The Wild Boys (novel)

The Wild Boys (full title The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead) is a novel written by Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs. It was first published in 1971 by Grove Press.

Introduction

The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes, intertwined by sections (called "The Penny Arcade Peep Show") written in a process of free association and stream-of-consciousness. It is settled in an apocalyptic near-future, and the main plot shows the struggle between the wild boys - a revolutionary tribe of youths, living in a instinctual state existing outside the conventions of civilization, and free from mechanisms of social control like religion, nation and family - and the remnants of civilization itself, living an hedonistic and paranoic existence in totalitarian enclaves.

Themes

The book embody themes like the idea of youths escaping from social control, anonymous sexuality, and shamanism.

Film adaptation

Russell Mulcahy wanted to direct a film adaptation, and talked to Duran Duran about writing the soundtrack in the same way that Queen did for Mulcahy's Highlander in 1986, but the project never came to fruition.^[1]

Allusions in other works

• The novel inspired the Duran Duran song, The Wild Boys.^[1]
• The clothes, hair, and makeup of David Bowie's character Ziggy Stardust was based on the description of the Wild Boys in the book. According to Bowie, "it was a cross between that and Clockwork Orange that really started to put together the shape and the look of what Ziggy and the Spiders were going to become. They were both powerful pieces of work, especially the marauding boy gangs of Burroughs's Wild Boys with their bowie knives. I got straight on to that. I read everything into everything. Everything had to be infinitely symbolic."^[2]
• The neo-psychedelia and post-punk band The Soft Boys took their name from two of Burroughs books, The Wild Boys and [The Soft Machine]].^[3]
• Former Joy Division front-man Ian Curtis mentioned The Wild Boys as one of his favourite books. ^[4]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} VH1 interview with John Taylor
2. ^ Christopher Sandford, Bowie: Loving The Alien. Da Capo Press, 2003, 1998. ISBN 978-0-306-80854-8
3. ^ Hitchcock, Soft Boys Still Rock Hard
4. ^ Jon Savage on Ian Curtis's reading