My Education: A Book of Dreams

Rating:
Summary: One of his best novels.
Review: I think this was a very interesting concept to record 5 years worth of dreams and then put them into a book. Some of the images and characters Burroughs comes up with are so vivid and so realistic that when I read this I actually felt like I was with Burroughs during this subconcious journey.

I liked how he used his dreams as education, and how he realized the importance of his dreams; a very Freudian quality. I think that this book represented finally coming to terms with your past, and accepting vicissitude (or change) that others tend to shy away from. This book is a very important addition to Burroughs' extensive body of work, and undoubtedly one of his best books. And often times it's overlooked because it's in the shadow of the Naked Lunch and the Soft Machine.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully layered words
Review: This book is my introduction to Mr. Burroughs, but it definatly will not be the end. I have never read a book so detached yet so intriging, each paragraph takes you further from the "real" concrete world and closer to a world that is so complex and confusing. Rather than trying to make this a thesis or make this book into a lesson, Burroughs treats the subject as a observer and as an experience. It is a short book, you have nothing to lose. I highly recommend

Rating:
Summary: A tourbook of the Land of the Dead
Review: This really isn't a novel. It is much more than that. This is where Burroughs got so many of the images for his life time of work. You see, this is a tour book of The Land of the Dead, or as he also called it, The Place of Dead Roads. While he subtitles this work _A Book of Dreams_ he is careful to point out that these are a very special sort of dream. They are dreams that are more real than waking life. Indeed, the author speculates if the dreaming city isn't really his true home, his true life- far more real than Lawrence, Kansas.

You can't expect to read a book like this in the same way that you would read an ordinary book. You must unfocus your mind, in the same way that you must unfocus your eyes to truly SEE some abstract art. Only then will the images begin to flow and transport you. That is because this book is a conscious act of magic, as the old magician knew when he crafted it....

See if the Land of the Dead doesn't start to seem very familiar to you. I know I immediately recognised the place he was describing. It is a place where the dead, the sleeping, the magical travellers all meet. That is why the landscape and architecture are such a tangle, why there are no clear distinctions between public and private places. It is a mad, mixed, consensus "reality." That is also why flight is possible there. You see, in such a place gravity isn't a law- it is an opinion....