Review: ‘Queer’ (1952/1985) by William S. Burroughs

Summary

Continuing on from his efforts to get off of heroin in ‘Junky’, the now-soberish William Lee (Burroughs himself in all but surname) attempts to pursue a new kind of fix. 

Lee pursues a sexual relationship with the attractive young man Eugene Allerton.

He fails.

Background

If ‘Junky’ was about addiction, then ‘Queer’ was trying to stay clean.

Starting life as the ending to the ‘Junky’ manuscript, the book reads partly as a sequel but works as a standalone piece in it’s own right. 

Burroughs shot his wife in 1951 during a drunken attempt at re-enacting William Tell, finishing ‘Queer’ the following year.

Review

The introduction states that Burroughs’s grief from accidentally killing his wife is a key factor behind ‘Queer’ being shelved for thirty-three years.

Lee’s failing relationship with Allerton does form an interesting parallel to this event, and indeed becomes somewhat poignant in light of it.

I first read the book in an afternoon and it left me cold. 

Maybe it was the third-person narration, the uneven tone or the generally unfinished feel of the book, but ‘Queer’ was as its name implied, an oddity. This awkward thing was neither as clinical as ‘Junky’ nor as shocking as ‘Naked Lunch’ and the ‘Cutup Trilogy’ or even as complete a narrative as the ‘Red Night’ trilogy.

What it does achieve is something nothing of those other books accomplish, it strips Burroughs-as-Lee down to his emotional core. 

Under all the chess strategies and animal torture lies something pitiable. 

There’s a painful void in the heart of the text that provides catharsis in perhaps its crudest form. 

It’s pretty easy to dismiss Burroughs’s work as too disconnected from reality to enjoy. It was almost a year after getting ‘Naked Lunch’ before I felt I could get into it.

I regret that I didn’t begin with ‘Queer’. 

By blending moments of genuine self-loathing and desire with one another, ‘Queer’ sets itself apart from the rest of Burroughs’s work although the frequent forays into madness (Lee casually talks about burning a pig alive and setting it loose in a restaurant as a novelty appetiser) keep it in line with his canon.

The way the narrative starts with disjointed images, congeals into something of a narrative and falls right back apart again is like witnessing an addict’s attempt to get clean and then relapsing in novel form.

Lee’s frequent moral lapses and Burroughs’s proclamation that he endured a “destruction of self-image” won’t make you like him, but if you read ‘Naked Lunch’ and wonder what kind of fucked-up individual could write the kind of stuff, ‘Queer’ will give you some sort of answer. 

It’s also barely over a hundred pages even with all the introductions and added parts, so even if you don’t like it you won’t have wasted much time on it.

What happened next?

In 1984 a near-complete manuscript of ‘Queer’, then thought long-lost, was discovered and Burroughs agreed to its publication after being offered a lucrative deal on it and subsequent novels. 

‘Queer’ is undoubtedly the most straightforwardly emotive of Burroughs’s works, providing a narrative that is as readable as ‘Junky’, but displays all the warning signs needed to foreshadow the impending madness of ‘Naked Lunch’.

Rating: 7/10

Review: Rage (1977) by Stephen King

Summary

Charles Decker murders his teacher and holds the class at gunpoint and brings them round to his nihilistic worldview. They begin sharing embarrassing secrets with one another and growing closer to Decker, turning the class into a twisted sort of therapy group.

This spurs them to turn on Ted Jones, a popular student and the only one not identifying with Decker’s warped view of reality.

When Jones attempts to leave, the class beats him into a coma.

Decker eventually surrenders and is institutionalised. He later receives a letter from a classmate grateful for his actions.

Background

Stephen King would publish four books between 1977 and 1982 under the pseudonym ‘Richard Bachman’. Reasons for this boil down to King wanting to see whether his writing would still sell if it didn’t have his name attached to it. 

Although King would be outed as Bachman later in the decade, Bachman proved a fertile ground for ideas such as King’s 1989 novel ‘The Dark Half’ and further titles published under the pseudonym in a meta sense.

‘Rage’ is the earliest book that Stephen King began writing proper, as early as 1966.

Review

While reading ‘Rage’, you can see the stuff that would become King staples, albeit somewhat clipped. Since this is early King, it comes as no surprise that the Bachman books read as an embryonic version of his usual style.

That means no stream-of-consciousness asides, no supernatural elements and no idealism.

Of the Stephen King books I’ve read so far, the closest King parallel I can draw is to 1983’s ’Pet Sematary’. Throughout both books, people are written as fundamentally flawed creatures that will always abuse power to achieve personal gain.

