The actual title of this book is Exterminator! -- with the exclamation point. Understandably, the somewhat unconventional title throws a number of book catalogues for a loop and can make it a difficult title to locate.

William S. Burroughs initially made his mark with the brilliant, hallucinogenic, and highly controversial Naked Lunch back in the fifties. This landmark novel, coupled with disputes over Allen Ginsberg's Howl, would lead to the realization of freedom of speech and press in America, putting a stop to public book bannings.

From Naked Lunch, which was an eclectic masterpiece in its own right, Burroughs would go on to countless further experiments, completely dismantling conventional writing and word order.

While it was written much later, Exterminator! is more comparable to Naked Lunch than its contemporaries. This is one of the few large, novelistic works by Burroughs where, for the most part, "conventional" word order remains in tact.

The central topics of Exterminator! are junk (heroine) addiction, and Burroughs' very own primitive theories of Memetics. His basic idea, which would serve as the entire premise for his Nova Express trilogy, is that any word or idea is a "virus," and that the right kind of "word virus" can be developed and used as a weapon against humanity.

Exterminator! is essentially a series of stories and episodes which have been crafted and presented carefully for thematic reasons, which is to say that they don't actually form one large story, although many of the ideas and premises overlap and reoccur.

This book contains several of Burroughs' most famous pieces, including "The Priest They Called Him" -- a piece which he later worked into a spoken word recording in collaboration with Kurt Cobain. It's a surprisingly moving story about an old, seemingly heartless Junky who, deep in the throes of withdrawal, gives up his last shot to the teenage addict next door as a Christmas present, leading to his own death.(So you don't get confused, the title means "They called him The Priest," not "They called the priest Him.")

My favorite section of the book is The End, where Burroughs steps aside to comment on the novel in the first person directly to the reader and imagines a rather humorous dialog between himself and the narrator from the science fiction comic books he read as a kid.

This is altogether an excellent, relatively easy read that is packed with charm and humor in some of the last places you would expect to find it.

Those who enjoy Exterminator! will feel right at home with Naked Lunch and The Adding Machine, and may like The Wild Boys.

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GENERAL INFORMATION ON THIS ARTIST –

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS (1914-1998) is often considered a member of the 1950’s Beat literary movement for his close ties to Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferhlinghetti, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, although his writing, influence, and style reach far beyond the borders of that small community.

He is best known for co-developing with Bryon Gysion the Cut-up method, a literal application of the montage technique to the printed page. Pages and sequences of words are cut-up, then juxtaposed to form a purely visual pattern, thus breaking the traditional associations between words.

His most famous novel is Naked Lunch, a hallucinogenic semi-account of his life as a junk addict. It is here that the world met the world of Interzone, an elusive world of junkies and “queers.”

Burroughs’ primary theme in all of his writing was control, namely various methods, both real and extremely fictitious, whereby human beings manipulate and abuse one another. His primary method of relating to this idea was through his own harsh experiences with drug addiction, a problem that haunted him for most of his life.

Burroughs has been credited as the inspiration for a slew of artists, especially in the music industry, including the likes of Kurt Cobain and is considered the grandfather of 80’s punk.
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BURROUGHS HAS A HUGE CULT FOLLOWING ON THE WEB, AND YOU CAN SAMPLE MANY SELECTIONS OF HIS WORK, PLUS READ COMMENTARY, BIOGRAPHIES, AND ANYTHING ELSE YOU COULD ASK FOR FREE.
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TO HEAR SOUND RECORDINGS OF BURROUGHS AND HIS WORK, CHECK OUT THESE SITES –

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS – UBUWEB SOUND POETRY
http://www.ubu.com/sound/burroughs.html

THE GHOST OF WILLIAM BURROUGHS
http://www.netherworld.com/~mgabrys/william/prev.html
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ALSO RECOMMENDED –

INTERZONE
is a COLOSSAL web ring that is amazingly easy to navigate. The most informative and useful sites I’ve seen related to Burroughs.
www.inter-zone.org

THE WSB INTER-WEB-ZONE
http://www.hyperreal.org/wsb/


Recommended:
Yes