Washington Post: How David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Patti Smith and other musicians fell for William S. Burroughs

“D.C.-based rock critic and SiriusXM music licensing director Casey Rae meticulously details the connections in “William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ’n’ Roll.” The book is at its best when tracing the lyric and sonic collages of art rock and its offshoots to Burroughs’s groundbreaking use of literary cut-ups — the snipping and reassembling of texts to form new texts. Rae goes further, in fact, arguing provocatively that although Burroughs died in 1997 at age 83, he freakishly presaged the fractured, distracting memes and bytes of today’s Web mind.”

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