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Summary: "A journey to the outermost boundaries of the skull."
Review: A fascinating story that will stretch your mind. Burroughs is funny, to-the-point, and he has an outstanding sensitivity to smells. Will change you forever.
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Summary: Somewhere on the threshold....
Review: At one time I thought Burroughs was a total fraud. It was my opinion that he was laughing all the way to the bank at the dupes who bought his books- and paid for his habit. Then I sat down and read this book, and _The Place of Dead Roads_, and The Western Lands. I was dead wrong. This is an unique and valid vision. This is modern art in print, designed to rip the mind free from its habitual sleep walking. And that is strange, for this is one prolonged nightmare, or bad trip.... yet, while I was reading this I got this sense of deja vu, like the Cities of the Red Night and a Place of Dead Roads actually exist-somewhere- perhaps on the threshholds of hell, or limbo, or.... even "heaven." Where ever it is, it is a place on the border where only dreams, drugs, or black magic can take you.
Moreover, I think I understand Burroughs place in the beat trilogy. Kerouac was the holy fool who had the capacity to touch on direct union with the Divine. Ginsberg, was the secular humanist, a good man well grounded in the world. Burroughs, however, walked the left hand path, the shadow. Taken together, all three, the holy trinity, were the composite soul of an age.
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Summary: ORGASM OF THE WORD
Review: Burroughs searches in his writing for the same thing he searched for in drug use, sex and the russian roulette games he played with his guns: to try and distill out of an experience the pure essence of what it means to be alive, that single moment of ecstasy when living is made real in a blinding flash. Through graphic imagery of sex and death Burroughs will play you like a miscreant attacking a cathedral pipe organ, pulling out all the stops, feet pounding all the pedals at once, hands stomping the keys, blasting the pipes. In that rush of noise he challenges you to find the whisper of truth. A Liturgy and Scripture for the Damned.
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Summary: ORGASM OF THE WORD
Review: Burroughs searches in his writing for the same thing he searched for in drug use, sex and the russian roulette games he played with his guns: to try and distill out of an experience the pure essence of what it means to be alive, that single moment of ecstasy when living is made real in a blinding flash. Through graphic imagery of sex and death Burroughs will play you like a miscreant attacking a cathedral pipe organ, pulling out all the stops, feet pounding all the pedals at once, hands stomping the keys, blasting the pipes. In that rush of noise he challenges you to find the whisper of truth. A Liturgy and Scripture for the Damned.
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Summary: It's the End of the World...
Review: Burroughs' "Cities of the Red Night" is a feverish glimpse into alternate histories, the end of the world, new forms of government, viral mutations, bizarre slants on ethnicity and the to-be-expected preoccupation with hard drugs and wild sex. Prose style gyrates from first-person hard-boiled sleuth to all-too-believable boardroom monotone. "Cities of the Red Night" is a long and involving opus that squirms its way through myriad plot-lines without collapsing into complete incomprehensibility (although at times it trods perilously close).
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Summary: A Snapping Radioactive Cross-Dressing Turtle of a Book
Review: Cities of the Red Night absolutely crackles. Like an exposed electrified wire. It is true. The language of this book travels like a laser beam. It gallops faster and faster until the final hundred pages which blur by with a pace so frenetic as to almost induce convulsions. The writing is descriptive, Burroughs imagination is honed to fine blade. Various endorsements on the jacket of my version proclaim it be Burroughs best work. Having not read all his works I could not affirm or deny this. However Cities of the Red Night does read like the culmination of years of development. The construction of this tangled web of characters, plots, ideas, and images is so dense as to be almost non-navigatable. Which, I think, is the point. On one level this book seems to be self-indulgent sci-fi comic book porn, but to simply classify it as such would do you and the work a great disservice. However, the fact is, Burrough could WRITE. And write well. In a style wholly different from anyone else. This book forever changed the way I approach writing. It takes the abject, gives it power, reveals its beauty and then runs loose through the streets with a herd of bulldozers.
