Keith Gandal
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195338911
- eISBN:
- 9780199867127
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195338911.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, American, 20th Century Literature
This short Afterword concludes the book with a comparison between the post-World War I novels at issue and Burroughs's post-World War II novel. Burroughs's autobiographical novel seems at first ...
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This short Afterword concludes the book with a comparison between the post-World War I novels at issue and Burroughs's post-World War II novel. Burroughs's autobiographical novel seems at first glance a world away from the sublimations, projections, obfuscations, and tragic romanticisms of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner. But on closer inspection, and despite the thrust of the Prologue and its conclusion that the narrator's drug addiction stems from a lack of motivation, Burroughs (along with his narrator) wanted to become an officer in World War II, but he was stymied in his substantial efforts to do so, much like the 1920s authors. Thus, his 1950s postmodern novel of “absent desire,” like the 1920s modernist novels of “impossible love,” is, on another level, a tale of a love or desire unrequited by the military. Given the US involvement in war in the 20th century — and the tremendous social upset, or accelerated modernizing, that mobilizing for world wars involves — along with the fact that the military was something like the supreme arbitrator of manhood in the world war eras, it is not surprising that there is a rich vein of what be called mobilization fiction in American literature, but it is a vein that has so far been mostly untapped.Less
This short Afterword concludes the book with a comparison between the post-World War I novels at issue and Burroughs's post-World War II novel. Burroughs's autobiographical novel seems at first glance a world away from the sublimations, projections, obfuscations, and tragic romanticisms of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner. But on closer inspection, and despite the thrust of the Prologue and its conclusion that the narrator's drug addiction stems from a lack of motivation, Burroughs (along with his narrator) wanted to become an officer in World War II, but he was stymied in his substantial efforts to do so, much like the 1920s authors. Thus, his 1950s postmodern novel of “absent desire,” like the 1920s modernist novels of “impossible love,” is, on another level, a tale of a love or desire unrequited by the military. Given the US involvement in war in the 20th century — and the tremendous social upset, or accelerated modernizing, that mobilizing for world wars involves — along with the fact that the military was something like the supreme arbitrator of manhood in the world war eras, it is not surprising that there is a rich vein of what be called mobilization fiction in American literature, but it is a vein that has so far been mostly untapped.
Jorge García-Robles
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816680627
- eISBN:
- 9781452948805
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816680627.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This is an maginative and riveting account of Burroughs’s formative experiences in Mexico, his fascination with Mexico City’s demimonde, his acquaintances and friendships there, and his contradictory ...
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This is an maginative and riveting account of Burroughs’s formative experiences in Mexico, his fascination with Mexico City’s demimonde, his acquaintances and friendships there, and his contradictory attitudes toward the country and its culture. Burroughs explores the culture of Mexico and studies Aztec and Maya history half-heartedly, living contentedly with Joan and the children. The couple lives a self-destructive lifestyle, and tragedy strikes when Joan is shot by Burroughs accidentally. The section includes a piece by Burroughs himself, “My Most Unforgettable Character.”Less
This is an maginative and riveting account of Burroughs’s formative experiences in Mexico, his fascination with Mexico City’s demimonde, his acquaintances and friendships there, and his contradictory attitudes toward the country and its culture. Burroughs explores the culture of Mexico and studies Aztec and Maya history half-heartedly, living contentedly with Joan and the children. The couple lives a self-destructive lifestyle, and tragedy strikes when Joan is shot by Burroughs accidentally. The section includes a piece by Burroughs himself, “My Most Unforgettable Character.”
Nick Davis
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199993161
- eISBN:
- 9780199346387
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199993161.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter highlights symmetries between Cronenberg’s film of Naked Lunch and several other literary adaptations that proved central to 1990s-era New Queer Cinema, a movement that nonetheless ...
