Louis-Ferdinand Céline's influence on North American writers makes for a fascinating case study in literary influence. Is Céline a "strong poet" whose anxiety of influence has been felt on this side...previous work on Céline includes Sources et citations dans "Bagatelles pour un massacre" (1987) and a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, coedited with Philippe Roussin, "Céline, USA" (1994).

Louis-Ferdinand Céline's influence on North American writers makes for a fascinating case study in literary influence. Is Céline a "strong poet" whose anxiety of influence has been felt on this side...previous work on Céline includes Sources et citations dans "Bagatelles pour un massacre" (1987) and a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, coedited with Philippe Roussin, "Céline, USA" (1994).

Louis-Ferdinand Céline's influence on North American writers makes for a fascinating case study in literary influence. Is  Céline a "strong poet" whose anxiety of influence has been felt on this side... Alice Kaplan, " The Céline Effect: A 1992 Survey of Contemporary American Writers." From Modernism/modernity. Volume 3, Number 1, January 1996, pp. 117-136.

Joan Didion reads The Soft Machine   There sometimes seems a peculiar irrelevance about what is claimed for William S. Burroughs, both by those who admire him and those who do not; the insistent...and faked; it is the voice of a natural, and what it is saying is in no sense the point.   — Joan Didion, "Wired for Shock Treatments," Bookweek, 27 March 1966, p 2-3.

Marshall McLuhan, “Notes on Burroughs”                              Today men's nerves surround us; they have gone outside as electrical environment. The human nervous system itself can...of an active and lethal environmental process. Marshall McLuhan, "Notes on Burroughs," The Nation (28 Dec. 1964): 51719. Copyright © 1964 by The Nation magazine/ The Nation Company, Inc.

William S. Burroughs' fiction repeatedly posits a world of global anarchy, or even outright warfare . A recurrent motif is a pitiless guerrilla gang of savage wild boys fighting the agencies of police...streets, old newspapers in the wind, a rustle of darkness and wires.   In the night sky over St Louis the Mayan Death God does a Cossack dance shooting stars from his eyes. The Chief smiles .  

On the 7 th anniversary of 9-11 these words from Burrough’s The Soft Machine seem appropriate:   Gongs of violence and how—Show you something— Berserk machine—"Shift cut tangle word lines—Word...initial publication, Burroughs revised The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded , while leaving Nova Express in its original form ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nova_Trilogy ).

A true genius and first mythographer of the mid-twentieth century, William Burroughs is the lineal successor to James Joyce. Naked Lunch is a banquet you will never forget.   — JG Ballard  ..... sex organs sprout anywhere... rectums open,   defecate and close... the entire organism changes color   and con- sistency in split-second adjustments.....  

God's Gonna Cut You Down Johnny Cash ~ Pill-poppin' truck stoppin' been in Folsom prison kicked out the footlights at the Grand Ol’ Opry and was told to never come back generally wrecked a wide...with nectar- Starlings carry it On their black wings. See, at last My arms and my hands Are lying idle. How can I tell If I shall ever love you again As I do now? - Dr. William Carlos Williams .

Provident junkies, known as squirrels, keep stashes against a bust. Every time I take a shot I let a few drops fall into my vest pocket, the lining is stiff with stuff. I had a plastic dropper in my shoe... electronic eyes weigh your car and luggage, clothes and face; snarling big city dicks, soft-spoken country sheriffs with something black and menacing in old eyes color of a faded grey flannel shirt...