Playback from Eden to Watergate

Monday 30 March

Playback from Eden to Watergate from The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs.

Published by Penguin Classics, 2008

William Burroughs' work was dedicated to an assault upon language, traditional values and all agents of control. Produced at a time when he was at his most extreme and messianic, The Job lays out his abrasive, incisive, paranoiac, maddened and maddening worldview in interviews interspersed with stories and other writing. On the Beat movement, the importance of the cut-up technique, the press, Scientology, capital punishment, drugs, good and evil, the destruction of nations, Deadly Orgone Radiation and whether violence just in words is violence enough – Burroughs’ insights show why he was one of the most influential writers and one of the sharpest, most startling and strangest minds of his generation.

Selected by Richard Proffitt

The Whore of Mensa

Monday 23 March

The Whore of Mensa, from Without Feathers by Woody Allen.
Published by Random House, 1975

Click here to read http://woodyallenitalia.tripod.com/short-uk.html

Selected by Alan Williams

The Frozen Jug Band

Monday 16th March

The Frozen Jug Band, from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1968

I looked around and people's faces were distorted...lights were flashing everywhere...the screen at the end of the room had three or four different films on it at once, and the strobe light was flashing faster than it had been...the band was playing but I couldn't hear the music...people were dancing...someone came up to me and I shut my eyes and with a machine he projected images on the back of my eye-lids...I sought out a person I trusted and he laughed and told me that the Kool-Aid had been spiked and that I was beginning my first LSD experience...

Selected by Flis Mitchell

Have I Broken Your Heart?

Monday 9th March

Have I Broken Your Heart? by Gordon Burn, article published in Review, Saturday Guardian, 07.03.09.

'Fifty years ago Philip Roth claimed that 'the actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures daily that are the envy of any novelist'. In today's media-saturated world this is more true than ever, as epitomised by the tragic story of Jade Goody.'

Selected by Laura Robertson

Three Million Yen

Three Million Yen from Death in Midsummer by Yukio Mishima, Published by New Directions, 1966

Yukio Mishima was the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka, a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état. Nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mishima was internationally famous and is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century, whose avant-garde work displayed a blending of modern and traditional aesthetics that broke cultural boundaries, with a focus on sexuality, death, and political change.

Selected by Alan Williams