Review
A fascinating and richly helpful piece of literary archeology, tracing as broadly as possible the sources William Burroughs had available to him as he wrote. Both the title and the method echo the classic
Road to Xanadu, John Livingston Lowes' excavation of Coleridge s reading: Coleridge, like Burroughs, being more than a little interested in drugs. It is a work for which all Burroughs students should be grateful. --Larry McMurtry
Michael Stevens has found the right vein, circulating raw material of the mind of visionary genius in post modern literature and art. His exhaustive compendia and matrix is like the fractal's pattern bringing similarities that could reveal whole equation. He has provided the reader with the sources of allusion, influences, critiques, and the spirit of scatological obsessions of the late William S. Burroughs, the well-read innovator, inventor, and investigator in literature, art, culture and cosmology. Ezra Pound once advised readers who thought the Cantos too obscure, to just think of them as people throughout history sitting around talking. This book allows me the conversations with Uncle Bill that I unfortunately neglected in his presence. --Charles Plymell
To scan Michael Stevens' bibliography is to dream of entering into William Burroughs' head from a new angle -- not from his writings but from his readings. You can't live Burroughs' life but you can read the books he read. You can infect yourself with the same word virus he picked up in writers ranging from Abrahamson (Crime and the Human Mind) to Yeats ( 'cast a cold eye on life, a cold eye on death...' ) Will these get you any closer to the mutations Burroughs performed on the word virus? Doubtless you'll understand the man and his work better. And perhaps, with the help of the creative reading Burroughs espoused, Road to Interzone will even put you in position to subject the same viral sources to a few new mutations of your own. --RealityStudio.org
A fascinating and richly helpful piece of literary archeology, tracing as broadly as possible the sources William Burroughs had available to him as he wrote. Both the title and the method echo the classic
Road to Xanadu, John Livingston Lowes' excavation of Coleridge s reading: Coleridge, like Burroughs, being more than a little interested in drugs. It is a work for which all Burroughs students should be grateful. --Larry McMurtry
Michael Stevens has found the right vein, circulating raw material of the mind of visionary genius in post modern literature and art. His exhaustive compendia and matrix is like the fractal's pattern bringing similarities that could reveal whole equation. He has provided the reader with the sources of allusion, influences, critiques, and the spirit of scatological obsessions of the late William S. Burroughs, the well-read innovator, inventor, and investigator in literature, art, culture and cosmology. Ezra Pound once advised readers who thought the Cantos too obscure, to just think of them as people throughout history sitting around talking. This book allows me the conversations with Uncle Bill that I unfortunately neglected in his presence. --Charles Plymell
To scan Michael Stevens' bibliography is to dream of entering into William Burroughs' head from a new angle -- not from his writings but from his readings. You can't live Burroughs' life but you can read the books he read. You can infect yourself with the same word virus he picked up in writers ranging from Abrahamson (Crime and the Human Mind) to Yeats ( 'cast a cold eye on life, a cold eye on death...' ) Will these get you any closer to the mutations Burroughs performed on the word virus? Doubtless you'll understand the man and his work better. And perhaps, with the help of the creative reading Burroughs espoused, Road to Interzone will even put you in position to subject the same viral sources to a few new mutations of your own. --RealityStudio.org
