William S. Burroughs
Let Me Hang You
KHANNIBALISM/ERNEST JENNING
6/10
William S. Burroughs was one of mid-century America’s most important literary figures. A Midwestern trust-fund blue-blood whose path diverted far from the mainstream into homosexuality, drug addiction, and violence, he channeled his extreme behavior into a new style of writing, the early results of which were banned.
He emerged as a writer in the early 1950s and for thirty-five years produced some of the most compelling written work of the twentieth century. While Burroughs’s first novels Junkie and Queer followed a conventional writing style, he soon developed an avant-garde technique that included putting together random pieces of cut-up text and eschewing linear timeframes. Naked Lunch was the first, and prime, example of this new style. Published in 1959, it’s obscene, thrilling, sometimes disgusting, and was occasionally banned, too.
In the mid ’90s, Burroughs recorded a number of spoken word projects, and during this time he and longtime associate Hal Willner recorded audio of the writer reading his favorite parts of Naked Lunch. At once compelling, they were also randomly abandoned and forgotten—at least until now. Last year, Willner teamed up with charismatic Indo-Canadian musician King Khan to finally finish what he and Burroughs had started two decades previously.
What makes Let Me Hang You so special is that it takes its content solely from Naked Lunch, and follows the “narrative” (such that there is one) to the point that the story envelops us. Khan’s music fits and complements the readings rather than trying to stand out on its own. It’s ambient and experimental, with flourishes of guitar-based rock probably strong enough to go it alone, but Khan knows who the star is here and allows Burroughs’s voice to shine through. The fact that this is the first time anyone is hearing the recordings since they were made, almost twenty years since Burroughs death, is thrilling.
