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The Nova Trilogy #2
Nova Express
The Soft Machine introduced us to the conditions of a universe where endemic lusts of the mind and body pray upon men, hook them, and turn them into beasts. Nova Express takes William S. Burroughs’s nightmarish futuristic tale one step further. The diabolical Nova Criminals—Sammy The Butcher, Green Tony, Iron Claws, The Brown Artist, Jacky Blue Note, Izzy The Push, to name only a few—have gained control and plan on wreaking untold destruction. It’s up to Inspector Lee of the Nova Police to attack and dismantle the word and imagery machine of these “control addicts” before it’s too late. This surrealist novel is part sci-fi, part Swiftian parody, and always pure Burroughs.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
About the author
William S. Burroughs
339 books6,108 followersWilliam Seward Burroughs II, (also known by his pen name William Lee) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation.
Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation.
Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 124 reviews
December 27, 2017
"What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you: "the word."
- William S. Burroughs, Nova Express
Writing about the Nova Trilogy is frustrating.
It feels...
a bit...
like reviewing Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
At 3:00, now 4, am it is hard to really, REALLY, get to the meat and idahosoftbones of it all. The books (all 3) are so damn knotty and naughty. Now, I'm not even REALLY comparing the Nova Trilogy to Finnegans Wake. No. They are two different beasts in scale, complexity, method, etc. I only bring them together, briefly, HERE to compare because, for me (reader), they hit me (reader) hard with their experimentalism and dark, almost ugly, UGLY, opacity. They aren't meant to be understood as much as they are intended to be experienced. They were both written to flickerclusterfuck with the reader (me). Yes. Mission Accomplished.
One of the other difficulties with the "Nova Trilogy" is the VERY concept of these 3 books being an actual trilogy, or defining WHAT exactly the Nova3 was. The novels that are NOW generally considered to be part of the trilogy were writen in an order that is different than the order they were eventually published. Many of the novels in the Nova3 were REVISED and some revised again, so knowing what version of the cut-up novel is part of the Nova3 becomes, within the overall word horde, a bit dicey. Add to that--both The Wild Boys and Naked Lunch were considered at one poin to be part of Nova3 makes defining/containing things even more fragmented and confusing.
But please, don't let that daunt you. I'm not sure multiple versions of the novels, and the swirling versions of the trilogy were ever INTENDED to not confuse; Burroughs WAS ever and mutliple always breaking and rebuilding forms. He was cutting and re-cutting constantly. So, the idea of a living, breathing Nova3 is part of the whole word horde experiment. Go with it. Grab a version. Grab one of the 3. Hell grab one of the 5. Read it. Read another. Don't get too stuck on whether you are reading the "right" version, or reading the novels in the right order. Relax. Drink something. Smoke something. Pop something. Enjoy?
Of the three books that make up the currently accepted Nova3 (1. The Soft Machine, 2. The Ticket That Exploded, 3. Nova Express) Nova Express is the by far easiest to read, the least offensive, but also my least favorite. And NOT really because it was easist to read and stomach. Perhaps, I was just weary of the whole word horde world, or gassed out, or even a bit [gasp] bored. Nova Express just didn't bend me over like SM & TTTE both did. It was a soft landing, a walking last lap, a migraine bruise. But still, together, these three novels are hard to shake off. They are rash and a rush and infection and a cure, a nightmare and a VERY strange trip. They are, together, a literary cold sore that won't go away.
I'm done now.
I think.
- William S. Burroughs, Nova Express
Writing about the Nova Trilogy is frustrating.
It feels...
a bit...
like reviewing Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
At 3:00, now 4, am it is hard to really, REALLY, get to the meat and idahosoftbones of it all. The books (all 3) are so damn knotty and naughty. Now, I'm not even REALLY comparing the Nova Trilogy to Finnegans Wake. No. They are two different beasts in scale, complexity, method, etc. I only bring them together, briefly, HERE to compare because, for me (reader), they hit me (reader) hard with their experimentalism and dark, almost ugly, UGLY, opacity. They aren't meant to be understood as much as they are intended to be experienced. They were both written to flickerclusterfuck with the reader (me). Yes. Mission Accomplished.
