It was during his childhood that Burroughs' developed a lifelong interest in magic and the occult – topics which would find their way into his work repeatedly across the years. The dates refer to the time of writing, not publication, which in some cases was not until decades later: Burroughs also produced numerous essays and a large body of autobiographical material, including a book with a detailed account of his own dreams (My Education: A Book of Dreams). During that time he met a Chicago soldier also awaiting release, and once Burroughs was free, he moved to Chicago and held a variety of jobs, including one as an exterminator. With a new preface as well as a final chapter on William S. Burroughs’s last years, the acclaimed Literary Outlaw is the only existing full biography of an extraordinary figure. According to Ted Morgan's Literary Outlaw,[5], His parents, upon his graduation, had decided to give him a monthly allowance of $200 out of their earnings from Cobblestone Gardens, a substantial sum in those days. [5](pp69–70), Burroughs' parents sold the rights to his grandfather's invention and had no share in the Burroughs Corporation. What is the writer trying to do? In 1966, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the work "not obscene" on the basis of criteria developed largely to defend the book. According to his biographer Ted Morgan, his philosophy for living one's life was to adhere to a laissez-faire path, one without encumbrances – in essence a credo shared with the capitalist business world. Lawrence Ferlinghetti remarked the induction of Burroughs into the Academy proved Herbert Marcuse's point that capitalistic society had a great ability to incorporate its one-time outsiders.[5](p577). To me this has always seemed self evident ... From the viewpoint of magic, no death, no illness, no misfortune, accident, war or riot is accidental. William S. Burroughs became one of the founding figures of the Beat Movement. He left for Tangier in November 1954 and spent the next four years there working on the fiction that would later become Naked Lunch, as well as attempting to write commercial articles about Tangier. Burroughs appears on two songs from Technodon, the 1993 reunion album by the Japanese electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra. Once I woke up in the early morning light and saw little men playing in a block house I had made. [47] Earlier, Burroughs revisited St. Louis, Missouri, taking a large advance from Playboy to write an article about his trip back to St. Louis, one that was eventually published in The Paris Review, after Burroughs refused to alter the style for Playboy’s publishers. Burroughs played Opium Jones in the 1966 Conrad Rooks cult film Chappaqua, which also featured cameo roles by Allen Ginsberg, Moondog, and others. He was fired from the network in 2017 after reports surfaced of his settlements for sexual harassment allegations. [106] 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". William S. Burroughs, Letter to Allen Ginsberg, 2nd Jan 1959. With the help of Ginsberg and Kerouac, Burroughs wrote the novel Naked Lunch in Tangiers, which continued to follow the exploits of William Lee in a disturbing drug culture journey. The ugly American", and took part in a shamanic ceremony with the explicit aim of exorcising the Ugly Spirit.[32]. During 1982, Burroughs developed a painting technique whereby he created abstract compositions by placing spray paint cans in front of blank surfaces, and then shooting at the paint cans with a shotgun. A 12" EP was released with five different remixes of the Spare Ass Annie track "Words of Advice for Young People", all done by Bill Laswell. According to James Grauerholz, two witnesses had agreed to testify that the gun had fired accidentally while he was checking to see if it was loaded, with ballistics experts bribed to support this story. Burroughs' magical techniques – the cut-up, playback, etc. [121] He gave a reading on Saturday Night Live on November 7, 1981, in an episode hosted by Lauren Hutton. [5](p611), Burroughs graduated from Harvard in 1936. “Almost indecently readable . [2] He later told investigators that he had been showing his pistol to friends when it fell and hit the table, firing the bullet that killed Vollmer. His third novel, Prakriti Junction, begun in 1977, was never completed, although extracts from it were included in his third and final published work Cursed Fro Burroughs described Vollmer's death as a pivotal event in his life, and one which provoked his writing by exposing him to the risk of possession by a malevolent entity he called "the Ugly Spirit": I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. [53] He was skeptical of the organization itself, and felt that it fostered an environment that did not accept critical discussion. https://www.biography.com/writer/william-s-burroughs. Does the work exhibit "high seriousness"? The reader follows the narration of junkie William Lee, who takes on various aliases, from the U.S. to Mexico, eventually to Tangier and the dreamlike Interzone. He wrote three novels: "Speed," "Kentucky Ham," and the unfinished "Prakriti Junction." Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson during the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots and is described as a person devoid of anger, passion, indignation, hope, or any other recognizable human emotion. Burroughs attended prep schools and later studied English literature at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1936. "The Life of William S. Burroughs: A timeline", "The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs". [5](pp495–536), In London, Burroughs had begun to write what would become the first novel of a trilogy, published as Cities of the Red Night (1981), The Place of Dead Roads (1983), and The Western Lands (1987). His father spent time in 1976 and 1977 in Colorado, helping Billy through additional surgeries and complications. "[26] Burroughs' writing was intended as a form of "sorcery", in his own words[27] – to disrupt language via methods such as the cut-up technique, and thus protect himself from possession. During Burroughs' friendship and artistic collaborations with Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville, the technique was combined with images, Gysin's paintings, and sound, via Somerville's tape recorders. Irving Rosenthal, student editor of Chicago Review, a quarterly journal partially subsidized by the university, promised to publish more excerpts from Naked Lunch, but he was fired from his position in 1958 after Chicago Daily News columnist Jack Mabley called the first excerpt obscene. Flavor Flav is an American hip-hop artist known for his work with Public