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Volume I, Issue 11
August 18 - August 25, 1997
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The Pope of Avant Garde 
A eulogy for William S. Burroughs. [2]
Tom Huckabee
Culture Shock 
News and views of Burque's art scene. [3]
Tom Crider
The Book of Zines
Chip Rowe's new book gets the once-over. [4]
Blake de Pastino
Mississippi Mud 
Southern-fried scandal makes for delicious reading. [5]
Christine Wald-Hopkins
Lesser Evils
Unusual detective fiction set in World War II France. [6]
Emil Franzi
Grave Decision Making
How to put on a good show when you croak. [7]
A. Dashing
Speed Reader
Mechanical Brides, Fame and Folly, Migrant Song and Franco American Dreams get the read through this week. [8]
Blake de Pastino, Tracey Cooley, Jessica English and Julie Birnbaum
Call of the Wild 
Reviews of The Return of the Wolf to Yellowstone and The Wild Child: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. [9]
Debbie Gilbert & Leonard Gill
Now What? 
Love to read? Need some clever ideas? Our library of resources and staff picks are guaranteed to turn on plenty of mental light bulbs via your electrified eye sockets. [10]
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Talk Back 
Our online BBS is just like the Algonquin Round Table, only electronic,
sober, and without all the famous people.
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illiam S. Burroughs, now there was an odd one: My first awareness
of him came in the form of acidic comments spewed forth on avant-garde
records by the likes of Laurie Anderson and Material. What was
wrong with his voice, I wondered? He sounded like a grown-up version
of Froggie from The Little Rascals.
Not much later I would steal a copy of Naked Lunch and
find myself giggling nervously over "The Talking Asshole,"
a really creepy description of the process by which men ruin all
that is good within themselves. It was all too appropriate when
he showed up in Drugstore Cowboy as a granddaddy of self-destruction,
a combination wise man and "Don't become like me" cautionary
symbol.
Reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road, I realized he was the
decrepit junkie Neal and Jack kept visiting; even then, in the
'50s, he was thought of as old. A man who killed his own wife
in a drug-induced William Tell-style accident(?), Burroughs was
an antithesis to innocence, someone who'd been to the depths and
survived to tell about it in a crisp, painful drawl.
That voice still crackled in my ears as I read this memoir exploring
the intensely non-conformist contours of William S. Burroughs'
mind. A second tribute, found here, provides a more succinct summary
of Burroughs' unusual life.
But we ought to save some space for living writers. Here are reviews
of a few of their recent works:
Touched by Carolyn Haines
Stone Killer by J. Robert Janes
The Book of Zines edited by Chip Rowe
Mechanical Brides by Ellen Lupton
The Return of the Wolf to Yellowstone by Thomas McNamee
In Memoriam: A Practical Guide to Planning a Memorial Service
Note that this last one isn't dedicated to Burroughs, since he
was anything but practical.
Cowboy Cum Laude
J.P.S. Brown is a Tucson novelist who hasn't been getting his share of respect n recent years, though he may be the quintessential regional writer. [08-04-97]
Sam Negri
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