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This chapter highlights symmetries between Cronenberg’s film of Naked Lunch and several other literary adaptations that proved central to 1990s-era New Queer Cinema, a movement that nonetheless discounted Cronenberg entirely. Next, it draws out analogies linking the more expansive, chaotic, and illusory world of Naked Lunch (as compared to Dead Ringers) to the “derationalized” grammars of post–World War II cinema that Deleuze evokes in his book Cinema 2 (as compared with its predecessor, Cinema 1). After analyzing the notorious “sex-blob” sequence as a pivotal illustration of how the movie derationalizes desire, the chapter defends Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch against charges of straightening and commodifying the revolutionary legacy of William S. Burroughs. Lastly, John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus (2006), with its infamous scenes of “actual sex,” reveals how comparably counter-cultural but more eagerly embraced examples of queer cinema may perpetuate clichés about gender and desire in ways Cronenberg’s work avoids.Less
This chapter highlights symmetries between Cronenberg’s film of Naked Lunch and several other literary adaptations that proved central to 1990s-era New Queer Cinema, a movement that nonetheless discounted Cronenberg entirely. Next, it draws out analogies linking the more expansive, chaotic, and illusory world of Naked Lunch (as compared to Dead Ringers) to the “derationalized” grammars of post–World War II cinema that Deleuze evokes in his book Cinema 2 (as compared with its predecessor, Cinema 1). After analyzing the notorious “sex-blob” sequence as a pivotal illustration of how the movie derationalizes desire, the chapter defends Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch against charges of straightening and commodifying the revolutionary legacy of William S. Burroughs. Lastly, John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus (2006), with its infamous scenes of “actual sex,” reveals how comparably counter-cultural but more eagerly embraced examples of queer cinema may perpetuate clichés about gender and desire in ways Cronenberg’s work avoids.
Christopher Breu
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816688913
- eISBN:
- 9781452949178
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816688913.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter presents a reading of William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. It discusses his articulation of three forms of materiality in the emerging era of globalization and biopolitics: the linguistic, ...
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This chapter presents a reading of William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. It discusses his articulation of three forms of materiality in the emerging era of globalization and biopolitics: the linguistic, the bodily, and the political economic. The novel reflects the life of early twentieth-century experimentalists and surrealists, and describes the postmodern period of fiction, globalization, neoliberal biopolitics, and immaterial production. It suggests that people need to be mindful to the most obscene and degraded forms of material existence that are directly shaped by biopolitics and thanatopolitics if they want to see the possibility of a better future.Less
This chapter presents a reading of William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. It discusses his articulation of three forms of materiality in the emerging era of globalization and biopolitics: the linguistic, the bodily, and the political economic. The novel reflects the life of early twentieth-century experimentalists and surrealists, and describes the postmodern period of fiction, globalization, neoliberal biopolitics, and immaterial production. It suggests that people need to be mindful to the most obscene and degraded forms of material existence that are directly shaped by biopolitics and thanatopolitics if they want to see the possibility of a better future.
David J. Alworth
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691183343
- eISBN:
- 9781400873807
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691183343.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers the work and life of William S. Burroughs, and proposes that Naked Lunch (1959) constructs something like a nightmare image of Latourian sociality: a collective of human ...
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This chapter considers the work and life of William S. Burroughs, and proposes that Naked Lunch (1959) constructs something like a nightmare image of Latourian sociality: a collective of human subjects and nonhuman objects governed by the logic of putrefaction, or “translation” run amok. The novel not only visualizes a welter of “literal garbage” decomposing in a dumpsite, which Burroughs names the “junk world,” but also assumes the formal structure of a landfill, a site governed by the logic of putrefaction. In other words, rather than simply representing the dump, Burroughs enacts a mimetic relation to it, thereby converting spatial into literary form.Less
This chapter considers the work and life of William S. Burroughs, and proposes that Naked Lunch (1959) constructs something like a nightmare image of Latourian sociality: a collective of human subjects and nonhuman objects governed by the logic of putrefaction, or “translation” run amok. The novel not only visualizes a welter of “literal garbage” decomposing in a dumpsite, which Burroughs names the “junk world,” but also assumes the formal structure of a landfill, a site governed by the logic of putrefaction. In other words, rather than simply representing the dump, Burroughs enacts a mimetic relation to it, thereby converting spatial into literary form.
Arthur Versluis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199368136
- eISBN:
- 9780190201951
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199368136.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Discusses the religious significances of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and the Beat movement. Argues Burroughs is an outlier figure. Kerouac in particular exemplifies American ...
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Discusses the religious significances of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and the Beat movement. Argues Burroughs is an outlier figure. Kerouac in particular exemplifies American religious immediatism.Less
Discusses the religious significances of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and the Beat movement. Argues Burroughs is an outlier figure. Kerouac in particular exemplifies American religious immediatism.
