Cities of the Red Night

by William S. Burroughs

Book Overview

While young men wage war against an evil empire of zealous mutants, the population of this modern inferno is afflicted with the epidemic of a radioactive virus. An opium-infused apocalyptic vision from the legendary author of Naked Lunch is the first of the trilogy with The Places of the Dead Roads and his final novel, The Western Plains .

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312278462
• ISBN13: 9780312278465
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A true vision of the future or past

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.

Somewhere on the threshold....

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.

The paradox of a post-modern classic...

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

Get Out of the Defensive Position

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?

cities of the red night

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.