William S. Burroughs' "The Revised Boy Scout Manual": An Electronic Revolution

by William S. Burroughs

Overview

Before the era of fake news and anti-fascists, William S. Burroughs wrote about preparing for revolution and confronting institutionalized power. In this work, Burroughs' parody becomes a set of rationales and instructions for destabilizing the state and overthrowing an oppressive and corrupt government. As with much of Burroughs' work, it is hard to say if it is serious or purely satire. The work is funny, horrifying, and eerily prescient, especially concerning the use of language and social media to undermine institutions.

The Revised Boy Scout Manual was a work Burroughs revisited many times, but which has never before been published in its complete form. Based primarily on recordings of a performance of the complete piece found in the archives at the OSU libraries, as well as various incomplete versions of the typescript found at Arizona State University and the New York Public Library archives, this lost masterpiece of satiric subversion is finally available in its entirety.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814254899
Publisher:	Ohio State University Press
Publication date:	09/10/2018
Edition description:	1
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	736,305
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

William S. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation who wrote in the postmodern paranoid fiction genre. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift," while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius." While he is best known for the novels Naked Lunch, Queer, and Junkie, he also collaborated with artists such as Laurie Anderson, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Gus Van Sant, David Cronenberg, and Sonic Youth to produce films, music, and performance pieces.

Geoffrey D. Smith is Professor Emeritus, former head of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of The Ohio State University Libraries, and adjunct professor in the Department of English. He was also longtime steward of the William S. Burroughs Collection at Ohio State.

John M. Bennett is the founding curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries. He was editor of the international literary journal Lost and Found Times from 1975 to 2005 and is the publisher of Luna Bisonte Prods, promoting avant literatures since 1974.

V. Vale is a counterculture writer and publisher and the sole proprietor/founder of RE/Search Publications. He published part of Burroughs' "The Revised Boy Scout Manual" in 1982 in RE/Search #4/5: William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Throbbing Gristle.

Antonio García is a visual artist, scholar, and philologist studying William S. Burroughs' work as a process-based art form.

Date of Birth:

February 4, 1914

Date of Death:

August 2, 1997

Place of Birth:

St. Louis, Missouri

Place of Death:

Lawrence, Kansas

Education:

Los Alamos Ranch School; A.B., Harvard University, 1936; graduate study, 1938

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Foreword Antonio Bonome ix

Brief Textual History Geoffrey D. Smith xv

Did Burroughs Have a Plan? John M. Bennett xxi

"The Revised Boy Scout Manual": An Electronic Revolution 1

Afterword V. Vale 75

Supplements 81

Abbreviations and Sources 103

Notes 105

About the Editors and Contributors 117

Editorial Reviews

09/03/2018
Burroughs’s jarringly piecemeal satire on how to prepare for a revolution against powerful, oppressive institutions is strikingly timely, albeit difficult to follow. The text, assembled from multiple sources including recordings of Burroughs’s readings, leaps about, including bizarre fantasies such as a Night of the Living Dead–inspired scenario and a testy conversation between Watson and Holmes about the latter’s excessive drug use. Credited for creating terms such as “heavy metal” and the now ubiquitous “fake news,” Burroughs was a talented wordsmith; readers who persist will find delicious phrasing here such as ”the vote is a weapon” and “the weapons of illusion.” Burroughs’s sharp observations on the shaping of media narratives are particularly worth seeking out. This slender offering serves best as an opportunity to appreciate Burroughs’s dark humor and insights into human nature—“Can any human being live without enemies? No human being has ever done so yet”—rather than as a lost classic. V. Vale’s observation in an afterword that “if your language lives on, in a way, you live on” sums up what there is to admire here: Burroughs’s gift for creating phrases that remain relevant. Agent: Jeffrey Posternak, Wylie Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Burroughs's jarringly piecemeal satire on how to prepare for a revolution against powerful, oppressive institutions is strikingly timely." --Publishers Weekly

"He's up there with the pope . . . you can't revere him enough . . . he's the greatest mind of our times." --Patti Smith

"The most important writer to emerge since the Second World War." --J. G. Ballard

"Well, he's a writer." --Samuel Beckett

​"Here we have Bill Burroughs' voice coming through loud and clear, like a conversation after his first large whiskey, London c. 1972. His preoccupations at the time: weaponry, viruses, tape recorder cut-ups, Scientology techniques, the Mayan calendar, and Korzybski's General Semantics are utilized as means to deal with 'the shits.' Never has a text been more apposite. As usual his ideas are developed into hilarious routines, but at heart he is deadly serious: 'I mean every word I say.' It is wonderful to see this legendary text in print at last." --Barry Miles, author of Call Me Burroughs

"It's all there all the time with Burroughs." --Marc Maron

"The Revised Boy Scout Manual offers easy-to-read proof that the uncensored human imagination, when allowed to freely extrapolate about future social change, can offer outrageous scenarios and fresh language capable of inspiring readers decades into the future." --V. Vale, founder and publisher of RE/Search

From the Publisher