About book The Adding Machine: Selected Essays (1993)
It is tempting to say that Burroughs’s writing represents either the urgent dispatches from a social observer warning of impending danger or the ravings of a paranoid crank. However, as Burroughs himself points out, either/ or thinking is reductive, and so if one wants to get at the complexity of his work, it’s preferable to take a both/ and approach, and indeed, while some of Burroughs’s ideas seem pretty loopy, others are right on (that’s right, I started out with a straw man. Mea culpa).Although associated with them, as author and individual Burroughs is not really like other members of the Beat Generation. I’ve seen a photograph of him with a couple of the Beats—perhaps it was Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac—and they’re at the beach, and while the others are wearing trunks and T-shirts, Burroughs conspicuously wears a formal suit. It’s like those pictures of the Rolling Stones in which everyone has long hair and mod clothes except for Charlie Watts, who looks more like a banker than a drummer in a rock and roll band.Burroughs has been called the godfather of punk. Some have suggested that his literary experiments with the “cut-up technique” can be read as early experiments in hypertext. He’s best known for Naked Lunch, a novel about heroin and sex that somewhere got spliced with science fiction dystopism and mutated into one of the central texts of social satire of the last fifty years (yes, read it!)So, The Adding Machine? It’s a book of essays on a number of subjects. There’s literary criticism, as Burroughs discusses the work of writers like Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckettand Marcel Proust. There’s philosophy both aesthetic (Burroughs talks about the creative process) and ethical (Burroughs comments on the “Johnsons” he’s known, and contrasts them to the $#!&s he’s met).Yet although the work is a collection of essays, it’s not necessarily non-fiction. One essay starts out as a fictional dialogue between two film producers, at some point becoming a non-fictional discussion about a real drug that could help junkies kick their addiction to heroin, but that is unavailable in America because the FDA has prohibited it. Another begins as literary criticism, with Burroughs commenting on The Great Gatsby; it ends, however, as fiction, with Burroughs suggesting an alternate ending for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, and reproducing a passage of experimental writing in which he “cuts-up” The Great Gatsby with other texts. In addition to these there are the “speculative” essays, in which Burroughs writes about subjects like coincidence or orgone accumulation; the fictionality or non-fictionality of these subjects frequently depends more on the credulity of the reader than on what can be proven scientifically.The essays are short, some of them only three or four pages long, and more conventionally constructed than are most of his novels. Funny and alarming all at once, Burroughs is a kind of canary in the coalmine, a surreal satirist, as much George Carlin as George Orwell. You might think of him as that character who appears in the opening of the B horror picture—the old timer who can tell you what you want to know about the mysterious goings on “up yonder the old Vineland place.” So if you want to make it past the third reel, you could do worse than to listen to what Burroughs has to say before going to investigate for yourself what’s locked up in the basement of the creepy house that is contemporary Amerika.
This is the Burroughs I enjoy most, endearingly wry and academic in this edited compilation of essays and lectures. Topics include range from neuroscience and the ego to literary craft and the nitty gritty of character and setting development; space travel as a means for saving the human race and progressive ecology which would render a regression (and perhaps apocalypse) of humanity; Hemingway and Fitzgerald to Proust and Beckett; the liberating potential (both creative and societal) of technology and the perverse and destructive elements in its co-option and classification by security agencies. He treats all with sincerity (even in his dry cynical humour) and impresses with both his knowledge and critical intellect. He encourages the creative writer to treat nothing as sacred...everything should be of use to the author, who in an inevitable pastiche should harbour no hopes of complete originality. To put this to the test he demonstrates the liberating effects of montage and cross-genre appropriation, the rendition on the page of a compendium of texts the reader has already cognitively or absently determined. Inspiring in his lectures, from the "fiction" of Kerouac as a natural writer to the hard task of every writer to exhaustively write write write (Kerouac included). I include Kerouac here, though he is sparingly mentioned in this book because many will associate this "grandfather" of the Beats to the iconic writer who launched a literary and social revolution. The common qualities of a great writer for Burroughs first and foremost hard work ("there is no shortcut"), a braveness in craft and even in facing mortality (which he feels all great writers--exemplified by Hemingway--must enter the 'ring' with the 'bull').Additionally, social and political commentary, though specific to the bipolar and paranoid historical context of the writing has proved prophetic---associated digressions on dream patterns (as reference to future time), victimhood--"lightning always strikes twice" "there is no such thing as coincidence" resonates with this reader. The "Walking Exercise" has great craft value for any writer: "Take a walk around the block. Come back and write down precisely what happened with particular attention to what you were thinking when you noticed a street sign, a passing car or stranger or whatever caught your attention. You will observe that what you were thinking just before you saw the sign relates to the sign. The sign may even complete a sentence in your mind....Your surroundings are your surroundings. They relate to you". "The ability to think in concrete visual terms is almost essential to a writer. Generally speaking, if he can't see it, hear it, feel it, smell it, he can't write it". As follows, everything belongs to the living artist, any one who can use them..."loot the Louvre!"I love his portrait of Nixon as to "go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue or irreverence and skepticism back to the people."The thematic unity of this book is around control, regaining control, questioning institutions and infrastructures of control (right down to the word and language itself). This has been most enjoyable and will continue to fulfill.
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to speak on that last comment:writing about another is a great priviledge; you know more than what the person defined by your narrative knows.Burroughs was writing on society; of course there is an exceptionalism to that! Myself, I found little self-congratulation in this book, just the normal narcissim of all postmodern literature. =]
—Terry
Fantastic Essays by El Hombre InvisibleTom Robbins has often been called the most dangerous writer alive. Well, William Burroughs just may be the most dangerous writer since Joyce.In these essays, Burroughs really takes notes and rips into his enemies, whether they be other writers or members of the government. He takes no prisoners. His humour is incisive, acerbic and as sardonic as ever. As Kerouac once famously said, he truly IS "the greatest satirist since Johnathan Swift"I think Burroughs' analysis of Proust and Beckett is spot on. Beckett, despite all of his literary merits, DOES come across as aloof and cold as Burroughs correctly point out while Proust is not only someone who is a true master of French prose but also someone who has stamped such unforgettable characters indelibly into the record of French letters.Burroughs's essay on Kerouac, entitled Remembering Jack Kerouac, was both sharp and wistful, with WSB reminiscing about their collaboration on And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks which was about the Kammerer murder by Lucien Carr. My favourite essay was his Review of the Reviewers in which he takes literary critics to task. His analysis is both scathing and extremely valid. All the essays in this book, come to think of it, are fantastic. This is really Burroughs at his best and a great place to start with WSB if you have just started reading him and have yet to discover the true diamonds of his mind fully unleashed.
—Mat
As I mentioned before, Burroughs had a superb voice -not only in speaking terms, but that you can hear it through his writing. It's hard for me to think on the top of my head, who else has that 'voice' in their work. Maybe Capote? But i don't hear it. But Burroughs can only write in one way or fashion, and he does it the best. This collection of essays are a series of his voice on particular subject matters. He's like the guy who is entertaining at the nearby pub or bar. Kind of cranky, kind of insane, but incredibly entertaining. So in a sense Burroughs was an entertainer. And he entertained me for many many years now.
—Tosh
