So, I've been revisiting W S Burroughs lately: I
found an audiobook of The Soft Machine at the library the other week, and I've
been listening to it in the car on random play (sometimes with other discs,
sometimes on its own). And I've got to say, I fucking LOVE the cut
up method. There's a lot of people who can't stand it (my
delightful love partner and best friend Nalin among them), but it speaks to me
in some barely-articulable way, like it's speaking directly to the part of me
where dreams are made. The thrill some people get out of poetry, I get
out of cut-ups. The surreal flashes of imagery, the non-connected moments
juxtaposed at random! It's the closest thing to actual dreaming I can
feel (in a reading or writing capacity).
I still remember when I first discovered the book
Minutes to Go: it was 1993, the Baillieu Library at Melbourne Uni. The
book not only outlined the process and thoughts behind the cut-up as a
compositional tool, but was also filled with examples of the cut-up (and
fold-in) approach. It blew my fucking mind. I immediately rushed
home and started making my own cut-ups (in a project that I still revisit now
and then, some twenty six years later, eep).
Anyway. Point is, I loved the cut-up then and
there. But that's not all I love about Mr Burroughs and his writing.
His deadpan descriptions of completely fucked up situations and people,
his grey prose detailing the most colourful antics, is such an excellent voice.
His time-travelling body-possessing achronic multi-dimensional cosmology
is superb. His humour is so dark, so black, and so perfectly delivered.
The idea of this ultradimensional Agency of fucked up antiheroes chasing down
this conspiracy of fucked up criminal gangs through the very weave of space and
time is just excellent. His thoughts on addiction and language and
reality and brainwashing/education/indoctrination are all
fascinating. I pretty much love everything about his writing (to be
honest, I could do with fewer descriptions of morally-dubious sexual encounters,
but y'know, comes with the territory).
So, re-immersing myself in that world has been a
delight and an inspiration. And when I'm inspired, I'm liable to do
poorly-thought-out things. The poorly-thought-out thing I'm embarking
upon now is, chucking a cheeky August Derleth and completely ripping off the
Burroughsian mythos (and approach) myself.
(For those not in the know, August Derleth was a friend
of H P Lovecraft, and he’s the guy who pretty much helped Lovecraft become
posthumously famous – it was Derleth who coined the term “Cthulhu Mythos” to
describe the “ancient beings who once ruled the universe and will rule again
someday” cosmology that Lovecraft invented (Lovecraft himself used the term “Yog-Sothery”,
which is pretty cute). But as well as
anthologising a bunch of Lovecraft and publishing it, Derleth also took a bunch
of Lovecraftian idea scraps and turned them into fully-fledged stories, and
then started just jamming out his own stories set in Lovecraft’s glorious setting. I’ve never actually read any Derleth Cthulhu
stories, but allegedly they’re pretty shit, utilising all the exciting
amorphous unintelligible Yog-Sothery of Lovecraft but then de-ambiguousing it into
simple “good vs evil” tales (Derleth apparently was a fervent Christ-lover) and
adding very little new of his own.)
Anyway, so, if Derleth can unashamedly steal
someone else’s universe and set their own stories in it, so can I. If Derleth can be a second-rate Lovecraft, I
am allowed to be a second-rate Burroughs.
Because, let's face it, not a lot of people are
doing this kinda shit at the moment. The cut-up approach has been around
for 60 years (ooh, a quick Google says that it's 60 years exactly in September
of 2020!) and yet no-one's really doing it any more (there's one Japanese dude
who writes cut-up-like cyberpunk, can't remember his name, but I don't know if
it's actual cut-up or just incomprehensible).
And let's also face
it, Mr Burroughs himself was a little... "problematic" is the word
they use these days. As in, he was almost certainly a murderer, a
misogynist, and perhaps maybe a teensy bit paedo-adjacent, if not a full-blown
kiddie-fiddler (in a private letter to his definitely-paedophilic friend Allen
Ginsberg, he wrote of paying "two Arab kids 60 cents to watch them screw
each other ... They did it. Made me feel sorta like a dirty old
man"). I mean, if that’s the shit you’re sharing with your friends,
I can’t help but wonder what you’re hiding.
Eep. Anyway – so, yeah, Old Man
Burroughs is most definitely no saint, and in this age of cancel-culture, is
most likely completely null and void.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone who’s a bit
less problematic update the Interzone Mythos?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone, say, maybe a bit like me, for
instance, write some awesome stories in the Burroughsian mould? Well, nice or not, I’m doing it, so there.
I’m definitely qualified. And I promise I’ll do it justice. And after all, the cut-up technique
frequently cuts other people’s material into itself, if not makes new material entirely out of other source material –
so, if Old Man Burroughs can cut up a newspaper and call it his own, I can cut
up some Burroughs and call it my own.
Surely. Thing is, I won’t even be
cutting much Burroughs into what I’m writing, I don’t think – definitely will
be some, but it’ll primarily be all new material written from scratch – I’ll
mostly be cutting up my own writing, I think.
But I really do want to be true to the spirit of what
Burroughs was doing with his work. It’s
not just “stories set in the same mythos” that I want to do, but embrace the
whole approach. So, as he cut up
newspapers from his era, I’ll be cutting up articles from mine. As his writing was semi-autobiographical in
lots of sections, so will mine be. As
his writing slipped in and out of narrative comprehensibility, so shall my
own. And that voice! I’ll do my best to
recreate that deadpan, alienated, observationally-detached voice he did so well
(although I can’t help but think I won’t be able to – I’m too much of a softy
to remove all human emotion from my writing, I think). I’m even writing it in small chapterlettes –
and calling them “routines”, as Burroughs himself did. (Let’s face it though – he and I are very
different writers, living very different lives, in very different times, and it’s
not going to be an “imitation” as much as an “homage” – I don’t want it to be “like”
a Burroughs work, but “on the same trajectory” or something. I’m not ghostwriting him, but writing from a
place of love and inspiration. So let’s
get that clear – it won’t actually be all that Burroughsy – but it will
hopefully do the things that I love about his writing, and be some kind of
suitable tribute.)
It’s a stupid project, and one that I know will
only appeal to a very very very small
number of people (even Nalin, my biggest fan, will never read this – she loathes
cut-ups with a passion that feels almost pathological), but I’m going to do it
anyway. And I’m going to post the
routines up on my blog as I finish them (but maybe not in order), so they’re
just “out there”. Maybe if I ever get to
a place where I feel like “it’s finished”, I’ll compile them into a novel or
something, but that day may never come (although, now that I know that
September 2020 is a significant milestone in the cut-up timeline, maybe that
could be some kind of deadline or something – who knows?).
So. Who’s with
me? Anybody?
