In A Completely Sane World, Madness Is

If Their Work Is Satisfying People Don't Need Leisure In The Old-fashioned Sense. No One Ever Asks What Newton Or Darwin Did To Relax, Or How Bach Spent His Weekends. At Eden-olympia Work Is The Ultimate Play, And Play The Ultimate Work.

Burroughs Called His Greatest Novel Naked Lunch, By Which He Meant It's What You See On The End Of A Fork. He's A Writer Of Enormous Richness Whose Books Are A Kind Of Attempt To Blow Up This Cozy Conspiracy, To Allow Us To See What's On The End Of The Fork . . . The Truth.

Hell Is Out Of Fashion - Institutional Hells At Any Rate. The Populated Infernos Of The 20th Century Are More Private Affairs, The Gaps Between The Bars Are The Sutures Of One's Own Skull. A Valid Hell Is One From Which There Is A Possibility Of Redemption, Even If This Is Never Achieved, The Dungeons Of An Architecture Of Grace Whose Spires Point To Some Kind Of Heaven. The Institutional Hells Of The Present Century Are Reached With One-way Tickets, Marked Nagasaki And Buchenwald, Worlds Of Terminal Horror Even More Final Than The Grave.

I Work For Three Or Four Hours A Day, In The Late Morning And Early Afternoon. Then I Go Out For A Walk And Come Back In Time For A Large Gin And Tonic.

During The 1960s, The Shanghai Of My Childhood Seemed A Portent Of The Media Cities Of The Future, Dominated By Advertising And Mass Circulation Newspapers And Swept By Unpredictable Violence.