William S. Burroughs’ “The Revised Boy Scout Manual”: An Electronic Revolution (Bulletin, 23)

Up there with the Western Lands. Some of his best writings in my opinion.

A fine “CIA”-style manual on chaos magick warfare. Like 1984, it would seem that modern powers that be have read Burroughs and used his tactics against us. Ha, just kidding. It’s all satire....

Super cool

This manual is a bit of a Frankenstein project, as it has existed in various forms and under different titles, and in different mediums. At times the story of how this book was constructed is more interesting than the actual material by Burroughs. This “definitive” version is cobbled together from eight different print sources and the transcripts from three 90 minute tapes called either The Revised Boy Scout Manual or An Electronic Revolution, along with a few paragraphs originally published in The Job. Ostensibly, this is a manual to discuss becoming a terrorist (or “radical”) and proper action to take to destroy the system. As per usual in a Burroughs book, it degenerates into revenge and sex fantasies, then blathers on about some cut-up sound techniques to affect reality and drive people in a certain direction. Much of this has been stated by him before in other books. As such, perhaps the first thirty pages of the book is the most interesting. Whether this is meant to be a serious work is a lightly debated topic on those who read Burroughs. Whether he meant it to or not, it’s completely impractical and thus doesn’t matter. As usual, he shows his love for the pseudo-science of L. Ron Hubbard and Wilhelm Reich, so much of his “combat” techniques are mired in their insanity. Who knows if he believed it? Perhaps in his more drug addled moments it all seemed plausible, but if so, he certainly took none of the actions discussed in this book while sober. However the emotions behind the words are most certainly authentic.

And if you're buying any of his books, I strongly suspect you know this. This book has at least three forwards from different authors that speculate that the work was satire, irony, and any number of other things. I disagree. This is a collection of angry rants about the government from a moderately crazy person. If you like William S. Burroughs, you'll probably like this book. If you don't, you don't. If you've never read any of his work before, I wouldn't recommend starting with this.

Essential reading

If you like Burroughs, you don't want to miss this one. It might have been smuggled from the Interzone. There isn't an ounce of satire in it. It's not tongue in cheek, it's Burroughs. Normally the author would be arrested, the publisher jailed and the books burnt. It certainly would be in at least 98 countries. This is a very dangerous book and reminds one of Burroughs discussion on 'thought time bombs'. In this screaming wincing, hilarious rant I was reminded a lot of Jonathan Swift. Don't get caught with this book in most countries. Don't get caught. Read it, hide it, bury it - wait.

An excellent read.

If your into Burroughs this is a must have ..

would burroughs be termed as toxic masculine today? i don't know. I read through all of him years ago. it was good to hear the magic again. but... its the rantings of an sex crazed drug addict. no doubt. so maybe ive grown out of this...