DEMONOLOGY
567
nize a fairly traditional sort of esthetic, even romantic, outcry against
the distortion and exploitation of nature practised by the forces of
an industrial society. (For instance:
"Pay Red-Pay
back the red you
stole for your lying flags and your Coca-Cola signs-Pay that red
back to penis and blood and
sun-Pay Blue-Pay
back the blue you
stole and bottled and doled out in eye droppers of junk-Pay back
the blue you stole for your police uniforms-Pay that blue back to
sea and sky and eyes of the earth" and so on.) But it
is
not clear
how these specific attacks on recognizable ills relate to such enigmatic
phenomena as "The Oxygen Impasses." He explains: "Life Fonn A
arrives on alien planet from a crippled space craft-Life Fonn A
breathes 'oxygen'-There is no 'oxygen' in the atmosphere of alien
planet but by invading and occupying Life Fonn B native to alien
planet they can convert the 'oxygen' they need from the blood stream
of Life Fonn B.... Health and interest of the host is disregarded."
And so on. Burroughs' use of scientific and biological phenomena to
dramatize a general drama of unscrupulous parasites and hapless
hosts in the human realm is very interesting-but the tenns of the
application of these images are not clear. Is there
literally
an alien
force from another planet taking us over?
If
it is intended
metaphori–
cally)
then to what actual forces on earth do these images refer? This
is always the danger of an analogy-that as well as illuminating a
process or phenomenon in another realm, it may also simplify or even
falsify it. The malicious appropriation and exploitation of other peo–
ple's vitality and individuality is a major theme in American litera–
ture-in the work of Hawthorne and Henry James, to go no further
afield. From this point of view we can see that Burroughs' idea of
a virus eating out the independent life of a human host
is
a further
exploration, in peculiarly modern tenus, of an old theme. The ques–
tion is, with his vivid and powerful imagery has he in fact deepened
our comprehension of this theme?
The images are certainly as telling as ever in
this
book: the metal
junkies, the scorpion men, the fish people, the prisoners being broken
down into insect fonns, the monster crab, the tanks in which "whole
peoples" are melted down "into one concentrate." The Controllers,
the Lemurs, the Mongolian Archers "with black metal flesh," as well
as all the comic yet ominous characters who dart around in the book
-all these do help to convey Burroughs' vision of a world nearly taken
