The Wild Boys (1971)

Time now for the novel that is not part of any trilogy I know of but was packaged with the first two novels of a William S. Burroughs trilogy in a book called Three Novels. Go figure. This Grove Press edition, which I picked up somewhere along the line, does mention The Ticket That Exploded in an “other works” list, which is the third novel in the trilogy. But never mind, Jake. The Wild Boys, perhaps not surprisingly, is full of homoerotics, rectal mucus, and locker-room smells. And, maybe surprisingly, it’s more lucid than much of the so-called Nova (and/or Cut-Up) trilogy. I think I’m settling on the “damaged genius” narrative for Burroughs. There’s enough good writing in any one of his generally slim novels (and/or collections of stories and/or installments of larger works) that they are almost worth reading. His focus on sensory details—colors, smells, textures—makes some passages extraordinarily vivid. But many other long passages make very little sense at all. I read him in a way that I read little else: with a kind of free-floating disengagement, trying to look at every word and absorb its significance, imagining scenes when I can. If it’s not working I just take it as opaque and move along (nothing to see here, folks). I’m sure I’m missing things but I’m also sure some of these passages are merely inscrutable. They consist of words, or down to letters in some cases, but they don’t seem to mean anything. Or you fill in the gaps yourself somehow, with something, which can be interesting. I’m not saying reading Burroughs doesn’t have its pleasures but it’s often frustrating too. Tantalizing and portentous images and scenes evaporate into nothing, melting into a meaningless block of words and then the scene changes, or a new paragraph starts. Formal disengagement is almost self-protective. It’s possible that reading more closely would reveal more. It’s also possible the whole thing is a put-on. In places, The Wild Boys seems almost sentimental about its manifold sexual connections. There are some vague SF elements. Lots of scattered great paragraphs and sentences. David Bowie cited it as his favorite by Burroughs, but I would still be careful about jumping in.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.