From the beat generation and counterculture author William S. Burroughs comes the second novel of the Red Night trilogy, available in audio for the first time.
This surreal fable, set in America’s Old West, features a cast of notorious characters: the Crying Gun, who breaks into tears at the sight of his opponent; the Priest, who goes into gunfights giving his adversaries the last rites; and the Nihilistic Kid himself, Kim Carsons, a homosexual gunslinger who, with a succession of beautiful sidekicks, sets out to challenge the morality of small-town America and fight for intergalactic freedom.
Fantastical and humorous, The Place of Dead Roads continues Burroughs’ exploration of society’s controlling forces—the state, the church, women, literature, drugs—with a style that is utterly unique in twentieth-century literature.
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“Powerful…A raging torrent of words and images…Burroughs, like Dalí, first draws from his insanity, then selects with reason. And what a master of the mother tongue he is—sculpted sentences, poetic prose, riffs that make you gasp in amazement…More accessible and murkily poetic than ever.”
— Los Angeles Times Book Review
“It’s a comedy and a nightmare of Bosch-like visions, extraordinarily precise vivid visualizations, outrageous ideas like mind bombs.”
— Allen Ginsberg“One of the wildest rides into the Wild West, and other parts known and unknown, we will ever have.”
— Washington Post Book World“A moving personal saga as well as a record of revolutionary vision.”
— Chicago TribuneBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) was an American author, painter, and spoken-word performer who has had a wide-ranging influence on American culture. Jack Kerouac called him the “greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift.” Norman Mailer declared him “the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius.” A postmodernist and a key figure of the beat generation, he focused his art on a relentless subversion of the moral, political, and economic conventions of modern American society, as reflected in his often darkly humorous and sardonic satire. He wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six short-story collections, and four collections of essays. No fewer than five books of his interviews and correspondence have been published. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians and made many appearances in films. He was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1983 and in the following year was appointed to the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
Ray Porter has garnered two Audie nominations as well as several Earphones Awards and enthusiastic reviews for his sparkling narration of audiobooks. A fifteen-year veteran of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has also appeared in numerous films and television shows.