One of the other difficulties with the "Nova Trilogy" is the VERY concept of these 3 books being an actual trilogy, or defining WHAT exactly the Nova3 was. The novels that are NOW generally considered to be part of the trilogy were writen in an order that is different than the order they were eventually published. Many of the novels in the Nova3 were REVISED and some revised again, so knowing what version of the cut-up novel is part of the Nova3 becomes, within the overall word horde, a bit dicey. Add to that--both The Wild Boys and Naked Lunch were considered at one poin to be part of Nova3 makes defining/containing things even more fragmented and confusing.
But please, don't let that daunt you. I'm not sure multiple versions of the novels, and the swirling versions of the trilogy were ever INTENDED to not confuse; Burroughs WAS ever and mutliple always breaking and rebuilding forms. He was cutting and re-cutting constantly. So, the idea of a living, breathing Nova3 is part of the whole word horde experiment. Go with it. Grab a version. Grab one of the 3. Hell grab one of the 5. Read it. Read another. Don't get too stuck on whether you are reading the "right" version, or reading the novels in the right order. Relax. Drink something. Smoke something. Pop something. Enjoy?
Of the three books that make up the currently accepted Nova3 (1. The Soft Machine, 2. The Ticket That Exploded, 3. Nova Express) Nova Express is the by far easiest to read, the least offensive, but also my least favorite. And NOT really because it was easist to read and stomach. Perhaps, I was just weary of the whole word horde world, or gassed out, or even a bit [gasp] bored. Nova Express just didn't bend me over like SM & TTTE both did. It was a soft landing, a walking last lap, a migraine bruise. But still, together, these three novels are hard to shake off. They are rash and a rush and infection and a cure, a nightmare and a VERY strange trip. They are, together, a literary cold sore that won't go away.
I'm done now.
I think.
June 11, 2008
Sort of the ultimate Libertarian cranky novel (with huge experimental overtures), Burroughs is at the very least a great American Humorist in the Mark Twain category or at the very least a hard-boiled Jonathan Swift. Nevertheless you either like the 'voice' or you don't. As a younger man he was 'it' or the cat's milk, but now that I am older (and not wiser by any means) I prefer PG Wodehouse. But I will never forget my youthful appreciations for this very dark Gentleman.
May 21, 2019
This is assumedly a SF book, written by William S. Burroughs. It was nominated for Nebula in 1965 and I read as a part of Monthly reads in Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group.
It isn’t the third volume of the trilogy, as Goodreads suggests. For the trilogy actually doesn’t exist: it is attempt of the author to use the following technique: write a text, cut it in parts with no regard to sentence structure, rearrange and drop pieces, write a next part based on what resulted. Repeat. At the same time this book is much more consistent compared to The Soft Machine. but it still lacks a plotline; it speaks about aliens, cabals that rule Earth, that words affect real world and news aren’t the statement of facts but their progenitor; so to get free one should get out of our environment determined by words, apply to is the same method that was used to write the book. And I have to say it does work: after finishing this book I started another, but ‘cut-in’ method disallowed for seeing behind sentences of the text for several pages.
Here are word clouds created for this novel, after all I also may try to create something :)
It isn’t the third volume of the trilogy, as Goodreads suggests. For the trilogy actually doesn’t exist: it is attempt of the author to use the following technique: write a text, cut it in parts with no regard to sentence structure, rearrange and drop pieces, write a next part based on what resulted. Repeat. At the same time this book is much more consistent compared to The Soft Machine. but it still lacks a plotline; it speaks about aliens, cabals that rule Earth, that words affect real world and news aren’t the statement of facts but their progenitor; so to get free one should get out of our environment determined by words, apply to is the same method that was used to write the book. And I have to say it does work: after finishing this book I started another, but ‘cut-in’ method disallowed for seeing behind sentences of the text for several pages.
Here are word clouds created for this novel, after all I also may try to create something :)
June 9, 2020
Probably my least favorite of the “cut-up” trilogy. I should have known when the foreword was almost as long as the novel that there was bound to be an issue with quality. And a large portion of the foreword centered around Burroughs stating Nova Express was a mainstream sci-fi novel that any 12-year-old could read. Uh...no. Nor can I imagine them wanting to. On the whole, there was a lot less “anal mucus” than the other two books, but there was furthermore a lot more missing that would’ve tied the narrative together. “Cut-up” can certainly be reduced to babble, and this novel was more babble than story, unfortunately. If you want the incredible Burroughs novels, I’d recommend sticking with the more “realistic” and traditionally narrative works like Junky and Queer. Those are two incredible reads.
