William S. Burroughs

This article is about the novelist. For the inventor, his grandfather, see William Seward Burroughs.

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American novelist, essayist, social critic and spoken word performer. Much of Burroughs' work is semi-autobiographical. He saw all his writing as a single, vast book [1].

Birth

Burroughs was born to a prominent family in St. Louis, Missouri. His grandfather, William Seward Burroughs I, founded the Burroughs Adding Machine company, which evolved into the Burroughs Corporation. Burroughs' mother, Laura Hammon Lee (1888-1970), was the daughter of a minister whose family claimed to be related to Robert E. Lee. His father, Mortimer Perry Burroughs ran an antique and gift shop, first in St. Louis, then in Palm Beach, Florida.

Education

Burroughs attended John Burroughs School in St. Louis, and The Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico. This period, although unexpectedly stressful for him, proved formative. He kept journals documenting an erotic attachment to another boy. These remained undiscovered, and in fact he kept his sexual orientation concealed well into adulthood. He was soon expelled from Los Alamos after taking chloral hydrate in Santa Fe with several fellow students. He finished high school at Taylor School in St. Louis and, in 1932, left home for an arts degree at Harvard University. This period saw Burroughs introduction to the gay subculture of New York City. He visited lesbian dives, piano bars, and the Harlem and Greenwich Village homosexual underground with a wealthy friend from Kansas City, Richard Stern. Burroughs, who had a lasting fascination with firearms and techniques of self-defense, nearly killed Stern with a mistakenly loaded revolver in an event that would foreshadow things to come. Burroughs graduated from Harvard University in 1936. Throughout this time and much of his life it is believed that he received a monthly allowance from his family fortune (his family name profited, but not greatly, from his grandfather's invention), but Burroughs has stated in interview that it was seldom and rarely enough to free him of responsibilities.

Europe and graduate school

After leaving Harvard, Burroughs traveled to Europe, which proved another window into Austrian and Hungarian Weimar-Era homosexuality; he picked up boys in steam baths in Vienna, and moved in a circle of exiles, queers, and runaways. In Austria, Burroughs met Ilse Klapper, a Jewish woman fleeing the country’s Nazi government. The two were not romantically attached, but Burroughs married her in Croatia to allow her to gain a United States visa. She made her way to New York City, and eventually divorced Burroughs, although they remained friends for many years. Burroughs enrolled as a graduate student of Anthropology at Harvard and later enrolled briefly at Medical School in Vienna, Austria. He was enlisted in the U.S Army in 1941 but was discharged for psychological reasons. In New York, he met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.

Joan Vollmer

In 1944, Burroughs began living with Joan Vollmer Adams in an apartment they shared with Kerouac and Edie Parker, Kerouac's first wife. Vollmer Adams was married to a GI with whom she had a young daughter, Julie Adams. Burroughs and Kerouac got into trouble with the law for failing to report a murder. Burroughs began using morphine and quickly became addicted. He eventually sold heroin in Greenwich Village to support his habit. Vollmer also became an addict but her drug of choice was the inhaled form of the amphetamine, Benzedrine. Because of her addiction and social circle, her husband immediately divorced her after returning from the war. Vollmer would become Burroughs’ common law wife. Burroughs was arrested for forging a narcotics prescription and was sentenced to return to his parents' care in St. Louis. He returned to New York, released Vollmer from the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital and moved with her and her daughter to Texas. Vollmer soon became pregnant with Burroughs’ child. Their son, William S. Burroughs Jr. was born in 1947. The family moved briefly to New Orleans in 1948.

Mexico

He was arrested after police searched his home and found letters between Burroughs and Ginsberg referring to a possible delivery of marijuana. Burroughs fled to Mexico to escape possible detention in Louisiana's Angola state prison. Vollmer and their children followed him. Burroughs planned to stay in Mexico for at least five years, the length of his charge's statute of limitations. In 1951, Burroughs accidentally shot and killed Vollmer in a drunken game of 'William Tell' at a party above an American-owned bar in Mexico City. He spent 13 days in jail before the killing was ruled accidental. Vollmer’s daughter, Julie Adams went to live with her grandmother, and William S. Burroughs, Jr. went to St. Louis to live with his grandparents.

