Monday, August 4, 2008

Johannes Göransson's DEAR RA

When Burroughs died in '97 it was the summer after I finished high school. I had just gotten the internet on a computer in my room, I had my first email, I had saved pictures of naked women on my hard drive and knew where to look at them. That was some summer then. In his last trilogy of books Burroughs wrote about a sex propelled virus that destroys humanity. Burroughs had written this before AIDS was discovered. Burroughs had birthed in his male uterus the perfect virus that by replicating to paper he shat straight through the earth.

I read a lot of Burroughs, I read him over and over, I read NAKED LUNCH before I knew a lot of things after I bought it from the only independent bookstore I'd ever been in, where the ideas on the pages seemed profane and new already to me: the first poetry reading I ever went to when I was like 16 there were guys with long hair who got tired of reading their own shit and so they got NAKED LUNCH and started reading their favorite passages from it, they didn't stop to take a breath even when the train went by and you couldn't hear what they were saying anymore. I read THE SOFT MACHINE and THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED back to back on a bad in a basement room that had no windows.



YEARS AFTER BURROUGHS DIED I STARTED THINKING ABOUT WHOSE BODY HIS MIND HAD ABSORBED INTO AT HIS DEATH

There never seemed anyone for years. I think I read the most during my undergrad blur at a major technical college spending my library hours masturbating in the bathroom or staring at texts I knew no one had really written on the massive databank computers in the library, walking around in circles. I don't think I believe in rebirthing, maybe I do, but I definitely believe in invocation or attachment, or consumption via layering.

If anyone has been infected as the heir of the mass-apocalyptic Burroughs language virus megaburden, it must be Johannes Göransson.

I realized this while reading his new DEAR RA, out from Starcherone Books now THIS LINE DELIVERED TO YOU VIA TELEMARKETING UPLOAD.

I don't know whether how he would take this idea (though the Burroughs surname is layered in the book along with other loaded refs like offhanded shotputs), if you've ever spent any time reading Exoskeleton you know the man is made of some kind of multipolymer plastic that glows in no light, but I still think the transcription is illuminary, at least for me, in that no one else since Burroughs seems as capable of inveigling such mass hysteria, hyper-sexual anti-sex mutation, cultural whitewall, rhythmic jargon, and just plain ravaged flesh language in such tangible, tasted bursts.

Though at the same time, Göransson is too made of himself to be just an infection, even one so now-real.

DEAR RA is like 89 hyper-prose pages, stuffed with white space, though here the white space is as loaded as the floor of the Tangier hotel covered in black muck where Burroughs was discovered in a daze with the pages of NAKED LUNCH strewn all around him. These are letters to the sun god, though some might say now this god's replacement is a florescent lamp, a tanning bulb, a whoops. Göransson's text is the kind that slips past spam filters and makes you consider the dick surgery. Göransson's mind is the kind you feel breathing behind you while you're watching that slightly more filthy than usual porn download that you will delete from your web browser's history when you are finished even though no one ever looks at your web browsing history because one day motherfucker you will die.

The most important books, I think now, are the ones that you either can't read because of where they touch, or that you can read in 30 minutes because they are so cleanly chiseled and short, to the windpipe.

This book is still stuck in my windpipe.

This book made Breton cry because Breton knew he never had such glimmer, and Breton is very dead.

This book is much bigger than it feels with its slick cover and its quickburst easy-on-the eyes, and though I want it on my nightstand, the fucking thing keeps crumpling under the weight.

I am going to open the book to a random page and quote the first line I see, because the pages of this book were cut from a rotting tree and made white enough for you to lose your eye-tint regarding, and still they have the wound layered in them enough that no matter where you are inside it, you will be infected:

No, the interviewer asked me something about you, and 'moths' is how I replied.


As I typed that, I accidentally typed 'mothers' at first where 'moths' is, and I felt the paint in the room around me on my face and a new McDonald's opened right down the street and everything was okay.

DEAR RA knows more than it knows it knows, and the channels can't quite control their color.

Göransson, if he's not shotgun/cathair infected, is at least here an associative kingkong, stirring up Göransson's already hyperattended vocabs (sternum, animal, thievery, problematic answers to unasked questions, orifices, fucking, drive-bys) into little things that might sliver your balls hairs into new ball hairs. Then you'd have some hair ass balls and you'd wake up earlier and go places you didn't see despite having walked past them 1500 times doused in gasoline.

I would say Göransson is the Tupac of tonight's slurfest, but Tupac isn't dead yet and I don't want him coming off that island to cut his wiser, buzzheaded brethren where he breathes, because then Tupac would have the Göransson blood gushing all over him and he wouldn't be able to record his next posthumous clubjam without spitting the realest realest shit he ever wrote, and I don't think those fratkids are ready for that yet, and I want one more weekend to sit and slurp my own saliva before we go past empty to negative neon. This is a new node on a lexicon that will not let itself be lexiconned.

