This is a marvelous act of reviewing. Want a demonstration of the art and craft of reviewing? Read the whole thing.
… these biographies turn you into the equivalent of a boy standing by the railroad tracks watching an endless slow freight of depravity rattle past. The monotony becomes hypnotic. The freakishness becomes normal with repetition. You can't look away.
This indeed is so, even though — perhaps because — the more carefully you observe Burroughs, the more repellent he becomes. I've known a few like him — though they were small fry by comparison (one, I believe, is still doing a major stretch at Graterford). You could win a measure of sorry respect from them by letting them know you'd figured out their shtick was being evil and hurting people.
"Wind in the chilly heavens over London a dead boy on the ghostly pillow lips chapped broken sunlight a flicker of Jermyn Street pale half moon of ghostly dandies behind his head a cool ark windy evening sky washed by wind and rain broken dreams in the air."
I don't think that's all that good . Just some guy trying to impress me that he's so deep and subtle the rules of grammar and syntax just get in the way of the revelation he bears. Sure. Guess that's why that windy evening sky was washed by … wind.
Mr. Miles, a biographer of other louche celebrities, chronicles Burroughs's dark stardom in the company of Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Mick Jagger, Kurt Cobain, Frank Zappa and Patti Smith. Burroughs also dined with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. He was introduced on "Saturday Night Live" as "the greatest living writer in America."Absolute proof, were any needed, that people such as those mentioned should never be taken seriously.
Burroughs was an odd specimen of authenticity, a dreadful human reconciled to his dreadfulness. And every now and then he could write something worth reading, like The Western Lands.
No comments:
Post a Comment