M HKA Ensembles

Book, 20.3 x 13.9 cm, 353 p, language : English, ISBN : 224 61777 X, publisher : Jonathan Cape Ltd.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2026/67).

Literary synopsis

In The Process, description is done on location. It consists of a number of narrations, all done in the first person by different characters. The sections are entitled: I, THOU, IT, SHE, WE, YOU (fem.), YOU (mas.), THEY. These voices are recordings on the Uher of Ulys O. Hanson of Ithaca, New York, a pot-smoking Negro professor skilled in scholarship-, foundation-, grant- and sponsor-hopping, a traveler through a great desert where the fabulous Himmers juggle precarious phantom empires over heat waves and atomic testing sites. His tape recorder is the point of observation that brings each narration into present time. We do not see the director or the scriptwriter. Their presence is always inferential. We do not see Hanson, who records, plays back and changes the tapes. He himself is another recording, made by someone who does not appear. Hanson is entitled to make the last recording, for Thay Himmer has given the emerald seal, Beginning and Ending of the Word. He himself is another recording.

-William Burroughs

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