The long last goodbye: control and resistance in the work of William Burroughs

Article Abstract:

William Burroughs' fiction explores the control exercised over the body by drugs and over the mind by society. These dual controls affected Burroughs personally because he was a heroin addict and a homosexual whose sexuality was controlled by society. The author-agent in his fiction seeks freedom of the body from parasitic drugs and of the soul from society. However, the ideally free subject can only reach that total freedom from organized society through death which is not transcendable. Therefore, Burroughs' characters never achieve Burroughs' ideal but self-negating freedom.

Society, Drug abuse, Literature, Literature and society, Liberty, Freedom

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Can you see a virus?: The queer cold war of William Burroughs

Article Abstract:

William Burroughs's novel Queer encodes the essential queerness of The Naked Lunch, framing the queer identity in cybernetic terms, and preparing for the works that follow. It is difficult to argue the centrality of Queer as the published text scarcely conceals its exceptional contingency. Queer still has not critical presence as a work in its own right, 10 years after its appearance.

Authors, Writers

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William S. Burroughs's Cities of the Red Night trilogy: Writing outer space

Article Abstract:

Williams S. Burroughs's "Cities of the Red Night" trilogy in relation to space exploration is examined to consider the aspects of the space programs, his fiction on space travel and whether his writing amounts to counter-postmodernism. It is analyzed that Burroughs's mythology provides access repeatedly to the untimely 'outer space' on Earth.

Outer space, Space exploration, Space flight, Burroughs, William Seward, Jr. (American writer, 1947-1981), Critical essay, Cities of the Red Night (Novel)

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