564
TONY TANNER
"palate close to death"? On reading some of his cut-up passages, one
fallacy strikes me immediately. An Englishman,
A.
P. Rossiter, once
did an experiment involving the presentation of purely nonsensical ar–
rangements of words to children and the study of their reaction. (See
"Poetry and Gagagram" in
Our Living Language.)
What was notable
was that they
all
tried to impose or elicit a meaning from the mean–
ingless cluster. In a way bearing out Gestalt theories, they sought for
pattern in the conglomeration of isolated units they were confronted
with. They were not content with "blocks of association"-they
would
find lines in the mess. And I find that this is the experience
in reading Burroughs. One is constantly on the lookout for bits of
shipwrecked meaning, searching for glimpses of significant images.
One scans the field of words for hints of purposive intent. Old habits
die hard, Burroughs might say. But after all we must understand
his
warning before we can heed it-as he himself implicitly reveals in
his splendidly factual and clear-lined statements about his own inten–
tions. How can we grasp the drama unless we can perceive the sig–
nificance of the opposing forces? And what is it to distinguish between
alternatives if not to be indebted to "either-or" modes of thought? Is
it the proper business of a committed Factualist to strike at the very
roots of our ability to separate out the facts and discriminate among
them?
In a way Burroughs concedes the point by interposing bits of
narrative between his cut-ups or fold-ins, or whatever. Thus,
The
Soft Machine
is, he says, "an expansion of my South American ex–
periences, with surreal extensions." Certain of his old characters pop
up from time to time, along with characters due to appear in
Nova
Express.
In the book there are many surreal panoramas of vileness,
perversion, decay and general foul disorder, which come through
blurred because of the violation of syntax, but which nevertheless
do come through. But more arresting are the passages which we can
read and comprehend in an "old-fashioned" way. For instance, this
-about a vague menace called "the guards." "The guards are made
from the host; flesh, word and image impression taken in Short
Time Booths. Picture the guard as an invisible tapeworm attached
to word centers in the brain on color intensity beams. A helpless
parasite that dies if the host can find The Word Switch Off."
If
we
know anything about the Burroughs universe we can recognize the
