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S'està carregant… Cities of the Red Night (1981)de William S. Burroughs
S'està carregant…
Apunta't a LibraryThing per saber si aquest llibre et pot agradar. No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. I’d greatly appreciate it if somebody could give me even a bloody rough idea of what the hell I’ve just read. ( ) Just when a feller might've thought Burroughs didn't have it in him anymore, he comes out w/ a western trilogy that's refreshing by virtue of its less radical style & more substantial narative linearity. This is maybe the closest to Pynchon Burroughs ever came. Never underestimate the man. May I be as sharp as this as I rot. Never having read the renowned William Burroughs lo these many years, I was eagerly anticipating "Cities of the Red Night". Yet, I found myself initially confused and then disappointed. The work was doing nothing for me. My best guess is that the work hasn't aged well. What had shock value (sexually explicit content and drug use) in 1980, in 2022 seemed somewhat banal and pointless. The plot, while interesting, also seemed to lack relevance. My alternate interpretation for my disappointment was that I just had no appreciation for his genius. Perhaps he was a genius for his time. The past decade or two, I've kept up with WSB more through various spoken word, audio collage, or similar projects (viz, Material's Seven Souls album) than from texts. I recognised several excerpts here, evidently WSB gave readings while the work was in progress, and perhaps afterward, as well. I'm confident this novel is my first encounter with Clem Snide, for example, though this character featured in various recordings I've heard. Notably, these early encounters help me focus on themes I might not have grasped on first reading: Virus-B23 and biowarfare, or the addictive dynamics of consumer capitalism. Other themes I don't recall from audio work: piracy's Articles of Freedom in contrast with democratic republics; time travel and references to extraterrestrials on Earth; personality transplants. "I wonder what tyranny had led him to leave his native planet and take refuge under the Articles." [265] Novel is structured in three Books: the first two each feature distinct sets of characters and timelines (modern day, 18th century), though suggestions of characters reappearing in different guises as though time traveling or reincarnating. The third is increasingly episodic, with dream logic and a cut-up grammar predominant. Novel ends without any plot resolution, and in fact it's unclear to me who is narrating in the final chapter. At a couple points WSB alludes to the influence of six cities, armies fighting between them, and the impact of a black hole on Earth (suggesting to me the Black Hole of Calcutta). These Cities of the Red Night are linked to Hassan i Sabbah's notorious words: "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." Does each city somehow embody a variation of Sabbah's meaning? Were it not for the title drawing attention to these references, it's likely I would not have noted them, fleeting as they were. Sense ressenyes | afegeix-hi una ressenya
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From one of the founders of the beat generation and the 1960s counterculture comes this opening novel of a series available now in audio for the first time. An opium addict is lost in the jungle; young men wage war against an empire of mutants; a handsome young pirate faces his execution; and the world's population is infected with a radioactive epidemic. These stories are woven together in a single tale of mayhem and chaos. In the first novel of the trilogy continued in The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands, William Burroughs sharply satirizes modern society in a poetic and shocking story of sex, drugs, disease, and adventure. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — S'està carregant… GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana:
Ets tu?Fes-te Autor del LibraryThing. Penguin AustraliaUna edició d'aquest llibre ha estat publicada per Penguin Australia. |