title: Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader
author: William S. Burroughs
description: The deadpan granddad of postmodernism is well represented in this bountiful collection of fiction, essays and collaborations from all stages of Burroughs's (1914-1997) long career. Burroughs's companion, longtime editor and literary executor Grauerholz, and Grove editor Silverberg include selections from the writer's better-known works, as well as sections of the experimental "cut-up" novels?complete enough to give readers a feel for the form without exhausting those unaccustomed to Burroughs's disjointed sharpness. Dark humor runs throughout the collection, from the 1938 collaboration "Twilight's Last Gleamings," in which the cross-dressing captain of a sinking ship murders his way onto a lifeboat, to a wry account of Burroughs's stint as a cockroach exterminator. What may prove most valuable to readers is the inclusion of Burroughs's commentary on his aims and intent. "Remembering Jack Kerouac" recalls the way the younger Kerouac prodded Burroughs to write. In the manifesto "Les Voleurs," Burroughs celebrates "stealing" words, a cure for "the fetish of originality." Perhaps most surprising are the passages both melancholic and elegiac, such as this, from The Western Lands: "A tree like black-lace against a gray sky. A flash of joy." In a selection from My Education, Burroughs provides an apt description for this collection: "Each page is a door to everything is permitted." <br />Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  Word Processor of the Gods
  
  by Stephen King
  
  At first glance it looked like a Wang word processor --it had a Wang keyboard
  and a Wang casing. It was only on second glance that Richard Hagstrom saw that
  the casing had been split open (and not gently, either; it looked to him as if
  the job had been done with a hacksaw blade) to admit a slightly larger IBM
  cathode tube. The archive discs, which had come with this odd mongrel, were
  not floppy at all; they were as hard as the 45's Richard had listened to as a
  kid.
  
  "What in the name of _God_ is that?" Una asked as he and Mr. Nordhoff lugged
  it over to his study piece by piece. Mr. Nordhoff had lived next door to
  Richard Hagstrom's brother's family... Roger, Belinda, and their boy,
  Jonathan.
  
  "Something Jon built," Richard said. "Meant for me to have it, Mr. Nordhoff
  says. It looks like a word processor."
  
  "Oh yeah