Last night I finished up with Nick Hornby's Songbook (highly recommended for music addicts)...so off to the "To Be Read" pile. On the top was the recently purchased The Adding Machine by William S. Burroughs. In the first essay, entitled "The Name Is Burroughs", his early ideas of what writers were supposed to be like:
- As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.
Uh...OK.
So this got me to thinkin' about the time I rented Naked Lunch. My reaction to it was: "Wha...?". This was a little different when compared to my reaction to the book, which was: "Wha...???".
Anyway...the soundtrack, by Howard Shore (and executed by the London Philharmonic) and Ornette Coleman, is an entirely different thing. There are certainly a few "what the?!" moments in it (such as Coleman and Prime Time popping up right in the middle of some orchestration) but, compared to Burroughs "cut-up" method, this stuff is almost Kind Of Blue.
(First posted on Mark Is Cranky)
Article comments
1 - Tom Johnson
Hornby's Songbook is another book being added to the growing pile of must-reads. I read a few pages of it at Borders a couple weeks back and thought that even if I didn't care for the songs he wrote about, the truths he spoke about being obsessed with music were universal.
As for Burroughs, I haven't really gotten into him, but haven't bought a book and forced myself to really get into it either. What I've thumbed through seemed just a tad too weird for my reading tastes . . . but it was intriguing. I do, however, look forward every year to hearing his gentle tale of "Junkie's Christmas." Santa and heroin . . . there's not much more heartwarming than that.
2 - Eric Olsen
I read "Naked Lunch" on an idyllic clipper ship cruise along the coast of Maine over 25 years ago, and the juxtaposition between the trip and the book nearly caused an out of body experience. If you can go with the stream of consciousness flow, the abject degeneracy, the nihilism, the degradation, it's almost charming.
3 - Mark Saleski
it's not often you see the words "burroughs" and "charming" so close together on the same page.
4 - JR
Yeah, I've been to four of NYC's five boroughs, and charming isn't quite the word.
5 - Eric Olsen
"I've been to Bakersfield twice and four county fairs/but I've never seen a woman like that anywhere"