Queer

I picked this up recently because I wanted to read this before watching Luca's adaptation with Daniel Craig. Also because I have been reading a lot of [a:Cormac McCarthy 4178 Cormac McCarthy https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1611995562p2/4178.jpg] and [a:Ernest Hemingway 1455 Ernest Hemingway https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1654446435p2/1455.jpg] over the past year or so but am desperately sick of reading straight relationships and reading [b:Love, Leda 63577939 Love, Leda Mark Hyatt https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1669140290l/63577939.SY75.jpg 99499818] made me yearn to read more gay writing.I am not sure that was a thing much rewarded with this. Burroughs is an odd character (most famous, probably, for shooting and killing his second wife with in a drunken “William Tell” act, I guess), referring to himself as a ‘homosexual' and being a big fringe politically, or so it seems. Truth be told I know nothing about him other than, except a brief look at his Wikipedia page that I took after finishing this book, trying to see if the author was gay or not. I recognize the differences of time and all of that. Queer, my understanding written in the 50's but published in 1985, is from a different time. Burroughs grew and developed in a different time. But I certainly see no love for the idea of being gay. Everything is very cold.I've also learned that this book is a semi-follow-up to [b:Junky 23940 Junky William S. Burroughs https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386920565l/23940.SY75.jpg 24861], which I haven't read. It seems clear that this is vaguely autobiographical. Burroughs does himself no favors. At the start of the book, I find myself relating to Lee very much. He is anxious and insecure, but also putting on a show. He is attentive, and presses his eyes on those he watches. Burroughs does not write this pleasantly: “Lee watched the thin hands, the beautiful violet eyes, the flush of excitement on the boy's face. An imaginary hand projected with such force it seemed Allerton must feel the touch of ectoplasmtic fingers caressing his ear, phantom thumbs smoothing his eyebrows, pushing the hair back from his face.” (p23.).Lee is also highly sensitive to even the slightest of slights. There is a lot going on in his head, though the writing doesn't delve too far into it. Page 32-33: “In the dark theater Lee could feel his body pull toward Allerton, an amoeboid protoplasmic projection, straining with a blind worm hunger to enter the other's body, to breathe with his lungs, see with his eyes, learn the feel of his viscera and genitals. Allerton shifted in his seat. Lee felt a sharp twinge, a strain or dislocation of the spirit. His eyes ached. He took off his glasses and ran his hand over his closed eyes.”That use of strange, biological-clinical language again. Desire and fantasy are ectoplasmic and amoeboid. You don't feel any love, here. Just a sort of animal lust. Of course lust happens all the time, and Lee is eyeballing boys left and right the entire book. I struggle to understand Lee because his desire for Allerton is so all-encompassing but at no point does he display or evidence thoughts of love for him.About midway through, Lee starts trying to basically buy Allerton's time. He is really pressuring his presence on him in a way that clearly makes Allerton uncomfortable. When Allerton says he must work, Lee experiences physical pain: “Now Allerton had abruptly shut off contact, and Lee felt a physical pain, as though a part of himself tentatively stretched out towards the other had been severed, and he was looking at the bleeding stump in shock and disbelief.” (p50.) His solution is to offer to pay Allerton not to work. Lee seems immune to the social discomfort of this, and when it is refused he goes home and lays on his bed and cries. A few pages later he is accompanying Allerton to get his camera back from a pawn shop and is happy to spend out money to get this thing for Allerton. He does not understand why Allerton is so cold to him, does not understand that his actions are not being understood as loving or even affectionate. Lee says to himself: “I liked him and I wanted him to like me,” Lee thought. “I wasn't trying to buy anything.” (p53). I understand trying to find some way to express a feeling for someone, I really do. But this is a profound misunderstanding of people, of himself, from Lee. He starts panicking and desiring to leave the country, to travel somewhere else. Now there is a feeling that I know well.I guess this is turning more into a summary and less into a review. It's because I really do not understand Lee's character at all. I felt kinship and understanding to him at the start of the novel, but became more and more alienated the whole way through. To points of complete disgust. There's a line where, discussing Yage and telepathy, he tells Allerton that he could change anything about him he didn't like. How do you say that to someone you love? If you believe that, you don't love them. And so, of course, Lee is obsessed with Allerton and lusting for him, but I don't believe there is a real love there.The ending pretty well perplexed me. It quite grinds to a halt.Burroughs has a lot of interest to say in the Appendix, in previous editions this was his original introduction. I'm not sure what to make