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Nova Express (Evergreen Black Cat Book, BC-102) (Mass Market Paperback)

~ William S. Burroughs (Author) "LISTEN TO MY LAST WORDS anywhere..." (more)
Key Phrases: colorless question, nova heat, colorless sheets, Green Tony, Meester William, Sammy The Butcher (more...)
4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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  Hardcover, Import -- -- $64.99
  Paperback, January 20, 1994 $11.20 $6.45 $2.76
  Mass Market Paperback, November 30, 1964 -- -- $2.99

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Nova Express takes William S. Burroughs’s nightmarish future one step beyond The Soft Machine. The diabolical Nova criminals have gained control and plan on wreaking untold destruction. It’s up to Inspector Lee of the Nova Police to attack and dismantle the word-and-imagery machine of these “control addicts” before it’s too late.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 156 pages
  • Publisher: Grove/Atlantic (December 1964)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0394171039
  • ISBN-13: 978-0394171036
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,684,670 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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William Burroughs
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
LISTEN TO MY LAST WORDS anywhere. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
colorless question, nova heat, colorless sheets, nova police, nova mob, wounded galaxies, inflexible authority, blue silence, expression sir, word dust, mind screens, dead sun, iron claws
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Green Tony, Meester William, Sammy The Butcher, The First Hearing, The Kid, The Sailor, Doctor Benway, New York, The Subliminal Kid, Hamburger Mary, Limestone John, The Family, Willy The Rube
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The Soft Machine by William Burroughs
 

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
5 star:
 (7)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
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Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars thirty-six years old and still ahead of its time, June 4, 2000
By Jeremy P. Bushnell (imaginaryyear.com) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Nova Express (Paperback)
Oh, this book is superb; thrilling. Burroughs' critique of media/information culture has never been more relevant (he even predicts, in 1964, the emergence of something that sounds very much like the Web - "more and more images in less space pounded down under the sex acts and torture ever took place anywhere"). Great chunks of the book function practically as a Machiavellian instruction manual on how those in power might use a stream of words and images to generate fear, passivity, and conflict in a human population.

Some of Burroughs' incisiveness may derive from his usage of the famous cut-up and fold-in techniques (using passages plagiarized / "sampled" from other texts, including psychology journals, newspapers, pulp science fiction and true crime texts, and literary sources like T. S. Eliot and Rimbaud) - when he uses these, he gets at a radical (if illogical) analysis of the source texts. The illogical / nonlinear structure that results might throw some, but to my mind, this fits in perfectly with the book's overall critique - if you believe that certain forms of language (and thought) are politically corrupted, as Burroughs does, then the answer may be to compose a text that exists outside of those structures. The result feels vital and exciting - it is practically a new way of thinking on the page - and Burroughs' ideas on how to resist and defeat "the machine" and the nova process are similarly thought-provoking and unexpected (they bring to light a spiritual (monastic) side of Burroughs that I hadn't been previously familiar with).

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Notes From The Grey Room, June 5, 2000
By "jdubach" (Illinois) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Nova Express (Paperback)
This installation into the Nova series helps establish the reality of Interzone, first introduced in Naked Lunch. The Nova Police are the only thing keeping the Nova gangsters from harboring the monopoly on the universe's only source for Apomorphine. Burroughs appears in the novel as Agent Lee, the primary factor for the Nova Police. From incidious mass-poisonings to wild goose-chases across Interzone, Nova Express is an essential bridge between Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine. In my mind, one cant/shouldn't read either of the other two without having read Nova Express as well.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "Give me that kimono!"-The Captain, January 4, 2002
This review is from: Nova Express (Paperback)
I won't be as vivid and descriptive as an eel in hot pursuit over gravy, er, I won't be as evil and malignant as Cortez babies, er, want I....EGAD! Start over...

I won't be as descriptive and detailed (there we go) on this review as on THE Wild Boys. This too is a good book, but my least favorite of my collection. It also seems to be the shortest, and less memorable. Parts of it seem to be more preachy than other releases, opening with Agent Lee talking about how the mass media is controlled by psuedo-punk poseurs addicted to controlling the brainwashed populace. From what I remember, Burroughs seems to make fun of these individuals (who have such elaborate names as Jimmy The Butcher, Jackie Blue Note, etc.) who are portrayed as racist punks fooling everyone with actually being the enemy of true revolutionaries. The plans they hatch up to keep the world controlled are amusing.

Aside from this most coherent of writing, the rest is pure Burroughs insanity...classics include the section "Twilight's Last Gleeming", in which a ship is going down and all hell is breaking loose (the immortal line quoted above is said by the drag-wearing captain of that ship). This may come as a shock, but some of the sections actuall bored me...mainly the more scientific information packed parts like the relationship between parasites and hosts, other easily forgettable things. But look past this, and Burroughs knows what he's talking about.

As before, there are some downright beauties and truths around...this may have been from one of the other books since they all seem to flow together as a whole, but I remember a story about a house shifting over a dsert plain and the tenants trying to socialize with lonely lemurs hanging in a tree. There's a great peice of poetry existing right around there. about angry warriors waitng around with their arrows loking for someone to shoot. It just proves that WSB would've been good at straitforward poetry, possibly better than Allen Ginsburg. He actually tried it with Tom Waits on The Black Rider album, remind myself I gotta get that. Wancha all stripped down, all stripped down....wrong album. Point blank, this book is just as worthy/signifigant/brown propeller on a fasion moon as any of his others. Dig? Flat, baby. Flatfooted and pure goulash on my headset tonight. Burroughs, my man...you know it...you...

Fadeout in classic form.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Remind you of something?
I don't have much to add to the other reviews, except to note that one of the techniques of the Nova Mob is to provoke conflict by playing back the worst things opposing groups... Read more
Published on March 14, 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars the cut-up trilogy
my god, man! Burroughs is a sheer genius. I read the trilogy as well as Naked lunch and the Wild Boys (also cut-ups) three years agoo. This is the one I remember most. Read more
Published on September 15, 2002 by Quentin Xavier

4.0 out of 5 stars Word falling --- photo falling --- breakthrough in Grey Room
I read this book cover to cover when I was 17, something I felt to be an accomplishment. There's a narrative (sometimes) and striking, vivid language that you won't find anywhere... Read more
Published on May 8, 2000 by C. S. Junker

5.0 out of 5 stars the ultimate use of language - useless fight with word virus
it's not an easy book, it's work of dark but extremely vivid imagination, a perfectly targeted description of counciousness-reality relation - a letter from the other side of... Read more
Published on June 3, 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars the one with the silencer in his hand talks to you
Yes and he means business. This sequel to the Soft Machine continues to aim at shooting holes in the phoney fabrications of our indoctrinated minds. Read more
Published on August 19, 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars Naked Lunch++
Society, consciousness, language--Religion, time space--Nova Express takes us for a ride through the very roots of these imposed structures. Read more
Published on February 25, 1998

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