My Education: A Book of Dreams

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Title My Education: A Book of Dreams

1996 Penguin Books paperback edition.
Author	William S. Burroughs
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Viking Press
Released	January 1995
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	193 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-670-81350-8 (first edition, hardback)

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).

[edit] Explanation of the novel's title

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."

[edit] Plot summary

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 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.

[edit] Major themes

Burroughs' early work was typified by his dazzling imagination and shocking descriptions. In My Education, there are fewer aliens, a slower pace, and sex is described simply as "making it." This is a mellowed, mature version of Burroughs, unhurriedly observing a beach of coarse gray gravel or a cloud of flies.

Quote from pages 89 - 90, "What a horrible loutish planet this is. The dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. Hopeless rubbish."