Not knowing much about William Burroughs other than his history with drugs, I picked up ‘The Soft Machine’ spontaneously, assuming that it would be a “normal” novel, albeit a strange one. To say the least, I certainly wasn’t expecting this. One paragraph in, and I’d raised an eyebrow; one page in, and I was starting to wonder if the whole first chapter would be as seemingly nonsensical as what I’d just read. When I found that the second chapter was just as weird, I started to question whether or not it would be worth continuing to read a book that I just didn’t understand, but I persevered after reading the Wikipedia article on it and finding out that some kind of sense emerges from it in chapter 7. There was a strange allure to it, after all, as I’d never read anything quite like it before. Written in the so-called “cut-up and fold-in” technique, the book consists of many different seemingly random, mostly graphic, and often horrific, scenes spliced into one another. Paragraphs go off into a tangent, sentences inexplicably merge into one another, and there’s a general disregard for character, story or even grammar. I must admit, for most of the book, I found it arduous to read and I often came close to throwing in the towel and chucking it in the bin.However, by the time I’d reached chapter 7, the only chapter to have a somewhat coherent plot, and which kind of puts the rest of the book into perspective, I’d gotten my head around the incredibly disjointed writing style, and began to appreciate it for what it was. I say “appreciated”, but that’s purely on an artistic level. By this point, I still didn’t actually *like* the book, although some of the scenes were very funny. I also started to realise that this is a book that you have to read in small doses and really concentrate on. The moment I started reading it just to read it, my mind would wander and I’d lose the intricacies of the narrative (if you can call it that). In small doses, however, I could follow most of it (though many of the rambling sentences and paragraphs still lost me completely, and were probably designed to do so), and I started actually enjoying it.By the end of the book, I had fully gathered the theme (and “theme” is a better word to use than “story” when describing the narrative of this book) and understood that this was all some kind of analogy for being hooked on drugs. But, if any further context is needed, Burroughs includes some rather excellent appendices at the back, which I’m guessing he wrote for the book, and they really add to the appeal and understanding. If read as a cohesive end to the novel itself, rather than a separate entity, these appendices make for a rather satisfactory end to this bizarre and challenging book.Over all, I’m glad that I decided to persevere with ‘The Soft Machine’, and to take my time doing so. Although I hated much of the book before I got my head around it, I think it’s telling that I never once found it pretentious or artistic for the sake of being artistic. William Burroughs is clearly an extremely intelligent and talented writer, and under any lesser author the “cut-up and fold-in” technique would have no doubt been a pretentious nightmare. I can’t imagine myself ever recommending this book to anybody, but I did enjoy it and get a lot from it. It’s certainly forever changed my ideas of what the novel, as a medium, is capable of.
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 thinking things just before passing out, I STILL make more sense. There is this piece of advice W.G. Sebald supposedly used to give: "By all means be experimental, but let the reader be part of the experiment." That's where Burroughs fails miserably.Here is a random quote from a random page:"Corpses hang pants open on the road to Monterrey - clear and loud ahead naked post cards and baby shoes - A man comes back to something he left in underwear peeled the boy warm in 1929 - Thighs slapped the bed jumped ass up - 'Johnny screw' - Cup is split - wastings - Thermodynamics crawls home - game of empty hands - bed pictures post dead question - carrion smell sharp. open in"It goes like this for six chapters. Nonsense in its purest form. So when chapter seven comes, and all of a sudden paragraphs seem to be organized in an almost coherent manner, you get all excited, even though the plot is still completely bonkers, but alleluia, there IS a plot. Or at least in comparison to the previous six chapters which were written by someone with a serious case of anterograde amnesia, who can only remember the last five words he has written.But then chapter seven ends and it goes right back to gibberish.What am I supposed to get out of this book? There were two sentences I liked (and I used the word ‘sentence’ loosely as obviously Burroughs has a very particular approach to punctuation). "Jungle invades the weed grown parks where armadillos infected with the earth eating disease gambol through deserted kiosks and Bolivar in catatonic limestone liberated the area."and"The name is Clem Snide - I am a Private Ass Hole - I will take on any job any identity any body - I will do anything difficult dangerous or downright dirty for a price -" And the shock factor is non-existent. It’s 2013, you can write all you want about cocks in rectums, on every page even (as Burroughs laboriously did) and I won’t even bat an eye. "Evening touched our rectums."Thank you and goodbye.
