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A review by jeffhall
Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs
3.0
Like anything by William Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night is a wild ride that doesn't give up its secrets easily. The book initially seems to be about Virus B-23, a plague that begins as a rash around a victim's private parts, giving the author leeway to incorporate quite a lot of erect penises into his narrative. Early in the novel, we are even treated to a guest appearance from Dr. Benway (of Naked Lunch fame), which seems to reinforce the idea that Cities of the Red Night shares many concerns with Burroughs' most famous work.
But as the story rolls along in its wonderfully chaotic fashion, the focus shifts to Captain Mission's legendary colony of Libertatia, with its emphasis on direct democracy and complete human freedom, which becomes the seedbed for an 18th-century arms race. And then things get really crazy, as the various sub-stories and timelines begin to invade each other and key characters become plastic both in terms of personality and physical characteristics.
At the very end of the book, Burroughs arrives at something of a denouement:
"I have blown a hole in time with a firecracker. Let others step through. Into what bigger and better firecrackers? Better weapons lead to better and better weapons, until the earth is a grenade with the fuse burning."
So in the end, Burroughs delivers a parable of humanity's destructive tendencies, not so much as any sort of warning, but rather as a simple recognition of the limits of what we can hope to accomplish as a species. Given that Cities of the Red Night is the first volume of a trilogy, I'm eager to see how Burroughs develops this further, since there is a grim finality to this first installment of the series.
But as the story rolls along in its wonderfully chaotic fashion, the focus shifts to Captain Mission's legendary colony of Libertatia, with its emphasis on direct democracy and complete human freedom, which becomes the seedbed for an 18th-century arms race. And then things get really crazy, as the various sub-stories and timelines begin to invade each other and key characters become plastic both in terms of personality and physical characteristics.
At the very end of the book, Burroughs arrives at something of a denouement:
"I have blown a hole in time with a firecracker. Let others step through. Into what bigger and better firecrackers? Better weapons lead to better and better weapons, until the earth is a grenade with the fuse burning."
So in the end, Burroughs delivers a parable of humanity's destructive tendencies, not so much as any sort of warning, but rather as a simple recognition of the limits of what we can hope to accomplish as a species. Given that Cities of the Red Night is the first volume of a trilogy, I'm eager to see how Burroughs develops this further, since there is a grim finality to this first installment of the series.