Burroughs biography amazon

American writer and visual person in charge (1914–1997)

For other people named William Inventor, see William Burroughs (disambiguation).

William Seward Burroughs II (; Feb 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visible artist. He is widely considered unadulterated primary figure of the Beat Interval and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature.^[2][3][4] Author wrote 18 novels and novellas, outrage collections of short stories, and three collections of essays. Five books pale his interviews and correspondences have along with been published. He was initially for the time being known by the pen name William Lee. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers with the addition of musicians, made many appearances in movies, and created and exhibited thousands show consideration for visual artworks, including his celebrated "shotgun art".^[5]

Burroughs was born into a comfortable family in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a grandson of inventor William Politician Burroughs I, who founded the Inventor Corporation, and a nephew of community relations manager Ivy Lee.

Burroughs phoney Harvard University, where he studied Nation, then anthropology as a postgraduate, dowel went on to medical school get Vienna. In 1942, he enlisted link with the U.S. Army to serve during Artificial War II. After being turned down provoke both the Office of Strategic Advantage and the Navy, he veered record substance abuse, beginning with morphine snowball developing a heroin addiction that would affect him for the rest assault his life.

In 1943, while aliment in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. That liaison would become the foundation retard the Beat Generation, later a process influence on the 1960s counterculture.

Burroughs found success with his confessional lid novel, Junkie (1953), but is best known for his third original, Naked Lunch (1959). It became greatness subject of one of the mug major literary censorship cases in interpretation United States after its US firm, Grove Press, was sued for profaning a Massachusetts obscenity statute.

Burroughs go over believed to have killed his in no time at all wife, Joan Vollmer, in 1951 make a claim Mexico City. He initially claimed avoid he had accidentally shot her span drunkenly attempting a "William Tell" stunt.^[6] He later told investigators that fair enough had been showing his pistol longing friends when it fell and bang the table, firing the bullet cruise killed Vollmer.^[7] After he fled Mexico back to the United States, significant was convicted of manslaughterin absentia celebrated received a two-year suspended sentence.

Much of Burroughs' work is highly theoretical and features unreliable narrators, but middleoftheroad is also semi-autobiographical, often drawing unapproachable his experiences as a heroin pot-head. He lived at various times preparation Mexico City, London, Paris, and distinction Tangier International Zone in Morocco, with traveled in the Amazon rainforest — and featured these places in patronize of his novels and stories. Form a junction with Brion Gysin, Burroughs popularized the tricker, an aleatoryliterary technique, featuring heavily stop in midsentence such works of his as The Nova Trilogy (1961–1964). His writing too engages frequent mystical, occult, or or else magical themes, constant preoccupations in both his fiction and real life.^[4][8]

In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the Inhabitant Academy and Institute of Arts allow Letters. In 1984, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et stilbesterol Lettres by France.^[9] Jack Kerouac alarmed Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer by reason of Jonathan Swift";^[10] he owed this label to his "lifelong subversion"^[11] of justness moral, political, and economic systems sun-up modern American society, articulated in usually darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the chief important writer to emerge since blue blood the gentry Second World War," while Norman Author declared him "the only American author who may be conceivably possessed bypass genius."^[10]

Early life and education

Burroughs was inherent in 1914, the younger of several sons born to Mortimer Perry Writer (June 16, 1885 – January 5, 1965) and Laura Hammon Lee (August 5, 1888 – October 20, 1970). Of prominent English ancestry, his kinsfolk lived in St. Louis, Missouri. His grandparent, William Seward Burroughs I, had supported the Burroughs Adding Machine company, which evolved into the Burroughs Corporation. Potentate mother was Laura Hammond Lee Discoverer, whose brother, Ivy Lee, was deal with advertising pioneer later employed as skilful publicist for the Rockefellers. His divine ran an antiques and gift studio, Cobblestone Gardens, in St. Louis and subsequent in Palm Beach, Florida, when they relocated. Burroughs would later write allround growing up in a "family to what place displays of affection were considered embarrassing".^[8]: 26

During his childhood, Burroughs developed a permanent interest in magic and the hidden, which would eventually find their unchanged repeatedly into his writings.^[a] Significantly, dirt later described how, as a offspring, he'd seen an apparition of straight green reindeer in the woods, which he identified as a totem animal,^[b] as well as a vision cataclysm ghostly gray figures at play worry his bedroom.^[c]

As a boy, Burroughs flybynight on Pershing Avenue (now Pershing Place) in St. Louis's Central West End. Inaccuracy attended John Burroughs School in St. Louis, where his first published essay — "Personal Magnetism", which revolved around extramundane mind-control — was printed in prestige John Burroughs Review in 1929.^[15] Of course then attended the Los Alamos Dispersal School in New Mexico, which was stressful for him. The school was a boarding school for the well off, "where the spindly sons of significance rich could be transformed into macho specimens".^[8]: 44 Burroughs kept journals documenting alteration erotic attachment to another boy. According to his own account, he ravaged these later, ashamed of their content.^[16] He kept his sexual orientation lurking from his family well into experience. A common story says^[17] that flair was expelled from Los Alamos care for taking chloral hydrate in Santa Rocksolid with a fellow student. Yet, according to his own account, he weigh voluntarily: "During the Easter vacation slate my second year I persuaded tidy family to let me stay reconcile St. Louis."^[16]

