The late trilogy is called "The Western Lands," (Cities of
the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, The Western Lands)
and it is
(surprise, surprise) a Western. I believe one of Burroughs
first efforts was a collaboration with Jack Kerouac called
"And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks," or something of
that sort. It is, if I'm not mistaken, a hardboiled effort. I
perused it when it was released an a postmortem Burroughs
anthology, but I can't say I remember it very well, and I'm
at work so I don't have the book handy. Burroughs was
definitely influenced by hardboiled and noir fiction, and one
of the major conceits of his early works involves the Nova
Police trying to stop Intersellar criminals called the Noval
Mob from destryoing the planet. So Burroughs tended to play
with the three major genres
(Westerns, Sci-fi and Crime) as part of his rather ecletic,
surreal style. He was influenced early on by the work of Jack
Black, who sounds like an interesting character:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Black_%28author%29
On Jan 31, 2008 7:33 AM, Juri Nummelin <
juri.nummelin@pp.inet.fi> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Don't you think William Burroughs fits the
description of a writer who
> transcends the crime and thriller genre? JUNKIE is a
deeply noirish book and
> QUEER takes it to a more experimental level. The
beginning of THE NAKED
> LUNCH is quite hardboiled and noir - the rest of the
book is totally
> something else, though. I haven't read his late
trilogy (what's it called
> now, The Lands-something), but I just read a review
saying it plays with the
> thriller and mystery genres.
>
> Apart from that, Georges Perec must've known the
American noir. He wrote the
> screenplay for SERIE NOIRE, a 1976 film based on Jim
Thompson's novel
> (forgot which).
>
> By the way, has anyone seen the early movies that
Jean-Patrick Manchette
> wrote in the sixties? How are they like? Anything
like his novels or just
> pure euroexploitation? (Check the IMDb for
titles.)
>
> Juri
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 31 Jan 2008 EST