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January 21, 2024Üçleme kısacık olsa da bitirmesi zor bir kitap. Burroughs zorladıkça zorluyor okurunu. Yorumlarda söylendiği gibi üçlemenin en iyi kitabı da bu. Yazılıp parçalara ayrılarak farklı şekillerde tekrar eklemlenen metin serinin diğer kitaplarından daha iyi yazılmış. Taşkın ve alabildiğine garip fikirlerini anlamaya çalışırken dili daha dikkat çekici hale geldi. Her zamanki gibi saldırgan olsa da çok iyi bir dili olduğunu söylemem gerek. Hayattaki tüm çirkinlikleri göstermek isteyen Burroughs kendi dilini de deforme ediyor. Önerilecek kitaplar değil ama anti romanın en garip hatta sapıkça örneğine edebiyat meraklıları bir gözatmalı.
January 14, 2020
Hands-down the best of the nova trilogy (The Soft Machine is a close second, though), and the most coherent. That being said, attaching words like "coherent" to a description of any of Burroughs' avant-garde novels is pointless distraction, ignoring how these books are meant to communicate to the reader thoughts, ideas, and visions that transcend what is and is not traditionally coherent or comprehensible to the average human when in a state free of psychedelic influence. Burroughs' language is lush and living, frenetic literary compositions are mutilated, transient passages of sense are thrown out the window and occasionally retrieved, reminding the reader that this isn't random; no, Burroughs has reasons to be writing the way he writes, and the most adventurous readers will find that his piercing prose is home to many visceral, possibly transfigurative treasures.
February 15, 2021
I had a pretty tough time with this one, it took me a while to read it because I kept rereading bits that I didn't immediately get... but when I did get it then I really got it but my God I don't think I'll be able to explain it. Love the concepts though, and feel like just by writing this review I'm contributing to that darn Word Virus!
August 10, 2016
UNREADABLE.
May 27, 2020
One of Burroughs' best. His obsessions in this work — virus, CO2, inability to breath, aqualungs, nova crime, "rushing the life boat in drag" — are especially resonant against the backdrop of 2020. Burroughs is often regarded as an obscure, repetitive novelist, but I see him more as a 20th century sibyl. A work like Nova Express isn't a failed novel or story. It's an oracle. An occult vision of the future.
One striking example:
Another highly-relevant example: Nova crime. The job of the nova criminal is to "create and aggravate the conflicts that lead to the explosion of a planet that is to nova." This is achieved using recording devices:
The restored text has a fantastic introduction by Oliver Harris, filling in a lot of interesting background, as well as detailed notes on the history of the text.
One striking example:
"Two Lesbian Agents with glazed faces of grafted penis flesh sat sipping fluid through alabaster straws."That's a funny, satirical line a troll might cook up to lampoon life in 2020. Burroughs wrote it around 1962. There were sci-fi writers galore predicting the future in the 50s and early 60s (Nova Express was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966), but none of them capture the unsettling texture of the actual future like Burroughs. Just goes to show the potency of cut-up technique. As David Hopkins put it in his study of surrealism: "... collage had summoned up a world that was profoundly inimical to human control."
Another highly-relevant example: Nova crime. The job of the nova criminal is to "create and aggravate the conflicts that lead to the explosion of a planet that is to nova." This is achieved using recording devices:
"Take two opposed pressure groups--Record the most violent and threatening statements of group one with regard to group two and play back to group two--Record the answer and take to back to group one--Back and forth between opposed pressure groups--This process is known as "feed back"--You can see it operating in any bar room quarrel--In any quarrel for that matter--Manipulated on a global scale feeds back nuclear war and nova"Also,
"I have said the basic techniques of nova are very simple consist in creating and aggravating conflicts—“No riots like injustice directed between enemies”—At any given time recorders fix nature of absolute need and dictate the use of total weapons—Like this:: Collect and record violent Anti-Semitic statements—Now play back to Jews who are after Belsen—Record what they say and play it back to the Anti-Semites—Clip clap—You got it?—Want more?—Record white supremacy statements—Play to Negroes—Play back answer—Now The Women and The Men—No riots like injustice directed between “enemies”—At any given time position of recorders fixes nature of absolute need—And dictates the use of total weapons—So leave the recorders running and get your heavy metal ass in a space ship—Did it—Nothing here now but the recordings—Shut the whole thing right off—SilenceThis is a familiar process by now. Social media is the nova recording device. As someone on the Internet once said: "Today, Twitter is a planetary-scale hate machine. By which I don't mean "people post hateful things on Twitter." I mean literally generates hate, as in, put a bunch of people with diverse perspectives on Twitter and by the end of the day they hate each other more than when they started."
