Customer Reviews

Cities of the Red Night

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Of Burroughs' later work, this is possibly the most readable in conventional terms. Originally sub-titled "A Boy's Book", it was molded by the adventure stories he read as a boy in the 1920's and 30's, and uses the genres of the detective story and the pirate yarn to give its shape.

Typically for Burroughs, the novel begins with several false starts before a narrative begins to emerge - two stories, two centuries apart, being told simultaneously. Magic plays a key part in the plot, making some events and actions mysterious, not to say incomprehensible, but helping to unite the two tales.

Eventually the two stories meet in the mythical Cities of the Red Night, where the theme of rebellion against total oppression is enacted in a series of vivid, dream-like episodes. His idealized youths fight the good fight against mutants and matriarchs, until victory seems within their grasp...

This book is part of Burroughs' so-called Late Trilogy (being followed by The Place Of Dead Roads and The Western Lands) and includes characters and events from these later books and from previous works, but this novel can certainly stand alone as well. A rich and disorienting experience.

At one time I thought Burroughs was a total fraud. It was my opinion that he was laughing all the way to the bank at the dupes who bought his books- and paid for his habit. Then I sat down and read this book, and _The Place of Dead Roads_, and The Western Lands. I was dead wrong. This is an unique and valid vision. This is modern art in print, designed to rip the mind free from its habitual sleep walking. And that is strange, for this is one prolonged nightmare, or bad trip.... yet, while I was reading this I got this sense of deja vu, like the Cities of the Red Night and a Place of Dead Roads actually exist-somewhere- perhaps on the threshholds of hell, or limbo, or.... even "heaven." Where ever it is, it is a place on the border where only dreams, drugs, or black magic can take you.

Moreover, I think I understand Burroughs place in the beat trilogy. Kerouac was the holy fool who had the capacity to touch on direct union with the Divine. Ginsberg, was the secular humanist, a good man well grounded in the world. Burroughs, however, walked the left hand path, the shadow. Taken together, all three, the holy trinity, were the composite soul of an age.

I first read this ten years ago, as my first introduction to Burroughs. I have always recommended it to folks who have never read Burroughs before, remembering it to be accessible and devoid of most of Burroughs more off-putting stylistic experiments (the cut-ups in Nova Express, the weird place/time shifts and unconnected narrative stream of Naked Lunch, etc) while still containing all that is great about his work: shocking and surprising imagery and a pure, sharp understanding of language. Surprisingly, despite the narrative accessibility, my recomendation has had a very low rate of success; it rarely results in new Burroughs-philes. Now, re-reading it, I think I know why. The stylistic simplicity disguises all the stuff going on underneath which is obvious to those who already know Burroughs.

If someone didn't know better, _Cities of the Red Night_ might come across as a simplistic homosexual pornographic pulp space-opera, Mappelthorpe meets Edgar Rice Burroughs. The interwoven plot lines (homosexual pirate communes? a psychic private detective? an invading radioactive mutant virus?) come across as emotionally distant and vacuous, borrowed from pulp novels and used as a simple excuse for episodes of vivid sci-fi imagery and descriptions of boys with erections. While interesting, they don't seem to be the work of genius touted on the front cover.

In the end, however, this book is hopeful and passionate, complex and absolutely unique. Burroughs is trying to both conjure up the conditions for a perfect utopia, a world free of all interference and control, as well as give a mythic explanation for the horrifying state of existence. Burroughs is trying to save us, explain us, destroy us, free us. This isn't apparent until after the plots have crashed together and shattered apart in an end which has absolutely nothing to do with what has come before, while also explaining everything...

This may sound like general review-speak or inconsistent babble, but it is as close as I can come to explaining without giving away the ending. Burroughs uses the obvious, while distorting it, to keep the reader close. The themes Burroughs is working with are the things we touch everyday, the words we use and the feelings we experience, and the result Burroughs needs to reach is so far away from anything we know that he must use misdirection to get us there. Burroughs is a journalist reporting from the front of a war being fought every time we speak, glance, feel, want or touch. In order to reach an end that seems inconceivable, Burroughs must start from a beginning that we already know.

Burroughs can seem repetitious and stylistically limited. I have always thought that Burroughs has always been a horizontal, impressionistic writer; his works have to be understood as a connect-the-dots description of fragments of a large, more terrifying whole that cannot be pointed to directly. Burroughs is like H.P. Lovecraft, telling the same story over and over in slightly different ways, except the elder gods who still threaten us live inside our daily language and relationships. Reading Burroughs requires work, like reading James Joyce. Reading the cut-up trilogy or Naked Lunch is difficult and requires effort; the paradox is that this book, being simpler, is more difficult. Unlike reading Joyce, the work required in reading this book isn't obvious.

I think that this is still the book I will point people to, when they first express interest in Burroughs. Re-reading this book has simply reminded me of something I need to tell people: reading Burroughs is unlike reading anything else. You have to let him under your skin for his to make sense.

Burroughs knew what he was talking about. This book along with the Place of Dead Roads was the final, most complete and coherant summation of the Burroughs vision/nightmare. Just by virtue of his personal style these books mix utopian essay, apocalyptic nightmare, gut wrenching horror, and valid cultural criticism. As far as experimental fiction goes, you won't find any more readable, in the Burroughs canon or anywhere else. A word of caution: these books are for thinking people; they are not brain dead entertainment with cutesy characters or happy endings. It is not easy reading. Burroughs regards the natural condition of humaity and civillization as ultimately dark and depraved. Few people want to believe that, and those who do may have a hard time coming to grips with such a pessimistic conclusion about human nature. Such a vision provokes and challengues us all. Those brave souls who, though cold, disoriented and terrified choose to light a candle with trembling hands and willingly descend the staircase into the forsaken cellar of Burroughs' mind will not return unscathed or unrewarded.

