If Cities of the Red Night was crafted to garner acclaim from the gatekeepers of 'true literature', The Place of Dead Roads seems crafted to make those gatekeepers regret that acclaim.  Instead of masking the amorality and idiocy of his heroes, and that of his own authorial voice, he draws attention to it, challenging the reader to interrogate their unconscious sympathies and concepts of heroism — what we're willing to overlook when manipulated by a POV narrative and a few well-chosen words.  Typically enigmatic Burroughsian self-subversion, taking things too far, and then, when you're about to give up, he somehow turns it into art, something completely new and transfixing.  The hallucinatory scenes towards the end are some of Burroughs' most indelible and horrific.  And it's funny!  Such an incredibly original mind.