South America

After Vollmer's death, Burroughs drifted through South America for several months, looking for a drug called Yage, which could supposedly ease opiate addiction. He produced two novels during this time, Junky, exploring his heroin addiction, and Queer exploring his homosexuality. He also compiled correspondence with Allen Ginsberg about his search for and experiences with Yage as The Yage Letters. Ace Books published his first novel, Junky, in 1953 under the pen name William Lee. The Yage Letters and Queer were not published until 1963 and 1985 respectively.

Original Ace Double edition of Junkie (a.k.a. Junky) from 1953, credited to "William Lee". This was Burroughs' first novel publication.

Naked Lunch

Burroughs went to Rome and then to Tangiers, Morocco, and began to write a large body of text that he personally referred to as The Word Hoard, a subset of which would later become Naked Lunch. Under the influence of strong marijuana, Ginsberg and Kerouac helped Burroughs edit these episodes into Naked Lunch. Whereas Junky and Queer were conventional in style Naked Lunch was Burroughs' first foray into the cut-up technique. Scenes were slid together with little care for narrative. Perhaps thinking of his crazed medic, Dr Benway, he described it as a book that could be cut into at any point. Although in no sense science fiction, the book also forecasts, with eerie prescience, such later phenomenons as AIDS, liposuction and the crack epidemic. Burroughs sold Naked Lunch to Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias. After the novel was published in 1959, it became infamous across Europe and was popular within countercultures of the 1960s. In countries where the book was banned, copies and even printing plates were smuggled across borders. Once published in the United States, Naked Lunch was prosecuted as obscene by the state of Massachusetts, followed by other states. In fact, the stainless steel dildo in this work, Steely Dan, gave the band it's name. In 1966 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the work "not obscene" based on criteria developed largely to defend the book. The case against Burroughs's novel still stands as the last obscenity trial against a work of literature prosecuted in the United States. The trunk of manuscripts known as The Word Hoard that produced Naked Lunch also produced The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1963).

New York City College

In the 1970s he moved to New York City where Ginsberg helped him find work teaching writing at City College of New York . Burroughs also associated with New York cultural players Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, Susan Sontag, Dennis Hopper, Terry Southern, and Mick Jagger. The 1970s also saw Burroughs join, then leave the Church of Scientology [2]. His subsequent critical writings about the church and his review of a book entitled Inside Scientology by Robert Kaufman led to a battle of letters between Burroughs and Scientology supporters that played out in the pages of Rolling Stone. By late 1980s, Burroughs was a counterculture giant and collaborated with performers ranging from Bill Laswell's Material and Laurie Anderson to Throbbing Gristle and Ministry, and in Gus Van Sant's 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy, playing a character largely based on himself. In 1990, he released the spoken word album Dead City Radio, with musical back-up from producers Hal Willner and Nelson Lyon, and alternative rock band Sonic Youth. He also collaborated with director Robert Wilson and musician Tom Waits to create The Black Rider, a play which opened at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg in 1990, to critical acclaim, and was later performed all over Europe and the U.S. He was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1983.

Hollywood

In 1991, with Burroughs’ sanction, director David Cronenberg took on the seemingly impossible task of adapting Naked Lunch into a full-length feature film. The film opened to critical acclaim. Through the 1990s, Burroughs produced spoken word recordings, including collaborations with R.E.M., Kurt Cobain, and Ministry. Burroughs lived in Lawrence, Kansas through much of his later life. He lived with several cats who became significant in his personal mythology, and was watched over by friends and proteges.

Death

Burroughs died in Lawrence, at 6:50 p.m. on August 2, 1997 from complications of the previous day's heart attack. A few months after his death, a collection of writings spanning his entire career, Word Virus, was published. A collection of journal entries written during the final months of Burrough's life were published as the book Last Words.

Literary style

The major body of Burroughs' novels can be divided into three different categories:

• Junkie and Queer are quite straight-forward, common novels
• Naked Lunch a fragmentaric collection of "routines" from The Word Hoard-manuscripts from Tangier, Paris and London, blending over into the cut-up and fold-in fiction also mainly based off The Word Hoard: The Soft Machine, Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded, Dead Fingers Talk and the larger part of Interzone. The latter novels use the famous cut-up and fold-in methods to various extent and are not easily read.
• The trilogy Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands - these are written as quite commonplace experimental prose.

