Cities of the Red Night follows a dual narrative, slipping fluidly between the early 18th century exploits of a libertarian pirate crew, led by gunsmith Noah Blake, and the late 20th century “private asshole” (Clem Snide) hired to find the decapitated remains of one Jerry Green -- victim apparent of a bizarre hanging/sex cult. It is worth noting that hanging and the spontaneous erections/ejaculations induced by this mode of execution factor heavily into both tales, at times serving as the literal and symbolic connection between the two. Looking to the invocation, we find that the book itself is dedicated (amongst many others) to:"Ix Tab, Goddess of Ropes and Snares, patroness of those who hang themselves, to Schmuun, the Silent One, twin brother of Ix Tab, to Xolotl the Unformed, Lord of Rebirth, to Aguchi, Master of Ejaculations, to Osiris and Amen in phallic form, to Hex Chun Chan, the Dangerous One, to Ah Pook, the Destroyer, to the Great Old One and the Star Beast, to Pan, God of Panic, to the nameless gods of dispersal and emptiness, to Hassan i Sabbah, Master of Assassins, [and to] all the scribes and artists and practitioners of magic through whom these spirits have been manifested...."This intercultural pantheon of creative and destructive deities embodies the underlying mythos of the novel, which centers on transmutation of the soul through the simultaneous experience of orgasm and bodily death. Suggested is the notion of the spirit itself erupting from the inflamed, blistering body, its distinctive musky aroma being that of the “Red Fever” (a.k.a. Virus B-23), a disease originally endemic to the ancient mythical cities for which the book is named: Tamaghis, Ba’dan, Yass-Waddah, Waghdas, Naufana, and Ghadis. In one early episode, the enigmatic Dr. Peterson explains his theory on the virus:"Now let us consider the symptoms of Virus B-23: fever, rash, a characteristic odor, sexual frenzies, obsession with sex and death.... Is this so totally strange and alien? [...] We know that a consuming passion can produce physical symptoms ... fever ... loss of appetite ... even allergic reactions ... and few conditions are more obsessional and potentially self-destructive than love. Are not the symptoms of Virus B-23 simply the symptoms of what we are pleased to call ‘love’? Eve, we are told, was made from Adam’s rib ... so a hepatitis virus was once a healthy liver cell. If you will excuse me, ladies, nothing personal ... we are all tainted by viral origins."This equating of human biology and behavior with that of a viral organism is perhaps nothing new, but in Cities of the Red Night it is employed as a vital first premise to the thesis postulated by the Western Lands trilogy, which this book serves to open. In the world put forth by Burroughs, it is the soul itself which is the virus, bound to spread from one corporeal form to the next, at least until it it finds a host hardy enough to transcend life as we know it.Up next, The Place of Dead Roads.
A Warning of the Faustian Decline to Come........and it has already started. I'm not sure why but this was a really enjoyable book to read over the summer. (Read this during the summer of 2011)Many criticisms have been levelled at this book. However, I feel the reviewer of December 2, 2005 on amazon.com in particular has hit the nail on the head. It is not easy reading and is definitely not for the faint-hearted or prudish. As the above reviewer points out, this trilogy is for thinking people and while Burroughs' devastating exposure of human lust and depravity may turn some people off his work, to my mind he is much more open and honest in his assessments of 'the human condition'. So if people are turned off by its homoerotic lewdness or find other aspects of the narrative repulsive (such as all the hanging scenes which are in fact an exaggerated indictment of capital punishment which he was avidly against!), that's fine, but to my mind they are missing out on seeing the bigger picture of Burroughs' message and warning to Manking - the real messages and themes underlying Burroughs' work.First of all, know what an artist is trying to do! Some artists like to shock because that is the only way they will get their points across to the lay audience. This might seem like a really inappropriate example but remember the killer from Seven (played by Kevin Spacey) - he said in one of the closing scenes of the film that, "sometimes you have to hit people over the head with a sledgehammer for them to notice" or something to that effect - well Burroughs was all about doing this in a figurative sense.At times it reads like a post-holocaust (divine?) comedy, at other times like a jump-through-time pulp novel and at other times like a moralistic diatribe. Each of the cities corresponds to one in which Burroughs was firmly ensconced for some considerable length of time. I'm pretty sure that at least two of the real cities referred to obliquely in the text are Mexico City (remember Joan Vollmer Adams, Burroughs wife, and the notorious William Tell incident?) and Tangiers (where Kerouac and Ginsy helped typed up his Naked Lunch novel). The third city could either be Paris (where he lived for a while with other beat writers like Gregory Corso in the 'Beat Hotel') or more likely New York City.All in all though, this book, in my opinion, is pure art at its best - challenging, confrontational, notorious even! and above-all, absolutely visceral and riveting reading. I think it may have been Burroughs himself who once said, 'it is the job of the artist to raise people's consciousness'. Burroughs obviously sees humanity heading full-speed towards a gaping abyss and seems to be warning us that we may be on auto-pilot towards our own destruction unless we dramatically change gears right now.The final trilogy by Burroughs is excellent. The only book by Burroughs that I possibly like better than this one is the final instalment, The Western Lands, which is unbelievably good.
