Wising Up the Marks: The Amodern William Burroughs

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780520209510
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0520209516
Label: University of California Press
Manufacturer: University of California Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: January 05, 1998
Publisher: University of California Press
Studio: University of California Press

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
William S. Burroughs is one of the twentieth century's most visible, controversial, and baffling literary figures. In the first comprehensive study of the writer, Timothy S. Murphy places Burroughs in the company of the most significant intellectual minds of our time. In doing so, he gives us an immensely readable and convincing account of a man whose achievements continue to have a major influence on American art and culture. Murphy draws on the work of such philosophers as Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Theodor Adorno, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and also investigates the historical contexts from which Burroughs's writings arose.
From the paranoid isolationism of the Cold War through the countercultural activism of the sixties to the resurgence of corporate and state control in the eighties, Burroughs's novels, films, and music hold a mirror to the American psyche. Murphy coins the term "amodernism" as a way to describe Burroughs's contested relationship to the canon while acknowledging the writer's explicit desire for a destruction of such systems of classification. Despite the popular mythology that surrounds Burroughs, his work has been largely excluded from the academy of American letters. Finally here is a book that presents a solid portrait of a major artistic innovator, a writer who combines aesthetics and politics and who can perform as anthropologist, social goad, or media icon, all with consummate skill.




Rating: - One of the Better Burroughs Books
Murphy's book is a great examination of Burrough's major work from the beginning of his career until the end. It accurately makes sense of the often muddled messages and ambiguities of Burroughs more famous novels. Most importantly, Murphy very carefully exposes the great issues of Burroughs: Control and Lies. While this is not new ground, it is well written, allowing the reader a full view of the work in question.

Murphy also states an important fact about the majority of Burroughs' critics ... Read More

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Rating: - One of the Better Burroughs Books
Murphy's book is a great examination of Burrough's major work from the beginning of his career until the end. It clears up the often muddled messages and ambiguities of Burroughs more famous novels. Most importantly, Murphy very carefully exposes the great issues of Burroughs: Control and Lies. While this is not new ground, the book is well written, allowing the reader a full view of some of the past centuries most important books.

Murphy states an important fact about the majority of Burroughs' ... Read More

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Rating: - A book I wish I'd written -- outstanding scholarship
Timothy S. Murphy has contributed an extraordinary study, a book that finally does justice to the Burroughs canon, reading his work in the hypercritical line of Swift, Orwell, and Ralph Ellison, an unrepentant political literature firing the engines of social change. Readers of Burroughs scholarship are all too familiar with the widespread academic attempt to "postmodernize" him, of a reflexive poststructuralism which consigns his work to the a-referential abyss of a Robbe-Grillet, or a John Barth, an ... Read More

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Rating: - Wising Up the Marks: A Review.
Alongside the earlier works by Eric Mottram and Jennie Skerl, Mr. Murphy offers the reader an insight into the life of William Burroughs as well an in depth analysis of his works. ''Wising Up the Marks'' is an indispensable work for both the Burroughs's collector and academic historian alike.

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Rating: - Wising Up the Marks: A Review.
Alongside the earlier works by Eric Mottram and Jennie Skerl, Mr. Murphy offers the reader an insight into the life of William Burroughs as well an in depth analysis of his works. ''Wising Up the Marks'' is an indispensable work for both the Burroughs's collector and academic historian alike.

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