Burroughs' Dashes

I found Burroughs' grammatical format sort of interesting in the essay that we read. He uses every kind of punctuation that would be expected, except for the period. Instead, he uses dashes at the ends of his sentences. But are they really sentences if not demarcated by proper punctuation? I think his use of dashes is meant to reflect some of what he's talking about in terms of changing literary form. The dash after each idea indicates that the following ideas flow from the previous ideas in a way that periods do not necessarily convey (neither visually, nor grammatically). Rather than stopping ideas when there is a grammatical pause, Burroughs creates a very linear text--as opposed to the nonlinear narratives he is writing about--by linking each idea with a dash.

However, at the end of the piece, Burroughs seems to be poking fun at his reader, perhaps showing how the fold-in method can lead to both jarring confusion and new meaning in a text. He states, "In any case [the fold-in technique is] a matter for experimentation not argument--The conferring writers have been accused by the press of not paying sufficient attention to the question of human survival--" (306). In the first sentence, Burroughs is referring to the technique he has been describing in the essay, but in the second, he seems to veer off course and start talking about something unrelated. The rest of the paragraph and essay are about his writings and the "question of human survival." While he seems to be demonstrating some sort of fold-in method here, it also seems like he's indicating something fundamental about the flow of ideas in a text and textual instability (?). With just one unrelated phrase--even a phrase that might be somewhat related--he segues into an entirely different topic. His system of dashes ends up tricking the reader, leading them into the sense that the ideas are flowing from one another, and then taking these ideas into a jarringly unfamiliar realm. Perhaps the message here is, yes, literature should explore different ways of representing time and space, but watch yourself, reader, because this might bring you somewhere that you're not altogether familiar with!