About William S. Burroughs

By Stanley Gontarski American outlier writer, William S. Burroughs, was a creative force, as a writer in his own right, and as a cultural theorist, particularly his anticipation of what we now regularly call “a society of control” or “a…

Normal People and the strangeness of other people

Towards the end of Sally Rooney’s acclaimed novel Normal People, the two main characters, Connell and Marianne, talk sleepily one morning about whether it’s possible ever really to know another person. ‘I guess everyone is a mystery in a way’,…

CounterText is five years old

CounterText: A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary is five years old! To celebrate the occasion, Edinburgh University Press and the journal’s editorial team (based at the Department of English at the University of Malta) have put together a…