—When you answer the machine you provide it with more recordings to be played back to your “enemies” keep the whole nova machine running—The Chinese character for “enemy” means to be similar to or to answer—Don't answer the machine—Shut it off—"
The restored text has a fantastic introduction by Oliver Harris, filling in a lot of interesting background, as well as detailed notes on the history of the text.
October 3, 2014
This one made my scalp tingle. An exceptional experience of genre-transcendence pregnant with concepts and themes that have likely been an essential nutrient in the building of many other works by many other folks.
I managed to do an audio field recording of my surroundings of the last hour or so it took for me to finish reading this book; I plan to play this publicly in various spots that I will be reading more and will likely be uploading composites of these.
I'll have to come back to this review later when I'm not bouncing around with so much enthusiasm and can more tactfully point out a few things worth mentioning.
I managed to do an audio field recording of my surroundings of the last hour or so it took for me to finish reading this book; I plan to play this publicly in various spots that I will be reading more and will likely be uploading composites of these.
I'll have to come back to this review later when I'm not bouncing around with so much enthusiasm and can more tactfully point out a few things worth mentioning.
June 9, 2023
Best novel of the trilogy. It's simultaneously his most clear in message and his most abstract. Whereas The Soft Machine focuses on a specific instance of the Elect controlling the Preterite (Pynchon terminology is engrained in me rn, sorry), and The Ticket That Exploded is about propaganda and how It is used for control, Nova Express is about how built institutions and organization (i.e. the police, the CIA, the US government, drug distribution networks [AKA the police, the CIA, and the US Government]) are used to control the preterite. His thesis again is that because language is used to control us, we need to use language to resist control. Now how we go about doing that still remains unclear to me which is why I say this is simultaneously his most abstract work. It is possible that he means we need to become more versed in the abstract forms of language so we are better able to understand that what is being presented to us is real or just another form of control we are supposed to accept. But that's just a theory.
It's a great book. And a wonderful series. You should read it, but give Naked Lunch a shot first to see if this style is your vibe first.
It's a great book. And a wonderful series. You should read it, but give Naked Lunch a shot first to see if this style is your vibe first.
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May 10, 2019I have no idea how to rate this book. On the other had, I didn't really enjoy reading it. As a novel, it was pretty bad - it had no plot, no characters to speak of, no coherence.
On the other hand -
we want it to revolve around Nova and images - cause attempts to stop their consensus reality - Sinals were a joint project - meets media critique of Minraud - - infiltrators, they tried to experiment - crucial natural levels of violence in the arts - Only way to capture - conceptualize the limits - sure there are no different way - ints" open for them.
- Ahem. On the other hand, these kinds of experiments are crucial in order to advance the arts. I don't enjoy Schönberg's twelve-tone music either, but it was essential that somebody experimented where the borders of music and art actually laid. Afterwards everyone else would conceptualize the limits of music in a different way.
Nova Express wasn't so much a novel than experimental literary art. Burroughs pushed the boundaries of the novel form, and the literary world is better for that. I'm glad Nova Express was written; I'm less glad I read it, but I don't regret doing so.
On the other hand -
we want it to revolve around Nova and images - cause attempts to stop their consensus reality - Sinals were a joint project - meets media critique of Minraud - - infiltrators, they tried to experiment - crucial natural levels of violence in the arts - Only way to capture - conceptualize the limits - sure there are no different way - ints" open for them.
- Ahem. On the other hand, these kinds of experiments are crucial in order to advance the arts. I don't enjoy Schönberg's twelve-tone music either, but it was essential that somebody experimented where the borders of music and art actually laid. Afterwards everyone else would conceptualize the limits of music in a different way.
Nova Express wasn't so much a novel than experimental literary art. Burroughs pushed the boundaries of the novel form, and the literary world is better for that. I'm glad Nova Express was written; I'm less glad I read it, but I don't regret doing so.
May 27, 2008
Just well-written enough to be (barely) comprehensible.
