'Breathe in Johnny -- Here Goes --' I respect rather than love it. Like Gravity's Rainbow's sewer scene on his knees, bare as a baby ... or William T. Vollmann's telephone exchange between steel reefs, a wire wrapped in gutta-percha vibrates: I hereby...zzZZZZZ...the critical situation...a crushing blow....The sleepwalker's all eyes; the realist is all ears; their mating forms the telephone. Later perhaps, I see parts, flashing, cut-in, from David Lynch this is a formica table or Cronenberg's n...

I've seen a lot of comments about how this book of experimental fiction is "unreadable", which I did not find to be the case at all. In fact I enjoyed reading it immensely - the repetition of the cut-up material gives it a sort of surreal hypnotic quality. The writing is occasionally straight up brilliant. Some of the sex stuff is a bit too much though - if I never hear the phrase "rectal mucus and carbolic soap" again it will be too soon.I do agree that it is difficult to understand - the plot

Some experiments work, some others don't. In particular, experimental writing can always be, at least, fascinating; a unexpected way to elevate fiction and language to new and interesting places. William Burroughs' experiment here is cutting up one of his own manuscripts and then creating an entire new novel from scratch.Sounds interesting? Yeah, it also sounds incredibly difficult.The results are nothing short of peculiar. I often found myself laughing, making weird faces, gasping or even groan...

I know, that experiment. They are reminded that it is an alchemist experiment to try to produce gold dung. And it failed. In the end, they're just a hobby Sanya shit. I need to get this book? Misunderstanding. In severe cases of amnesia precedence, the stereotype of the avant-garde, experimental book:Page 5 Start - What's going on here?6th - two hours here?P.9 is - this is the entire five books.P.13 - This style is a way to pass the bullshit, fractures of the mind and the world I see.Page 20 - b...

Having greatly enjoyed a selection of Burroughs' earlier texts (Junky, Queer and Naked Lunch), and with the intention of reading through his works in order of composition, I hit upon a buffer with The Soft Machine. There are some enjoyably odd and perverse moments within the text and a number bizarre incidents I can relish, but ultimately I do not think the cut-up experimentation works and serves only to distract from the fact that there isn't much in this book that could be read in a sustained

Pure dissonance, attrition and aggression over the Mayan battleships that distillate phosphorescent obsidians into rains of junk. It ends with a dose of apomorphine though.

A self-indulgent mess. Not enjoyable. I love Most of Burrough’s work including Naked Lunch but this was too impenetrable. It just wasn’t any fun. It was simply a junkie tapping away at his type writer, alone in his cheap motel room thinking how great it might be to write a book completely fucked. Sorry pal, it's shite.

I know it is experimental. It reminds me of those alchemists' experiments when they tried to produce gold from excrements. And failed. Ultimately they were just dabbling in shit.This book reads as if Burroughs swallowed words like rectal mucous, compost heap, jissom, masturbate, cock, dropped his pants. And just threw them up on the page. This is not even a stream of consciousness, or unconsciousness for that matter. When I am completely off my face, haven’t had any sleep for 30 hours, and I’m t...

This book forever burned the words "rectal mucus" into my psyche. Carbolic acid and rectal mucus. Thanks BB!

The one book by Burroughs that separates the fans from the curious. The curious usually think 'no, I am not going there.' Relentless sexual assault mixed with very experimental writing makes this book... Charming! I love Burroughs' voice. I also think he's one of the great satire writers of all time. A true American (drug addict) original!

If one performed a Burroughs-type surgery on The Soft Machine and removed every instance of the words ‘orgasm’, ‘rectum’, ‘ass hairs’, even ‘Panama’, then the novel would, as it were, go limp, though if the title is synonymous with the human body then repetition is its natural mode. The cut-up style, assembling narrative by splicing in text from various sources at chosen, random or repeated intervals, is often intriguing but mostly hard-going. Then again, a book with ‘jissom’ every other paragra...

Imagine that the cable box has only 20 channels. Imagine that these channels are playing a variety of sex films, a documentary on parasitic and poisonous insects of the amazon, a sci-fi police drama strangely analogous to Dr. Who (no Daleks, sorry), and a film about junkies. Now imagine what all this would look like when the TV was set to jump randomly among channels every few seconds. This is the best description I can give to the text of The Soft Machine, however this belies the strange almost...

”In order to accomplish the purpose I prostituted myself to one of the priests---(Most distasteful thing I ever stood still for) ---During the sex act he metamorphosed himself into a green crab from the waist up, retaining human legs and genitals that secreted a caustic erogenous slime, while a horrible stench filled the hut---I was able to endure these horrible encounters by promising myself the pleasure of killing this disgusting monster when the time came---And my reputation as an idiot was b...

Burroughs has the power to make almost anyone's skin crawl. His works are clusters of unfocused creative genius complete with hoards of vulgarities and absurd gags. Naked Lunch was a transcendent reading experience for me, it was like nothing I'd ever read before. It was something unique and edgy, totally off the walls crazy to a point of extreme difficulty but also extreme entertainment. The Soft Machine is quite similar in these regards, but it is also even less focused and more experimental.

I find the work of William Burroughs fascinating, but I’m not sure I always understand it. In fact, his most experimental books, of which this is a prime example, are utterly incomprehensible from a rationalist, linear perspective. Their meaning seeps in to the subconscious and the reader is left with the feeling that they have almost but not quite grasped some profound set of truths fixed in a story that remains enigmatic, disturbing and genuinely strange.The main conceit behind *The Soft Machi...

If E.L. James were a gay heroin addict... okay you get the point.But there are some startling similarities. An affinity for a limited vocabulary, eroticising of stones (sand- for James, lime- for Burroughs)...Neither of the two authors seemed to know anything about sex. Or how human beings normally interact. The flimsy character of one was hung, and the other hung most of his flimsy characters.James taught me that the sight of black men makes you question your wardrobe (page, like... two?). Burr...

If you imagine the stereotype of an avant-garde, experimental book, that's The Soft Machine. Sure, it's a clever idea, but actually reading it would be a painful thing. My process reading the book went like this: p.5 (the start) - what's going on here? p.6 - how long is this going to continue? p.9 - oh, it's going on for the whole book. p.13 - I can see how this style conveys a delirious, fractured mind and world. p.20 - but I'm not really getting anything else out of it by reading more. p.27 -

This is the first (or second; or third… depends on the edition) volume of Nova trilogy, written by the beat generation icon, William S. Burroughs. I initially planned to read the whole trilogy, because (formally last volume) Nova Express, was nominated for Nebula in 1965. It doesn’t worth the effort.The author actively uses his ‘novel’ cut-up method of composition: take your text, scissors, and start rearranging parts until they lost coherence. This means the story has no plot, no characters, no...

The Soft Machine is like a travelogue concocted by a perverted and drugged space traveler…I had this special Green Boy I was making it with who knew the ropes you might say and he told me we have to tune the heat wave out with music – So we get all the Indians and all the Green Boys with drums and flutes and copper plates and stayed just out of the heat blast beating the drums and slowly closed in – lam had rigged up a catapult to throw limestone boulders and shattered the cubicle so we move in

It hit me with a certain amount of force yesterday that I'd read eight books by William S. Burroughs between July and November of 2012 and zero in the entirety of 2013 and 2014. What had happened to the young rebel? Had he calmed? Dare we say he made peace with the world?Well, it was a slow realization, but here's the essence of the problem: William S. Burroughs was not a great writer. An interesting one? Definitely. An influential one? I'll go along with that. A key part of shaping my tastes in...