Did I mention J.G. has among the finest gloss of craniums in our wordland? You kind of want to kiss it.

See how I've been infected?

What am I saying: this book is worth your while, you will read it in the bathtub or on the shitter, you will remember, you will be glad.

DO A BUY FROM THE PRESS

OR BUY THROUGH SPD

19 comments:

jillian clark said...

the book sounds very interesting, i really like the cover

BLAKE BUTLER said...

hi jillian, yes the cover is beautiful, and is a good stamp for the innnards, you should check it out!

Anonymous said...

how come its not available in any borders store yet? is it published by an independent or vanity press?

be my
be my little baby
be my
be my little baby

when my homies call
you aint heard

nuthin but a g thang
baby
2 low down gs going
crazy

said a 1
and a 2
and a 3 and a

said snoop dogg is
dogg
bow wow wow
yippy yo yippy yay
bow wow wow
yippy yo

feel me g?

BLAKE BUTLER said...

it is out from starcherone books, i dont think they are in borders, dont shop at borders anyway, unless you are returning big major label books to get store credit for good ones

www.powells.com
www.starcherone.com

DOGZPLOT said...

your fucking with the realest motherfuker ever born, and once again its own, im busting on these bitches til they gone..
now who the hell can you get to stop me, im in the projects parlayin with my posse. i keep my glock cocked nigga cuz they all shady, i finally made it, now these jealous bitches tryin to fade me..
but i aint going out i rather blast back.....


sorry i meant to write just one line, but i couldn't.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

it scared the fuck out of my and my friends the night we were deciphering tupac's fake death by listening to makavelli and we thought when he said

momma checkin in my bedroom, i aint der

that he said

momma checkin in my bedroom, i aint dead

but what he actually says i think is more right anyway

tupac

BLAKE BUTLER said...

fuck maybe tupac is johannes goransson

or

johannes goransson was tupac

they are doing wonders with p-surgery, i've seen it on tv

BLAKE BUTLER said...

i aint a killa but dont push me / revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin pussy

TUPAC THREAD

ryan said...

the asian tony robbins

Josh Maday said...

ordered. johannes goransson's mind is powerful. exoskeleton is one of my daily blog visits for sure. good review, blake. reading it made me feel a hungry fist in my stomach.

tupac cut my grass yesterday. fucker left without weed whacking.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

send tupac a txt msg, he can trim the edges with his mind from a distance of up to 1300 nautical miles

i am glad you ordered the book josh you are going to like it i think, it seems your style

DOGZPLOT said...

picture paragraphs unloaded, wise words being quoted, peeped the weakness in the rap game and sowed it.

did you know that at the very beginning of the cd, before the song bomb first, if you listen really really close, tupac says, suge shot me. you need the original cd though, not the bootleg.

we...bomb first when we ride.. please reconsider 'fore you die. we aint come to hurt nobody tonight, but its my life or your life, and im'a bomb first.

momma checkin in my bedroon, i aint there... thats funny.

i got a head with no screws in it, what can i do, one life to live but i got nothing to lose. just me and you. on a one way trip to prison, selling drugs. we all wrapped up in this living life as thugs.

aaron burch is tupac

BLAKE BUTLER said...

yeah, 'suge shot me' i remember that. there are lots of weird references on that record.

on the goransson tip, you can buy his books also through spd by clicking here

p said...

I am going to get that. hey are there any no colonies left?

BLAKE BUTLER said...

good peter, i think you will like it.

there are def no colonies left :)

sam pink said...

"na ever since a nigga was a seed only thing promised to me was the penitentiary, still ballin'"

"you can bring your crew, while we remain true mothuhfuckah, still ballin'"

BLAKE BUTLER said...

wise wordz spoke

troylloyd said...

thanx for taking the time to review this book, from reading what you've sed -- i'm gonna drop the cabbage onnit.

i'd already admired Göransson for his translation abilities & his killer blog, but goddamn man -- DEAR RA sounds like a must-read.

i dug how you laid it out ala Burroughs acause i'm a B-boy freak also & wondered where the fuck is the continuation of Burroughs's breakthru? what's after the grey room?

Kathy Acker came close, but no cigar.

Michael Brodsky i like, but he's more Beckett.

the vacuum.

Finnegans fills it.

i was directed here via Exoskeleton & must say yr blog is a'rockin'!

yr stylee, it is a most welcome addition to my scannings.

salut!

BLAKE BUTLER said...

troylloyd, thanks man glad you dig. you should indeed pick up the dear ra, it is workin it out. kathy acker, yeah she never filled the gap for me, there are lots of near misses...

very cool blogs, massive imagery, i like