Burroughs was mush-mouthed as a writer and there's plenty of mush here. The thing is, there's also some pitch-black deadpan critics of the moden control systems which are getting larger and paradoxically more insidious everyday.
Think of shit like Prozac, Botox, "focus groups", therapy culture, nuclear radiation, beaurocratic paranoia, "disaster capitalism", corporate hegemony, consumerism and all that abstract mind-waste which clogs up any decent human being's brainpan.
Language is the key- buzzwords, catchphrases, politcal obfuscation, totalitarian prose....therefore Burroughs has this intriguing yet ultimately self-defeating need to "rub out the Word" and therefore his prose has to be jarring, shocking, cacophanous, surreal. He's crystal clear when he wants to be: his ear for voice is tops, as his the nightmarish lucidity of the horrors he describes.
He uses quite a bit of arcane references which are sort of hit and miss but when they hit cha....boy, it's right between the eyes.
December 28, 2012
Clearest book of the cut-up trilogy and by far the best, although The Ticket That Exploded had its moments.
The first half of the book is brilliant, then Burroughs lost me for a while there talking about galactic space courts and advocates etc. but it does become easier to understand again.
This novel has fewer cut-up sentences which are hard to follow as we read the text linearly. Some of the information contained herein features in other Burroughs novels too, like the 'Clom Fliday' (slightly un-PC) joke.
If you can only afford to buy one Burroughs book from the cut-up period, then this is easily the one.
There is also another slightly hard-to-find publication called The Electronic Revolution - it's a very short text but I think Burroughs delivers his main ideas in this gem both succinctly and clearly.
The first half of the book is brilliant, then Burroughs lost me for a while there talking about galactic space courts and advocates etc. but it does become easier to understand again.
This novel has fewer cut-up sentences which are hard to follow as we read the text linearly. Some of the information contained herein features in other Burroughs novels too, like the 'Clom Fliday' (slightly un-PC) joke.
If you can only afford to buy one Burroughs book from the cut-up period, then this is easily the one.
There is also another slightly hard-to-find publication called The Electronic Revolution - it's a very short text but I think Burroughs delivers his main ideas in this gem both succinctly and clearly.
December 25, 2016
One cannot underestimate the impact of this book on the second half of the 20th century. forget "Junkey" and "Naked Lounch", this is Burroughs at his finest. it is pure heavy metal layered on industrial techno, grunge and punk steamed to perfection.
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January 28, 2019I'm glad Burroughs did the thing that he did. Can't exactly say it's my cup of tea. Of course. Not exactly sure it's tea. Or a cup. It's probably good stuff.
new thing :: read v3 of a trilogy. first.
another new thing :: this volume kicks off a new reading=series for me. Mass=Market=Maddness (mm-maddness). Which will feature me reading mass market pb's that were probably purchased cheap and whose survival as a bound thing matters not an iota to me. Nor understanding what I'm reading. Because they will be read in conditions Highly DISTRACTED. So there.
Here's Burroughs with Uncle Al ::
Just One Fix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbXci...
"The old man in the video is writer William S Burroughs." lol.
new thing :: read v3 of a trilogy. first.
another new thing :: this volume kicks off a new reading=series for me. Mass=Market=Maddness (mm-maddness). Which will feature me reading mass market pb's that were probably purchased cheap and whose survival as a bound thing matters not an iota to me. Nor understanding what I'm reading. Because they will be read in conditions Highly DISTRACTED. So there.
Here's Burroughs with Uncle Al ::
Just One Fix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbXci...
"The old man in the video is writer William S Burroughs." lol.
January 27, 2012
"Nova Express" one of the novels in the "Nova Express" trilogy. Warning: William S. Burroughs is not for everybody. He is not for children and he may be offensive to you. I do not want to mislead someone into reading something as though it were a book that anyone can benefit from reading.
The thing I like about the books in the "Nova Express" trilogy are the wacky voices. "Nova Express" begins with a statement from Inspector Lee, whose job is to disrupt the work of the Venusians (inhabitants of the planet) conspiring to cause a Nova event (their work is called a Nova Conspiracy) on places like Earth.
It is the voice of a crazy who is paranoid, who believes he can see directives all around him on public signs, everywhere. You don't have a traditional story in which anything is seen. It is routines of voices and descriptions of events from the world of a Junkie, living life on the edge.
I have talked with people who live on the streets and even read some things written by a person who was concerned about the Cybercops. Burroughs sounds like the person who wrote those flyers.
