The Wild Boys by William S. Burroughs
He did it. He won. William S. Burroughs won the contest. The contest to see who can publish the words “quivering” and “throbbing cock” more times per page than any one else ever. There is no prize.
This book is sort of a mish-mash of the Bill Burroughs mish-mash oeuvre. There is no story. Characters exist only in passing. The perspective changes often. Sometimes the narrator is a vulture flying overhead; other times, there is no narrator because the text is placed in movie-script format. And it’s tiny. One sitting, at most.
There’s only one image that keeps burroughing (get it? get it? GET IT???) its way into the “narrative,” which is that of the wild boys, an army of prepubescent boys who run afoul of the dystopian future-present-past of the “novella.” They kill a lot of people, and fuck each other with their quivering, throbbing cocks. Long passages of the novel are so graphically descriptive (and entirely aimless) that I actually felt sick. But— not for nothing— the cover is really cool. That kid is going to stab you with a bayonet. Right in the quivering, throbbing cock.
This isn’t one of Burroughs seminal works (his most seminal is, of course, Naked Lunch, which I blogged about on the three hour bus ride I took when I was founding this now internationally renowned quivering, throbbing website) and it isn’t very good. It seems more like a collection of notes for something longer, or something that never quite came all the way together.
Postscript
I’ve come down with a case of the quivering, throbbing lazies of late. I have a big quivering, throbbing chunk of books all read and queued up to post soon, so get fucking ready.
