THE DEEP ONES: "Wind Die You Die We Die" by William S. Burroughs

"Wind Die You Die We Die" by William S. Burroughs

Discussion begins November 22, 2023.

First published in the August 1968 issue of Esquire magazine.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1135527

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Exterminator!
The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft

ONLINE VERSIONS

https://classic.esquire.com/article/1968/8/1/wind-die-you-die-we-die (there are some options to sign in and read it for free, including with a Google account.

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

No online audio versions found to date.

MISCELLANY

https://deepcuts.blog/2020/08/08/cities-of-the-red-night-1981-by-william-s-burro...
https://realitystudio.org/publications/road-to-interzone/chris-steins-photograph...
https://www.npr.org/2014/02/05/271558637/possessed-by-genius-a-centennial-tribut...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs
https://tinyurl.com/bdzxht7a

The Starry Wisdom for me. I love that book!

Me too.

I read this one right on the heels of Ghostwritten, so it was chiliasm on top of chiliasm. The nested reading sequence gave the story a nice serial waking frisson.

I wonder if there isn't some sort of quantum immortality thing going on in this story, where the connecting consciousness (ultimately the reader?) keeps getting thrown back to a point of diagnosing the ineluctable catastrophe.

Interesting that both Ballard and Burroughs are found in the Starry Wisdom anthology. They've both acknowledged an interest in HPL's writing at various points, and they absolutely fit in. Both predicted Earth's current dire situation with societal entropy and extreme weather. Ballard, of course, even more so with several novels. Burroughs here takes a pure pulp (and 50's B-movie) approach, rather than a hard sf one. "Funny what you find in old pulp magazines", indeed. I love the title "Wind Die, You Die, We Die" and the explanation of its source. Pretty grim, but over all Burroughs is at his wisecracking best here. It's really funny and yet Weird at the same time. Maybe it helps that I can't read anything of his without hearing it as through his creaky-yet-intimidating voice. I believe the ending is a direct reference to Tod Browning's FREAKS (1932).

Yeah, imagining the Burroughs voice in this one makes it even better!