S. E. Gontarski
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748697328
- eISBN:
- 9781474416016
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748697328.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This concluding chapter looks at American writer William Burroughs. In many respects, William Burroughs was an apostle of invisibility, assiduously pursuing versions of physical vanishing and ...
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This concluding chapter looks at American writer William Burroughs. In many respects, William Burroughs was an apostle of invisibility, assiduously pursuing versions of physical vanishing and advocating, above all, authorial disappearance. He has on occasion declared himself simply an ethereal medium through which his texts pass into the visible world. Samuel Beckett's initial rejection on first meeting Burroughs in 1959 was not solely or particularly to the aleatory nature of the process but to the fact that the cut up method of Burroughs involved using the writing of other authors. Burroughs's reply to such charges generally suggested what one might call today intertextuality — that all writing was cut up or collage in one way or another and that his was different from those only by degree.Less
This concluding chapter looks at American writer William Burroughs. In many respects, William Burroughs was an apostle of invisibility, assiduously pursuing versions of physical vanishing and advocating, above all, authorial disappearance. He has on occasion declared himself simply an ethereal medium through which his texts pass into the visible world. Samuel Beckett's initial rejection on first meeting Burroughs in 1959 was not solely or particularly to the aleatory nature of the process but to the fact that the cut up method of Burroughs involved using the writing of other authors. Burroughs's reply to such charges generally suggested what one might call today intertextuality — that all writing was cut up or collage in one way or another and that his was different from those only by degree.
Lesley Wylie
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319747
- eISBN:
- 9781781380932
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319747.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter will focus on the important Amazonian hallucinogenic drink – yagé, also known as ayahuasca. It discusses, in turn, oral and written accounts of yage by indigenous Amazonians, Creole, and ...
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This chapter will focus on the important Amazonian hallucinogenic drink – yagé, also known as ayahuasca. It discusses, in turn, oral and written accounts of yage by indigenous Amazonians, Creole, and non-Latin American story-tellers and writers, including José Eustasio Rivera and William Burroughs. Prominent in all these Putumayan yage-narratives are descriptions of out-of-body experiences – of people traversing underwater and aerial dimensions, metamorphosing into animal form, or seeing far-off events. The narratives are characterized by fragmentation and non-linearity, and often try to convey heightened sensory perception through montage and synaesthesia. By comparing the content and, in particular, the style of these narratives, this chapter argues that there is, so to speak, a ‘yage aesthetics’ – a way of writing or speaking about the drug which transcends national, cultural, or linguistic borders.Less
This chapter will focus on the important Amazonian hallucinogenic drink – yagé, also known as ayahuasca. It discusses, in turn, oral and written accounts of yage by indigenous Amazonians, Creole, and non-Latin American story-tellers and writers, including José Eustasio Rivera and William Burroughs. Prominent in all these Putumayan yage-narratives are descriptions of out-of-body experiences – of people traversing underwater and aerial dimensions, metamorphosing into animal form, or seeing far-off events. The narratives are characterized by fragmentation and non-linearity, and often try to convey heightened sensory perception through montage and synaesthesia. By comparing the content and, in particular, the style of these narratives, this chapter argues that there is, so to speak, a ‘yage aesthetics’ – a way of writing or speaking about the drug which transcends national, cultural, or linguistic borders.
Jorge García-Robles
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816680627
- eISBN:
- 9781452948805
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816680627.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
First published in Mexico in 1995 as La bala perdida, The Stray Bullet presents a thorough and compelling account of William S Burroughs’ Mexico experience. Author Jorge García-Robles makes a ...
