My Education: A Book of Dreams
 First edition | |
| Author | William S. Burroughs |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | January 1995 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 193 pp |
| ISBN | 0-670-81350-8 |
| OCLC | 30109272 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3552.U75 M9 1995 |
My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995) (ISBN 0-14-009454-7) is the final novel by William S. Burroughs to be published before his death in 1997. It is a collection of dreams, taken from various decades, along with a few comments about the War on Drugs and paragraphs created with the cut-up technique. The book is dedicated to Michael Emerton (January 18, 1966 - November 4, 1992).
Explanation of the novel's title
[edit]The title is explained in the very first dream, dated 1959: Burroughs is trying to board an airplane, but a woman at the ticket counter "with the cold waxen face of an intergalactic bureaucrat" refuses him passage, informing him, "You haven't had your education yet."
Plot summary
[edit]Most of the dreams are concerned with mundane affairs: talking to his friends Ian Sommerville, Allen Ginsberg and Brion Gysin; protecting his cats; trying to get sex, drugs or something to eat. There are flying dreams, erotic suitcase-packing dreams, dreams of being bullied by men in uniforms. There are references to strange drugs such as "Jade" and "Bogomolets Anti-Human Serum 125." In addition, there are other segments which seem unconcerned with dreams at all, such as a chapter where Burroughs instructs the reader on how to create botulism. There is a place he refers to as the Land of the Dead, which, like Interzone, seems to be a conglomeration of many cities: Tangiers, London, Paris, and others.
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