out of it. I understand parts. On page 131 he says, “I glance at the manuscript of Queer and feel I simply can't read it. My past was a poisoned river from which one was fortunate to escape, and by which one feels immediately threatened, years after the events recorded—painful to an extent I find it difficult to read, let alone to write about. Every word and gesture sets the teeth on edge.” That I can relate to.Very similarly on page 135: “I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.”Overall I find this a very odd and unpleasant book. Lee is a lost person, who I think does not know quite how to love and I think it's possible the contexts of gay life at the time has made it impossible for him. It's hard to say without knowing the character's backstory from Junky, though I'm skeptical it is relevant. This is a pretty stark contrast from writers like Christopher Isherwood which well-capture love, in my opinion, even if it is often tragic.I'm not sure I'll read more Burroughs. But I'm glad, I guess, to read a character that I think is more messed up than I am, at least.Highlights/notes:* p2 - What Lee looked for in any relationship was the feel of contact.* p7-8 - Actually, Moor's brush-off was calculated to inflict the maximum hurt possible under the circumstances. It put Lee in the position of a detestably insistent queer, too stupid and insensitive to realize that his attentions were not wanted, forcing Moor to the distasteful necessity of drawing a diagram.* p15 - The result was ghastly.   As Lee stood aside to bow in his dignified old-world greeting, there emerged instead a leer of naked lust, wretched in the pain and hate of his deprived body and, in simultaneous double exposure, a sweet child's smile of liking and trust, shockingly out of time and place, mutilated and hopeless.* p23 - Lee watched the thin hands, the beautiful violet eyes, the flush of excitement on the boy's face. An imaginary hand projected with such force it seemed Allerton must feel the touch of ectoplasmtic fingers caressing his ear, phantom thumbs smoothing his eyebrows, pushing the hair back from his face. Now Lee's hands were running down over the ribs, the stomach. Lee felt the aching pain of desire in his lungs. His mouth was a little open, showing his teeth in the half snarl of a baffled animal. He licked his lips.* p24-25 - [Allerton] was forced to ask himself: “What does he want from me?” It did not occur to him that Lee was queer, as he associated queerness with at least some degree of overt effeminacy. Allerton was intelligent and surprisingly perceptive for a person so self-centered, but his experience was limited. He decided finally that Lee valued him as an audience.* p32-33 - In the dark theater Lee could feel his body pull toward Allerton, an amoeboid protoplasmic projection, straining with a blind worm hunger to enter the other's body, to breathe with his lungs, see with his eyes, learn the feel of his viscera and genitals. Allerton shifted in his seat. Lee felt a sharp twinge, a strain or dislocation of the spirit. His eyes ached. He took off his glasses and ran his hand over his closed eyes.* p45 - (Baked Alaska and Lee's dish idea.)* p50- “How about dinner tonight?” asked Lee. Allerton said, “No, I think I'll work tonight.” Lee was depressed and shattered. The warmth and laughter of Saturday night was lost, and he did not know why. In any relation of love or friendship, Lee attempted to establish contact on the non-verbal level of intuition, a silent exchange of thought and feeling. Now Allerton had abruptly shut off contact, and Lee felt a physical pain, as though a part of himself tentatively stretched out towards the other had been severed, and he was looking at the bleeding stump in shock and disbelief.* p50 - (TB: around this area, Lee begins to really press on Allerton. He starts offering him money to spend time with him, but it's not phrased like that. He says things like, “I subsidize non-production. I will pay you twenty pesos not to work tonight.” He is surprised and hurt when Allerton rejects this. It doesn't stop him from repeating it a few times later.)* p51 - He got up and walked out. He walked slowlly. Several times he leaned on a tree, looking at the ground as if his stomach hurt. Inside his apartment he took off his coat and shoes, sat down on the bed. His throat began to ache, moisture hit his eyes, and he fell across the bed, sobbing convulsively. He pulled his knees up and covered his face with hands, the fists clenched. Towards morning he turned on his back and stretched out. The sobs stopped, and his face relaxed in the morning light.* p52-53 - He forced himself to look at the facts. Allerton was not queer enough to make a reciprocal relation possible. Lee's affection irritated him. ... [Lee] had no close friends. He disliked definite appointments. He did not like to feel that anybody expected anything from him.. He wanted, so far as possible, to live without external pressure. Allerton resented Lee's action in paying to recover the camera. ... “I liked him and I wanted him to like me,” Lee thought. “I wasn't trying to buy anything.”   “I have to leave town,” he decided. “Go somewhere. Panama, South America.” ... A feeling of cold desolation came over him at the thought of arriving in another country, far away from Allerton.