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First published in Mexico in 1995 as La bala perdida, The Stray Bullet presents a thorough and compelling account of William S Burroughs’ Mexico experience. Author Jorge García-Robles makes a convincing case that Mexico, as escape route, inspiration and alternative universe, was essential to Burroughs’ development as a writer, as well as the scene of the definitive incident in the writer’s life, his accidental shooting of his wife, Joan Vollmer. Beginning with a description of the circumstances that led Burroughs to move to Mexico, the book covers the author’s initial elation at settling into this foreign land, followed by his growing disillusionment and descent into various addictions as he discovered his literary vocation. Reconstructing the environment of 1950s Mexico through Burroughs’ correspondence and writings, reports from the Mexican press, descriptions of the cultural and political panorama of the era and interviews with Burroughs’ Mexico acquaintances, García-Robles paints a vivid picture of the world that spawned the Beat novelist’s career. Although this period of Burroughs’ life has been written on by others, García-Robles’ version provides a uniquely Mexican perspective. García-Robles, who has translated the Burroughs-Ginsberg collaboration The Yagé Letters into Spanish, has a talent for recreating the Mexico of the 1950s. Burroughs cooperated with the author while La bala perdida was being written and in fact contributed an essay about the Mexican lawyer who arranged his quick release from prison after the shooting incident. The book also includes previously unpublished letters written by Burroughs from Mexico.Less
First published in Mexico in 1995 as La bala perdida, The Stray Bullet presents a thorough and compelling account of William S Burroughs’ Mexico experience. Author Jorge García-Robles makes a convincing case that Mexico, as escape route, inspiration and alternative universe, was essential to Burroughs’ development as a writer, as well as the scene of the definitive incident in the writer’s life, his accidental shooting of his wife, Joan Vollmer. Beginning with a description of the circumstances that led Burroughs to move to Mexico, the book covers the author’s initial elation at settling into this foreign land, followed by his growing disillusionment and descent into various addictions as he discovered his literary vocation. Reconstructing the environment of 1950s Mexico through Burroughs’ correspondence and writings, reports from the Mexican press, descriptions of the cultural and political panorama of the era and interviews with Burroughs’ Mexico acquaintances, García-Robles paints a vivid picture of the world that spawned the Beat novelist’s career. Although this period of Burroughs’ life has been written on by others, García-Robles’ version provides a uniquely Mexican perspective. García-Robles, who has translated the Burroughs-Ginsberg collaboration The Yagé Letters into Spanish, has a talent for recreating the Mexico of the 1950s. Burroughs cooperated with the author while La bala perdida was being written and in fact contributed an essay about the Mexican lawyer who arranged his quick release from prison after the shooting incident. The book also includes previously unpublished letters written by Burroughs from Mexico.
Jorge García-Robles
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816680627
- eISBN:
- 9781452948805
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816680627.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The first part of this biography describes Burroughs’s identity as a self-destructive young man, still uncertain about being a writer, and having just graduated from Harvard and keeping literary and ...
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The first part of this biography describes Burroughs’s identity as a self-destructive young man, still uncertain about being a writer, and having just graduated from Harvard and keeping literary and intellectual company. After some trouble with illegal substances, he and Joan Vollmer flee to Mexico.Less
The first part of this biography describes Burroughs’s identity as a self-destructive young man, still uncertain about being a writer, and having just graduated from Harvard and keeping literary and intellectual company. After some trouble with illegal substances, he and Joan Vollmer flee to Mexico.
Rebecca Roach
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198825418
- eISBN:
- 9780191864094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198825418.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, Criticism/Theory
This chapter traces the fortunes of the interview in the years after the Second World War. At mid-century the interview was becoming increasingly associated with the surveillance of citizens and ...
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This chapter traces the fortunes of the interview in the years after the Second World War. At mid-century the interview was becoming increasingly associated with the surveillance of citizens and cybernetics. In turn, interviews were no longer considered a product of co-production but rather as an interrogative profiling device—as publicized by Senator McCarthy among others. Innovative broadcasters such as Mike Wallace began to adopt their own interrogative style of interviewing toward the profilers in an attempt to foster a critically engaged citizenry. But it was in the infamous Treason case of Ezra Pound that questions around the subject’s analytical control in the era of New Criticism came to a head for the literary community. Meanwhile, for some avant-garde authors including William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, the interrogative possibilities of interviewing established it as a useful means for creating a countercultural project able to counter New Criticism.Less
This chapter traces the fortunes of the interview in the years after the Second World War. At mid-century the interview was becoming increasingly associated with the surveillance of citizens and cybernetics. In turn, interviews were no longer considered a product of co-production but rather as an interrogative profiling device—as publicized by Senator McCarthy among others. Innovative broadcasters such as Mike Wallace began to adopt their own interrogative style of interviewing toward the profilers in an attempt to foster a critically engaged citizenry. But it was in the infamous Treason case of Ezra Pound that questions around the subject’s analytical control in the era of New Criticism came to a head for the literary community. Meanwhile, for some avant-garde authors including William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, the interrogative possibilities of interviewing established it as a useful means for creating a countercultural project able to counter New Criticism.
