KICKING THE GONG AROUND

Farnsworth, the district health officer, was a man so grudging in what he asked of life that every win was a loss; yet he was not without certain plodding persistence of effort and effectiveness in his limited area.



Cities of the Red Night, William S. Burroughs

I cannot decide if it is the way the sentences are constructed or it is hearing Burroughs lilting tough guy delivery in my head or the portrait of self deprecation, but I am hooked.

The first chapter is jam packed with drugs, drunken clergy, exotic disease , rough terrain and our hero Farnsworth. Farnsworth is on a mission which finds him roughed up on a raft near his destination at the end of the first chapter. The writing is brillant a real page turner. Then as  I suspected the chapter ends in a rough sodomy. Shit. Check please.

I mean everyone knows Burroughs is a homo. That fact would not have any bearing in my interest, but homosexual sex shows up in a story I cannot continue. Intellectually, I know it is shallow. Think about how much great literature I am missing. I would feel much better with a censored edition.