Burroughs' novels are so chaotic that life itself seems calm and ordered by comparison. Structure and plot simply do not exist; characters are flat, interchangeable, and strangely unimportant; the narrative thrashes about with no apparent direction or coherence, and words scatter like so many jig-saw-puzzle pieces thrown into the air. Each book is a montage of startling images, fragmented episodes, scraps of dialogue, patches of exposition, and cultural echoes ranging from Renaissance drama to modern poetry, from Christian and Eastern myth to Madison Avenue jargon. The language itself is a pastiche from the media of journalism, film, literature, Holy Scriptures, textbooks. Burroughs seems to have cast the novel out like a net to catch whatever debris it can drag in from the outside world, and the result is a circus of confusion: laughs, thrills, horrors—you name it, it's all there. Images zoom by, explode, writhe, choke, puke themselves up into new combinations. Subtle satire merges with outrageous burlesque; low comedy mixes with the most sordid reality; the worlds of business, science, and entertainment become indistinguishable. Everything gushes together in a dizzying experience that revolts, amuses, shocks, and confuses the disoriented reader. Even familiar images, adjectives, styles, and references cannot be worked with in a conventional manner, since the random juxtaposition which places them in strange contexts somehow distorts their reality into a grotesque reflection of the sort that greets us in fun-house mirrors, nightmares, and drug fantasies. The reader, in short, can never feel comfortable, and his insecurity works for the author, who forces him into a position of openness to new ways of viewing which lead to experiencing new layers of feeling. (p. 339)
[Burroughs] forces his novels to spill out of any frames—even their own—which might confine them to a single system. Material from one novel is likely to appear intact in another novel—and such material ranges from phrases to whole chapters. Interestingly enough, though, the novels do seem to vary in quality and impact, and this suggests that an examination of Burroughs' four most important novels may help to determine where and why his techniques are most successful. While some of his effects seem to enlarge the novel's capacity to communicate multilevel experience, others seem only to bore and desensitize the reader, thus closing off more possibilities than are opened. By allowing himself maximum freedom, Burroughs opens the doors to chaos so widely that he invites at the same time admiration for artistic courage and condemnation for artistic irresponsibility. (pp. 339-40)
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