The trilogy formed by The Soft Machine, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded is sometimes also referred to as "The Nova Trilogy" or "the Nova Epic". The books have been described by Burroughs as an attempt to create "a mythology for the space age".

Apart from these three themes, Burroughs has also produced numerous essays and a large body of self-biographical material, including a book with a detailed account of his own dreams (My Education: A Book of Dreams).

Reaction to critics and view on criticism

Several literary critics treated Burroughs' work harshly. For example Anatole Broyard and Philip Toynbee wrote devastating reviews of some of his most important books. In a short essay entitled A Review of the Reviewers Burroughs answers to his critics in this way:

Critics constantly complain that writers are lacking in standards, yet they themselves seem to have no standards other than personal prejudice for literary criticism. (...) such standards do exist. Matthew Arnold set up three criteria for criticism: 1. What is the writer trying to do? 2. How well does he succeed in doing it? (...) 3. Does the work exhibit "high seriousness"? That is, does it touch on basic issues of good and evil, life and death and the human condition. I would also apply a fourth criterion (...) Write about what you know. More writers fail because they try to write about things they don't know than for any other reason.

Burroughs clearly indicates that he prefers to be evaluated against such criteria over being reviewed based on the reviewer's personal reactions to a certain book. He specifically criticized Anatole Broyard for reading authorial intentionality into his works where there is none. Thus he distanced himself from the movement around New Criticism, by referring to the old school (as exemplified by Matthew Arnold).

Influence

Burroughs is often called one of the greatest and most influential writers of the 20th century, most notably by Norman Mailer whose quote on Burroughs, "The only American novelist living today who may be conceivably be possessed by genius", appears on many Burroughs publications. Others, however, consider him overrated. Others still consider his conceptual ideas more influential than his prose.

Burroughs continues to be named as an influence by contemporary fiction writers like William Gibson. The late postmodern writer Kathy Acker often cited Burroughs as her first major influence. He is also cited as a major influence by musicians Patti Smith and Pier Nine Brawl. He remains controversial because of his homosexuality, drug use, and the often criticized obscene or misogynistic tone of his works, though it should be noted that Burroughs' ideas about and attitudes towards women gradually became more friendly as he aged. Burroughs was regarded as being extremely intelligent and a generally quiet person.

The drugs, homosexuality and death themes, common to Burrough's routines, are taken up by Dennis Cooper, of whom Burroughs said, "Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer." Cooper, in return, wrote, in his essay 'King Junk', "along with Jean Genet, John Rechy, and Ginsberg, [Burroughs] helped make homosexuality seem cool and highbrow, providing gay liberation with a delicious edge."

Burroughs' works continue to be referenced years after his death. For example, a November 2004 episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation included an evil character named Dr. Benway (named for an amoral physician who appears in a number of Burroughs' works). This is an echo of the hospital scene in the movie Repo Man, made during Burroughs' lifetime, in which both Dr. Benway and Mr. Lee (a Burroughs pen name) are paged.