Brandon LaBelle
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262013901
- eISBN:
- 9780262289696
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262013901.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter examines sound poetry, a speculative form that presaged the digital, and the reduction of sound to phonetic material characterized by modularity and “cut-upability.” Focusing on several ...
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This chapter examines sound poetry, a speculative form that presaged the digital, and the reduction of sound to phonetic material characterized by modularity and “cut-upability.” Focusing on several writers and artists, from 1920s sound poets such as Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters to Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin, and William Burroughs, it illustrates the double movement of the voice in contemporary sound poetry and art. This double movement seeks to make the body enter language again while also playing with the way technology allows the voice to be radically separated from the body.Less
This chapter examines sound poetry, a speculative form that presaged the digital, and the reduction of sound to phonetic material characterized by modularity and “cut-upability.” Focusing on several writers and artists, from 1920s sound poets such as Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters to Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin, and William Burroughs, it illustrates the double movement of the voice in contemporary sound poetry and art. This double movement seeks to make the body enter language again while also playing with the way technology allows the voice to be radically separated from the body.
Kathryn Hume
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450013
- eISBN:
- 9780801462870
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450013.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine ...
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A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers—or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. This book calls such works “aggressive fiction.” Why would authors risk alienating their readers—and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, this book offers a common-sense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy. The book considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. It gathers “attacks” on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.Less
A frequent complaint against contemporary American fiction is that too often it puts off readers in ways they find difficult to fathom. Books such as Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Don DeLillo's Underworld seem determined to upset, disgust, or annoy their readers—or to disorient them by shunning traditional plot patterns and character development. This book calls such works “aggressive fiction.” Why would authors risk alienating their readers—and why should readers persevere? Looking beyond the theory-based justifications that critics often provide for such fiction, this book offers a common-sense guide for the average reader who wants to better understand and appreciate books that might otherwise seem difficult to enjoy. The book considers roughly forty works of recent American fiction, including books by William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Chuck Palahniuk, and Cormac McCarthy. It gathers “attacks” on the reader into categories based on narrative structure and content. Writers of some aggressive fictions may wish to frustrate easy interpretation or criticism. Others may try to induce certain responses in readers. Extreme content deployed as a tactic for distancing and alienating can actually produce a contradictory effect: for readers who learn to relax and go with the flow, the result may well be exhilaration rather than revulsion.
Merve Emre
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226473833
- eISBN:
- 9780226474021
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226474021.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
While speech and bodily posturing offer two distinct if interrelated approaches to communication, consumption offers a new angle on what it means to communicate as a nationalized subject. This ...
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While speech and bodily posturing offer two distinct if interrelated approaches to communication, consumption offers a new angle on what it means to communicate as a nationalized subject. This chapter focuses on the consumption of tourism as exemplified by the American Express Company, including the sanitized reading materials deployed in its massive expansion of family-oriented, middle-class international travel. Yet some of the company’s most enthusiastic consumers were countercultural writers who co-opted the company’s advertisements, pamphlets, travelers checks, and brand in order to insert their experimental literary works into a broader field of national-corporate discourse. The counterculture, this chapter argues, was opposed to corporate culture in theory, yet its intimacies were sustained by American Express’s global network of office spaces, financial instruments, and writing technologies. In American Express’s corporate archives, as well as in novels by James Baldwin (Giovanni’s Room), William Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Erica Jong (Fear of Flying), and, most explicitly, Gregory Corso (The American Express), the chapter identifies an aesthetic of literary branding: one crafted to communicate a queer sense of national belonging. These novels introduced countercultural writers to businessmen eager to read their fiction and to co-opt the interaction rituals of the counterculture as representative of American freedom.Less
While speech and bodily posturing offer two distinct if interrelated approaches to communication, consumption offers a new angle on what it means to communicate as a nationalized subject. This chapter focuses on the consumption of tourism as exemplified by the American Express Company, including the sanitized reading materials deployed in its massive expansion of family-oriented, middle-class international travel. Yet some of the company’s most enthusiastic consumers were countercultural writers who co-opted the company’s advertisements, pamphlets, travelers checks, and brand in order to insert their experimental literary works into a broader field of national-corporate discourse. The counterculture, this chapter argues, was opposed to corporate culture in theory, yet its intimacies were sustained by American Express’s global network of office spaces, financial instruments, and writing technologies. In American Express’s corporate archives, as well as in novels by James Baldwin (Giovanni’s Room), William Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Erica Jong (Fear of Flying), and, most explicitly, Gregory Corso (The American Express), the chapter identifies an aesthetic of literary branding: one crafted to communicate a queer sense of national belonging. These novels introduced countercultural writers to businessmen eager to read their fiction and to co-opt the interaction rituals of the counterculture as representative of American freedom.
