A good book I enjoyed reading this book. If you like Burroughs work this is a definite read.
Tenderness in the sexual repression. This books is a very sensible story of William Burroughs with his boyfriend Allerton in the 50's in the spectral corrupted Mexico City, where queers where sexually repressed and where the repression was another tool of control. Burroughs give a comprehensible writing, more in the genre of Junky, where this is a straightforward telling with reality transposition, and with this tender and sad story of the end of the addiction of Burroughs and his sexual orientation and love story with this young boy which goes on a trip with Burroughs and ends on a really sad ending with tears streaming down from his face in the sound of the wind down the city streets and piano music in a feel of hardcore sadness.
tragedy of a drifter A book of unreciprocated feelings, and longings amplified by withdrawel and junk sickness. This is a much more intimate and personal look into the life of William Burroughs than his other stuff. It takes place after he accidentally killed his wife, and he is sobering up and facing all of the demons and guilt previously dulled by the drugs.
This book was banned for a long time, the homosexual relationships and longings aren't grotesque exaggerations with shock value in mind like some of his other stories, they are very human and almost universal innocent boyish longings for affection.
He develops these "routines", funny stories he uses that show off his sarcasm and absurd sense of humor when he wants the attention of the room. All of the stories are hilarious and really show off his talent as a writer, but the people around him generally could care less or they just don't get it. So he is trapped always in a foreign land suspicious of everyone searching endlessly for islands of sanctuary.
Burroughs claims in the introduction that just reading the words and putting it down is very painful for him, but he did it so that he could move forward. A very intense time in the life of a brilliant and fascinating character.
Drunks and lust What makes this novel so affecting, when it is, is due to the workmanlike approach of the writing -- it's very simple and blunt, but not boorish: there's a well of emotion running through the words, and some of the lines ("He felt a deep hurt, as though he were bleeding inside. Tears ran down his face.") are piercing. The novel reads like a druggy travelogue into Mexico; we get this dusty sense of watering holes, where our main character lusts after boys in his incompetent way, and formulates theories on how to acquire a rare drug. He's a crotchety old bugger, full of useless information, in love with Allerton, a boy more beautiful and refined than he, who allows himself to be bought; out of loneliness or indifference, it's not clear. (You understand why Allen Ginsberg appreciates the novel so much.)
Burroughs is witty in his way (there's a great line about Allerton being untalented at removing people from an occupied space in his life), but because his writing is so permeated with drunks and lascivious characters, you sometimes wonder whether his wittiness is apparent even to him. There is one uproarious scene where he refers to "she-Jews" and then backs up and says, "I must be careful not to lay myself open to a change of anti-Semitism." And he includes an idea for a new dish, a pig cooked on the outside but still alive and twitching on the inside. But of course he makes it clear that his writing is very much planned -- he includes an observational point of questioning if someone really understands what you've told them. Like that, Burrough's is working emotionally subtly; his descriptions of sex, too, are quiet and understated, if included at all. There are some dream sequences that anticipate Burroughs' later novels, but for the most part this is fairly straight-ahead storytelling. Steve Buscemi apparently wants to make a film of it, and if you've seen his "Trees Lounge" you may get a feel for what the novel is like.
An enjoyable, insightful read. Queer is an unfinished novel set in Mexico City in the late 1940s, where "Lee" (Burrough's surrogate) is trying to "kick the Chinaman all the way out". In the introduction, Burroughs, tries to explain his emotional state:
"When the cover is removed, everything that has been held in check by junk spills out. The withdrawing addict is subject to the emotional excesses of a child or an adolescent, regardless of his actual age."
Lee bares a raw neediness that is all too human; he is a grown man in the throws of a schoolboy's infatuation. He makes a fool of himself struggling to impress an indifferent youth named Allerton, who acquiesces occasionally enough to egg Lee on. However, these moments of devil-may-care outrageousness are when Burrough's incredibly dark humor steals the book. For those of a certain bent, Queer contains several "cackle-out-loud moments" in what Burroughs calls his "routines" - free association storytelling of thoroughly perverse nature. The phrase "Corn Hole Gus' Used-Slave Lot" should convey enough, without giving away the punch lines.
It seems as though this book might be about sex, but I found it to be much more about desire. For sex, but also for reciprocity. For that reason, even those who are not "queer" may well enjoy it. Burroughs' cast of characters and scenes in the early part of the book show an underside of Mexico City that is likely long gone. And don't skip the introduction. Burroughs' stories about campesinos are almost too savagely silly to believe.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
