Monthly Archives: April 2017

Mitya’s Certainty (Karamazov pp. 438-9)

“She may be there . . .” Mitya is jealous. He hides in the bushes in the dark outside the window, wondering whether his beloved is inside with the old man. He’s already peeked in through the window. He can’t … Continue reading

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Where Cows Are More Real Than Policemen

Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote a poem about a dog. This dog is a “real realist,” which means he looks up and down and smells with his nose and asks questions and doesn’t have any smart answers. “Dog” is a poem about … Continue reading

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How To Make Word Dust

Besides being a science fiction novel, Nova Express is a how-to book.  It tells us how to make cut-ups and create “word dust”. For example, Burroughs has a character called “The Subliminal Kid” use tape recorders to create cut-ups: “‘The … Continue reading

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William S. Burroughs: Vision and Intuition

Reading Queer by William S. Burroughs, I’m struck not just by the sharp clear quality of the prose, but also by the insights themselves, the things Burroughs can see and points out to us. If he had been a worse … Continue reading

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