What do You think about The Soft Machine (1994)?
Part dada-ist, part Rimbaud, and part early Scientology, Beat generation master William S. Burroughs utilizes Tristan Tzara's method of cut-up to produce a mind-bending work that challenges the reader to follow along. This is the first in Burrough's cut-up trilogy that followed on the heels of his most well-know work Naked Lunch and draws heavily from some of that novel's material. Not for homophobes, squeamish or your average reader for sure, but truly a work of genius. Burroughs bends us, twists us and forces us to re-think the linguistic programming we have been subjected to all of our lives. Seemingly, he is adjusting our brains so we can see the control mechanisms that make us think the way we do and hoping a few will take the leap and join him in seeing the world as it is. I look forward to the next two in the series and am grateful for this rediscovery. I do not know Oliver Harris who edited this version from three edition that Burroughs released, but he must be a master and quite patient to be able to piece this all together in a way that somehow captures each round of cut-ups that were done. Recommended for very few, but those that have the patience and wherewithal to go down this rabbit hole will certainly be rewarded.
—Scot
This book is difficult to rate. Parts of this book are absolutely brilliant. Burroughs is at his satirical best when writing about time travel in the Mayan Caper or the selling of sperm as a commodity in the Gongs of Violence. Other sections he is dark and disturbing when he is writing about addictions and homosexuality. Then there are some sections of the book which feel like indecipherable ranting of junkie nodding in and out of one thought into the next. Burroughs is more of a painter than story teller. Even in his least lucid moment he creates stark harrowing images that will penetrate your subconscious and violate your dreams.
—Stan
This book left me perplexed. I’m not sure if I enjoyed it or feel like I wasted my time by reading it. There are flashes of genius, true. Some juxtapositions of words and images were incredibly striking, a few dream-like sequences had to be admired for their sheer creativity, and there were thought-provoking moments throughout. Sometimes the bleakness of the imagery was captivating, sometimes the relentlessness of the prose felt truly exciting, sometimes a bit of satire stuck out of the mix and made me smile. Maybe the entire experience was worthwhile for those good moments. But at times, it was an utter trainwreck, and I found it a bit hard to get through. Which is a shame, because I really wanted to like it.Don’t get me wrong, I often enjoy disjointed, surreal prose. I don’t generally have a problem with “disturbing” material. And I definitely like books that are described as “strange.” However, there is something to be said for chaos that is carefully pieced together (or at least well-edited), some semblance of a central plot, and content kept at a tasteful level rather than descending into brazenly adolescent ramblings and shock tactics. That wasn’t the case here. To give some context as to what I consider "tasteful" - this is coming from someone who didn’t find American Psycho utterly disgusting and pointless (though I'm not sure I'd call it tasteful, exactly).That’s why I was surprised when I found parts of A Soft Machine hard to swallow. I do wonder if perhaps Burroughs intended it this way. If so, job well done. The level of sexual explicitness, particularly when dropped in between such subjects as giant centipedes and human excrement, rose to the point where it all became not just wholly un-erotic, but downright repulsive. Which is interesting. But also, uh, repulsive. Especially because it was so incredibly repetitive. Like other reviewers have mentioned, I’ve heard enough about jissom and rectal mucous to last a lifetime.There might well be lots of meaning behind the apparent insanity. But it is very effectively disguised, enough so that I didn’t even feel like putting the effort into it, because significant portions of the book could just as well have been written by someone with the IQ of a doorknob, vocabulary aside.This was my first experience with Burroughs, and I realise now this was a bad choice. I’ll certainly give Junkie a try, because stylistically, I found his style quite interesting. It's just content that was... questionable. I also have to admire that he created a novel that actually made me uncomfortable. Rare accomplishment.
—Nikolai