The imaginative place that Burroughs brings the reader to can be funny, it isn't a fun place to be and it won't make you feel good to be there. But it is interesting and I believe it has literary merit.
The thing I like about the books in the "Nova Express" trilogy are the wacky voices. "Nova Express" begins with a statement from Inspector Lee, whose job is to disrupt the work of the Venusians (inhabitants of the planet) conspiring to cause a Nova event (their work is called a Nova Conspiracy) on places like Earth.
It is the voice of a crazy who is paranoid, who believes he can see directives all around him on public signs, everywhere. You don't have a traditional story in which anything is seen. It is routines of voices and descriptions of events from the world of a Junkie, living life on the edge.
I have talked with people who live on the streets and even read some things written by a person who was concerned about the Cybercops. Burroughs sounds like the person who wrote those flyers.
The imaginative place that Burroughs brings the reader to can be funny, it isn't a fun place to be and it won't make you feel good to be there. But it is interesting and I believe it has literary merit.
February 13, 2021
I read Naked Lunch a few years back.. but don't really feel as if I really read it... a lot of it went over my head. So in a weird way reading this for my reading club did make me feel like I was having a kind of acid flashback to reading Naked Lunch. So in a way I was prepared but not as prepared as I thought I would be... but I loved it (in places). Hard to describe it and its the 2nd part of a trilogy, though I'm told it doesn't matter what order that trilogy is written because it deals with cut ups and is skewed into the wrong order anyway. It's definitely worth a read, can imagine for Burroughs aficionados it all makes a lot more sense and there's plenty of injokes for them. I may have to come back and change this into a five star rating once I've read more.... though feel like I deserve a break.
June 3, 2016
I'm labeling this one as a "what did I just read" book. It's one where I had to do some research to discover what the author was doing, what his point was. I had my ideas (and they were mostly correct), but learning the context of this one helped. Stylistically it reminded me of Gravity's Rainbow and maybe a lot angrier Kurt Vonnegut. There are some lucid parts that are easier to understand than others. The disjointed nature of the prose is intentional.
April 30, 2015
I have viewed and the Nova Trilogy as a self contained entity and rated it as a piece of conceptual art and an occult operation. Certainly it is not the ideal place to begin an exploration of the work of William S. Burroughs.
" Of language and writing, considered as magical operations, evocatory magic."
Intimate Journal.
Charles Baudelaire.
" Of language and writing, considered as magical operations, evocatory magic."
Intimate Journal.
Charles Baudelaire.
April 9, 2019
A book profoundly influenced by DMT experiences. As such, it explores barely imaginable paradoxes in the human condition which culminate in an eschaton of co-operative mutation after passing through searing Nova heat.
Burroughs' final exhortation of 'Silence!' was good advice, coming as it did in the Summer of '64.
Burroughs' final exhortation of 'Silence!' was good advice, coming as it did in the Summer of '64.
February 14, 2021
This is less of a book and more like a carousel but also a manifesto. There's a sense that Burroughs was really trying to change the shape of narratives and also the world and the way we structure thoughts... it gave me a lot to think about. It's best to go in without any spoilers.
July 13, 2021
Look... we can leave the question of whether the intriguing concept Burroughs started with is sufficient redemption for not really giving anything of substance in the actual content of this read for another time. Right now I'm just really happy to say ol Billy boy made it an entire book without using the phrase "anal mucus" which after its abundance in The Soft Machine comes as an overwhelming relief.
October 31, 2018
It's a bloody pulp mess, but it's also an entertaining bloody pulp mess for the most part.
November 28, 2011
Non c'è nessuna realtà vera o reale - La realtà è semplicemente uno schema di scansione più o meno costante.
Ci siamo. E' fatta. La Nebulosa del Granchio stringe le sue chele attorno all'umanità posseduta e contaminata dal virus della parola e dalla droga. Il corpo, la macchina morbida, si trasforma in arma. Tutto è pronto per la grande guerra. Il Complotto Nova può finalmente realizzarsi.
