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Review
‘It’s a comedy and a nightmare of Bosch-like visions, extraordinarily precise vivid visualisations, outrageous ideas like mind bombs.’ Allen Ginsberg
'"The Place of Dead Roads" is Burroughs at his very best, with the same remarkable ear for dialogue and effortless originality.' Guardian
‘The most radical innovator in fiction since Joyce.’ Angela Carter
‘Burroughs has a paranoid vision, but as he himself said: the psychotic is someone who knows what’s really going on.’ J. G. Ballard, Sunday Times
Product Description
A controversial reworking of well-trodden American myth by the author of ‘Naked Lunch’.
This surreal fable, set in America’s Old West, features a cast of notorious characters: The Crying Gun, who breaks into tears at the sight of his opponent; The Priest, who goes into gunfights giving his adversaries the last rites; and The Nihilistic Kid himself, Kim Carson, who, with a succession of beautiful sidekicks, sets out to challenge the morality of small-town America.
Fantastical and humorous, ‘The Place of Dead Roads’ continues William Burroughs’ exploration of society’s controlling forces – the State, the Church, women, literature, drugs – with a style that is utterly unique in twentieth-century literature.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is perhaps one of Burrough's most revealing works. The protagonist Kim Carsons is a youthful figure who in every way embodies Burroughs personality and ideals. Queer but masculine, clever with a hatred of authority, uninhibited and fearless and carrying an encyclopedic knowledge of firearms. The place of Dead Roads is also the work in which he most openly shows his admiration and debt to Jack Black's 'You can't win' (which I would recommend to any anyone reading this). This is probably my personal favorite of all Burrough's works and I would recommend it and the trilogy of which it is part(Cities of the Red Night, The Place of dead roads and the Western Lands)as an accessible starting point into the most important American writer of the late 20th century.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Concrete proof that the 1980's were not simply tight jeans, mullets and bad music. Apart from a few cultural refrences this book could easily have been written at the same time as Burroughs earlier stuff and it certainly stands up well in comparison to it. In fact I would go so far to say that this one of his best pieces of work. Combining a strange but compelling story with classic Burroughisms and well-integrated, persuasive arguments about the controlling elements of society, he even chucks in some ancient history for good measure. Funny, disturbing, intelligent and readable.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
the word virus strikes again in another of burroughs later peices, when he becomes obsseessed with his own mortality, this occupies the central position between the spiritual oddyssey that grew up in the cities of the red night and which was concluded in the western lands... it is the work of an old man who knows he will have to come to terms with himself, his actions, his own legend if he is ever to face his own end with dignity... it is more coherent that much of burroughs work, as the entire trilogy tends to be... we are constantly on a journey with the author, his identity is all the identities and we in turn identify with him, this is a superb peice of art, from the soul, from a superb artist...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not good
Kim Carsons - magical rebel, sexual outlaw and sharp-shooter extraordinaire - takes on the forces of evil and stagnation that pervade repressed America and prevent the human race... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Sarcosuchus
waste of time
As a fan of Kerouac and CJ Ballard, both of whom spoke positively of Burroughs, I was very disapointed by this book. Read more
Published 13 months ago by s. jones.
Generic Burroughs novel.
I struggled with "Naked Lunch" years ago, but after reading "The Adding Machine" and "Junky" recently I thought I may be able to handle another go at Burroughs' fiction. Read more
Published on 25 Nov 2009 by nicholas hargreaves
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