The Place of Dead Roads
E308210
The Place of Dead Roads is a surreal, nonlinear novel by William S. Burroughs that blends Western motifs, science fiction, and experimental prose to explore themes of death, sexuality, and control.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| The Place of Dead Roads canonical | 3 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T2894265 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Place of Dead Roads Context triple: [William S. Burroughs, notableWork, The Place of Dead Roads]
-
A.
The Black Riders and Other Lines
The Black Riders and Other Lines is a collection of brief, free-verse poems noted for their stark imagery, unconventional style, and early modernist sensibility.
-
B.
The Long Loneliness
The Long Loneliness is Dorothy Day’s spiritual autobiography, chronicling her journey from radical activism to Catholic faith and the founding of the Catholic Worker movement.
-
C.
Spirit of the Dead Watching
Spirit of the Dead Watching is a 1892 Symbolist painting by Paul Gauguin depicting a young Tahitian girl lying fearfully on her bed while a mysterious, ghostly figure looms in the background.
-
D.
Strange Meeting
"Strange Meeting" is a renowned anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen that depicts a surreal encounter between two dead soldiers, powerfully conveying the futility and horror of war.
-
E.
The Dead
"The Dead" is a World War I poem by English poet Rupert Brooke that idealizes the noble sacrifice of fallen soldiers.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Place of Dead Roads Target entity description: The Place of Dead Roads is a surreal, nonlinear novel by William S. Burroughs that blends Western motifs, science fiction, and experimental prose to explore themes of death, sexuality, and control.
-
A.
The Black Riders and Other Lines
The Black Riders and Other Lines is a collection of brief, free-verse poems noted for their stark imagery, unconventional style, and early modernist sensibility.
-
B.
The Long Loneliness
The Long Loneliness is Dorothy Day’s spiritual autobiography, chronicling her journey from radical activism to Catholic faith and the founding of the Catholic Worker movement.
-
C.
Spirit of the Dead Watching
Spirit of the Dead Watching is a 1892 Symbolist painting by Paul Gauguin depicting a young Tahitian girl lying fearfully on her bed while a mysterious, ghostly figure looms in the background.
-
D.
Strange Meeting
"Strange Meeting" is a renowned anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen that depicts a surreal encounter between two dead soldiers, powerfully conveying the futility and horror of war.
-
E.
The Dead
"The Dead" is a World War I poem by English poet Rupert Brooke that idealizes the noble sacrifice of fallen soldiers.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (45)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
Western novel
ⓘ
novel ⓘ postmodern novel ⓘ science fiction novel ⓘ |
| author | William S. Burroughs ⓘ |
| characterType | outlaw gunslinger ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| explores |
alternative histories
ⓘ
homosexuality ⓘ myth of the American West ⓘ time travel concepts ⓘ |
| followedBy | The Western Lands ⓘ |
| genre |
Western
ⓘ
experimental fiction ⓘ postmodern literature ⓘ science fiction ⓘ |
| hasSequel | The Western Lands ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| literaryMovement |
Beat Generation-adjacent literature
ⓘ
postmodernism ⓘ |
| mainCharacter | Kim Carsons ⓘ |
| mediaType | print ⓘ |
| motif |
Western imagery
ⓘ
science fiction elements ⓘ |
| narrativeStyle |
nonlinear
ⓘ
surreal ⓘ |
| notableFor |
blending Western and science fiction motifs
ⓘ
critique of social and political control systems ⓘ depiction of queer outlaw culture ⓘ |
| partOfSeries |
Cities of the Red Night
ⓘ
surface form:
The Red Night Trilogy
|
| precededBy | Cities of the Red Night ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1983 ⓘ |
| publisher | Holt, Rinehart and Winston ⓘ |
| seriesPosition | second novel in The Red Night Trilogy ⓘ |
| setting |
Old West
ⓘ
surface form:
American West
|
| theme |
addiction
ⓘ
control ⓘ death ⓘ power structures ⓘ sexuality ⓘ violence ⓘ |
| usesTechnique |
cut-up technique
ⓘ
experimental prose ⓘ nonlinear narrative ⓘ |
| workByAuthor | William S. Burroughs bibliography ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: The Place of Dead Roads Description of subject: The Place of Dead Roads is a surreal, nonlinear novel by William S. Burroughs that blends Western motifs, science fiction, and experimental prose to explore themes of death, sexuality, and control.
Referenced by (3)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.