Abstract
I want to begin with a disagreement — but one situated at some little distance from the youth culture of the late 1960s with which I will chiefly be concerned. In November 1963 a fierce controversy broke out in the letter columns of the normally august Times Literary Supplement, a controversy occasioned by a hostile review of William Burroughs’ first published novel in Britain, Dead Fingers Talk. Leading literary figures of the day sided for and against the author in what proved to be an unusually protracted and acrimonious debate: ‘we have never had a keener correspondence’, observed the concluding editorial. Amongst those springing to Burroughs’ defence were Michael Moorcock and Burroughs himself. For Moorcock the significance of Burroughs’ work was apparently metaphysical, ‘concerned with Space and Time, its nature, its philosophical implications, the place of the individual in the total universe’. ‘A moral message’, he confidently asserted, ‘is not its prime concern.’ In his own defence, however, Burroughs chose to emphasise precisely this moral message, since it ‘should be quite clear to any reader … and I say it is to be taken as seriously as anything else in my work’.1
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Notes
E. Hobsbawm, Industry & Empire ( Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969 ), pp. 279–84.
P. Lewis, The Fifties ( London: Heinemann, 1978 ), p. 160.
D. Hebdidge, ‘Towards a Cartography of Taste 1935–1962’, in B. Waites et al. (eds), Popular Culture: Past and Present ( London: Croom Helm, 1982 ), pp. 194–218.
See the cover of A. Trocchi’s Cain’s Book ( London: Jupiter Books, 1966 ).
A. Trocchi, ‘A Revolutionary Proposal’, City Lights Journal, No. 2 (1964), p. 17.
M. Brake, The Sociology of Youth Culture and Youth Subcultures ( London: RKP, 1980 ), pp. 86–7.
I. Taylor and D. Wall, ‘Beyond the Skinheads: Comments on the Emergence and Significance of the Glamrock Cult’, in G. Mungham and G. Pearson (eds), Working Class Youth Culture ( London: RKP, 1976 ), p. 115.
S. Hall, ‘The Hippies: An American “Moment”’ (University of Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies Stencilled Papers, 1968 ).
R. Neville, Play Power ( London: Paladin, 1971 ), p. 56.
On the changing nature of utopian thought and literature, see R. Levitas, ‘Sociology and Utopia’, Sociology, 13, No. 1 (January 1979), 19–33.
S. Hall, ‘Reformism & the Legislation of Consent’, in National Deviancy Conference (ed.), Permissiveness & Control: the Fate of the Sixties Legislation ( London: Macmillan, 1980 ).
See B. Aldiss, Billion Year Spree: the History of Science Fiction ( London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973 ), p. 265.
J. Watney, Mervyn Peake ( London: Abacus Books, 1977 ), p. 172.
A. Burns and C. Sugnet (eds), The Imagination on Trial ( London: Allison and Busby, 1981 ), p. 118.
W. S. Burroughs, A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive ( London: Covent Garden Press, 1973 ).
W. S. Burroughs, The Naked Lunch ( London: John Calder, 1964 ), p. 31.
W. S. Burroughs, Nova Express ( London: Panther Books, 1968 ), p. 18.
See Burroughs’ Snack (London: Aloes Books, 1975), p. 29.
W. S. Burroughs, ‘Interview 1965’, in A. Kazin (ed.), Writers at Work: Third Series ( London: Secker and Warburg, 1968 ), p. 174.
W. S. Burroughs, The Job ( London: Jonathan Cape, 1970 ), pp. 18–19.
W. S. Burroughs, ‘The Cut Up Method’, in L. Jones (ed.), The Moderns ( London: Mayflower Books, 1963 ), p. 315.
W. S. Burroughs, The Soft Machine ( London: Calder and Boyars, 1968 ), p. 34.
W. S. Burroughs, White Subway ( London: Aloes Books, 1973 ), pp. 36–7.
M. Moorcock, Sojan ( Manchester: Savoy Books, 1977 ), p. 150.
M. Moorcock, The Stealer of Souls ( London: Granada, 1968 ).
M. Moorcock, Sojan, pp. 144–57; The Golden Barge ( Manchester: Savoy Books, 1979 ), pp. 16–17.
R. Giddings and E. Holland, J. R. R. Tolkien: The Shores of Middle Earth ( London: Junction Books, 1981 ), pp. 4–9.
J. A. Sutherland, ‘American Science Fiction since 1960’, in P. Parrinder (ed.), Science Fiction: a Critical Guide ( London: Longmans, 1979 ), p. 164.
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Part One (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954), pp. 15–16; Giddings and Holland, J. R. R. Tolkien, p.20.
C. P. Manlove, Modern Fantasy: Five Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1975 ), pp. 200–1.
P. Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production ( London: RKP, 1978 ), p. 159.
H. Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography ( London: Allen and Unwin, 1977 ), p. 231.
M. Moorcock, The Retreat from Liberty ( London: Zomba Books, 1983 ), p. 20.
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© 1984 Rosalind Brunt, Bridget Fowler, David Glover, Jerry Palmer, Martin Jordin, Stuart Laing, Adrian Mellor, Christopher Pawling
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Glover, D. (1984). Utopia and Fantasy in the Late 1960s: Burroughs, Moorcock, Tolkien. In: Pawling, C. (eds) Popular Fiction and Social Change. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15856-0_8
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