Burroughs' novels are so chaotic that life itself seems calm and ordered by comparison. Structure and plot simply do not exist; characters are flat, interchangeable, and strangely unimportant; the narrative thrashes about with no apparent direction or coherence, and words scatter like so many jig-saw-puzzle pieces thrown into the air. Each book is a montage of startling images, fragmented episodes, scraps of dialogue, patches of exposition, and cultural echoes ranging from Renaissance drama to modern poetry, from Christian and Eastern myth to Madison Avenue jargon. The language itself is a pastiche from the media of journalism, film, literature, Holy Scriptures, textbooks. Burroughs seems to have cast the novel out like a net to catch whatever debris it can drag in from the outside world, and the result is a circus of confusion: laughs, thrills, horrors—you name it, it's all there. Images zoom by, explode, writhe, choke, puke...