Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.

  THE LIMITS OF CONTROL

  There is a growing interest in new techniques of mind-control. It has been suggested that Sirhan Sirhan was the subject of post-hypnotic suggestion [as he sat shaking violently on the steam table in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles while an as-yet unidentified woman held him and whispered in his ear]. It has been alleged that behavior-modification techniques are used on troublesome prisoners and inmates, often without their consent. Dr Delgado, who once stopped a charging bull by remote control of electrodes in the bull’s brain, left the U.S. to pursue his studies on human subjects in Spain. Brainwashing, psychotropic drugs, lobotomy and other more subtle forms of psychosurgery; the technocratic control apparatus of the United States has at its fingertips new techniques which if fully exploited could make Orwell’s 1984 seem like a benevolent utopia. But words are still the principal instruments of control. Suggestions are words. Persuasions are words. Orders are words. No control machine so far devised can operate without words, and any control machine which attempts to do so relying entirely on external force or entirely on physical control of the mind will soon encounter the limits of control.

  A basic impasse of all control machines is this: Control needs time in which to exercise control. Because control also needs opposition or acquiescence; otherwise it ceases to be control. I control a hypnotized subject (at least partially); I control a slave, a dog, a worker; but if I establish complete control somehow, as by implanting electrodes in the brain, then my subject is little more than a tape recorder, a camera, a robot. You don’t controla tape recorder—you use it. Consider the distinction, and the impasse implicit here. All control systems try to make control as tight as possible, but at the same time, if they succeeded completely, there would be nothing left to control. Suppose for example a control system installed electrodes in the brains of all prospective workers at birth. Control is now complete. Even the thought of rebellion is neurologically impossible. No police force is necessary. No psychological control is necessary, other than pressing buttons to achieve certain activations and operations.

  When there is no more opposition, control becomes a meaningless proposition. It is highly questionable whether a human organism could survive complete control. There would be nothing there. No persons there. Life is will (motivation) and the workers would no longer be alive, perhaps literally. The concept of suggestion as a control technique presupposes that control is partial and not complete. You do not have to give suggestions to your tape recorder, nor subject it to pain and coercion or persuasion.

  In the Mayan control system, where the priests kept the all-important Books of seasons and gods, the Calendar was predicated on the illiteracy of the workers. Modern control systems are predicated on universal literacy since they operate through the mass media—a very two-edged control instrument, as Watergate has shown. Control systems are vulnerable, and the news media are by their nature uncontrollable, at least in Western society. The alternative press is news, and alternative society is news, and as such both are taken up by the mass media. The monopoly that Hearst and Luce once exercised is breaking down. In fact, the more completely hermetic and seemingly successful a control system is, the more vulnerable it becomes. A weakness inherent in the Mayan system is that they didn’t need an army to control their workers, and therefore did not have an army when they needed one to repel invaders. It is a rule of social structures that anything that is not needed will atrophy and become inoperative over a period of time. Cut off from the war game—and remember, the Mayans had no neighbors to quarrel with—they lose the ability to fight. In “The Mayan Caper” I suggested that such a hermetic control system could be completely disoriented and shattered by even one person who tampered with the control calendar on which the control system depended more and more heavily as the actual means of force withered away.

  Consider a control situation: ten people in a lifeboat. Two armed self-appointed leaders force the other eight to do the rowing while they dispose of the food and water, keeping most of it for themselves and doling out only enough to keep the other eight rowing. The two leaders now need to exercise control to maintain an advantageous position which they could not hold without it. Here the method of control is force—the possession of guns. Decontrol would be accomplished by overpowering the leaders and taking their guns. This effected, it would be advantageous to kill them at once. So once embarked on a policy of control, the leaders must continue the policy as a matter of self-preservation. Who, then, needs to control others but those who protect by such control a position of relative advantage? Why do they need to exercise control? Because they would soon lose this position and advantage and in many cases their lives as well, if they relinguished control.

  Now examine the reasons by which control is exercised in the lifeboat scenario: The two leaders are armed, let’s say, with .38 revolvers—twelve shots and eight potential opponents. They can take turns sleeping. However, they must still exercise care not to let the eight rowers know that they intend to kill them when land is sighted. Even in this primitive situation force is supplemented with deception and persuasion. The leaders will disembark at point A, leaving the others sufficient food to reach point B, they explain. They have the compass and they are contributing their navigational skills. In short they will endeavour to convince the others that this is a cooperative enterprise in which they are all working for the same goal. They may also make concessions: increase food and water rations. A concession of course means the retention of control—that is, the disposition of the food and water supplies. By persuasions and by concessions they hope to prevent a concerted attack by the eight rowers.