Nova Express è l'ultimo episodio della Trilogia Nova, tetralogia, se si considera anche Pasto nudo, da cui tutto ebbe origine. E', questo, forse il più riuscito dei tre romanzi, sicuramente il più accessibile e comprensibile. Con pazienza ed attenzione tra le frasi sconnesse ed i pensieri spezzati si riesce a ricostruire l'intrico della trama di questo romanzo. Esito inevitabile di quanto scritto negli episodi precedenti, che fanno, per così dire, da preparazione scenografica all'azione, in Nova Express tutti i personaggi e le deliranti visioni convergono. La trama che si riesce a delinare è quella sopra descritta, sommariamente: la lotta a più livelli tra la Nova Mob, i parassiti alieni, e la Polizia Nova. La loro è una lotta all'ultima parola, che vede il linguaggio come la più invasiva forma di controllo dell'essere umano. A fare da ago della bilancia William Lee, alter-ego letterario dell'autore, drogato e omosessuale.
Visionario e delirante, esattamente come ci si aspetterebbe dallo zio Bill, più di tutti Nova Express sembra aver contribuito a preparare il cocktail fantasmagorico di cui si sarebbe nutrita la fantascienza più sperimentale, a cominciare da quel cyberpunk le cui invenzioni vengono sorprendentemente anticipate (esattamente venti anni prima di Neuromante Burroughs parla già di innesti cibernetici nei cervelli umani). Non si tratta solo di suggestioni tecniche: Burroughs anticipa il cyberpunk originale, quello, per intenderci, dell'antologia-manifesto Mirrorshades, che vedeva nel movimento soprattutto una riformulazione linguistica.
La guerra viene vinta dagli umani, i parassiti alieni processati, l'umanità è finalmente libera del giogo del linguaggio-virus: tra i caduti vi è la letteratura stessa. Sotto i colpi del cut-up muore la letteratura occidentale contemporanea: ciò che viene dopo non è che un mero dejavu.
Due parole finali sull'edizione, affatto esente da critiche. Dal grossolano errore di presentare il romanzo come secondo e non terzo episodio della Trilogia alla discontinuità della traduzione, affidata ad un traduttore diverso rispetto ai precedenti: e proprio in questa Trilogia, che presenta testi tagliati e rimescolati continuamente tra un romanzo e l'altro, un po' di uniformità non avrebbe guastato.
Ci siamo. E' fatta. La Nebulosa del Granchio stringe le sue chele attorno all'umanità posseduta e contaminata dal virus della parola e dalla droga. Il corpo, la macchina morbida, si trasforma in arma. Tutto è pronto per la grande guerra. Il Complotto Nova può finalmente realizzarsi.
Nova Express è l'ultimo episodio della Trilogia Nova, tetralogia, se si considera anche Pasto nudo, da cui tutto ebbe origine. E', questo, forse il più riuscito dei tre romanzi, sicuramente il più accessibile e comprensibile. Con pazienza ed attenzione tra le frasi sconnesse ed i pensieri spezzati si riesce a ricostruire l'intrico della trama di questo romanzo. Esito inevitabile di quanto scritto negli episodi precedenti, che fanno, per così dire, da preparazione scenografica all'azione, in Nova Express tutti i personaggi e le deliranti visioni convergono. La trama che si riesce a delinare è quella sopra descritta, sommariamente: la lotta a più livelli tra la Nova Mob, i parassiti alieni, e la Polizia Nova. La loro è una lotta all'ultima parola, che vede il linguaggio come la più invasiva forma di controllo dell'essere umano. A fare da ago della bilancia William Lee, alter-ego letterario dell'autore, drogato e omosessuale.
Visionario e delirante, esattamente come ci si aspetterebbe dallo zio Bill, più di tutti Nova Express sembra aver contribuito a preparare il cocktail fantasmagorico di cui si sarebbe nutrita la fantascienza più sperimentale, a cominciare da quel cyberpunk le cui invenzioni vengono sorprendentemente anticipate (esattamente venti anni prima di Neuromante Burroughs parla già di innesti cibernetici nei cervelli umani). Non si tratta solo di suggestioni tecniche: Burroughs anticipa il cyberpunk originale, quello, per intenderci, dell'antologia-manifesto Mirrorshades, che vedeva nel movimento soprattutto una riformulazione linguistica.
La guerra viene vinta dagli umani, i parassiti alieni processati, l'umanità è finalmente libera del giogo del linguaggio-virus: tra i caduti vi è la letteratura stessa. Sotto i colpi del cut-up muore la letteratura occidentale contemporanea: ciò che viene dopo non è che un mero dejavu.
