Cities of the Red Night: A Novel

It is fairly difficult to recommend a Burroughs novel to friends or family who are not well acquainted with beat or experimental literature without turning them off entirely. I managed to get my dad to read Naked Lunch after much goading and upon completing it he declared it the worst novel he had ever read (Down, trolls. It's not for everyone. Disliking NL does not signify a lack of intelligence.), but Cities is actually a pretty accessible entry into Uncle Bills oeuvre.The novel consists of three narrative strands taking place in three different eras in history. One narrative revolves around the clairvoyant detective Clem Snide and his search for the missing person named Jerry Green, another consists of an adventurer named Noah Blake and his journey enlisting with a group of pirates who seek to unite the world under a code of law established by the disputed historical figure Captain Mission called The Articles, and the final narrative follows an ancient and futuristic group of cities (the titular 'cities' of the red night) in what is now the Gobi desert and their wars against one another. The story is divided into 3 books, and by the final book the 3 narratives begin to bleed into one another in classic Burroughs fashion.Cities contains some of Burroughs best ideas on control, human nature, systematic corruption, historical determinism, and has one of the most entertaining storylines in his entire bibliography (This is said having read nearly all his books with the exceptions of Places of Dead Roads (working on it), Western Lands, and My Education).As I mentioned before, if you're someone who having read Burroughs more experimental works wants to share them with friends, family, or colleagues, but doesn't want to throw them too far into left field with Naked Lunch or the Cut-Up trilogy, this along with Junky would be a great place to start, although this might be a better choice than Junky because it combines his unconventional narrative techniques while harkening back to his earlier more conventional storytelling methods.In closing I'd definitely recommend this novel to Burroughs fans and newcomers alike. It's a fantastic tale that is greatly enhanced by the unique spins that only Burroughs could do for his readers. Pick it up and share it with others!

Jack Kerouac was declared King of the Beats quite prematurely, while Burroughs took longer to blossom as a writer, he surpassed anything his Beat contemporaries wrote with some of his later work. As much as a I love Kerouac's work, but as his literary alter-ego Jack Duluoz puts it in Big Sur, hes more of a "language spinner," than an "idea man." Burroughs is just so much more imaginative and visionary in his work, and I find that Cities of the Red Night has a lot in common with William Blake's later apocalyptic prophetic books. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on William Blake's influence on Kerouac and Ginsberg, and only read Cities of the Red Night after completing that thesis, but if I had read it beforehand I probably would have focused a lot more on the connections between the two Williams. Here Burroughs, like Blake, crafts a private mythology, and a narrative unencumbered by the strictures of linear time. However, there is very little use of cut-ups in this work, which despite its complexity, makes it a bit smoother of a read than Burroughs cut-up heavy works, Naked Lunch, and the Nova Trilogy. I would recommend anyone new to Burroughs start with naked lunch, but after that, I think its worth it to skip the Nova trilogy and go straight to Cities of the Red Night. There is a decent amount of gay sex, so if that's something that makes you uncomfortable than you probably won't want to read any of Burroughs work. But it's not just thrown in their for no reason as hanging, and auto-erotic asphyixiation play a major role in the mythology of the cities of the red night, and here I don't mean the book itself, but the actual cities portrayed in the text. I don't want to reveal too much, but simply put this is an amazing read, and perhaps some of Burroughs best work. I can't wait to read the second two books in the series, The Place of Dead Roads, and The Western Lands. I'm currently taking a gap year to apply to English Lit. PhD programs, but I'm already contemplating this trilogy as a subject for my dissertation.

I love Burroughs, have read his work for 20 years so to be fair I'm biased, but really enjoyed this work a lot... Was almost too much in parts, but that's part of the fun for me. Great read on my holiday in Thailand and kept reading out parts to my girlfriend to watch her jaw drop...Different in style to other works like junky, exterminator or nova express, more Naked Lunch.. Take a leap into WSB crazy dream induced fantasy land and hold on.

Burroughs' one and only attempt at a best seller is sublime, a book to re-read, and some of the best writing on dreams in existence. This is no wonder, as the great man spent a lifetime examining the nature and mystery of dreams, time, reality, synchronicity, parallel universes, et.. Also, very witty, very funny, grotesque, absurd and absolutely beautiful in parts.. For many, many years my favourite novel.. So glad to now be in possession of a signed first edition.. The plot or interweaving plots cannot be summarised easily, but it is certainly one of his best, and absolutely timeless, like all his works.. A work of very rare genius indeed.. Thank you, Bill, I can not imagine a more exquisite piece of science fiction/ detective fiction.. Also, an excellent place to start for those unfamiliar with this giant of twentieth century fiction.. Absolutely sublime..

On the one hand Burroughs is a great stylist with a gnostic humor second to none, yet on the other hand he is an obsessed degenerate. Henry Miller said that as he got older his writing moved up from the groin to the heart. Not true with Burroughs. He never seems to rise above. Did he ever write one uplifting line?

WSB is an old pervert and these novels are disjointedness and weird as hell. Probably why I liked them so much. One of the original Chaotes, RIP old Man.

His final trilogy, though by no means his final books, began with this. With relatively straight narrative other than flashes back and forth in time Burroughs once again proves the seer, here anticipating AIDS in particular and the onset of y4t further control systems in our increasingly corrupt society. One expects brilliance from him and it is here - an essential book to anyone wishing to be well read, particularly but not exclusively in gay literature. A background of disown childhood, his cowboy fantasy as his alter ego Kim and his refusal to flinch from breathtaking honesty and self exposure, creating also a wholly believable world in part because his world view saw things as thy actually are... the human ape layed bare. Simply magnificent. The one man I would wish to be other than myself despite his self torture over incidents he could not control, perp the most honest human ever to lift a pen. Buy it now.

I am not sure if this is true but I asked my good friend Mrs Hood (Betty) who lives down the road and knows all about him and she told me this so it must be right. My question is if he takes drugs how is he able to write books. But also how is he able to shoot bullet at wife? Mrs Hood told me he does this also. Strange man.

Overall a good book - Burroughs has a unique vision and voice but many sections such as the theatrical-style homoerotic 'routines' are gratuitous drivel and don't add to the work. Still well worth reading.

This was my first encounter with Burroughs and I was...erm...yeah.I bought it after getting interested in the idea of gay pirates (there's a song about this - Google it). So the novel jumps off the idea of a world in which a group of pirates decide to give up looting and pillaging to settle down to create a place where everyone could be free and equal. This did sort of happen in reality but these Utopian colonies didn't last very long - I think they all died through invasion and disease. But what would our world look like if those societies had been successful and flourished? At least I think that's what it's about.Well, this being a Burroughs novel, things are not straightforward. For a start, everyone practices magic (which actually works) and also there's some weird sexual disease on the rampage and...look, it's hard to explain what's going on but that doesn't make it bad.There's a LOT of sex. Lots. And body fluids. Themes of sex, death and ritual feature heavily. Anyway, I think I like it but it's hard to say. Sort of leaves you wanting a shower. Certainly very evocative - you can smell and taste this novel.Ew. I need to brush my teeth...

but ive kinda grown out of him. his phantasmagoria is... not optimistic. in terms of his cut/up technique, i gotta say that sam beckett does it better: what burroughs does with cut and paste, beckett does in his head. obviously, theres minimal sexuality in beckett, but im at the point where im thinking, uh, the sexual revolution kinda failed, didnt it?