Details
Synopsis
The soft machine of the title is, in fact, the human brain. In the second part of the Nova Tetralogy, William Lee (of JUNKY and NAKED LUNCH, Burroughs's fictional alter-ego) works for the Nova Police, travelling back in time to the Mayan civilization. The Nova Mob, a gang of aliens who have controlled humanity for 3,000 years through viral infections leading to various addictions, have worked within Mayan society and in particular the priesthood--establishing the calendar. Lee must redo the calendar, and bring to ruin the priesthood, and the structure it imposes on Mayan civilization. This book was originally published in 1961.
| Size | | Height: | 8.3 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 7.2 oz |
Industry Reviews
"The point [of this work] is not to read the book at all, but somehow to hear the voice in it. The voice in The Soft Machine is talking about time....[it] is giving an hallucinatory reading to Eliot's Four Quartets....This is by no means unintentional; Eliot's is one of the rhythms into which the voice in The Soft Machine slips deliberately and frequently, sometimes ironically and sometimes not. Sometimes the voice is not Eliot but Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain....[It] rattles off elliptical allusions, throws away joke after outrageous joke, shifts gear in mid-sentence, never falters. It is precisely this voice--complex, subtle, allusive--that is the fine thing about [this book] and about Burroughs."
Didion
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