In both cases, King felt discomfort with publishing these ideas under his own name. With ‘Rage’ he’d publish it under the pseudonym ‘Richard Bachman’ and he would sit on ‘Pet Sematary’ for a full year before releasing it to fulfil his contract with Doubleday.

However, ‘Pet Sematary’ depicts humans falling victim to their own power and hubris. At the end Louis Creed has lost his entire family and his sanity, his final fate remaining ambiguous. Creed’s actions begin as rational and morally just, and become more questionable and twisted as he succumbs to the allure of power, in this case the burial ground’s ability to resurrect the dead.

‘Rage’ kicks off with Charlie getting expelled after a history of violence and abuse in school, but he doesn’t care for these consequences because he has a gun in his locker.

He begins the story holding all the cards, and ends in the same position. He holds an entire class hostage and turns them into his willing accomplices against Ted. When a police sniper shoots Decker in the chest, he is miraculously saved by the locker padlock he had just happened to place in his shirt pocket earlier. In the eyes of the narrative, he becomes literally bulletproof.

The class doesn’t turn on Charlie, they let him get into their heads, and they drag Ted down to their level, putting him into a coma.

Even when Decker is non-fatally shot at the end, he provokes this himself and ends the story on his own terms. 

Evil never gets out of the driver’s seat.

‘Pet Sematary’ holds a fatalistic worldview best summed up with the line “Sometimes… dead is better”. Stephen King would later argue that “we can only find peace in our human lives by accepting the will of the universe” when discussing the book. 

When Louis Creed seeks to challenge the universe’s will, he is punished.

‘Rage’ holds a far more cynical worldview, the idea that everyone can and will fall from grace, the only negotiable criteria being how far. Charlie brags about the toxicity of humanity, that “all that weirdness isn’t just going on outside. It’s in you too, right now, growing in the dark like magic mushrooms.”

What’s more, Charlie Decker never faces punishment. True, he had a traumatic upbringing but that’s a pretty weak excuse for murder. He received trauma therefore he will spread it to others.

When I first read this book about two years ago, I was in a very different state of mind and I even for a time ranked ‘Rage’ as highly as ‘Misery’ for its uncompromising portrayal of how unsavoury people can become given the right or wrong circumstances.

You could say I was like one of Decker’s classmates. I was taken in by his charismatic but ultimately two-dimensional portrayal and I do feel a bit taken-in in hindsight. 

But people like Charlie Decker do exist out there. Not everyone is a murderer waiting to happen, but there will always be people who go on power trips like Decker. 

That’s kind of the only positive I can glean from ‘Rage’ two years along, the warning about being taken in by people who enable your worst behaviours. And honestly, there are tons of pieces of media that convey that message far more effectively.

Problems with the narrative are purely down to reader interpretation, there’s nothing functionally wrong with the writing.

Bad Stephen King is still highly readable and compelling stuff.

What happened next?

Due to the book being found among the possessions of several school shooters, King allowed ‘Rage’ to fall out of print. While I’m personally of the belief that banning or discontinuing a piece of media will only intensify people’s desires to obtain it, I understand and respect King’s reasons for doing so. I can’t imagine how heartbreaking it would feel to have a piece of your art being used as justification for murder.

Considering ‘Rage’s relative lack of merit amongst the rest of King’s canon, not much has been lost. If you really want to still get ahold of the book, it is still available online through secondhand websites.

If you want something similar, ‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ by Jessica Knoll supplies a much more sympathetic interpretation of the ‘school shooter’ character template. As well as this, the book has a much more relevant and insightful depiction of bullying and misogyny.

King tends to place himself on the side of good, that idealism and morality will always triumph over evil

The Bachman books tend to lean towards a more cynical worldview, they were written by a younger man who may have at times believed it was just him up against the world.

‘Rage’ is a nasty little book, but coming back to it actually made me learn a lot more about myself. I no longer hold ‘Rage’ in such esteem as I once did because of how my own worldview has changed.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Quick Review: Birth Of Venom

Bit about Venom, Spider-Man, but evil and a massive alien Joker-like grin. 

Who’d have thought he’d be as successful as he was.

Well, considering he first appeared in 1988 just as the Dark Age of Comic Books was kicking off and edgy anti-heroes were really taking off, I’d say a lot of people.

Eh, regardless, Venom remains one of my favourite Marvel characters not only due to his design but also his backstory in being the sort-of dark counterpart to Spider-Man.

Writer David Michelinie had an idea to have a villain that was immune to Spider-Man’s spider-sense, adding a new level of menace to Venom when he finally appeared in 1988. 

