William Burroughs, The Western Lands

Chad Weidner

Ed. by Christopher Hugh Gair, University of Glasgow
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1987

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Recommended Reading

The Western Lands

was published by Viking Press in 1987. It is the final book of a late Burroughs trilogy that began with

Cities of the Red Night

(1981) and

The Place of Dead Roads

(1983) and is a fitting conclusion to it in terms of scope and vision. Different from

Cities of the Red Night

and

Place of Dead Roads

, the book recognizes the impossibility of really escaping our broken condition unless we radically reimagine ourselves. Norman Mailer’s

The Book of the Dead

was a source of inspiration for the book, and the content of

The Western Lands

is bold and wide-ranging. The author handles a number of issues throughout the narrative. Fragments are autobiographical, and show the aging writer’s anxieties about his own mortality. Burroughs also contemplates social and ecological…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1889 words

Citation: Weidner, Chad. "The Western Lands". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 August 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8129, accessed 21 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

William Burroughs, The Western Lands

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback