Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Flamingo (2001), Paperback, 272 pages
Description
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, a homosexual gunslinger who, with a succession of beautiful sidekicks, sets out to challenge the morality of small-town America and fight for intergalactic freedom. 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.
Media reviews
Since Naked Lunch, his writing has been invaded by overheard conversations, newspaper headlines, and similar kinds of texts that settle like airborne microbes. This kind of deliberate disruption goes back at least to Tristan Tzara; what is peculiar to Burroughs is the way that randomly chosen or
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observed details survive and mutate through book after book. Show Less
Mr. Burroughs takes the premises of cosmic conspiracy and time travel a step further in his new novel, ''The Place of Dead Roads,'' continuing to fulfill a wish he expressed in ''The Soft Machine,'' to produce a mythology durable enough for the space age.
User reviews
LibraryThing member CBJames
I didn't understand this book. I didn't really see the point of it. I couldn't really follow it. To be honest, I bought it because I liked the cover. It's a very cool cover.
Admit it.
William Burroughs's novel, The Place of Dead Roads, begins as a satire of the classic American western gunslinger.
Well, not sleep.
In fact, nearly all of the men our hero meets want to sleep with him. Most of them do.
For all of the sex our hero has in the first half of The Place of Dead Roads there's not much writing about sex in the book. Mr. Burroughs just states that so-and-so slept with the hero and moves on with his story. He saves his more flowery prose for descriptions of guns. There are lots of guns in The Place of Dead Roads. Guns described in ways I expect sex is described in 50 Shades of Gray. I've not read 50 Shades of Gray so I'm guessing here, but I imagine that the sex in 50 Shades of Gray is described in ways that are meant to be erotic but not in ways that go so far as to offend too many people. Real, but not that real. That's about how Mr. Burroughs describes the guns in The Place of Dead Roads.
That's probably part of the satire, that the guns are described like sex while the sex is not described at all.
About half way through The Place of Dead Roads the hero goes into the future and travels into space.
That's where Mr. Burroughs really lost me, but I think the rest of the book takes place on Venus.
There's not nearly as much sex in the second half of the book, which was kind of a let down, oddly. There aren't as many guns either.
I remember reading somewhere that Mr. Burroughs once took a manuscript, cut it into pieces and then rearranged those pieces more-or-less randomly to produce a new manuscript which he then published. By the end of The Place of Dead Roads I was beginning to wonder if something similar was going on. Mr. Burrough's writing is excellent. Judging his work on a sentence by sentence basis, even a page by page basis, I have to say that he is a wonderful writer. However, looking at the novel as a whole, I have to say that by the end of The Place of Dead Roads I remembered why I stopped reading William Burroughs two decades ago.
Admit it.
William Burroughs's novel, The Place of Dead Roads, begins as a satire of the classic American western gunslinger.
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The hero is a young man with a gun. He comes into town and very quickly forms a gang made up of other young men who all want to sleep with him.Well, not sleep.
In fact, nearly all of the men our hero meets want to sleep with him. Most of them do.
For all of the sex our hero has in the first half of The Place of Dead Roads there's not much writing about sex in the book. Mr. Burroughs just states that so-and-so slept with the hero and moves on with his story. He saves his more flowery prose for descriptions of guns. There are lots of guns in The Place of Dead Roads. Guns described in ways I expect sex is described in 50 Shades of Gray. I've not read 50 Shades of Gray so I'm guessing here, but I imagine that the sex in 50 Shades of Gray is described in ways that are meant to be erotic but not in ways that go so far as to offend too many people. Real, but not that real. That's about how Mr. Burroughs describes the guns in The Place of Dead Roads.
That's probably part of the satire, that the guns are described like sex while the sex is not described at all.
About half way through The Place of Dead Roads the hero goes into the future and travels into space.
That's where Mr. Burroughs really lost me, but I think the rest of the book takes place on Venus.
There's not nearly as much sex in the second half of the book, which was kind of a let down, oddly. There aren't as many guns either.
I remember reading somewhere that Mr. Burroughs once took a manuscript, cut it into pieces and then rearranged those pieces more-or-less randomly to produce a new manuscript which he then published. By the end of The Place of Dead Roads I was beginning to wonder if something similar was going on. Mr. Burrough's writing is excellent. Judging his work on a sentence by sentence basis, even a page by page basis, I have to say that he is a wonderful writer. However, looking at the novel as a whole, I have to say that by the end of The Place of Dead Roads I remembered why I stopped reading William Burroughs two decades ago.
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Language
Original publication date
1984
Physical description
272 p.; 7.56 inches
ISBN
0586085920 / 9780586085929