From: Richard Ridge (richard_ridge@tao-group.com)
Date: Wed Feb 27 2002 - 02:59:13 MST
> > Your list of books is incomplete without William S Burroughs -
> Word
> > Virus. It is a distillation of his work. The replication of auto and
> exo-toxic
> > memes is central to Burroughs' work. 'Nothing is true, everything is
> > permitted.' A fine vaccime for any dogmatic manifestation recurrs
> throughout
> > WSB writing. He deals with memes explicitly and unflinchingly
The memetic analogy (it would be anachronistic to say that memes are central
to his work) is certainly not difficult to discern in his work (he considers
language a kind of virus, and uses the cut-up techniques to disrupt this),
though it would be more accurate to say that Burroughs exists in a state of
irrational paranoia over the infectivity of language. Nor can I honestly
state that all of the memes his work emits are compatible with virus (he is
not the most rational of writers - far from it). For all of his counter
culture reputation, Will Self's comment that Burroughs hated women and loved
guns, probably sums him up best. If virus wishes to stand for a
bunker-in-the-ground mentality, then by all means put him on the list. I'm
probably being a bit unfair, as I do rather admire Burroughs in many
respects. But a tenuous link to memetics doth not a Virian make.
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