30 MAY 1970, Page 19

Shorter notice

The Job William Burroughs interviewed by Daniel Odier (Cape 35s). Mr Burroughs's thoughts on life, art and society are spiced with racy gleanings from semi-scientific re- search, which he uses to demonstrate a) how sensible men and admirable schemes are con- tinually being suppressed by vested interests and b) how the world as we know it will shortly go up in smoke or be entirely altered anyway. Indeed his fourth-form vision of Them (Authority) and Us (himself) gets so tangled up that at one point he is seeing violence, sex and drugs as the three keys to the brave new world and at another as the very means by which the CIA, the Narcotics Bureau, the Press and other Villains are keeping us all in bondage. His tone is that of Fr Rolfe at his most persecuted, his level of argument that of Gruntfuttock of Round the Home and he seems to see himself as stand-up comic with Mr Odie as straight-man. There is a good ex- ample of this on page 116: 'D.O. What is the symbolism of the lesbian agents with penises grafted on to their faces, drinking spinal fluid? W.B. Oh, just a bit of science fiction, really.'