personal mythology,space exploration, inner and outer, and expandingfor through Mailer s description of Egyptian mythand ritual, Burroughs was able to recast his previ- awareness. Anything that goes against such devel-opment we will extirpate. Margaras Unlimited,ous work in a new and vital form.There must notonly have been recognition here but also valida- then, closely resembles the Articulated of Cities ofthe Read Night and the Johnson Family of The Placetion, and Burroughs takes some pains to show theof Dead Roads.ways in which his own ideas from the past 40 yearsBurroughs introduces a new character, Joe theof writing find their counterparts in the knowledgeDead, who, it turns out, was the gunman who shotof the ancients.Kim Carsons and Mike Chase at the end of TheIn Egyptian mythology the Western Lands isPlace of Dead Roads.Joe is a Technician, the secondwhere the soul lives on after death.The old writersoul.He killed Mike Chase and Kim Carsons be-who was introduced at the beginning of the novel sets out to write his way out of death a strat- cause both were responsible, directly and indirectly,for the death of photographer Tom Dark, one ofegy that Burroughs adopted quite consciously afterJoe s fellow guild members.He personally dislikedthe tragedy of his wife Joan s death in 1951.In hisKim because he is an arty type, no principle andresearch on death, he learns (in Mailer s Ancientalso because of Kim s fascination with antiquatedEvenings) that the Egyptians believed that thereweaponry. Mike Chase was going to be president,were seven souls and that each soul is personified.These personifications, it turns out, closely resem- which would have been a disaster.Joe the Dead isa member of a select group that is known as Natu-ble the sci-fi cosmology that Burroughs had createdral Outlaws and is dedicated to breaking the lawson his own.For example, the first soul (Ren) isvery much like Burroughs s Director, the second of science.Joe specializes in breaking the laws ofsoul (Sekem) the Director s sometimes recalcitrant evolutionary biology: first, that only closely related Technician, and so on.The body corresponds to species may produce hybrids and, second, that mu-Burroughs s favorite disaster metaphor the sink- tations are irreversible.He is also an eco-warrioring ship and souls are deserting the ship as they who is fighting the destruction of the rainforest.Inleave the body.In this they resemble the Italian all respects, then, he is an updated, 20th-centurysteward who put on women s clothes and so filched version of Kim and the Johnsons.a seat in a lifeboat in Burroughs s various retell- Nerferti, an Egyptian scribe, is introducedings of the sinking of the Titanic and the Morro as a character who is supposed to bring drasticCastle (such as Twilight s Last Gleaming ).The change, to the world.His writings, however, are Venusian invasion of Burroughs s mythology is a shot down by enemy critics backed by computerizedtakeover of the souls. The ultimate killer of souls, thought control. The world of the book is a magi-says Burroughs, will be the radiation from atomic cal one, and Neferti practices black magic to killblasts, for souls (following the findings of Wilhelm Julian Chandler (based on Anatole Broyard, whoReich) are seen as electromagnetic. That is the savaged The Place of Dead Roads), a book reviewerreal destructive power of the bomb, and it has been for the New York Times who has chosen for hiscreated as a Soul killer to keep a glut of souls out professional rancor the so-called Beat Movement. of the Western Lands.Chandler earns his death by penning a caustic 344 Western Lands, Thereview of William Hall s The Place of Dead Roads knowing God who permits suffering, death. The(Neferti is apparently Hall).See and Prick, two beginning of the pilgrimage to the Western Landsgoons who work for Big Picture (a plan to evacu- is a spiritual awakening that results from the knowl-ate the select few before nova conditions set in), edge that we live in the dead, soulless universe ofare also killed by magic.The cause of their death the One God
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]