Gary Westfahl
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037801
- eISBN:
- 9780252095085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037801.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter describes William Gibson's early years based on his autobiographical sketch, “Since 1948,” first posted to his blog on November 6, 2002. There, he relates the generally familiar story of ...
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This chapter describes William Gibson's early years based on his autobiographical sketch, “Since 1948,” first posted to his blog on November 6, 2002. There, he relates the generally familiar story of how he was born in South Carolina and, as a child, frequently moved with his parents because of his father's various jobs. In these early years, the major influence on Gibson's life was television. This chapter first considers Gibson's childhood and adolescence before discussing how he discovered science fiction literature, which became his passion. It then considers the change in Gibson's perception of science fiction beginning in 1962, which he often attributes to his chance discovery of William S. Burroughs and, through him, other Beat Generation writers. It also looks at Gibson's publication of fanzines, his enthusiasm about Fritz Leiber, and how he developed an interest in science fiction poetry and later in nonfiction. Finally, the chapter documents the turbulent events of Gibson's first two decades of his life and notes that since the 1980s, his life has been remarkably uneventful.Less
This chapter describes William Gibson's early years based on his autobiographical sketch, “Since 1948,” first posted to his blog on November 6, 2002. There, he relates the generally familiar story of how he was born in South Carolina and, as a child, frequently moved with his parents because of his father's various jobs. In these early years, the major influence on Gibson's life was television. This chapter first considers Gibson's childhood and adolescence before discussing how he discovered science fiction literature, which became his passion. It then considers the change in Gibson's perception of science fiction beginning in 1962, which he often attributes to his chance discovery of William S. Burroughs and, through him, other Beat Generation writers. It also looks at Gibson's publication of fanzines, his enthusiasm about Fritz Leiber, and how he developed an interest in science fiction poetry and later in nonfiction. Finally, the chapter documents the turbulent events of Gibson's first two decades of his life and notes that since the 1980s, his life has been remarkably uneventful.
Thierry Bardini
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816667505
- eISBN:
- 9781452946580
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816667505.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Are we made of junk? This book believes we are. Examining an array of cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication networks, it explores the idea that most of culture and nature, ...
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Are we made of junk? This book believes we are. Examining an array of cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication networks, it explores the idea that most of culture and nature, including humans, is composed primarily of useless, but always potentially recyclable, material otherwise known as “junk.” This book unravels the presence of junk at the interface between science fictions and fictions of science, showing that molecular biology and popular culture since the early 1960s belong to the same culture—cyberculture—which is essentially a culture of junk. He draws on a wide variety of sources, including the writings of Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs, interviews with scientists as well as “crackpots,” and work in genetics, cybernetics, and physics to support his contention that junk DNA represents a blind spot in our understanding of life. At the same time, this book examines the cultural history that led to the encoding and decoding of life itself and the contemporary turning of these codes into a commodity. But it also contends that, beyond good and evil, the essential “junkiness” of this new subject is both the symptom and the potential cure.Less
Are we made of junk? This book believes we are. Examining an array of cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication networks, it explores the idea that most of culture and nature, including humans, is composed primarily of useless, but always potentially recyclable, material otherwise known as “junk.” This book unravels the presence of junk at the interface between science fictions and fictions of science, showing that molecular biology and popular culture since the early 1960s belong to the same culture—cyberculture—which is essentially a culture of junk. He draws on a wide variety of sources, including the writings of Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs, interviews with scientists as well as “crackpots,” and work in genetics, cybernetics, and physics to support his contention that junk DNA represents a blind spot in our understanding of life. At the same time, this book examines the cultural history that led to the encoding and decoding of life itself and the contemporary turning of these codes into a commodity. But it also contends that, beyond good and evil, the essential “junkiness” of this new subject is both the symptom and the potential cure.
