Perversion the Social Relation

32 Dennis Fosterby physicists, chemists, mathematicians, biologists and, above all, themonumental fraud of cause and effect, to be replaced by the more pregnantconcept of synchronicity" (1987: 30). Burroughs connects this NOfigure in The Western Lands to Poe's diddler (31), the grinning figurewho takes his pleasure in providing people with the illusion they desire,and who also takes their money. This con, like others, depends on theillusion that the diddler can deny limits, deny death. That is, the NO'Sbreaking of natural laws mimics the perverse wish implicit in phallicauthority—enjoyment will one day be yours—only it offers the rewardnow. The NO challenges two biologic laws: against crossbreeding betweenunrelated species and against evolutionary reversibility. Both saythat each individual's pleasure is limited, that each of us is on a narrowtrack to personal extinction, a mere tool of evolution. And what is theGod of the OGU, the One God Universe, but a promise that despite theinevitability of thermodynamic decline, despite "sickness, famine, war,old age and Death" (113), you personally, are immortal. The NO playsthe same con, offering the perverse where the sad mortal longs for thesublime.The contradictions that mark Burroughs's writings as argument aredemonstrated nowhere more clearly than in the doubling that occurs betweenthe outlaws he values and the figures he most despises. For example,Burroughs seems to promise that those with courage and dedicationmight travel to the Western Lands, a trip "beyond Death, beyondthe basic God standard of fear and danger" where one gains access to"Immortality" (124). But every guide to the lands, from those of theEgyptians and Tibetans to the Messiah, is simply working a con on thosedesiring eternal life: "Messiahs on every street corner transfix one witha confront (sic) stare: 'Your life is a ruin.' 'We have the only road to personalimmortality' " (126). If you turn over your life, they will provideyou with a way of evading the biologic imperative of death. It is an unlikelystory, but Burroughs does not provide the true pilgrim with analternative, a true road. These obvious cons, however, mimic the offersmade by legitimate religions, advertisers, and the other operators thatinhabit our real Western lands. Burroughs cannot subvert these assurancesof future happiness except by pointing out the way rational culturehas always been perverted, has always linked reason to an unreasonableexpectation of enjoyment.