''The Place of Dead Roads'' is a 1983 novel by
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
, the second book of the trilogy that begins with ''
Cities of the Red Night
''Cities of the Red Night'' is a 1981 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. His first full-length novel since '' The Wild Boys'' (1971), it is part of his final trilogy of novels, known as The Red Night Trilogy, followed by '' The Place o ...
'' (1981) and concludes with ''
The Western Lands'' (1987). It chronicles the story of a gay
gunfighter
Gunfighters, also called gunslingers (), or in the 19th and early 20th centuries gunmen, were individuals in the American Old West who gained a reputation of being dangerous with a gun and participated in gunfights and shootouts. Today, the t ...
in the
American West, beginning with the gunfighter's death in 1899, incorporates contrasting themes and time travel episodes, and makes use of Burroughs’ extensive knowledge of
firearms. Non-linear in construction, it makes use of vivid imagery and repetition but does not employ the famous “
cut-up
The cut-up technique (or ''découpé'' in French) is an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to the Dadaists of the 1920s, but it was developed and popularized ...
” method of literary
collage used in his earlier novels.
1983 American novels
1980s LGBT novels
Nonlinear narrative novels
Novels by William S. Burroughs
Novels with gay themes
Viking Press books
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