The novel lives

Duncan Fallowell

William Burroughs at Heaven Discotheque The discotheque is underground, huge, painted black throughout, with startl- ing lights, video machines, television cameras ready to roll. It is beginning to fill with urban night life, mutant bisexuals under the age of 25 in post-holocaust chic, the deathray look, but there is variety lint Only green hair but purple and blue hair too, much of it torn. r mThe boys generally wear stubbe, on their cas if they can, often on their heads; Pubic stubble is experiencing a revival (Shaving here was last popular under the [kings),

girls perhaps due to infestations. The

have slashed their garments in an en- thusiastic, haphazard way to expose moist chunks of flesh — the idea is to simulate the 4PPearance of a rape victim. Futurist pop Music chops the air with jagged computer

rhythms and an assorted bunch do the latest dances, the Panic Attack or the Ducky

c nrPse, until the growing compress of "°ches suffocates them. ,A man starts chatting:

I Ye just finished doing life. I'm 33. I went in at 20. Can I get you a drink?' He is

drunk but not violent. 'This is my first :Icean day — I was on 18 months' parole 1,ter I got out and that ended yesterday. 41, a murderer. I murdered a policeman.' "(2 „ Do you like William Burroughs's n/els?'

`Who? I'm here because my parole Officer said it's a good place to pick peo- Up. I was straight until I went inside but tY% know, after the first 24 hours — bent

as hell!'

That one's very first encounter down 'ere should be with a murderer is uncannily the for an evening with William Burroughs, e weird American writer in the throes of a teading tour of England. 'I couldn't make on books alone. Half my income comes from readings.' Mr Burroughs had said on an earlier occasion, adding, 'Which do you prefer, guns or knives?'

The show is billed as The Final Academy and is presented by an organisation called `The Final Solution'. Finality seems to be the rage round here but the general impres- sion is that this could be the start of something great. For example, there is a lot of shouldering and picking up going on already. Heaven is normally a straight gay disco but tonight it has moved on a genera- tion and people approach each other from unexpected angles. The sun is going to rise tomorrow on some peculiar couplings.

According to the ticket the evening is 8 p.m. till 3 a.m. but nothing happens until 10 p.m., except more strangeness arrives, including one or two of Fleet Street's more crabby, clap-ridden , specimens. The pro- gramme includes film/tape/music/spoken contributions from John Giorno, Heath- cote Williams, Genesis P. Orridge etc and opens with one of the new breed of `mouthrush' comedians, Mr Stephens, who has an extremely hard time attracting any interest at all. Fortunately his act is livened up by a sudden racket from the gallery. `Help, help!' screams a boy, 'I want to stay!' but he is torn off some metal wall rack to which he is clinging and removed by bouncers, his sin a mystery.

But the star — and this is signified by his ascending to the reading desk in clouds of dry ice (the old Shirley Bassey routine) — is Burroughs himself. Indeed the brilliant concentration of his half-hour performance in a low, underamplified drawl under a white light, causes all the others to turn into a string of rather tatty small-timers from the do-it-yourself avant garde.

With clouds thinning sufficiently to reveal the bobbing of his cropped skull and its predatory birdlike features, Burroughs reads from his sickest, most amusing texts. His body is unusually composed but that head moves with great animation, shooting the sentences straight out of his mouth like sticks, hitting bullseye the targets of his venomous choice: the family, the law, con- ventional notions of decency and right, the church, the establishment. The jokes are plentiful, high-grade noir, and go down ex- tremely well. Not many writers could get through to this choosy lot, let alone one who is 68 years old.

His reading includes substantial passages from the new novel, The Place of Dead Roads, and it is clear that, far from fading into a dotage of drug echoes, he has had a powerful renewal of energy. His imagina- tion is as inventive as ever, his perversity even more ingenious; the writing is lithe and full of purpose, its satire gruesome; and the comedy of a very heady variety. Burroughs retains the ability to make the work of most other writers — and all English ones seem genteel and inconsequential. This is because he believes passionately in the power of his art to transform. He is strange and dangerous and sharp — but unques- tionably the real thing.