Bibliography

Prose

• Junkie (1953)- (ISBN 0142003166) - novel
• Naked Lunch (1959) (ISBN 0802132952) - novel
• Minutes To Go (1960)
• The Exterminator (1960) (with Bryon Gysin)
• The Soft Machine (1961) (ISBN 0802133290) - novel
• The Ticket That Exploded (1962) (ISBN 0802151507) - novel
• Dead Fingers Talk (1963) - novel
• The Yage Letters (1963) (with Allen Ginsberg)
• Nova Express (1964) (ISBN 0802133304) - novel
• Valentine's Day Reading (1965)
• Roosevelt After Inauguration and Other Atrocities (1965; later republished 1979) - short stories
• Time (1965)
• APO-33 (1966)
• So Who Owns Death TV? (1967)
• The Dead Star (1969)
• The Job (1969) (ISBN 0140118829) (with Daniel Odier)
• The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969) (ISBN 1559702117)
• Jack Kerouac (1970) (with Claude Pelieu)
• "Ali's Smile" (1971)
• The Wild Boys (1971) (ISBN 0802133312) - novel
• Electronic Revolution (1971)
• Bryon Gysin Let the Mice In (1973) (with Gysin)
• Exterminator! (1973) (ISBN 0140050035) (a different book than the 1960 volume) - short stories
• White Subway (1973)
• Mayfair Academy Series More or Less (1973)
• Port of Saints (1973) (ISBN 0912652640) - novel
• The Book of Breething (1974)
• Sidetripping (1975) (with Charles Gatewood)
• Snack... (ISBN 0856520144) (1975)
• Cobble Stone Gardens (1976)
• The Retreat Diaries (1976)
• Colloque de Tangier (1976) (with Bryon Gysin)
• Letters to Allen Ginsberg 1953-1957 (1976)
• The Third Mind (1977) (with Gysin; first English printing in 1978)
• Ali's Smile/Naked Scientology (1978)
• Colloque de Tangier Vol. 2 (1979) (with Bryon Gysin, Gérard-Georges Lemaire)
• Blade Runner, A Movie (1979)
• "Dr. Benway" (1979)
• "Ah Pook is Here!" (1979)
• Streets of Chance (1981)
• Early Routines (1981)
• Cities of the Red Night (1981) (ISBN 0030539765) - novel
• Ah Pook is Here, Nova Express, Cities of the Red Night (1981) (ISBN 0312278462)
• "Sinki's Sauna" (1982)
• The Place of Dead Roads (1983) (ISBN 0312278659) - novel
• "Ruski" (1984)
• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1984)
• The Burroughs File (1984)
• The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985) (ISBN 1559702109)
• Queer (1985) (ISBN 0140083898) - novel
• The Cat Inside (1986) (with Bryon Gysin) - novella
• The Western Lands (1987) (ISBN 0140094563) - novel
• The Whole Tamale (c.1987-88)
• Interzone (1987) (ISBN 0140094512) - short stories
• Apocalypse (1988) (with Keith Haring)
• Tornado Alley (1989) - short stories
• Uncommon Quotes Vol. 1 (1989)
• Ghost of Chance (1991; later reprinted 1997) (ISBN 1852424575) - novella
• "Seven Deadly Sins" (1992)
• Paper Cloud; Thick Pages (1992)
• Selected Letters (1993)
• My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995) (ISBN 0140094547) - novel
• Word Virus : The William Burroughs Reader (1998) (ISBN 0006552145)
• Burroughs Live : The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, 1960-1997 (2000) (ISBN 1584350105)
• Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs (2000) (ISBN 0802137784)

Many of Burroughs' works were later republished with revisions made by the author, and/or censored material restored. Both Junkie/Junky and Naked Lunch were published in "restored" editions following Burroughs' death.

Burroughs' son, William S. Burroughs Jr., also wrote two novels: Speed and Kentucky Ham. These books are often erroneously credited to his father.

Recordings and Film

File:WilliamBurroughsCD.jpg

William S. Burroughs' popular 1990 spoken word CD, Dead City Radio.

• Call Me Burroughs (1965) - The English Bookshop, Paris (reissued in 1995 by Rhino Word Beat)
• Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981) - LP Industrial Records IR0016
• Dead City Radio (1990) - Island Records
• Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales (1993) - Island Records (features the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy)
• the "Priest" they called him (1992) - Burroughs' voice and Kurt Cobain playing guitar
• 10%: file under Burroughs (1996) - 2 CD set; Disc one: "Beats" (dance music using Burroughs' voice and Brion Gysin); Disc two: "Beat" (acoustic sounds and voices)
• "Is Everybody In?" (track 11 of Stoned Immaculate: The Music of the Doors, 2000) - Burroughs reads poetry by Jim Morrison over music provided by The Doors.
• Material: Seven Souls. An album recorded with Bill Laswell.

