William S. Burroughs is one of the twentieth century's most visible, controversial, and baffling literary figures. In the first comprehensive study of the writer, Timothy S. Murphy places Burroughs in the company of the most significant intellectual minds of our time. In doing so, he gives us an immensely readable and convincing account of a man whose achievements continue to have a major influence on American art and culture. Murphy draws on the work of such philosophers as Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Theodor Adorno, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and also investigates the historical contexts from which Burroughs's writings arose.From the paranoid isolationism of the Cold War through the countercultural activism of the sixties to the resurgence of corporate and state control in the eighties, Burroughs's novels, films, and music hold a mirror to the American psyche. Murphy coins the term "amodernism" as a way to describe Burroughs's contested relationship to the canon while acknowledging the writer's explicit desire for a destruction of such systems of classification. Despite the popular mythology that surrounds Burroughs, his work has been largely excluded from the academy of American letters. Finally here is a book that presents a solid portrait of a major artistic innovator, a writer who combines aesthetics and politics and who can perform as anthropologist, social goad, or media icon, all with consummate skill.

Wising Up the Marks: The Amodern William Burroughs

Literature & Fiction

Murphy, Timothy S.

History & Criticism

University of California Press

To see so many friends bringing such critical contributions to bear on my work serves as a spur to action once again. Antonio NegriThe spectacular success of Empire and Multitude has brought Negri's writing to a new, wider audience. Negri’s work is singular in its depth and expression. It can be difficult to grasp the complexity of his ideas, as they are rooted in the history of philosophy. This book offers an introduction to his thinking, and is ideal for readers who want to get to grips with his key themes. Outstanding contributors include Pierre Macherey, Charles Wolfe, Alex Callinicos, Miguel Vatter, Jason Read, Alberto Toscano, Mamut Mutman, Ted Stolze and Judith Revel.Written with dynamism and originality, the book will appeal to anyone interested in the evolution of Negri’s thought, and especially to students of political philosophy, international studies and literary theory. This book is the sequel to The Philosophy of Antonio Negri, Volume One: Resistance in Practice (Pluto, 2005) but can be read entirely independently.

The Philosophy of Antonio Negri - Volume Two: Revolution in Theory

Politics & Social Sciences

Mustapha, Abdul-Karim

Philosophy

Pluto Press

The first comprehensive study of the works of William Hope Hodgson, one of the true innovators of Weird fiction, this book examines the Weird novels and stories upon which his posthumous reputation rests, his non-fantastic writing, identifiable literary influences, and the historical contexts in which he wrote. Focusing extensively upon major works such as The House on the Borderland (1908) and The Night Land (1912), Timothy S. Murphy surveys topics including Hodgson's experiments with code switching and linguistic experimentation; his depictions of racial and ethnic differences and gender and sexuality; the function of space and place in his writing; the adaptation of his shipboard experiences; and his use of abyssal time. With special attention paid to his paradoxical nihilist humanism, this book explores what made Hodgson a respected precursor to later innovators such as H. P. Lovecraft and C.L. Moore, and what makes him an important ancestor to 21st-century writers such as China Miéville, Greg Bear, and Charlie Jane Anders. Demonstrating how his work is both of his time and 'untimely', Murphy recovers Hodgson as the most significant figure to precede the fantastically popular but deeply controversial Lovecraft, as well as a figure whose work challenges what has thus far been accepted about the genre and the interpretive perspectives from which we view it.

William Hope Hodgson and the Rise of the Weird: Possibilities of the Dark (Perspectives on Fantasy)

British & Irish

Bloomsbury Academic

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