Long-Term Reading Projects

[J-Sun]

That's amazing! What a nutter.

No, no - he's just very dedicated. Committed, even.

Seriously, it is a useful resource and it does make me feel better to consider myself only mildly fanatical in comparison.

 

[Avelino de Castro]

By "long-term" is meant ones that would take months to do. Someone might decide to read as many first contact novels as possible, or all the sf published in a given year, or all the Hugo-winning short stories, or the complete novels of Dickens, or everything by Clifford D. Simak, or as many travel books about Japan as possible, or all the weird stories mentioned in Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature (our old Chrons friend J. D. Worthington was working on that), or all the books you can remember reading before your 14th birthday... or what else?

So I wondered if anyone had such ambitions for reading. The only qualification I have in mind is that it's a definite concept of some sort that involves reading and that you estimate it would take many weeks for you to do it.

Looking to read everything by William S. Burroughs. I've seen naked lunch as a film, and read Queer and Cities of the Red Night but I know it's going to be hard to get a hold of Junkie and The Soft Machine.

 

[Avelino de Castro]

Looking to read everything by William S. Burroughs. I've seen naked lunch as a film, and read Queer and Cities of the Red Night but I know it's going to be hard to get a hold of Junkie and The Soft Machine.

Does anybody know what else he wrote that I should look for?

 

[Toby Frost]

Well, there's The Naked Lunch itself, but good luck making much sense out of it! He did an audio recording of a short story that he wrote called "The Priest, They Called Him". It was back in the 1990s, and Curt Cobain was involved.

 

[Bick]

Burroughs longer works:

• Junkie (1953)
• Queer (written 1951-3; published 1985)
• Naked Lunch (1959)
• The Nova Trilogy (1961-67):
  • The Soft Machine (1961/66)
  • The Ticket That Exploded (1962/67)
  • Nova Express (1964)
• Dead Fingers Talk (1963)
• The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969)
• The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (1971)
• Port of Saints (1973)
• The Red Night Trilogy (1981-87):
  • Cities of the Red Night (1981)
  • The Place of the Dead Roads (1983)
  • The Western lands (1987)
• My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995)

I can't think of many things I'd less like to read though

 

[Hugh]

Not forgetting two volumes of collected letters and one of collected interviews. There are also two good biographies (Ted Morgan, Barry Miles).

I've read a lot around Burroughs as I find him such an unusual character. However, for me personally, most of his prose is virtually unreadable, so other than Junkie/Junky and Queer and the much shorter Yage letters I've never got very far at all. I think he's most accessible in his first volume of letters (The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945 - 1959) - I really enjoyed these. In contrast I found the second volume (1959 - 1974) more than a little tedious.

It's also worth looking out for Jack Black's "You Can't Win", the autobiography of a small-time thief around the turn of the century, as both the prose style and the whole perspective on life had a tremendous influence on Burroughs.

 

[Simbelmynë]

However, for me personally, most of his prose is virtually unreadable

Is any of Burroughs readable? I think I gave up on The Naked Lunch sooner than on any book I’ve ever read. I can’t remember if I ever attempted Junkie.

Long term reading - I planned to read Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion sequence as published in the omnibus editions by Orion. I’d already read a good few of the stories, singly or as part of the collections, though not all in order. I think I’m up to book 8, which is an Elric collection, but frustratingly I leant it to someone who hasn’t yet returned it.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Proust.

 

[Avelino de Castro]

Burroughs longer works:

• Junkie (1953)
• Queer (written 1951-3; published 1985)
• Naked Lunch (1959)
• The Nova Trilogy (1961-67):
  • The Soft Machine (1961/66)
  • The Ticket That Exploded (1962/67)
  • Nova Express (1964)
• Dead Fingers Talk (1963)
• The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969)
• The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (1971)
• Port of Saints (1973)
• The Red Night Trilogy (1981-87):
  • Cities of the Red Night (1981)
  • The Place of the Dead Roads (1983)
  • The Western lands (1987)
• My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995)

I can't think of many things I'd less like to read though

thank so much! comprehensive list!

 

[Hugh]

Is any of Burroughs readable? I think I gave up on The Naked Lunch sooner than on any book I’ve ever read. I can’t remember if I ever attempted Junkie.

Junky is straight matter-of-fact narrative, pretty much autobiographical. It's a gritty account of life on the seamy side of the street, as lived by Burroughs. This is before killing his wife and the subsequent need to write his horrors out in the vignettes that were put together as "Naked Lunch", and before discovering "Cut-ups" . Most, if not all, of the characters are real life people. 'Herman' for instance is Herbert Huncke, a well-known figure in the stories of those times.

 

[Simbelmynë]

Junky is straight matter-of-fact narrative, pretty much autobiographical. It's a gritty account of life on the seamy side of the street, as lived by Burroughs. This is before killing his wife and the subsequent need to write his horrors out in the vignettes that were put together as "Naked Lunch", and before discovering "Cut-ups" . Most, if not all, of the characters are real life people. 'Herman' for instance is Herbert Huncke, a well-known figure in the stories of those times.

Perhaps a better place to start then. I’ll give Junkie a go at some point.