Book Description: William Burrough's surreal fable, set in America's Old West, features a cast of notorious characters: The Crying Gun, who breaks into tears at the sight of his opponent; The Priest, who goes into gunfights giving his adversaries the last rites; and the Nihillistic Kid himself, who sets out to challenge the morality of small-town America. Fantastical and humorous, The Place of Dead Roads continues Burroughs's exploration of society's controlling forces- the State, the Church, women, literature, drugs - with a style utterly unique in twentieth-century literature.