The Soft Machine

by William S. Burroughs

Book Overview

A total assault on the powers that turn humans into machines by writing and fixing our life scripts, Burroughs' original "cut-up" book was itself rewritten in three different forms. This new edition... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802133290
• Release Date: September 1992
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

"Smash The Control Machine!"-K9 the pilot

This is possibly my favorite, I remember a lot about it. Just as if not more so on the lines of Wild Boys, except those boys are replaced renegade military types who go haywire and destroy the civilized control towers and such with the ubiquitous words "Calling partisans of all nations-Shift linquals, vibrate tourists-Word falling, photo falling-break through in grey room!" Wonderful. Mostly stream-of-conciousness, including the immensely garbled and mind blowing (atleast to me) chapter "Trak!Trak!Trak!" (either that or Trek)...he just keeps going and going, but not like the Energizer Bunny becuase that peice of fluffy pink machinery is a commercialized 'soft machine' and Burroughs is its arch enemy. Wouldn't it just be marvelous if the 2 duked it out on some adulterated Japanese animation like Cowboy Bebob? Err. BREAK THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE...OF LITERATURE AND LUNACY! Other particularly memorable scenes that stuck in my internal synapses include a chapter where a news reporter infiltrates backward Mayan codices (where a hollogram image of an old master controls the migrant workers) and penetrates the machine and punches the hollogram in the gut and screams out freedom and aw, it was beautiful. Also feast your eyes on voodoo doctors taking advantage of their drug induced patients, boys in the forgotten hills, traveling shifty, where am I going with this? Whatever, just read it, boys and girls.

If you liked N.B.K. then you'll like this educational book

When I first started reading this book not much of it made any sense. I just let it from whatever it had to feed in my right brain (visuals). The second step came on the chapter Public Agent where I kept with the imaging and connected this imaging together so that it made some intellictual sense. From these experiences I found out that in this book Burroughs communicates in a language that streams together the sound, image,word. This book with its cut/up induces creativity and will also boost anybody's vocabulary skills. If you liked the cut/up used in Natural Born Killers then you'll like this book,which Natural Born Killers was probably born from.

the best part

I think the genius comes in when Burroughs takes the stories apart and scrambles them back together to make silly but surreptitiously truthful little sideswipes at reality.

a silencer to your head

It's the logical answer to Burroughs Naked Lunch that served us the sliced up meal of contorted reality in order to make us see the truth. The battle is now raging in the language itself. And therefore in our own minds. The sentences with which humanity has manipulated its existence are under siege. Their order is cut up in the hope that through the black holes that are thus struck in them we may reach the silence so we may hear what's going on. Sometimes this means we have to struggle through a heap of rubbish, until we are no longer repelled by it and are free from its diseases. As a reward new ways of giving words to things are singing their strange but compelling songs to us in phrases that defy one dimensional meaning. The real sound of silence. To make us realize that these experiments are more than 'thoughtplays' and to keep us engaged in the process of 'unwriting' glimpses of stories weave themselves into this amalgam of prosepoetry and cut up text. In awe we get almost too physical views of the warfare and the journeys and haunts that accompany it, all on a science fiction and futuristic level. Details of this Nova Mob detective like narration are given to us in the next part of the trilogy, without entirely raising the curtain. It's a see for yourself message Burroughs is giving.

A Bizarre, but fun, experience for the very open mind

I've given this book a high acclaim, but to be honest it's difficult to come up with a rating. Easily 99.9% of the population will not be able to deal with this book, both for moral and comprehendable reasons. If you have read and enjoyed other Burrough's novels, you'll get a kick out of this one: lots of Nova Mob intrigue, some truly funny industry parodies, and lots of familiar faces (Kiki, et al). But if you've found Burroughs difficult, or if you're easily offended by graphic homosexual goings-on, you should steer far away from this one. My personal rating is not so much against other literature, but against other Burroughs. Stacked next to them, I feel this is a good one. Very fast paced, and usually on target. But pick it up only if you really dare