I find a forbidden copy of "Wild Boys" by the now declared criminal 20th century author William Burroughs. This in a used book stall. I'm amazed there's one still around. I mean after the "Literary Purity, and Religious Freedom Act" was passed.
I paid in Bitcoin script, and hid it under my shirt. I took it home turned out all the lights. I climbed into my hall closet with a flash light. I crouch, and slowly open to the first page.
Suddenly police dogs barking a chopper hovering overhead with search lights stabbing through the curtains. The sound of boots stomping up my building's stairs.
Life in Tomorrowland.
“I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.”
ReplyDeleteWilliam S. Burroughs
...and he didn't mean maybe.
ReplyDeleteHey Uncle... Don't forget Samuel R. Delany's book "Hogg". Another great fighter. But you rarely hear it ever mentioned.
ReplyDelete“Among the tasks the novel attempts is to mark out a discursive field in which, by the end, the reader can no longer even say the words ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ without putting them in quotation marks, ironizing them, or somehow or other placing them sous rature.”
-Samuel R. Delany, “The Making of Hogg”, Fiction International, 1997, and Shorter Views, Wesleyan University Press, 1999 p.308
Delany has also said:
• "I read the NAMBLA (Bulletin) fairly regularly and I think it is one of the most intelligent discussions of sexuality I've ever found. I think before you start judging what NAMBLA is about, expose yourself to it and see what it is really about. What the issues they are really talking about, and deal with what's really there rather than this demonized notion of guys running about trying to screw little boys. I would have been so much happier as an adolescent if NAMBLA had been around when I was 9, 10, 11, 12, 13."
"Queer Desires Forum"
He wrote this before the era of hysteria on the subject.
ReplyDeleteOne could actually rationally discus what sexuality really may be what it means what it did, and didn't do. That, and the whole pubescent sensuality matter may likely not be so discussed again for perhaps a century.
Vladimir Nabokov given the era would be arrested or even assassinated if he tried to publish "Lolita" today. At the very least he'd become a "Non-person" never to be published again in his lifetime.
One takes risks even here mentioning any of this in non-apoplectic terms. I just watched an aging DVD copy of Visconti's version of "Death in Venice". This based on the Thomas Mann novella.
I obtained it from the arts section of NYC 42nd street library. It wasn't available for near 15 years. They must be testing the waters as for acceptance of formerly acclaimed, but now no longer recognized works of art.
It's over 40 years since it was made, and certainly time for another version. There were attempts, but the times being so it was changed to a Professor having a mild interest in a female co-ed at university.
I recall industry chatter about it...this in the late 1990's.
It was said that a serious treatment of the Mann work likely could not be done in the West for at least 100 or more years. This given the profoundly volatile baggage the subject now bears.
Imagine the horror. A major studio film about an aging composer inspired to again write by the youthful beauty of a 16 year old boy.
Horror!
Maybe somebody could do a graphic novel of it. It's a lot cheaper than making movies, and would be less of a red flag on the radar screen than a major film production.
ReplyDelete