The Western Lands (Paperback)

by William S. Burroughs (Author)
Key Phrases: Western Lands, Land of the Dead, One God (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"The trilogy that began with Cities of the Red Night and continued with The Place of Dead Roads is completed here, and the result is a divine comedy," wrote PW of this "remarkable achievement," concerning the search for eternal rest that is symbolized by the Western Lands of Egyptian mythology.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This novel concludes the trilogy begun in Cities of the Red Night ( LJ 11/15/80) and The Place of the Dead Roads ( LJ 2/1/84). The title refers to the place in ancient Egyptian mythology where souls journeyed in search of immortality. Characters from Burroughs's earlier works reappear; the dreamlike prosestylistically a mixture of straight-forward and surrealistic narrative, with sparse use of the cut-up method Burroughs developed with the late Brion Gysinabounds with images of violent homosexuality, man-eating insects, and rancid decay as Burroughs explores such themes as addiction, mortality, the survival of the species, and the quest for eternal life. Essential for all serious literature collections. William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Later printing edition (December 7, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140094563
• ISBN-13: 978-0140094565
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #80,375 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quien es?, June 3, 2000

By	In One Ear Out Your Mother (Spotswood, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

Refusing to designate the human as a unitary enitity, Burroughs compels us to schizophrenize our psychic lives via the Egyptian inspiration that we have Seven Souls, representing the miscellany of psychic forces which vie for possession of the egoistic "I" (in the novel, Mr. Eight-Ball). *Quien es?* [Who's there?] "There is intrigue among the souls, and treachery. No worse fate can befall a man than to be surrounded by traitor souls"(6). Once the reader has mastered this logic of multiplicity, he is ready for Burroughs's second novelistic reality-engine, his attempt to write a new Book of the Dead, an effort to alert the reader of his/her submissive, zombie-like role in the interstices of turn-of-the-century capitalist subjectivity, to grant us the psychic weapons to wage war on the necromantic cultural artifacts which surround us and construct us; a quest to reposition oneself in disjunction with these seven spirits of control and subjugation. The paradise of the Western Lands can only be viewed from the sunken regions of the Land of the Dead, the *kenoma* or cosmological emptiness within which we wander. Those readers who can survive the brutal exigencies of the pilgrim's death-march will realize with Burroughs that Immortality is, in all finality, coextensive with Purpose and Function, a becoming-Active which precedes the constitution of the ego and will survive that ego's demise. The Western Lands will always exist as that unreachable horizon of eternal sanctity and gratification, a Lie against time whose intoxicating sovereignty will stand as an impetus to transgress the optical illusion of Mr. Eight-Ball, the unadulterated "I" installed as chimera and despot. "I want to reach the Western Lands - right in front of you, across the bubbling brook. It's a frozen sewer. All the filth and horror, fear, hate, disease and death of human history flows between you and the Western Lands. Let it flow! How long does it take a man to learn that he does not, cannot want what he "wants." You have to be in Hell to see Heaven. Glimpses from the Land of the Dead, flashes of serene timeless joy, a joy as old as suffering and despair."(257-258).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Voice from the Mirror, July 19, 2008

By	Keith Otis Edwards "Keith Otis Edwards" (Dearbron, MI United States) - See all my reviews

It's sad that since his death, the star of William S. Burroughs has been fading. But when this book was first released, I was working as the night foreman in a municipal garage in Detroit. I spent haunted Saturday nights at my desk, near the emergency phone, reading "The Western Lands" and when a worker came into the office, I'd read aloud from it. After a while, other workers came in and listened.

These man were white trash and those of the African persuasion. Some were hipsters, others were devout Christians. They could've been sleeping, they could've been goofing off, but they all seemed to understand what I was reading, and at certain passages the black guys would hoot and give each other "high fives."

Who IS this guy? they asked. They (we) all hated English class and hated being force-fed "literature." This, however, was something else.

I think poorly of literary critics, and it really matters little, in the long run, what their opinions are. What matters is that old Bill Lee wrote the obvious truth in such a way that it cut past the [horsefeathers].

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Burroughs's best work. Period., July 17, 1999

By A Customer

The Western Lands has all the scatter-brained and scatological charm that any of WSB's finest portrays, but not only is this particular story, the third installment of the Cities of the Red Night trilogy, form at its best, the content transcends anything else he's written. In his old age, WSB had an incredible emotional sadness about him, and this novel, which becomes semi-autobiographical at its end, leaves you profoundly touched in a way Naked Lunch never did and few novels ever can. The whole thing is worth reading if nothing else for the Wishing Box chapter at the work's conclusion.