My Education: A Book of Dreams
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| My Education: A Book of Dreams | |
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| Author | William S. Burroughs |
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| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Publication date | January 1995 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 193 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-670-81350-8 (first edition, hardback) |
My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995) (ISBN 0-14-009454-7) is the final novel by William S. Burroughs to be published before his death in 1997. It is a collection of dreams, taken from various decades, along with a few comments about the War on Drugs and paragraphs created with the cut-up technique. The book is dedicated to Michael Emerton (January 18, 1966 - November 4, 1992).
[edit] Explanation of the novel's title
The title is explained in the very first dream, dated 1959: Burroughs is trying to board an airplane, but a woman at the ticket counter "with the cold waxen face of an intergalactic bureaucrat" refuses him passage, informing him, "You haven't had your education yet."
[edit] Plot summary
Most of the dreams are concerned with mundane affairs: talking to his friends Ian Sommerville, Allen Ginsberg and Brion Gysin; protecting his cats; trying to get sex, drugs or something to eat. There are flying dreams, erotic suitcase-packing dreams, dreams of being bullied by men in uniforms. There is a place he refers to as the Land of the Dead, which, like Interzone, seems to be a conglomeration of many cities: Tangiers, London, Paris, and others.
[edit] Major themes
Burroughs' early work was typified by his dazzling imagination and shocking descriptions. In My Education, there are fewer aliens, a slower pace, and sex is described simply as "making it." This is a mellowed, mature version of Burroughs, unhurriedly observing a beach of coarse gray gravel or a cloud of flies.
Quote from pages 89 - 90, "What a horrible loutish planet this is. The dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. Hopeless rubbish."
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