The Western Lands

by William S. Burroughs

Overview

From the legendary author of Naked Lunch, the conclusion of his trilogy that includes Cities of the Red Night and Palace of Dead Roads

The Western Land is legendary Beat writer William S. Burrough’s profound, revealing, and often astonishing meditation on morality, loneliness, life, and death — a Book of the Dead for the nuclear age. 

"Burrough's visionary power, his comic genius, and his unerring ability to crack the codes that make up the life of this century are undimished." — J.G. Ballard, Washington Post Book World

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780140094565
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/07/1988
Series:	Red Night Trilogy , #3
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.07(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.57(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) was an American novelist, short story writer, satirist, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author who wrote in the paranoid fiction genre, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century". His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays including Naked Lunch, Queer, Exterminator!, The Cat Inside, The Western Lands, My Education, and Interzone.

Date of Birth:

February 4, 1914

Date of Death:

August 2, 1997

Place of Birth:

St. Louis, Missouri

Place of Death:

Lawrence, Kansas

Education:

Los Alamos Ranch School; A.B., Harvard University, 1936; graduate study, 1938

Editorial Reviews

PRAISE FOR THE WESTERN LANDS:

"Among his most important books." — The New York Times (1997)

"...seems like nothing else being published in the United States today..." -- The New York Times (1988)

"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 ...a remarkable achievement ...concerning the search for eternal rest that is symbolized by the Western Lands of Egyptian mythology." — Publishers Weekly


PRAISE FOR WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: 

"The only American novelist who may conceivably be possessed by genius.” —Norman Mailer

“Burroughs is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift. . . . Swift and Rabelais and Sterne accomplished a step in that direction, and Burroughs another.” —Jack Kerouac

"He’s a writer of enormous richness whose books are a kind of attempt to blow up this cozy conspiracy, to allow us to see what’s on the end of the fork . . . the truth.” —J. G. Ballard

“Burroughs was the last great avatar of literary modernism..." — Will Self

“A creator of grim fairy tales for adults, Burroughs spoke to our nightmare fears and, still worse, to our nightmare longings. . . . And more than any other postwar wordsmith, he bridged generations; popularity in the youth culture is greater now than during the heady days of the Beats.” —The Los Angeles Times Book Review

From the Publisher

The trilogy that began with Cities of the Red Night (1981) and continued with The Place of Dead Roads (1983) is completed here, and the result is a divine comedy. Although this final volume is a significant work on its own merits, one must wade through the chaotic and at times unintelligible Cities and the more coherent though by no means easy Place to fully understand why The Western Lands is a remarkable achievement. While the plot resists encapsulation, in general terms it concerns the search for eternal rest that is symbolized by the Western Lands of Egyptian mythology. Among those involved in the quest are many characters from the earlier books in the trilogy, as well as a few from Naked Lunch; not the least of them is Burroughs himself. While Burroughs's ability to create and describe vast, hellish landscapes has never been denied, often there has been no character with whom the reader can empathize. Here, however, an empathetic bond is established in passages describing the fear of death, where Burroughs speaks more directly than usual, sometimes in the guise of old, forgotten novelist William Seward Hall, sometimes forthrightly and freely in his authorial voice. As a result, Burroughs fans will find this narrative vivid, horrifying, beautiful and sad. (December)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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

Library Journal