A review by rhys_thomas_sparey
Queer by William S. Burroughs

dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Queer, alongside Junkie, is an essential thematic and technical preface to the rest of Burroughs' work. Together, they expound the tragic, sincere emotionality underpinning the sardonic irony and mania which fuel his later hallucinatory experiments and exorcisms. He unloads his queerness onto the page, and sets it forth in a deeply efficacious act of overcoming what he perceived to be a form of demonic possession rooted in childhood trauma. Yet, it is an accessible narrative of confusion, lust, and betrayal, the primary object of the protagonist's desire a universal metaphor for the futility of struggling for a successful and fulfilling version of queer romance. Unlike Junkie, one can begin to see in this text Burroughs' trademark voice begin to break free from the constrictions of linear time and psychological compartmentalisation. His routines land, his points eviscerate common courtesy, and the reader is exposed to a rendering of the Western hive mind as ugly and ruinous. But the most powerful part of this book is a rare undercurrent of optimism; it is the first and final time that Burroughs admits any hope for self-improvement, any sense of self-worth, however defined, and he is left heartbroken.