  Actually they intend to poison the drinking water as soon as they leave the boat. If all the rowers knew this they would attack, no matter what the odds. We now see that another essential factor in control is to conceal from the controlled the actual intentions of the controllers. Extending the lifeboat analogy to the Ship of State, few existing governments could withstand a sudden, all-out attack by all their underprivileged citizens, and such an attack might well occur if the intentions of certain existing governments were unequivocally apparent. Suppose the lifeboat leaders had built a barricade and could withstand a concerted attack and kill all eight of the rowers if necessary. They would then have to do the rowing themselves and neither would be safe from the other. Similarly, a modern government armed with heavy weapons and prepared for attack could wipe out ninety-five percent of its citizens. But who would do the work, and who would protect them from the soldiers and technicians needed to make and man the weapons? Successful control means achieving a balance and avoiding a showdown where all-out force would be necessary. This is achieved through various techniques of psychological control, also balanced. The techniques of both force and psychological control are constantly improved and refined, and yet worldwide dissent has never been so widespread or so dangerous to the present controllers.

  All modern control systems are riddled with contradictions. Look at England. “Never go too far in any direction,” is the basic rule on which England is built, and there is some wisdom in that. However, avoiding one impasse they step into another. Anything that is not going forward is on the way out. Well, nothing lasts forever. Time is that which ends, and control needs time. England is simply stalling for time as it slowly founders. Look at America. Who actually controls this country? It is very difficult to say. Certainly the very wealthy are one of the most powerful control groups, since they are in a position to control and manipulate the entire economy. However, it would not be to their advantage to set up or attempt to set up an overly fascist government. Force, once brought in, subverts the power of money. This is another impasse of control: protection from the protectors. Hitler formed the S.S. to protec
t him from the S.A. If he had lived long enough the question of protection from the S.S. would have posed itself. The Roman Emperors were at the mercy of the Praetorian Guard, who in one year killed many Emperors. And besides, no modern industrial country has ever gone fascist without a program of military expansion. There is no longer anyplace to expand to—after hundreds of years, colonialism is a thing of the past.

  There can be no doubt that a cultural revolution of unprecedented dimensions has taken place in America during the last thirty years, and since America is now the model for the rest of the Western world, this revolution is worldwide. Another factor is the mass media, which spreads all cultural movements in all directions. The fact that this worldwide revolution has taken place indicates that the controllers have been forced to make concessions. Of course, a concession is still the retention of control. Here’s a dime, I keep a dollar. Ease up on censorship, but remember we could take it all back. Well, at this point, that is questionable.

  Concession is another control bind. History shows that once a government starts to make concessions it is on a one-way street. They could of course take all the concessions back, but that would expose them to the double jeopardy of revolution and the much greater danger of overt fascism, both highly dangerous to the present controllers. Does any clear policy arise from this welter of confusion? The answer is probably no. The mass media has proven a very unreliable and even treacherous instrument of control. It is uncontrollable owing to its need for NEWS. If one paper or even a string of papers owned by the same person makes that story hotter as NEWS, some paper will pick it up. Any imposition of government censorship on the media is a step in the direction of State control, a step which big money is most reluctant to take.

  I don’t mean to suggest that control automatically defeats itself, nor that protest is therefore unnecessary. A government is never more dangerous than when embarking on a self-defeating or downright suicidal course. It is encouraging that some behavior modification projects have been exposed and halted, and certainly such exposure and publicity could continue. In fact, I submit that we have a right to insist that all scientific research be subject to public scrutiny, and that there should be no such thing as “top-secret” research.

  LES VOLEURS

  Writers work with words and voices just as painters work with colors; and where do these words and voices come from? Many sources: conversations heard and overheard, movies and radio broadcasts, newspapers, magazines, yes, and other writers; a phrase comes into the mind from an old western story in a pulp magazine read years ago, can’t remember where or when: “He looked at her, trying to read her mind—but her eyes were old, unbluffed, unreadable.” There’s one that I lifted.

  The County Clerk sequence in Naked Lunch derived from contact with the County Clerk in Cold Springs, Texas. It was in fact an elaboration of his monologue, which seemed merely boring at the time, since I didn’t know yet that I was a writer. In any case, there wouldn’t have been any County Clerk if I had been sitting on my ass waiting for my “very own words.” You’ve all met the ad man who is going to get out of the rat race, shut himself up in a cabin, and write the Great American Novel. I always tell him, “Don’t cut your input, B.J.—you might need it.” So many times I have been stuck on a story line, can’t see where it will go from here; then someone drops around and tells me about fruit-eating fish in Brazil. I got a whole chapter out of that. Or I buy a book to read on the plane, and there is the answer; and there’s a nice phrase too, “sweetly inhuman voices.” I had a dream about such voices before I read The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett, and found that phrase.

  Look at the surrealist mustache on the Mona Lisa. Just a silly joke? Consider where this joke can lead. I had been working with Malcolm McNeill for five years on a book entitled Ah Pook Is Here, and we used the same idea: Hieronymus Bosch as the background for scenes and characters taken from the Mayan codices and transformed into modern counterparts. That face in the Mayan Dresden Codex will be the barmaid in this scene, and we can use the Vulture God over here. Bosch, Michaelangelo, Renoir, Monet, Picasso—steal anything in sight. You want a certain light on your scene? Lift it from Monet. You want a 1930s backdrop? Use Hopper.

