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NOVA_EXPRESS_RESLICED
September 19, 2021
A random sample from a (somewhat) random book:
"Even so there is a devious underground either
outright or partial misdirection-- The office air
are heads in bottles-- Beyond all doubt intend to
outthink and replace the advocate-- A client
revolution-- For how could he keep fallen heads to
help him?-- Metal shimmering heat from the stage
where further assistance melts at noon into remote
inaccessible courts-- "
William S. Burroughs, "Nova Express" (1964)
p. 123, Evergreen Black Cat paperback
This is Burroughs well into his cut-up phase.
I've seen film of him at work on this process,
typing a page, then quartering it-- cutting it
vertically and horizontally-- then reassembling
the pieces in different order, and re-typing the
page.
Just looking at this small sample of text, it
seems unusually *coherent* for this sort of
process. You might expect that every dozen
words or so, there should be a linguistic
glitch. Instead only one here really leaps
out, I think:
"The office air | are heads in bottles"
Then there's this jump in topic that might
indicate a cut:
fallen heads to help him?-- | Metal shimmering heat"
It occurs to me that Burroughs might've
exercised some license in reassembling
the pieces, e.g. inserting an emdash on
some of the breaks.
But then, you might expect some of the
cuts to be "self-healing": it's all one Also, there are differences in
voice, and one flow of discourse (phrases prose composition that would be
re-joined from the same page are likely likely to kick in if you were
to be on the same topic at least.) *planning* on re-working it via
cut-up: should I use three
So in these 59 words, using my rule of phrases in a row repeating a
thumb you'd expect around five "cuts", concept when it's likely I
and if I can't detect three of them, could do with just one? Well,
maybe that's not *that* strange. why not if the immediate
setting isn't going to be the
Also, I have no way final one? It's in effect a
of knowing if "first draft" without any need
Burroughs attacked to polish it. Leaving some
this task with the redundancy in the original might
thorough consistency improve the coherence of the
of a John Cage, he Just as Kerouac final, scrambled form.
might very well have exaggerated the
played up the amount amount of There's an opening remark
of scrambling he was improvisation explaining that "An
doing to increase the spontaniety he extension of Brion Gysin's
his legend. was using... cut-up method which I call
the fold-in method has been
I have similar (Interesting used in this book which is
suspicious about the that two of the consequently a composite of
claims David Bowie original beat may writers livin and
made in the Ziggy quadrumvirate dead."
Stardust era that he went with two
was using a cut-up different Hypothetically, some of the
technique to attacks on the science fictional riffs here
generate song tradition of might be lifted from some
lyrics. There are compositional trashy, forgotten skiffy,
some unusually control.) of which there is much...
non-linear lines
here and there
throughout those
Bowie songs, but not
all that many
really.
It would seem that Burroughs was doing
a "fold-in" of earlier passages in the
book into the later sections:
I see that the passage I randomly
selected is clearly related to an
earlier passage on p.65, the opening
of "Crab Nebula":
"They do no have what they call 'emotions
oxygen' in the atmosphere. The medium in The phrase "Metal cities
which animal life breathes is not in that controlled by The Elders
soulless place-- Yellow plains under white who are heads in bottles"
hot blue sky-- Metal cities controlled by may be the original
The Elders who are heads in bottles-- source of the fragment
Fastest brains preserved forever-- Only "are heads in bottles".
form of immortality open to The Insect
People of Minraud-- An intricate This phrase "Even so..."
bureaucracy wired to the control brains is very close to the
directs all movement-- Even so there is a opening of the p.123 quote
devious underground operating through above, except the phrase
telepathic misdirection and camouflage-- "operating through
[...] telepathic" becomes
Largely the underground is made up of "outright or partial",
adventurers who intend to outthink and which looks far more like a
displace the present heads-- [...] " human re-write than cut-up
reslicing. I suspect the
source material for the
Presuming this (relatively linear) text fold-in was an earlier
is the source of the later quote, this draft...
was the original source of the phrase
"intend to outthink and replace", which
reveals some additional seams in the
p.123 cut-up:
"Beyond all doubt | intend to
outthink and replace | the advocate"
So there's two of the "self-healing"
cuts I was speculating about.
Department of "English Sucks":
I would guess that further analysis--
perhaps computerized-- would let you Did Burroughs prefer
trace the proximate origins of the "mis-direction" or "misdirection"?
other phrases, e.g. "the advocate"... in my paperback edition, there's
an end-of-line break after the
hyphen. When the phrase is reset
on p. 123 it loses the hyphen,
so I've deleted it here...
My spellchecker prefers "out think"
to "outthink" but I stet Burroughs
sic because in a text full of mildly
fractured language you can't use
"standard" rules to do corrections.
And even worse, Burroughs version of
the "beat" style is often informal,
based on slang....
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