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Summary: Impressive, though incomplete, tales from the past.
Review: Cities of the Red Night has been hailed as the consummate sequel to Naked Lunch; at first glance the style, tone, and typically hideous imagery would seem to support this. However, there the similarities end. What motives may have gripped the author are unclear, but the general smoothness of the script and kinder degree of readability seem to suggest that he was at his more lucid state of mind when writing this. This is not to say that Red Night is necessarily any better or worse than its precursor - it is coherent, concise, and in places very compelling - but the very fact that there is a traceable plot and storyline will probably surprise those who accustomed to Naked Lunch. Conversely, anyone who picks up this novel in the expectation of an easily understandable yarn is likely to meet an unexpected shock: Red Night is by no means ideal for the conventional taste (it is coherent for Burroughs; it still requires acclimatization). Whilst individual stories weave and occasionally intertwine, the majority of the book is a collage of non- or only vaguely-connected tales. The book begins with a renaissance flavor, concentrating on the machinations of a splinter group of South American rebels against the Evil Empire of the Christian faith. It then takes an unexpected turn for the surreal with a sudden cut to the present: the life of Clem Snide -"Private Asshole"- and various doctors analyzing a mysterious disease. After many somewhat nebulous theories concerning time travel and inter-corporeal experiences, the novel winds up in the waging of climactic battles in long-forgotten cities. Those familiar with Naked Lunch will be at home with the constant themes of homosexuality, drug use, and bizarre death throughout. This time, however, Burroughs attention is no longer focussed upon the life cycle of the junk fiend which won Naked Lunch its cult following - Red Night is a tale of strange cultures, unexplored territories, time travel, and spirit-possessions. Although the occasional familiar ! face is noticed - Dr. Benway, the xiucults, and mugwumps - the majority of Red Night is a departure from the predominantly 'cut-up' style of his other work. Whether this is good or bad is uncertain. Red Night is enjoyable to anyone who enjoyed Naked Lunch, but unlike Naked Lunch it tempts the reader into expecting a definite ending or final realization...a dangerous thing. If there IS a message inherent in the novel, it is likely to be even more difficult to grasp than the fragmented (though clear) storylines, and the reader will be hard pressed to find it. But that is hardly reason enough to condemn the novel- after all, it is a piece of work which makes no explanation for its unworldly nature, nor gives any apologies for its violent and frequently repulsive subject matter.
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Summary: Cities Of The Red Night
Review: Cities Of The Red Night is one of the most enjoyable books I have read. The novel has different storys that as the novel progresses intertwine. The books presents situations that are unbelievable but because of Burroughs genius you are convinced of that they are happening in a world not too far from are own. I think he was trying to show the questionableness of what is presented to us as reality. This book also has some of the most vivid pictures and unforgetable lines that I have read. It is Burroughs masterpiece.
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Summary: Get Out of the Defensive Position
Review: Cities of the Red Night is William Burrough's magnum opus, the most sublime manefestation of his genius. From the opening chapter titles and hallucinatory invocation to the exquisitely fashioned closing dream sequence, each word bears the stamp of the studiously enigmatic visionary stylist. This novel impressed itself to the point that I met one of the characters in a dream, a truly disorienting experience. Sure, it's disjointed. Innoculation to the parasitic authority of the word virus, to see and feel in another medium, whaddaya think the poor guy's tryna say here, anyways?
Rating:
Summary: Get Out of the Defensive Position
Review: Cities of the Red Night is William Burrough's magnum opus, the most sublime manefestation of his genius. From the opening chapter titles and hallucinatory invocation to the exquisitely fashioned closing dream sequence, each word bears the stamp of the studiously enigmatic visionary stylist. This novel impressed itself to the point that I met one of the characters in a dream, a truly disorienting experience. Sure, it's disjointed. Innoculation to the parasitic authority of the word virus, to see and feel in another medium, whaddaya think the poor guy's tryna say here, anyways?
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