What do You think about Cities Of The Red Night (2001)?
Spasmic spurts of jizz under the fiery sky; burning orgasms exploding in flashes; never-ending smell of rectal mucus; animalistic sex, opium induced hallucinations and hashish. A nightmarish, perverted alternative dimension with sexual sacrificies, hangings, strangulations, beheadings and magic. Commodification and commersialism; sex and death. America.A hallucinatory pastische of an adventure story, of a hardboiled detective story and of fantasy/science fiction, all at the same time with intertwining narratives weaving in and out of one another, creating levels of meta-fiction just to get deconstructed in the next second, questioning not only the novel itself, but language and literary techniques in themselves. At first, easier to read and not as apparent experimental and inpenetrable as The Wild Boys or Soft Machine, but equally brilliant and wild, still experimental but rather toned down until the last hundred pages where Burroughs use of techniques to break up the narratives culminates in a hallucinatory, anti-narrative war where present, past and future co-exist; where the world is a set from a Hollywood film and every movie genre and every epoch of world history are engaged. Perhaps the inevitable, logical end of imperialistic entertainment culture. So far removed from reality, yet - with its comments on power structures, commodification, manipulation, entertainment industry, fiction, language and viruses - the 21st century in a twisted nutshell. Not to mention, extremely entertaning! Burroughs is a genius.
—Jack Brånfelt
*Partial spoilers ahead*WSB really outdid himself here. "Junky" remains my personal favorite but, objectively speaking, "Cities of the Red Night" is his finest book--and it's all the more impressive considering his rather substandard output ("Port of Saints", "Exterminator!") in the preceding years. Burroughs struggled with writer's block in the mid-'70s and worked for seven years to complete "Cities", but when it was released no one could argue that the Godfather of the Beats wasn't firing on all cylinders again. This is a long, multi-tiered novel, juggling several initially discrete storylines which begin gradually to overlap. In all of them, the author's attention to mood and detail is extraordinary--and, if his failure to provide a resolution at the book's end is frustrating, it at least will come as no surprise to Burroughs fans. Thankfully, his use of cut-ups had by this time become minimal. The overarching theme, as always, is the battle against Control. In his introduction WSB briefly outlines the possibly legendary history of Libertatia, a pirate commune founded in Madagascar by Captain James Mission, and argues convincingly that Mission's experiment was far preferable to the so-called republican forms of government to which the French and American revolutions gave birth. He also foreshadows the novel's melancholy, unresolved climax by observing that a present-day revival of Libertatia would be impossible. "The chance was there," Burroughs writes. "The chance was missed. (...) Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it." "Cities of the Red Night" is partly a broadside against tyranny in all its forms and partly a sexagenarian's wistful fantasy of youth, and it's terrific. Not for all tastes, of course, but terrific.
—Jonathan Mitchell
Hm. Not aged well, Burroughs. Or maybe I have, as I was mad about this aged 17 but now it seems tiresome. Taking the repetitive gay porn out of this would reduce its mass to a pamphlet. It would be an excellent pamphlet. The AIDS/Spanish Flu/Love as a virus conceit feels a bit of a vague platform. The cut-ups in CotRN seems more arbitrary than in earlier stuff, a shame because there's occasionally very interesting Burroughs-gents into astral projection, Shakespeare, ancient races and the state of the cities of red night, various folk ephemera...but these snippets are inevitably interrupted with 15 pages of pirate anus porn. It can never be bad, but it's really not all that good anymore. Like an old man at the bar trying to explain the 1970s backwards.
—Michael William West
