Birth of a Zimbu by Christopher Schulz is another addition to the growing collection of artworks based on William Burroughs’ The Wild Boys (1971), in this case a 52-page collection of “visual reveries made from collaged parts of dated gay porn, ancient ruins, and other various unrelated sources.” The book costs $10 and may be previewed and ordered here.
The Zimbus are Burroughs’ solution to the problem of reproduction (or regeneration) among the Wild Boys, his army of eternal teenage boys at war with the world at large in a dystopian 1988. Warfare means casualties so in order to maintain their homosocial, homoerotic tribal existence they gather at special times to perform sex-magic rituals that summon the “Zimbu” spirit forms of dead Wild Boys. The Zimbus are incarnated as new Wild Boys after being inseminated and fully materialised.
Burroughs wasn’t short on fantastic concepts but his ideas are often delivered and dismissed in a few lines. By contrast, the creation of the Zimbus is given pages of detailed description, the separatist, semi-human world of the Wild Boys being one to which he devoted a great deal of imaginative attention. I’ve linked before to Phil Hine’s essay, Zimbu Xototl Time, which examines the Zimbu idea at some length, drawing comparisons to similar ideas in anthropology and other fiction. If I ever get round to finished the long-gestating Wild Boys portfolio I may be able to show some Zimbu manifestations of my own.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The William Burroughs archive
And speaking of Burroughsian links on this site & Wild Boys like Franz and Howard: The essay entitled “Architects of Fear” can NEVER be read by enough people. As timely today as always, Sir.
Ha, thanks. I look at that now and think it could be better written but then that’s often the case with any piece of your own writing. I like the train of associations, anyway.
I wish I could remember where I read a description of Burroughs in the 1990s; something about his enjoying living in Kansas, spending time shooting his guns and reading HP Lovecraft. If that piece of trivia is unlikely to turn up then I’d like to know whether he kept a copy of the Creation Books Starry Wisdom in his library. I’m sure Creation sent him a copy, and I like the idea of my Call of Cthulhu strip being in his house throughout the 90s.
Thanks John for this further discussion of Burroughs. His ideas come and go from the margins of my thinking – so these prompts to delve further are welcome!