Cities of the Red Night – William S. Burroughs

In the second edition of The Shlog (Sean Blog) Blook (Blog Book) Club (Club), I shall cover Cities of the Red Night (published 1981), the first installment in a trilogy by William S. Burroughs. I’m pretty sure no one is participating in this book club anyway, so I’ll make it quick.

To begin, this novel contains more erections per capita than anything else I have ever read. That being said, don’t let that scare you off – they’re only fictional erections, they’re not going to hurt you. Unless you let them. That’s just how Burroughs rolls. There is a lot going on in this book – piracy, international intrigue, time travel, and a lot of hangings. I finished it and wondered what the crap had just happened. So perhaps I’m not the best person to be giving a synopsis, but I will say that this novel is much more stimulating than the legal buffoonery that takes place in your average J-Grish (John Grisham) novel. So go ahead, give it a read.