The Soft Machine: The Restored Text

The Nova Trilogy, Book 1

By: William S. Burroughs

Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef

In The Soft Machine, William S. Burroughs begins an adventure that will take us into the dark recesses of his imagination, a region where nothing is sacred, nothing taboo. Continuing his ferocious verbal assault on hatred, hype, poverty, war, bureaucracy, and addiction in all its forms, Burroughs gives us a surreal space odyssey through the wounded galaxies in a book only he could create.

A total assault on the powers that turn humans into machines by writing and fixing our life scripts, Burroughs' original "cut-up" book was itself rewritten in three different forms. This new edition of The Soft Machine clarifies for the first time the extraordinary history of its writing and rewriting, demolishes the myths of his chance-based writing methods, and demonstrates for a new generation the significance of Burroughs' greatest experiment.

©1961, 1966 William S. Burroughs. © 2014 by the Estate of William S. Burroughs. Introduction © 2014 by Oliver Harris (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Wild ride

This book has greatly changed my opinion of art as a whole. I don't think that people create art, I think that people discover art. This connotes the idea that art is everywhere, it just takes us to find it and appreciate it. I'm very interested in the cut up method and the possibilities that stem from it. I'd hate to try to hogtie this book with a general description, because obviously it aims to elude all description. But Irecommend this to anyone open minded amd nonjudgmental. The cut up method forces us to see the unseen connections between anything and everything. Sometimes the words just seem like a lot of shit. Other times they're very profound and thought provoking.

....just.......read it.

Amazing

This is an amazing book that requires patience and multiple reads to get a satisfying reading experience from it. The introduction and narrative performance are first rate. I highly recommend this book.

Just as I recall

I was in my late teens or early 20s. It took a few hours but I read it all in one sitting at Penrose library in downtown Colorado Springs. Next day I decided to check it so I could read it again. And again. I didn't attempt to memorize it but repetition of key phrases embedded them into my hippocampus and I felt no need to revisit.
Now some thirty years later I rediscover all of William S. Burroughs in audio and mostly free.
Hooray!

Dirty twisted drug dreams

Funny filthy and freaky dreamlike neo-baroque word maelstrom. You can feel the conjuring of the ethos of punk, SciFi noir, underground film, body horror, and cyberpunk. Like listening to a schizophrenic street prophet hanging out at an all night dive bar. Great performance by the narrator too.

Gets really boring after awhile

Although Burroughs style is (or was) revolutionary, and although the book was interesting for a while, I was eventually bored by its repetitiveness.

Breathe in Johnny -- Here Goes --

I respect rather than love it. Like Gravity's Rainbow's sewer scene on his knees, bare as a baby ... or William T. Vollmann's telephone exchange between steel reefs, a wire wrapped in gutta-percha vibrates: I hereby...zzZZZZZ...the critical situation...a crushing blow....The sleepwalker's all eyes; the realist is all ears; their mating forms the telephone. Later perhaps, I see parts, flashing, cut-in, from David Lynch this is a formica table or Cronenberg's not naked lunch or beginning of Kubrick's 2001 apes confronted with steel. Celluloid burning. when we came out of the mud we had names. Perhaps, Trump Tweets massacred by homoeroticism: I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke 11:43 AM - 14 Oct 2012. Thinking man's thin man. Marlowe and Philip K Dick detectives utilizing third-person singular indirect recall, though now using the cut-up method, Burroughs unsettles and alarms with images of consumption. Pan God of Panic piping blue notes through empty streets as the berserk time machine twisted a tornado of years and centuries -- wind through dusty offices and archives -- Late night Trump tweets interrupted because The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences! 6:22 PM - 1 Aug 2014. The time to be Messianic is now. Word Hordes of the World Unite! I feel like I just jumped off a modern James Joyce Finnegan nightmare bridge. Not even my warm bath, diet Coke, Hi-Chew blood sugar highs and restless foot cramps can keep me from the dizzying nature of Wind turbines are ripping [Scotland] apart and killing tourism.Electric bills in Scotland are skyrocketing-stop the madness. ...High on ammonia issuing insane orders... Grammy award goes to Adele 'Song of the Year' HELLO? Reading paperback 3rd edition on back in bath. 'Record of the Year' HELLO? Listening to audiobook of revised edition. 'Best Pop Solo Performance' HELLO? HELLO? HELLO? The inconsistency between editions seems right. Lost seems right. Unsettled seems right. Unfinished loop seems to capture the Burroughs sense of a living text. I'm adrift. Wet certainly. Drowning. Cut the word lines -- Cut the music lines -- Smash the control images -- Smash the control machine -- Burn the books -- Kill the priests --Kill! Kill! Kill!. Amazing how the haters & losers keep tweeting the name “F**kface Von Clownstick” like they are so original & like no one else is doing it... 9:35 AM - 3 May 2013. Welcome Mr. President. President Trump welcome to the future. - nothing here now but circling word dust - dead postcard falling through space between world - this road in this sharp spell of carrion -

Pure brilliance

I wasn't a huge fan of Naked Lunch. But this is a whole new animal. This novel is beyond my capability of description. It boggles the senses. It's the purest manifestation of finding beauty within depravity and it is, as far as I am concerned, the ultimate distillation of the Beat movement. Burroughs was a genius. This book is the proof.

Captivating

First time through there isn't much of a story but the writing was captivating. Very obscene but if you can get past that it's very good. The introduction is the first hour of the book and explained a lot.

heroin erections and jizz

that's the story. soft machine is the human body.. thought I was a fan. Not so much

Ugh. The horrible voice

The voice is an attempt at imitating Burroughs, which makes it unlistenable. Burroughs had emphysema from constant smoking, causing him to speak even the most mundane sentences with uegency to try to finish his thought before running out of breath. This narration convinces me yet again that nobody ever really responded to Burroughs words, merely to his rushed, urgent delivery, which they mistakenly imagined meant these words must be terribly important, in ways that none of them can articulate because they are so mysterious.
Verdict: a nonsense word-salad drug diary, delivered by an imitation emphysemic. Don't waste your time.