Due parole finali sull'edizione, affatto esente da critiche. Dal grossolano errore di presentare il romanzo come secondo e non terzo episodio della Trilogia alla discontinuità della traduzione, affidata ad un traduttore diverso rispetto ai precedenti: e proprio in questa Trilogia, che presenta testi tagliati e rimescolati continuamente tra un romanzo e l'altro, un po' di uniformità non avrebbe guastato.
May 30, 2016
The Nova Mob and The Nova Police finally duke it out for control of the planet. Unfortunately, the ending is ambiguous as to who wins. A good portion of the trilogy is how-to effect the techniques of Burroughs himself as writer in order to rewrite the script of history and future. In the Nova world, there is a lot of body changing. In many ways, Burroughs says, we are tape-recorders, recording input and giving forth output. He recommends at one point that we hold parties where the guess bring tape recorded messages of what they plan to say and then walk around the party playing bits for others and recording bits of what they play. The splicing effect that would occur would create new realities on the recordings. Word splices, contexts shifting, for example.
The cut-ups don't really bother me now. I read them so much poetry that I don't understand, and I can see relationships between Burroughs's writing and that of Allen Ginsberg's, his close personal friend. I obviously recognized the cut-ups from previous sections so that new phrases evoke memories. I picture a conversation with someone in some context where you zone out and they might as well be talking cut-up because you aren't getting it. Familiar but not quite clicking. Burroughs himself said that cut-ups are closer to actual experience than so called linear narrative.
The how-to and straight narrative parts are welcome in that they provide some coherence to the novels.
A very satisfying trip in Burroughs's universe: paranoid but not delusional. I can see myself writing something closer to this, but I have yet to experiment with cut-ups.
The cut-ups don't really bother me now. I read them so much poetry that I don't understand, and I can see relationships between Burroughs's writing and that of Allen Ginsberg's, his close personal friend. I obviously recognized the cut-ups from previous sections so that new phrases evoke memories. I picture a conversation with someone in some context where you zone out and they might as well be talking cut-up because you aren't getting it. Familiar but not quite clicking. Burroughs himself said that cut-ups are closer to actual experience than so called linear narrative.
The how-to and straight narrative parts are welcome in that they provide some coherence to the novels.
A very satisfying trip in Burroughs's universe: paranoid but not delusional. I can see myself writing something closer to this, but I have yet to experiment with cut-ups.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 8, 2010
Saying that this is the most comprehensible of the Nova books isn't saying much. Like all of Burrough's cut and paste drug poetry prose, any reader will find themselves scratching their head and wondering at times why they bother. But Nova Express is the first book in the trilogy to really embrace science fiction as the Nova Police finally emerge from the shadows and their operations are exposed. Several chapters are completely legible, as Burrough's fascination with tape recordings and even some straightforward takes on scientology get snuck in.
I hate to say it, being such a purist, but I really do feel casual readers would be best off skipping the first two novels and getting a satisfactory shot in the veins from 'Nova Express' alone.
I hate to say it, being such a purist, but I really do feel casual readers would be best off skipping the first two novels and getting a satisfactory shot in the veins from 'Nova Express' alone.
June 7, 2018
By far the most straightforward/comprehensible of the series.
Unfortunately also the most pg13, with comparatively little sex and drugs, which is where Burroughs's writing tends to be most poetic and visceral.
Nevertheless, it's a witty and enjoyable strange trip he takes you on.
The introduction and notes on the 'restored text' version are extremely enlightening and make me wish I'd found the other two Nova books in that edition.
Unfortunately also the most pg13, with comparatively little sex and drugs, which is where Burroughs's writing tends to be most poetic and visceral.
Nevertheless, it's a witty and enjoyable strange trip he takes you on.
The introduction and notes on the 'restored text' version are extremely enlightening and make me wish I'd found the other two Nova books in that edition.
October 30, 2008
you probably already have your own opinion on burroughs and i doubt i need to go to any great length here. i hadn't read this for a long time but found a first edition in a suitcase full of 60's porn at an estate sale the other day. i'd forgotten how much i like all the cutups in this one and how funny it is. i used to write graffiti with phrases from this book.
February 10, 2021
El estilo de escritura es sencillamente molesto. Hay una fina línea entre la genialidad, la excentricidad y la molestía. En este segundo libro de la trilogía, Burroughs salta de la primera a la última sin dudarlo ni un momento.
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