don@allegra.UUCP (D. Mitchell) (07/11/84)
Since William Burroughs has come up, I thought I would collect a few amusing samples of his prose that I had marked. These are collected from Naked Lunch, Exterminator, Cities of the Red Night, and The Wild Boys. And now Tia Maria, retired fat lady from a traveling carnival, comes out onto the lower balcony supporting her vast weight on two canes. She looks up at Fernandez and her sad brown eyes pelt him with chocolates. ------------------------ He has discovered the simple and basic Discipline of DE. DO EASY. Knives forks and spoons flash through his fingers and tinkle into drawers. He moves through the sitting room a puff of air form his cupped hand delicately lifts a cigarette ash from the table and wafts it into a wastebasket. Don't try for speed at first it will come his fingers will rustle through the wallet with a touch light as dead leaves and crinkle discreetly the note that will bribe a South American customs official into overlooking a shrunk-down head. ------------------------ People hang from balconies, trees, and poles. Even horses are hauled into the air, kicking and farting, while boys prance around them, showing their teeth in mimicry. ------------------------ ...'Come back, kid! Come back!' and follows his boy right into the East River, down through condoms and orange peels, mosaic of floating newspapers, down into the silent black ooze with gangsters in concrete ------------------------ "We friends, yes?" The shoe shine boy put on his hustling smile and looked into the Sailor's dead, cold, undersea eyes, eyes without a trace of warmth or lust or hate or any feeling the boy had experienced in himself or seen in another, at once cold and intense, impersonal and predatory. The Sailor leaned forward and put a finger on the boy's inner arm at the elbow. He spoke in his dead junky whisper. "With veins like that, Kid, I'd have myself a time!" ------------------------ Nurse: "Adrenaline doctor?" Benway: "The night porter shot it all up for kicks." He looks around and picks up one of those rubber vacuum cups on the end of a stick they use to unstop toilets. . . .He advances on the patient.. . . ."Make an incision, Doctor Limpf," he says to his appalled assistant. . . . "I'm going to massage the heart."
mike@smu.UUCP (07/13/84)
#R:allegra:-259200:smu:11300005:000:685 smu!mike Jul 13 14:20:00 1984 Some notes for any true Burroughs fan: See the documentary film recently released about WSB. This film contains fascinating footage of Burroughs and various of his pals chatting about old times. Truly worth seeing. Read the book ``With William Burroughs'' by Charles Bockris (Charles? I forget). This book contains all sorts of interesting interviews with Burroughs and an incredible array of famous and almost-famous people, ranging from Susan Sontag to Debbie Harry. Try hard to see WSB in person. He is very entertaining. Seeing the film and buying albums of him reading is close, but there's nothing like the real thing. Mike McNally allegra!convex!smu!mike