DEMONOLOGY
561
Let us go back to junk for a moment. Burroughs says that nar–
cotics disturb "normal perception" and "set up instead a random
craving for images." A junkie, he tells us, will "read newspapers and
magazines right straight through. Indiscriminately. Every word." And
he adds:
"If
drugs weren't forbidden in America, they would be the
perfect middle-class vice. Addicts would do their work and come home
to consume the huge dose of images awaiting them in the mass
media." In this connection Burroughs has increasingly interested him–
self in films, with the ultimate implication that for a lot of people
"reality is actually a movie." But "the word" remains as the most
powerful way in which to take over a person's mind with a false
reality. In our helpless passivity in the face of manufactured word
patterns (of which the junkie's indiscriminate reading
is
only a par–
ticularly extreme example), we readily fall prey to the hostile powers
who manipulate us and rob us of our spontaneous individual life and
draw us down toward the state of "the all-purpose blob." Coming
from someone who once worked in an advertising agency it
is
an
understandable and authentic vision. The question remains: why does
Burroughs think that the cut-up method of writing is a major way
to combat the dangerous human subservience to "the word"?
Two points emerge from his essay on "The Cut-Up Method."
First: "You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the un–
predictable spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors." We may recall
that the evil forces in
Naked Lunch
worked against spontaneity in
individual life. The cut-up method thus becomes a gesture of resistance
to external molding; an act of spontaneity in an increasingly manipu–
lated world. Secondly he says that the cut-up method can be applied
"to other fields than writing." He alludes to the use of the principle
of "random action" in "game and military strategy." Thus: "Assume
that the worst has happened and act accordingly.
If
your strategy is
at some point determined . . . by random factors your opponent will
gain no advantage from knowing your strategy since he can not
predict the move." Perhaps we can suggest how this applies to Bur–
roughs' own cut-ups by suggesting a crude military analogy.
If
you
are in retreat in the face of an advancing army, it is well to impede
their progress toward you by blowing up bridges and demolishing
roads. Now, if we regard normal linguistic habits as bridges and roads
into the human consciousness, we can perhaps see what Burroughs is
