Nova Express

Nova Express is a 1964 novel by William S. Burroughs. It was written using the cut-up method, developed by Burroughs with Brion Gysin, of enfolding snippets of different texts into the novel. It is the third book in The Nova Trilogy, preceded by The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded. Burroughs considered the trilogy a "sequel" or "mathematical" continuation of Naked Lunch.

Nova Express was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965.

Summary

Nova Express is a social commentary on human and machine control of life. The Nova Mob—Sammy the Butcher, Izzy the Push, The Subliminal Kid, and others—are viruses, "defined as the three-dimensional coordinate point of a controller."^[1] "which invade the human body and in the process produce language."^[2] These Nova Criminals represent society, culture, and government, and have taken control. Inspector Lee and the rest of the Nova Police are left fighting for the rest of humanity in the power struggle. "The Nova Police can be compared to apomorphine, a regulating instance that need not continue and has no intention of continuing after its work is done."^[3] The police are focused on "first-order addictions of junkies, homosexuals, dissidents, and criminals; if these criminals vanish, the police must create more in order to justify their own survival."^[4] The Nova Police depend upon the Nova Criminals for existence; if the criminals cease to exist, so do the police. "They act like apomorphine, the nonaddictive cure for morphine addiction that Burroughs used and then promoted for many years."^[5]

Burroughs not only uses the Nova Police as a function for catching the Nova Criminals, he also adds satire about his own life and addictions. Control is the main theme of the novel, and Burroughs attempts to use language to break down the walls of culture, the biggest control machine. He uses inspector Lee to express his own thoughts about the world. "The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals. In Naked Lunch, Soft Machine and Nova Express I show who they are and what they are doing and what they will do if they are not arrested. [...] With your help we can occupy The Reality Studio and retake their universe of Fear Death and Monopoly."^[6] As Burroughs battles with the self and what is human, he finds that language is the only way to maintain dominance over the "powerful instruments of control," which are the most prevalent enemies of human society.

Criticism

While Naked Lunch was an initial shock to the literary community, Nova Express was considered the end of Burroughs’s stylistic experiment and of the Nova Trilogy. The novel received more praise on its own, as it was often compared to the other books in the trilogy and Naked Lunch. Eric Mottram stated that although "Burroughs’s repetitive narcotic and homoerotic fantasies become tedious in sections of his third novel ... it is from these obsessions that his most powerful work develops."^[7]

Reviewing the novel for a genre audience, Judith Merril compared Nova Express to "the surreality of certain dreams, or the intense fascination of of a confusion of new impressions in real life."^[8]

Cultural references

• A late-night coffee shop/diner called Nova Express Cafe existed at 426 N. Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles in the early 2000's, until closing in March 2008. (http://laist.com/2008/03/02/nova_express_closing.php)

• An arcade computer game, developed in 2011, called Nova Express featuring many references to the novel. (http://www.kongregate.com/games/TJEisemann/nova-express)

• The left-wing magazine in Watchmen is named "The Nova Express".

• At least two bands have used the name Nova Mob: an unrecorded Liverpool group featuring the young Julian Cope and Pete Wylie; and a 90s grunge rock group led by Grant Hart^[9].

References