Birth of Venom: Roughly cover ‘The Alien Costume’ saga, and the first two appearances of Venom.

Originally published between 1984 and 1989.

So the broad timeline of events in ‘Birth Of Venom’ go as such:

• 1984: During the ’Secret Wars’ crossover event, Spider-Man obtains a new black costume. 
• 1984-5: Spider-Man becomes suspicious of his new costume and its abilities, (infinite webbing, can change its appearance by reading his mind). He visits the Fantastic Four, who reveal it to be an alien symbiote trying to permanently bond to him. The symbiote is removed and kept in storage. 
• Concurrently, Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson’s relationship matures, featuring Watson’s backstory and the revelation that she’s known Parker’s been Spider-Man for years.
• 1985: The symbiote escapes confinement and attempts to forcibly bond with Spider-Man, who manages to use extreme sound (in this case church bells) to repel the alien costume.
• 1986: A hand pushes Peter Parker in front of a subway train without triggering his spider-sense. 
• 1987: A hand grabs and pushes Peter Parker out of a window, again without triggering his spider-sense.
• 1988: Venom’s first full appearance. Ends with Venom incarcerated.
• 1989: Venom’s second appearance. 

A key part of Peter Parker’s characterisation, even if you’re not an avid comic reader, is the phrase ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. The words of his late Uncle Ben are integral to Peter Parker and Spider-Man’s characterisation and approach to crime-fighting.

So the idea that some thing could challenge this unshakeable ethos and perhaps push Spider-Man to go even further with greater power than he could potentially handle, to perhaps seek to even kill off his villains in cold blood, the ends justifying the means and so on? Yeah, with this image in mind thanks to adaptations like the 1994 and 2008 cartoons and the 2007 film, I was pretty stoked to have a read.

But the first appearances of the alien costume have neither of these effects. Indeed, for most of the black costume run, the symbiote behaves as any other costume would.

The reasoning for this was Spider-Man’s new costume was poorly received by readers and was later retconned to be an alien and was presumably killed soon after.

Venom’s first full appearance could have included a doppelgänger type scenario to maintain the tension for a little while longer. Furthermore, Venom’s reveal as Eddie Brock lacks some impact when the next few pages contain retcons for Brock’s involvement that go back to 1985, almost three years ago.

Venom’s return in 1989 already displays the beginnings of being an anti-hero, rescuing a family from militant thugs and killing the latter. These proved to be early indicators that there was more to Venom than just being the ‘dark reflection’ villain to Spider-Man.

Later adaptations such as the 1994 fox cartoon and the 2007 film would introduce the retcon that the symbiote boosted Spider-Man’s abilities and aggression, the former giving him a reason to keep it on and the latter leading him to get it off. 

This also had the bonus outcome of putting Spider-Man in a better light by turning the removal of the symbiote into a return to heroism.

As it stands, Spider-Man’s motivation for removing the symbiote is understandable (being forced to do things in your sleep is a horrifying concept), but later adaptations would do a much better job of tailoring the alien costume plot device into Spider-Man’s characterisation.

‘Birth Of Venom’ is a pretty good example of the kind of continuity lockout that would go on to plague Marvel throughout the 1990s, becoming a contributing factor to their eventual bankruptcy at the end of 1996. 

Marvel lives on with the fallout from this event to this day, having sold off the film rights to many of their major characters to stay afloat.

A couple of pages are plagued with asterisks linking to other titles running concurrently to explain background events and character recaps and these can get a little intrusive at times.

All things considered, ‘Birth Of Venom’ can’t be faulted for the problems of the source material and does a fair job of cherry-picking the most relevant parts of the arc to produce a relatively coherent narrative. 

I only wish there were a few more recap panels and highlights showing off more of Eddie Brock’s backstory before becoming Venom. As it stands, he still bursts into the narrative with relatively little fanfare.

Considering how popular the character is, I’m still quite surprised that there hasn’t been a definitive update of Venom’s origin story even for the sake of being concise.

The Fox cartoon arguably provides a more definitive version of Venom’s origin story, certainly a more succinct one. Except it gives Venom these weird snake-like pupils.

In hindsight, they weren’t a good idea for the same reason that Spider-Man doesn’t have pupils on his costume. It looks like he’s perpetually struggling to make eye contact with any other character he talks to.

Aside from that, the 1994 cartoon sands off all the edges present here. For that reason I’d still recommend it over this collection as it requires much less background knowledge of Spider-Man and it avoids the continuity headaches present in the original source material.

Still, the collection is an interesting piece of Spider-Man’s history and gave later adaptations all the ingredients they needed to refine the origins of one of Spider-Man’s most notable villains.