* p56-60 – (TB: an extended “routine” from Lee, initially to Allerton and his chess partner and implied lover, Mary, and concluded after they have left. Lee is telling stories and it isn't clear to me if he is sharing memories of real things or just making things up. It is basically irrelevant as the ‘routine' on Corn Hole Gus's Used Slave Lot - a fantasy(?) of Lee taking a slave boy and seeking to trade him in for a pure Beduin. These are children, by the way. In the appendix/original introduction by Burroughs, he describes these as flights of fancy, routines, Lee settling into his writing. Okay.)* p65 - (TB: Lee is so pining for any attention from Allerton that he contemplates buying a stake in the bar where Allerton keeps a tab, so that the man could not ignore him. Awful.)* p72 - (TB: At a point in the story where Lee and Allerton are more or less traveling outside of Mexico by themselves, Lee sets up a contract where Allerton will sleep with him twice a week. This feels abhorrent and unreal. Why would Lee want this if he loves Allerton? Doesn't he want there to be some warmth? At no point does Allerton ever express anything but disgust for Lee. Anyway, on page 72 Lee shows him where to buy sex from women where they're at, and encourages him. I really don't understand Lee at all. Isn't he haunted by that thought? It's so bizarre.)* p79 - [Lee] had an arm around Gene's shoulders. They were both wearing swimming strunks. The sea was glassy. He saw a fish rise in a swirl of water. He lay down with his head in Allerton's lap. He felt peaceful and happy. He had never felt that way in his life, except maybe as a young child. He couldn't remember. The bitter shocks of his childhood had blacked out memory of happy times.* p80 - “While we are in Ecuador we must score for Yage,” Lee said. “Think of it: thought control. Take anyone apart and rebuild to your taste. Anything about somebody bugs you, you say, ‘Yage! I want that routine took clear out of his mind.' I could think of a few changes I might make in you, doll.” He looked at Allerton and licked his lips. “You'd be so much nicer after a few alterations. You're nice now, of course, but you do have those irritating little peculiarities. I mean, you won't do exactly what I want you to do all the time.” (TB: Holy shit, can you imagine someone saying this to you? This is insane! How can you think that way about someone?)* p113 - I have dreamed many times I was back in Mexico City, talking to Art or Allerton's best friend, Johnny White, and asking where he was. Dream about Allerton continually. Usually we are on good terms, but sometimes he is inexplicably hostile, and when I ask why, what is the matter, his answer is muffled. I never find out why. (TB: this is from the last chapter, 2 years after the events of the book, and notably the writing has changed from third-person to first-person. Anyway, I recognize these dreams. Have had them. But for Lee to think that hostility from Allerton could be inexplicable demonstrates no insight.)Appendix, Burroughs's original introduction:* p131: “I glance at the manuscript of Queer and feel I simply can't read it. My past was a poisoned river from which one was fortunate to escape, and by whicih one feels immediately threatened, years after the events recorded—painful to an extent I find it difficult to read, let alone to write about. Every word and gesture sets the teeth on edge.” * p135 - I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.

This was my first Burroughs and reading it felt like fishing in a landfill. You're guaranteed to find something repulsive, profound, evocative, funny, rotting, weird, dull or all of the above, maybe all in the same statement. “Ugly American” doesn't cut it - maybe better to call him the “Repulsive American”. “Ugly” suggests a body that is ostracized or shunned for aesthetic reasons - we find ugliness in a junky or a disabled person (like the hunchback) or a queer (like the old queen Bobo). The author's ugliness runs deeper, a repulsiveness at the core - every possible -ism and pedeophilia to boot. Those assigned ugliness are not allowed to have an internal life, not even here - but the repulsive, that we explore, that we come to understand. Yes, “every country has its Shits”, and through the sheer violence of his imagination I'm thinking Burroughs was one of ours.

Despite it all - or because of it - I can't write it off. I wouldn't say that I “connect” to anything here, as most of it by design offends me to my core. But in all the bizarro self-absorption, the blind hedonism and the endless “routines”, there are moments where Burroughs found something real, in all this junk - a real pain, exquisite and sharp, captured here -
- “In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it, you cannot complain.”
- “He walked on, looking at every face he passed, looking into doorways and up at the windows of cheap hotels. An iron bedstead painted light pink, a shirt out to dry... scraps of life. Lee snapped at them hungrily, like a predatory fish cut off from his prey by a glass wall. He could not stop ramming his nose against the glass in the nightmare search of his dream. And at the end he was standing in a dusty room in the late afternoon sun, with an old shoe in his hand.”

Anyway I went crazy trying to analyze this book and then remembered I'm not in college and nobody's paying me, so at this point I shrug and toss my notes aside. Three stars because I said so.