The Ticket That Exploded is a 1962 novel by American author William S. Burroughs, published by Olympia Press and later by Grove Press in 1967. Together with The Soft Machine and Nova Express it is part of a trilogy, referred to as The Nova Trilogy, created using the cut-up technique, although for this book Burroughs used a variant called 'the fold-in' method. The novel is an anarchic tale concerning mind control by psychic, electronic, sexual, pharmaceutical, subliminal, and other means.[1] Passages from the other two books and even from this book show up in rearranged form and are often repeated. This work is significant for fans of Burroughs, in that it describes his idea of language as a virus and his philosophy of the cut-up technique.[2] It also features the cut-up technique being used by characters within the story. The Ticket That Exploded lays the groundwork for Burroughs' ideas of social revolution through technology, which he would later detail in his book-length essay The Electronic Revolution.
The revised edition published in 1967 was 50% longer than the original, as Burroughs added more material and an appendix. In 2014, a 'Restored' edition was published by Grove Press, edited by Oliver Harris, which made a number of corrections and added an introduction and extensive notes. Establishing the text's manuscript history, the introduction showed that Burroughs wrote The Ticket after The Soft Machine and before Nova Express, and argued that the Trilogy defied any fixed sequence.
Plot introduction
The Ticket That Exploded continues the adventures of Agent Lee in his mission to investigate and subvert the methods of mind control being used by The Nova Mob, a gang of intergalactic criminals intent on destroying Earth.
From the book:
"The basic nova technique is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflicts—This is done by dumping on the same planet life forms with incompatible conditions of existence—There is of course nothing "wrong" about any given life form since "wrong" only has reference to conflicts with other life forms—The point is these life forms should not be on the same planet—Their conditions of life are basically incompatible in present time form and it is precisely the work of the nova mob to see that they remain in present time form, to create and aggravate the conflicts that lead to the explosion of a planet, that is to nova—"
In popular culture
A phrase in the book, "Language is a virus from outer space" was the inspiration for the Laurie Anderson song, "Language is a Virus from Outer Space - William S. Burroughs", originally composed for her performance work, United States. Under the shortened title, "Language is a Virus", the song was performed in her 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave, in which Burroughs also appeared.
Footnotes
↑ William S. Burroughs and Love: Cutting Up The Ticket That Exploded (1962 and 1967) by Katharine Streip Concordia University
↑ William S. Burroughs and the Language of Cyberpunk by Brent Wood Science Fiction Studies #68 = Volume 23, Part 1 = March 1996
Brion Gysin was a British-Canadian painter, writer, sound poet, performance artist and inventor of experimental devices.
The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to at least the Dadaists of the 1920s, but was popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs. It has since been used in a wide variety of contexts.
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games, and are less common in other art forms. Three-part works that are considered components of a larger work also exist, such as the triptych or the three-movement sonata, but they are not commonly referred to with the term "trilogy".
William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences; he was initially briefly known by the pen name William Lee. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "Shotgun Art".
Naked Lunch is a 1959 novel by American writer William S. Burroughs. The book is structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes, intended by Burroughs to be read in any order. The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone.
Nova Express is a 1964 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. It was written using the 'fold-in' method, a version of the cut-up method, developed by Burroughs with Brion Gysin, of enfolding snippets of different texts into the novel. It is part of The Nova Trilogy, or "Cut-Up Trilogy,' together with The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded. Burroughs considered the trilogy a "sequel" or "mathematical" continuation of Naked Lunch.
The Soft Machine is a 1961 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. It was originally composed using the cut-up technique partly from manuscripts belonging to The Word Hoard. It is the first part of The Nova Trilogy.
James Grauerholz is a writer and editor. He is the bibliographer and literary executor of the estate of William S. Burroughs.
Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. He partnered with Richard Seaver to bring French literature to the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its publisher, Morgan Entrekin, merged with Grove Press in 1991. Grove later became an imprint of the publisher Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is a novel by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. It was written in 1945, a full decade before the two authors became famous as leading figures of the Beat Generation, and remained unpublished in complete form until 2008.
Dead Fingers Talk, first published in 1963, was the fifth novel published by Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs. The book was originally published by John Calder in association with Olympia Press.
The Word Hoard was a large body of text produced by author William S. Burroughs between roughly 1954 and 1958.
The Nova Trilogy or The Cut-up Trilogy is a name commonly given by critics to a series of three experimental novels by William S. Burroughs.
Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology is a collection of essays and a short story by American Beat writer William S. Burroughs (1914–97). First published in 1971 as the short story "Ali's Smile", the book eventually contained a group of previously published newspaper articles as well, all of which address Scientology. Burroughs had been interested in Scientology throughout the 1960s, believing that its methods might help combat a controlling society. He joined the Church of Scientology later in the decade. However, he became disenchanted with the authoritarian nature of the organization. In 1970 Burroughs had published a "considered statement" on Scientology's methods because he felt they were significant enough to warrant commentary. These pieces were later gathered together into Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology, which religious studies scholar Hugh B. Urban describes as a "nonscholarly popular exposé of Scientology". Burroughs's texts argue that while some of Scientology's therapies are worthwhile, the dogmatic nature of the group and its secrecy are harmful.
The Electronic Revolution is an essay collection by William S. Burroughs that was first published in 1970 by Expanded Media Editions in West Germany. A second edition, published in 1971 in Cambridge, England, contained additional French translation by Henri Chopin.
The Third Mind is a book by Beat Generation novelist William S. Burroughs and artist/poet/novelist Brion Gysin. First published in a French-language edition in 1977, it was published in English in 1978. It contains numerous short fiction pieces as well as poetry by Gysin, and an interview with Burroughs. Some chapters had previously been published, in slightly different form, in various literary journals between 1960 and 1973.
Oliver C. G. Harris is a British academic and Professor of American Literature at Keele University. He is the author and editor of fourteen books, including a dozen editions of works by William S. Burroughs: Letters, 1945–1959 (1993), Junky: the definitive text of Junk (2003), The Yage Letters Redux (2006), Queer (2010), The Cut-Up Trilogy, The Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Ticket That Exploded (2014), Minutes to Go Redux (2020), The Exterminator Redux (2020), BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS (2020) and Dead Fingers Talk (2020). He is President of the European Beat Studies Network.
This is a bibliography of the works of William S. Burroughs.
Christopher David Allen, known professionally as Daevid Allen, sometimes credited as Divided Alien, was an Australian poet, guitarist, singer, composer and performance artist. He was co-founder of the psychedelic rock groups Soft Machine and Gong.
Call Me Burroughs is a spoken word album by Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs, which was released on LP by The English Bookshop, Paris, in June 1965, and then issued in the United States by ESP-Disk, New York, in 1966. Rhino Word Beat reissued the album on Compact Disc in 1995, the company's first ever reissue.
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