Jesse

A Thorough Look At Burroughs" Life And Work

Reviewed: 02-06-18

This book has everything you want to know about William S. Burroughs. Everything from his earliest memories to his final words is lovingly encapsulated within the confines of this book. Episodes from the subject"s life are reflected by passages of his work by the biographer"s appropriately placed excerpts. If you wanted to know how the novels reflect the life and times of Burroughs, this book is your ultimate resource. Likewise, it is a skeleton key for matching Burroughs" work with his occult beliefs. Call Me Burroughs spends a healthy amount of time discussing William S. Burroughs"s relationship with the Church of Scientology, and beliefs regarding the supernatural power of his own writings. Barry Miles" previous biography of Burroughs, El Hombre Invisible, was not great. Ted Morgan"s biography of Burroughs, Literary Outlaw, is much better, and still worth reading, but Call Me Burroughs is as much an exegesis of Burroughs" work as an artist as it is a catalog of his life"s events, so I rate it far above Literary Outlaw. Ted Morgan, however, captures Burroughs" flaws in a way that Barry Miles fails to. Perhaps this is due to Barry Miles" personal acquaintanceship with the subject of this book. Anyway, I no longer hold El Hombre Invisible against Barry Miles, and I will be checking out his Zappa biography now that I"m aware of his grown capacity for biography. Malcolm Hillgartner"s performance should be a selling point for audiobook buyers looking for a narrator who will capture the signature sound of the voice of Burroughs. He imitates the subject in a way that doesn"t distract from the book itself. Hillgartner borrows speaking habits of Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and others, when he he is reading words attributed to them. Rest assured that it isn"t a hammy or overdone performance, and merely helps the listener to identify quoted words from the author"s exposition. I give Michael Hillgartner"s performance five stars because it gives this book a humanizing touch that doesn"t detract from the academic worth of the text.

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1 person found this helpful

The Missing Pieces

Reviewed: 02-05-18

If Twin Peaks: The Return, and The Secret History of Twin Peaks, left you with unanswered questions, this short book should answer most of them. Your hunches and gut feelings regarding the unanswered questions will (probably) be affirmed by this book. Astute fans of Twin Peaks wont find many surprises here but, again, The Final Dossier will fill gaps and lay much of the speculation regarding The Return"s enigmatic ending to rest. The core mysteries and surrealist tone of the series remains intact after listening to this book -- it is ultimately one person"s interpretation of events -- so don"t worry about Twin Peaks "losing its magic" after listening to this audiobook. Not a lot is added to the story of Twin Peaks by this book. As you already know, it is mainly concerned with wrapping up loose ends, but as (SPOILER ALERT) Major Garland Briggs is the principal narrator and assembler of the dossier in The Secret History, Agent Tamera Preston is the principal complier of this dossier. Her character is advanced through the development of her narrative voice over the course of the dossier. One thing that Twin Peaks (for the most part) lacked up to the point of this book is a heroine as strong, sharp, and morally admirable as Special Agent Dale Cooper. Twin Peaks has powerful women but none of them are heroic in the same sense as Dale Cooper. That mistake is remedied by the presence of Tammy Preston in The Final Dossier. Her character isn"t developed (very much) in The Return, but she comes into her own here. Her level of insight, and poetic command of language, rivals Garland Briggs and Dale Cooper at their best. Tammy Preston is more vulnerable in her narration of events than Dale Cooper is in his dictated memos to Diane. She"s less all-knowing than Garland Briggs. In some ways, these two facts make her voice a more relatable one than the voice of Garland Briggs in Secret History, and the voice of Dale Cooper in his diaries. The ACTUAL narrator here is fairly good. I have no major feelings on Annie Wersching"s performance as Tammy Preston. No offense to Chrysta Bell but the fact that this book was narrated by someone else is probably for the best. The Secret History had a full cast recording. That was a nice touch but The Final Dossier is a fine audiobook. I enjoyed listening to it with a playlist of ambient tracks from Twin Peaks"s many soundtracks playing in the background. Made for a very wonderful three hours that passed in a flash. Loose ends and unexplained mysteries regarding every character to Leo Johnson and Donna Hayword to Annie Blackburn and Aubrey Horne will be tied up and laid to rest in this short book. Again, there is some room left for speculation regarding the larger cosmological mysteries of the series. Tammy Preston indulges in some of this speculation herself when she waxes poetically about dreams and existential mysteries. In the end: this is just Mark Frost"s attempt to wrap up Twin Peaks until he (or David Lynch) decides to return to its world. Tammy Preston"s improved character in this book lead me to imagine a more X-files style take on Twin Peaks with Tammy Preston investigating mysteries of a psychospiritual nature. I doubt Mark Frost and David Lynch will return to Twin Peaks but the end of the series (and this book) invites fans to journey into the world of Twin Peaks and find new stories to explore on their own. Mark Frost interprets The Return into something we can all understand, but David Lynch used the eighteen hours of The Return to reflect on Twin Peaks and recontextualize it into an Inland Empire-style mystery that fans of his surrealist work will analyze for years to come. This may be the Final Dossier but the book on Twin Peaks remains open.

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Smartest guy alive! Not really. Still good though.

Reviewed: 05-30-13

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes. I would recommend this audiobook to my brother because he"s a big fan of Marc Maron"s podcast and would like it a lot. I might recommend it to one of my other friend"s but they rarely read the books I let them borrow so probably not.

What does Marc Maron bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I haven"t read the book to compare to the audiobook but I think Marc Maron breaks through the forth wall and makes small comments on his own reading of the story as he works through it. It"s a very interesting approach and I wish more authors would do this when reading their own works. It humanizes the process rather than leaving the author or reader nothing more than an impersonal who serves no other purpose but to deliver the words on the page.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Ten years ago the machines who rule the future sent an unstoppable Terminator to assassinate the yet unborn Marc Maron. They failed. In 2013, the machines will try again.

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