5b8
TONY TANNER
over already. The Nova Police do not bring any discernible order to
the world of the book-and indeed one cannot help half suspecting
that Burroughs enjoys the chaos he evokes. He would not be the first
artist to unconsciously indulge a dangerous taste while ostensibly
setting out to warn against it. However, there is one late section called
"One More Chance?" which seems to indicate that although we can
be controlled by various alien instructions being fed into us on a tape,
it is somehow possible to "wipe" the tape clean, until "the person
becomes what they call a
clear
sir": it also seems possible to "laugh"
the tape clean, which might explain the intention behind some of
Burroughs' own black humor (occasionally very funny--occasionally
amazingly puerile).
On one level one can see the book as an attempt to show people
how their consciousnesses and lives are manipulated and taken over
in the modern world.
It
urges-as other voices have urged in Amer–
ican literature-that people should break out of the false pseudo–
realities in which they are imprisoned and emerge into true reality.
To this end one can appreciate his strategy of silence, a state of cul–
tivated immunity to the "word and image" onslaughts of the world.
But beyond this, how does Burroughs expect us to take his prescrip–
tions? Does he really mean that the only final hope for survival is to
escape out of body and time altogether? Mter all, the ascent into a
timeless empty Space which is his dream has something in common
with the descent into the inertia and stasis of mere mud and metal
which is his nightmare. They are both ways of fleeing from the
mixed complexities of sheer life-that spontaneous, free-moving in–
dividuallife which Burroughs at times is so keen to protect and warn.
Again, when he says, "Mankind will have to undergo biologic altera–
tions ultimately, if we are to survive at all.
This
will require biologic
law to decide what changes to make. We will simply have to use our
intelligence to plan mutations, rather than letting them occur at
random," isn't he advocating a kind of deliberate manipulation of the
individual not intrinsically different from the horrors he has shown
us? Whose intelligence is to plan the mutation? Can we be sure it
will be any better than
Brave New World
if not as terrifying as 1984?
What was it he once said about control only ever leading to more
control? And what happens to spontaneity if all randomness is elimin–
ated? It is worth stressing the point, not only because Burroughs is an