Enemy and for his appearances on multiple reality television series. Sources. The "Beat Hotel" was a typical European-style boarding house hotel, with common toilets on every floor, and a small place for personal cooking in the room. Since 1997, several posthumous collections of Burroughs' work have been published. Burroughs narrated part of the 1980 documentary Shamans of the Blind Country by anthropologist and filmmaker Michael Oppitz. [37] At the Beat Hotel Burroughs discovered "a port of entry" into Gysin's canvases: "I don't think I had ever seen painting until I saw the painting of Brion Gysin. By this point, Burroughs was a counterculture icon. Following his first cure, he wrote a detailed appreciation of apomorphine and other cures, which he submitted to The British Journal of Addiction (Vol. That very day, Clark's ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. [71][94] Burroughs' involvement with the movement further deepened, as he contributed artwork and other material to chaos magic books,[95] addressed an IOT gathering in Austria,[96] and was eventually fully initiated into The Illuminates of Thanateros. Burroughs was in New York when he heard from Allen Ginsberg of Billy's death. William S. Burroughs. Burroughs is featured on the 2000 compilation tribute album, Stoned Immaculate, on the track "Is Everybody In?" Burroughs was fictionalized in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical novel On the Road as "Old Bull Lee". [41] He went to Paris to meet Ginsberg and talk with Olympia Press. He attended John Burroughs School in St. Louis where his first published essay, "Personal Magnetism" – which revolved around telepathic mind-control – was printed in the John Burroughs Review in 1929. Words of Advice: William S. Burroughs on the Road, is a 2007 documentary about William S. Burroughs directed by Lars Movin and Steen Møller Rasmussen and produced in Denmark. A new biography reveals a William S. Burroughs both ghastlier and more impressive than many previously thought. Allen Ginsberg was supportive to both Burroughs and his son throughout the long period of recovery. "The teaching gig was a lesson in never again. These novels feature extensive use of the cut-up technique that influenced all of Burroughs' subsequent fiction to a degree. Reason for operation was outrageous and unprovoked discourtesy and poisonous cheesecake. [72], This was no idle passing interest – Burroughs also actively practiced magic in his everyday life: seeking out mystical visions through practices like scrying,[73][74][44] taking measures to protect himself from possession,[75][76][31][32] and attempting to lay curses on those who had crossed him. More writers fail because they try to write about things they don't know than for any other reason. Grauerholz, James interviewed 25th June 2010 by Steve Foland. These splattered and shot panels and canvasses were first exhibited in the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York City in 1987. Burroughs however was convinced. And also appears near the end of U2's music video "Last Night on Earth", pushing a shopping cart with a large spotlight positioned inside it. In 1990, Island Records released Dead City Radio, a collection of readings set to a broad range of musical compositions. Burroughs came to equate liberalism with bureaucratic tyranny, viewing government authority as a collective of meddlesome forces legislating the curtailment of personal freedom. Despite being a fan of a right-wing columnist, many in his entourage such as Genesis P-Orridge and Al Jourgensen are notable for far-left, anti-capitalist, and anti-fascist politics. — Terry Wilson, "The word of course is one of the most powerful instruments of control ... Now if you start cutting these up and rearranging them you are breaking down the control system." But Allen Ginsberg managed to get excerpts published in Black Mountain Review and Chicago Review in 1958. Introduction p. xv, in William Burroughs. But when he was classified as a 1-A infantry, not an officer, he became dejected. Rodio se u obitelji srednje klase, a majka mu je bila kći svećenika čija je obitelj tvrdila da su u rodu s Robertom Edwardom Leejem, zapovjednikom vojske Konfederacije u Američkom građanskom ratu. An addict for years, he crafted books like Junky and Naked Lunch, which were harrowing, often grotesque looks at drug culture. After the publication of Naked Lunch, a book whose creation was to a certain extent the result of a series of contingencies, Burroughs was exposed to Brion Gysin's cut-up technique at the Beat Hotel in Paris in October 1959. [12] He then attended the Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico, which was stressful for him. Filmmakers Lars Movin and Steen Moller Rasmussen used footage of Burroughs taken during a 1983 tour of Scandinavia in the documentary Words of Advice: William S. Burroughs on the Road. He sent these writings to Ginsberg, his literary agent for Junkie, but none was published until 1989 when Interzone, a collection of short stories, was published. Drugs, homosexuality, and death, common among Burroughs' themes, have been taken up by Dennis Cooper, of whom Burroughs said, "Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer". In 1968, an abbreviated – 77 minutes as opposed to the original's 104 minute – version of Benjamin Christensen's 1922 film Häxan was released, subtitled Witchcraft Through The Ages. Vollmer also became an addict, but her drug of choice was Benzedrine, an amphetamine sold over the counter at that time. [j] It was from this febrile atmosphere that the famous cut-up technique emerged. Sargeant, Jack. Burroughs appears on the cover of The Beatles' eighth studio album, Sgt. Burroughs not only made waves in the literary world but became a huge influence for many musical artists of the day. He created file-folder paintings featuring these mediums as well as "automatic calligraphy" inspired by Brion Gysin. After the novel was published, it slowly became notorious across Europe and the United States, garnering interest from not just members of the counterculture of the 1960s, but also literary critics such as Mary McCarthy. With this money he purchased a small bungalow for $29,000. Burroughs' experimental nature and his espousal of drug use made him an attractive figure of the 60's counter-culture. After leaving Mexico, Burroughs drifted through South America for several months, seeking out a drug called yagé, which promised to give the user telepathic abilities. which pairs Jim Morrison yelping and groaning with Burroughs reading Morrison's poetry. [61], Burroughs moved to Lawrence, Kansas in 1981, taking up residence at 1927 Learnard Avenue where he would spend the rest of his life.