Elaborate Burial Customs Are A

E. Klimov's 'come And See,' About Partisans Fighting The Germans In Byelorussia, Is The Greatest Anti-war Film Ever Made.

The Reptiles Had Taken Over The City. Once Again They Were The Dominant Form Of Life. Looking Up At The Ancient Impassive Faces, Kerans Could Understand The Curious Fear They Roused, Rekindling Archaic Memories Of The Terrifying Jungles Of The Paleocene, When The Reptiles Had Gone Down Before The Emergent Mammals, And Sense The Implacable Hatred One Zoological Class Feels Towards Another That Usurps It.

The Geometry Of Landscape And Situation Seems To Create Its Own Systems Of Time, The Sense Of A Dynamic Element Which Is Cinematizing The Events Of The Canvas, Translating A Posture Or Ceremony Into Dynamic Terms. The Greatest Movie Of The 20th Century Is The Mona Lisa, Just As The Greatest Novel Is Gray's Anatomy.

In The Past We Have Always Assumed That The External World Around Us Has Represented Reality, However Confusing Or Uncertain, And That The Inner World Of Our Minds, Its Dreams, Hopes, Ambitions, Represented The Realm Of Fantasy, And The Imagination. These Roles, It Seems To Me, Have Been Reversed. The Most Prudent And Effective Method Of Dealing With The World Around Us Is To Assume That It Is A Complete Fiction - Conversely, The One Small Node Of Reality Left To Us Is Inside Of Our Own Heads.

Burroughs Called His Greatest Novel Naked Lunch, By Which He Meant It's What You See On The End Of A Fork. He's A Writer Of Enormous Richness Whose Books Are A Kind Of Attempt To Blow Up This Cozy Conspiracy, To Allow Us To See What's On The End Of The Fork . . . The Truth.