Burroughs also participated on numerous album releases by Giorno Poetry Systems, including The Nova Convention and You're the Guy I Want to Spend My Money With (with John Giorno and Laurie Anderson). He was also featured doing a spoken word piece entitled "Sharkey's Night," on the Laurie Anderson album Mister Heartbreak. Burroughs also provided vocal samples for the soundtrack of Anderson's 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave and made a cameo appearance in the movie. Furthermore, in 1992 he recorded "Quick Fix" with the band Ministry, which appeared on their single for "Just One Fix." The single featured cover art by Burroughs and a remix of the song dubbed the "W.S.B. mix."

Burroughs appeared in a number of cameo roles in various films and videos, such as Wax: Or Discovery of Television among the Bees, 1991, where he plays a beekeeper, in an elliptic story about the first Gulf War; and Decoder (1984) by Klaus Maeck. Rundown at Internet Movie Database. He played an aging junkie priest in Drugstore Cowboy by Gus Van Sant. He also made a number of short films in the 1960s based upon his works, directed by Antony Balch. Near the end of his life, recordings of Burroughs reading his short stories "A Junky's Christmas" and "Ah Pook is Here" were used to great effect on the soundtracks of two highly acclaimed animated film adaptations of the pieces. He also gave a reading on Saturday Night Live on 7 November, 1981.

Burroughs also featured in the 1997 music video Last Night on Earth by U2. He appears at the end of the video pushing a shopping trolley with a large spotlight positioned inside it. The video ends with a close up of Burrough's eyes. Burroughs' scenes were filmed only a few weeks before his death.

References

• Grauerholz, James. Word Virus. New York: Grove, 1998.
• Miles, Barry. William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible, A Portrait, New York: Hyperion, 1992.
• Morgan, Ted. Literary Outlaw. New York: Avon, 1988.

External links

• RealityStudio.org -- A Burroughs community featuring a moderated forum, Burroughs texts, exclusive interviews, news, and more.
• William S. Burroughs -- A French website dedicated to William S. Burroughs featuring news, Burroughs texts and quotations, a gallery and more.
• Beat -- A film (2000) based on his and Joan Burroughs' life leading up to her death.
• Lines of Advance -- Burroughs audio, image, text.
• William S. Burroughs at Literary Kicks
• Interzone.org 5 linked websites on William Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
• William S. Burroughs Internet Database
• Master Musicians of JoujoukaPhotos Gysin '56, Burroughs 50s, Hamri 50s, 71, Master of Joujouka, Paintings Hamri]
• The Western Lands
• Interzone Web Ring
• William Burroughs and Brion Gysin resources
• Brion Gysin, Tangier Beat Generation, Joe Ambrose, Joujouka
• Interzone Academy
• Reporters Redacteurs d'Interzone
• Other Minds Archive: William Burroughs Press Conference at Berkeley Museum of Art on November 12, 1974 Streaming audio.
• rotten.com library biography
• Naropa Audio Archives: William S. Burroughs class on the technology and ethic of wishing (June 25th, 1986) Streaming audio and 64 kbit/s MP3 ZIP file.
• Naropa Audio Archives: William S. Burroughs lecture on public discourse. (August 11th, 1980) Streaming audio and 64 kbit/s MP3 ZIP file.
• Interzone Creations Creations inspired by Burroughs & Gysin's work.
• The Interzone Coffee House Fan-based site.
• The death of Joan Vollmer Burroughs Research by James W. Grauerholz concerning the shooting of Joan Burroughs
• Shooting Joan Burroughs at Beats In Kansas.
• Essay on Junky by Will Self.
• Article on Counterculture and Burroughs by Jonathan Leyser
• Zed TV: "Ah Pook is Here" Animated film by Philip Hunt, inspired by Burroughs' text.
• Studio AKA: "Ah Pook is Here" Excerpt from animated film by Philip Hunt.
• Language Is A Virus Online Cut-Up Machine, the cut-up writing technique
• Reports from the Grey Veil Contemporary cut up poems by Erik Vloeberghs, based on the works of William Burroughs and on other texts found on the Internet and elsewhere
• 1984 and 1985 audio interviews of William Burroughs by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio
• Blue Neon Alley - William S. Burroughs directory
• Ubuweb arts website contains authorized MP3s of many Burroughs recordings, as well as online video of The Cut Ups short film and other works
• Template:Last.fm
• William S. Burroughs discography at MusicBrainz