The Ticket That Exploded: The Restored Text Audiobook By William S. Burroughs cover art

The Ticket That Exploded: The Restored Text

The Nova Trilogy, Book 2

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The Ticket That Exploded: The Restored Text

By: William S. Burroughs
Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
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About this listen

In The Ticket That Exploded, William S. Burroughs' grand "cut-up" trilogy, which starts with The Soft Machine and continues through Nova Express, reaches its climax as inspector Lee and the Nova Police engage the Nova Mob in a decisive battle for the planet. Only Burroughs could make such a nightmare vision of scientists and combat troops, of ad men and con men, whose deceitful language has spread like an incurable disease, be at once so frightening and so enthralling.

©1962, 1964, 1967 William S. Burroughs. Introduction © 2014 by Oliver Harris (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Fiction Literary Fiction
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What listeners say about The Ticket That Exploded: The Restored Text

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Lust for Life

Lust for life
I got a lust for life
I got a lust for life
- Iggy Pop, Lust for Life

Reviewing, cutting, looking slowly back at 1962 o͝orˌtekst, 1967 Endetext, fold, refold, oragami fold, cut, paste, recut, film and redact. So? Start again. From the bigbanging. - there are no good words- I wrote silences - review the story of two halves, two texts, living text, breathing review Here comes Johnny Yen again/With the liquor and drugs - 'Better than 'the real thing?' - there is no real thing - reviewing the review, before the end, I'm not sure the cut-up review will work. Abandon all holes, ye whosorifices here. Mother smother may I must I smother mother this May. And the flesh machine/He's gonna do another striptease. I've naked lunched and snacked on soft machines. I've dined on queers and feasted on exterminators! These all do their part, they have all left me full and slightly sick. Puppy sick. Sick. sick./[sic]poopy. I'm not sure my form or pattern or strategy will add much to the Universe. I'm not sure it will subtract either. It will (like a Luxor light on New Years) attract only non-native moths, that feed the non-native bats, that feed the non-native owls, circling the giant urban a$$hole of the Las Vegas universe. Boys will be boys and boys, 'Boys we've been sublimated.' I'm worth a million in prizes/With my torture film.I'll redraft this draft, re-view this review, and post it toast it on Audible. I'll come at Amazon from two directions. Equally futile F body. I'll let DearGODreads swallow my early editions. I'll let Audible carry my post-review drip penicillin. Clock. clock. Tap. tap. Tock. tock. Written before on 'the Soft Typewriter' - transparent quivering substance the body is two halves stuck together around - Jeff B3zos - Lizard king. Owns my words. Licking the metallic air. Sells me your word drones. Shed your skin. Barter, trade, and consume all words made flesh - No good - No bueno - Departed have left no address - It's all done with tape recorders. Well I am just a modern guy/Of course I've had it in the ear before Listen again. Listen harder. Escape to and from the Nova. But never dream of leaving the word horde.

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I love this book

I love this book. I think it does what it sets out to do.
It is a brave book that peels back the dangerous underpinnings of life as we know it.

The audio performance contributes to my pleasure as I 're-read the book. This is another reason to read multiple volumes of the story.

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More rectal mucus with music folded in

William S Burroughs' The Ticket that Exploded is ostensibly his second installment in his Nova trilogy, although just as each book adheres loosely to a linear tale so does the whole trilogy similarly. Sprinkled throughout are song titles as agent Lee continues to work to stop the Nova mob from mind control of Earth with bizarre media mash-ups.

Burroughs employs a fold-in technique throughout the book where the left side of one page of text is complemented with another 'folded' page representing the right side of the text and then editing that mess to make some sense. There are extensive portions that appear as near poetic phrases that in aggregate make little sense. This version is the 'restored' text representing a composite as Burroughs produced two distinct published versions.

The narration is well done.

Note: Although the full audiobook is about 9.5 hours, the first hour is an introduction by the editor of the restored text providing historical context and the relationship to Burroughs' other writing as well as explaining references in the text to cultural trivia that are unlikely to be familiar to today's listener. The last two hours are the notes detailing all the editing changes between the two previously published versions.

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Pornography without Purpose

Would you try another book from William S. Burroughs and/or Ramiz Monsef?

No, not now that I know Burroughs is just interested in writing about sex to be writing about sex.

Would you ever listen to anything by William S. Burroughs again?

No. I don't need to listen to pornography.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Yes. The narration was done well considering the very experimental nature of Burroughs' work.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disgust and disappointment. I'm okay with sex in a book that's supposed to be science fiction, but this book, with all its potential, ended up being erotica with no real point outside of remixing sexual content.

Any additional comments?

I wish I had both my money and time back. I couldn't even finish the book, despite it being for a graduate level Sound Studies course.

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