Cities of the Red Night has been hailed as the consummate sequel to Naked Lunch; at first glance the style, tone, and typically hideous imagery would seem to support this. However, there the similarities end. What motives may have gripped the author are unclear, but the general smoothness of the script and kinder degree of readability seem to suggest that he was at his more lucid state of mind when writing this. This is not to say that Red Night is necessarily any better or worse than its precursor - it is coherent, concise, and in places very compelling - but the very fact that there is a traceable plot and storyline will probably surprise those who accustomed to Naked Lunch. Conversely, anyone who picks up this novel in the expectation of an easily understandable yarn is likely to meet an unexpected shock: Red Night is by no means ideal for the conventional taste (it is coherent for Burroughs; it still requires acclimatization). Whilst individual stories weave and occasionally intertwine, the majority of the book is a collage of non- or only vaguely-connected tales.

The book begins with a renaissance flavor, concentrating on the machinations of a splinter group of South American rebels against the Evil Empire of the Christian faith. It then takes an unexpected turn for the surreal with a sudden cut to the present: the life of Clem Snide -"Private Asshole"- and various doctors analyzing a mysterious disease. After many somewhat nebulous theories concerning time travel and inter-corporeal experiences, the novel winds up in the waging of climactic battles in long-forgotten cities.

Those familiar with Naked Lunch will be at home with the constant themes of homosexuality, drug use, and bizarre death throughout. This time, however, Burroughs attention is no longer focussed upon the life cycle of the junk fiend which won Naked Lunch its cult following - Red Night is a tale of strange cultures, unexplored territories, time travel, and spirit-possessions. Although the occasional familiar ! face is noticed - Dr. Benway, the xiucults, and mugwumps - the majority of Red Night is a departure from the predominantly 'cut-up' style of his other work.

Whether this is good or bad is uncertain. Red Night is enjoyable to anyone who enjoyed Naked Lunch, but unlike Naked Lunch it tempts the reader into expecting a definite ending or final realization...a dangerous thing. If there IS a message inherent in the novel, it is likely to be even more difficult to grasp than the fragmented (though clear) storylines, and the reader will be hard pressed to find it. But that is hardly reason enough to condemn the novel- after all, it is a piece of work which makes no explanation for its unworldly nature, nor gives any apologies for its violent and frequently repulsive subject matter.

Cities of the Red Night is William Burrough's magnum opus, the most sublime manefestation of his genius. From the opening chapter titles and hallucinatory invocation to the exquisitely fashioned closing dream sequence, each word bears the stamp of the studiously enigmatic visionary stylist. This novel impressed itself to the point that I met one of the characters in a dream, a truly disorienting experience. Sure, it's disjointed. Innoculation to the parasitic authority of the word virus, to see and feel in another medium, whaddaya think the poor guy's tryna say here, anyways?

Burroughs' "Cities of the Red Night" is a feverish glimpse into alternate histories, the end of the world, new forms of government, viral mutations, bizarre slants on ethnicity and the to-be-expected preoccupation with hard drugs and wild sex. Prose style gyrates from first-person hard-boiled sleuth to all-too-believable boardroom monotone. "Cities of the Red Night" is a long and involving opus that squirms its way through myriad plot-lines without collapsing into complete incomprehensibility (although at times it trods perilously close).

open the door on cities of red night and you are confronted with a bosch like vista of inverted reality. unlike the 60s cut-ups this is more accessible although don't open it expecting anything approaching a lineal narrative because burroughs doesnt do anything the straight way. if you are amused by the image of a six foot centipede with a translucent humanhead then this is the book for you. burroughs rewires time, dismantles perspectives and generally dislocates your expectations. cities of the red night is a strange but exhilarating trip which will leave the reader wrong footed and breathlessly disorientated. try it out.

This book is unlike many of Burroughs's prior works in that there is an actual plot. The story itself centers on a cult of control freaks who are trying to destroy the world through the release of a Virus. A private detective hired onto the case does some digging -- with some paranormal help -- and traces the cult back to the Cities Of The Red Night, which existed before recorded history. Burroughs crafts this story as only a true master could, at first enchanting you, then throwing you through fear, horror, nausea, awe and irony, and finally leaving you feeling as if you've been in a car crash (without all the nasty bills to pay). All at once, you get a sense of just how overwhelming this world is that he has created, and you wonder if maybe, given more time, and the will to do so, he might have created an anti-Narnia.
As it turns out, he did. Cities of the Red Night is just one part of what turns out to be a trilogy of Burroughs's views on religion and metaphysics.
The other two books, Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands, take the world and worldview in Cities of the Red Night and expands them to cover his metaphysics and his views of the afterlife. Burroughs isn't looking to make friends with these works; in fact many people will be downright offended by what is contained in these books, especially his anti-Christian sentiments. In the end, though, the reader (well, *this* reader anyway) is left with a sense that Burroughs was trying to be more than a writer with these books. Perhaps, he was trying to be a prophet.

A fascinating story that will stretch your mind. Burroughs is funny, to-the-point, and he has an outstanding sensitivity to smells. Will change you forever.