  The same applies to writing. Joseph Conrad did some superb descriptive passages on jungles, water, weather; why not use them verbatim as background in a novel set in the tropics? Continuity by so-and-so, description and background footage from Conrad. And of course you can kidnap someone else’s characters and put them in a different set. The whole gamut of painting, writing, music, film is yours to use. Take Molly Bloom’s soliloquy and give it to your heroine. It happens all the time anyway; how many times have we had Romeo and Juliet served up to us, and Camille grossed forty million in The Young Lovers. So let’s come out in the open with it and steal freely.

  My first application of this principle was in Naked Lunch. The interview between Carl Peterson and Doctor Benway is modelled on the interview between Razumov and Councillor Mikulin in Conrad’s Under Western Eyes. To be sure, there is no resemblance between Benway and Mikulin, but the form of the interview, Mikulin’s trick of unfinished sentences, his elliptical approach, and the conclusion of the interview are quite definitely and consciously used. I did not at the time see the full implications.

  Brion Gysin carried the process further in an unpublished scene from his novel The Process. He took a section of dialogue verbatim from a science fiction novel and used it in a similar scene. (The science fiction novel, appropriately, concerned a mad scientist who devised a black hole into which he disappeared.) I was, I confess, slightly shocked by such overt and traceable plagiarism. I had not quite abandoned the fetish of originality, though of course the whole sublime concept of total theft is implicit in cut-ups and montage.

  You see, I had been conditioned to the idea of words as property—one’s “very own words”—and consequently to a deep repugnance for the black sin of plagiarism. Originality was the great virtue. I recall a boy who was caught out copying an essay from a magazine article, and this horrible case discussed in whispers . . . for the first time the dark word “plagiarism” impinged on my consciousness. Why, in a Jack London story a writer shoots himself when he finds out that he has, without knowing it, plagiarized another writer’s work. He did not have the courage to be a writer. Fortunately, I was made of sterner or at least more adjustable stuff.

  Brion pointed out to me that I had been stealing for years: “Where did that come from—’Eyes old, unbluffed, unreadable’? And that—’inflexible authority’? And that—’arty type, no principles.’ And that—and that—and that?” He looked at me sternly.

  “Vous êtes un voleur honteux. . . a closet thief.” So we drew up a manifesto . . .

  Les Voleurs

  Out of the closet and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief. All the artists of history, from cave painters to Picasso, all the poets and writers, the musicians and architects, offer their wares, importuning him like street vendors. They supplicate him from the bored minds of school children, from the prisons of uncritical veneration, from dead museums and dusty archives. Sculptors stretch forth their limestone arms to receive the life-giving transfusion of flesh as their severed limbs are grafted onto Mister America. Mais le voleur n’est pas pressé—the thief is in no hurry. He must assure himself of the quality of the merchandise and its suitability for his purpose before he conveys the supreme honor and benediction of his theft.

  Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! A bas Voriginalité, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons as it creates. Vive le vol—pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight.

  IMMORTALITY

  To me the only success, the only greatness is immortality.

  —James Dean, from James
Dean the Mutant King by David Dalton

  The colonel beams at the crowd . . . pomaded, manicured, he wears the satisfied expression of one who has just sold the widow a fraudulent peach orchard. “Folks we’re here to sell the only thing worth selling or buying and that’s immortality. Now here is the simplest solution and well on the way. Just replace the worn parts and keep the old heap on the road indefinitely.”

  As transplant techniques are perfected and refined the age-old dream of immortality is now within the grasp of mankind. But who is to decide out of a million applicants for the same heart? There simply aren’t enough parts to go around. You need the job-lot once a year save twenty percent of people applying. Big executives use a heart a month just as regular as clockwork. Warlords, paying off their soldiers in livers and kidneys and genitals, depopulate whole areas. Vast hospital cities cover the land from the air-conditioned hospital palaces of the rich, radiating out to field hospitals and open-air operating booths. The poor are rising in huge mobs. They are attacking government warehouses where the precious parts are stored. Everyone who can afford it has dogs and guards to protect himself from roving bands of part hunters like the dreaded Wild Doctors who operate on each other after the battle, cutting the warm quivering parts from the dead and dying. Cut-and-grab men dart out of doorways and hack out a kidney with a few expert strokes of their four-inch scalpels. People have lost all shame. Here’s a man who sold his daughter’s last kidney to buy himself a new groin—appears on TV to appeal for funds to buy little Sally an artificial kidney and give her this last Christmas. On his arm is a curvaceous blonde known apparently as Bubbles. She calls him Long John, now isn’t that cute?