I don’t usually write about short fiction, but Burrough’s The Girl from Farris’s is almost novel-length, and it packs in at least a novel’s worth of plot, with intrigues, betrayals, and skullduggery to spare. I read gobs of Burroughs in my adolescence — John Carter of Mars, Carson of Venus, et al — but this is the first non-fantastical piece of his I’ve read. I liked it, not least for the brief, if not representative appearances of Eddie the Dip, who can put forth a mean mouthful of scarcely intelligible slang:
“That’s right; think it over,” said Eddie. “It’s a good proposition and that ain’t no dream. He’s not exactly pretty, but he’s there with a bundle of kale that would choke the Panama. He’d set you up in a swell apartment, plaster sparklers all over you, and give you a year-after-next model eight lunger and a shuffer. You’d be the only cheese on Michigan Boulevard.”
needs more demons? a smidge of historical perspective might help, but demons would not.
Needs More Demons Or Not 