Not Rubbish
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"Cities" affords a logical conclusion to the various literary techniques and experiments employed by Burroughs over three prolific if somewhat confused decades of work. The straight forward narrative style of his debut novel "Junky" is thankfully reinvented peppered with a Chandler type detective story which sets the early theme of the book. This overlaps a pirate story based on the apparently factual adventures of Captain Mission and his colony of Libertatians. The book develops to suggest an alternative history that satirises the present in the same way as the outrageous comical routines of "Naked Lunch" attacked the America status quo. All the usual Burroughs themes are here, drugs, weapons, disease, virus control, hangings and gay porn. However, sparingly employing his controversial cut-up techniques interwoven with his various other writing styles Burroughs creates a prose, almost poetic in every line pulling together his masterpiece.
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Superb
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As in all of Burroughs work there are several seemingly unconnected strands in this text. However, Cities of the Red Night is perhaps the most linear and accessable of Burroughs novels, and as a result the trilogy of novels which it begins is probably the best way for the uninitiated to start to appreciate the work of one of the 20th centuries most original writers. Whether you enjoy a ripping yarn about Pirates, detectives and magic, or are interested in Burrough's sometimes somewhat obsure plague metaphors, this book opens a door to an alternate history and present that once accessed can never be forgotten.
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Easily my favourite...
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This is by far my favourite of all Burroughs work, its much warmer and cleverer than much of his other work, Naked Lunch may be the most famous but it really doesnt hold together as well as this beautifully evocative and bizaare "prose" that haunts you long after the turning of the final cyclonic page of annihilation... this is a sculture of words to please the eye and is reptilianly divine in its ambience... this is a bad dream written down and will forever thrill you with its power...
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Re-writing all that you might not know
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This novel proves once and for all that Burroughs could have been one of the ten or so greatest straight narrative writers of the C20th. The narrative strands are coiled and clever, the range vast in both time and space and the concerns distinctly Burrough-sian, but without the willful obscurity that sometimes marred his abstract novels.
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This book is rubbish.
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Cities of The Red Night is confusing, boring and over complex. The book is complete waste of time and money. Don't bother !
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