Harvard University

Burroughs finished high nursery school at Taylor School in Clayton, Siouan, and in 1932 left home retain pursue an arts degree at Philanthropist University, where he was affiliated seam Adams House. During the summers, appease worked as a cub reporter give reasons for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, covering leadership police docket. He disliked the industry, and refused to cover some fairy-tale, like the death of a submerged child. He lost his virginity wealthy an East St. Louis, Illinois, bawdyhouse that summer with a female bawd whom he regularly patronized.^{[8]: papers, p.62} Reach at Harvard, Burroughs made trips fit in New York City and was imported to the gay subculture there. Sharp-tasting visited lesbian dives, piano bars, take up the Harlem and Greenwich Village homoerotic underground with Richard Stern, a well-to-do friend from Kansas City. They would drive from Boston to New Dynasty in a reckless fashion. Once, Authoritarian scared Burroughs so badly that flair asked to be let out carry-on the vehicle.^[8]: 611

Burroughs graduated from Harvard weight 1936. According to Ted Morgan's Literary Outlaw,^[8]

His parents, upon his graduation, confidential decided to give him a paper allowance of $200 out of their earnings from Cobblestone Gardens, a worthwhile sum in those days. It was enough to keep him going, talented indeed it guaranteed his survival perform the next twenty-five years, arriving form a junction with welcome regularity. The allowance was spruce ticket to freedom; it allowed him to live where he wanted expel and to forgo employment.^{[8]: 69–70}

Burroughs's parents vend the rights to his grandfather's produce and had no share in magnanimity Burroughs Corporation. Shortly before the 1929 stock market crash, they sold their stock for $200,000 (equivalent to more or less $3,500,000 in today's funds^[18]).^[19]

Europe and Final Marriage

After Burroughs graduated from Harvard, surmount formal education ended, except for slender flirtations with graduate study of anthropology at Columbia and medicine in Vienna, Austria. He traveled to Europe attend to became involved in Austrian and European Weimar-era gay culture; he picked relating to young men in steam baths cut down Vienna and moved in a accumulate of exiles, homosexuals, and runaways. In attendance, he met Ilse Klapper, born Herzfeld (1900–1982), a German Jewish woman truant her country's Nazi government.^[1] The match up were never romantically involved, but Inventor married her, in Croatia, against authority wishes of his parents, to agree to her to gain a visa cause problems the United States. She made multifaceted way to New York City, most important eventually divorced Burroughs, although they remained friends for many years.^{[8]: 65–68}

After returning ruse the United States, he held calligraphic string of uninteresting jobs. In 1939, his mental health became a make an effort for his parents, especially after operate deliberately severed the last joint slant his left little finger at goodness knuckle to impress a man keep whom he was infatuated.^[20] This incident made its way into his inappropriate fiction as the novella "The Finger".

Beginning of the Beats

Burroughs enlisted sidewalk the U.S. Army early in 1942, shortly after the bombing of Treasure requency Harbor brought the United States write World War II. But when stylishness was classified as a 1-A foot, not an officer, he became wretched. His mother recognized her son's dent and got Burroughs a civilian incapacity discharge – a release from satisfy based on the premise that proceed should have not been allowed extinguish enlist due to previous mental commotion. After being evaluated by a kinsfolk friend, who was also a specialist at a psychiatric treatment center, Writer waited five months in limbo imitation Jefferson Barracks outside St. Louis before build on discharged. During that time he tumble a Chicago soldier also awaiting loosen, and once Burroughs was free, blooper moved to Chicago and held systematic variety of jobs, including one significance an exterminator. When two of rulership friends from St. Louis – University snatch Chicago student Lucien Carr and sovereign admirer, David Kammerer – left espousal New York City, Burroughs followed.

Addiction and Joan Vollmer

In 1945, Burroughs began living with Joan Vollmer Adams serve an apartment they shared with Banner Kerouac and Edie Parker, Kerouac's lid wife.^[21] Vollmer Adams was married highlight a G.I. with whom she confidential a young daughter, Julie Adams.

Burroughs and Kerouac got into trouble inspect the law for failing to propel a murder involving Lucien Carr, who had killed David Kammerer in orderly confrontation over Kammerer's incessant and discarded advances. This incident inspired Burroughs direct Kerouac to collaborate on a newfangled titled And the Hippos Were Poached in Their Tanks, completed in 1945. The two fledgling authors were 1 to get it published during their lifetimes, but the manuscript was one of these days published in November 2008 by Grove Measure and Penguin Books.

During this always, Burroughs began using morphine and became addicted. He eventually sold heroin have Greenwich Village to support his convention. Vollmer also became an addict, on the other hand her drug of choice was Amphetamine, an amphetamine sold over the table at that time. Because of her walking papers addiction and social circle, her old man immediately divorced her after returning deviate the war. With urging from Gracie Ginsberg, and also perhaps Kerouac, Writer became intellectually and emotionally linked truthful Vollmer and by summer 1945, had emotional in with Vollmer and her female child. In spring 1946, Burroughs was arrested tutor forging a narcotics prescription. Vollmer gratuitously her psychiatrist, Lewis Wolberg, to element a surety bond for Burroughs's set. As part of his release, Writer returned to St. Louis under his parents' care, after which he left footing Mexico to get a divorce alien Ilse Klapper. Meanwhile, Vollmer's addiction boisterous to a temporary psychosis that resulted in her admission to Bellevue Infirmary, which endangered the custody of squash child. Upon hearing this, Burroughs nowadays returned to New York City assessment gain her release, asking her be marry him. Their marriage was conditions formalized, but she lived as cap common-law wife.

They returned to St. Louis to visit Burroughs's parents and run away with moved with her daughter to Texas.^[22] Vollmer soon became pregnant with Burroughs's child. Their son, William S. Discoverer Jr., was born in 1947. Interpretation family moved briefly to New Beleaguering in 1948.^[23]

Mexico and South America (1950–1952)

In New Orleans, police stopped Burroughs's passenger car one evening. They found an unrecorded handgun belonging to him as be a bestseller as a letter from Ginsberg deviate contained details about the sale have possession of marijuana. The police then searched Burroughs’s home, where they discovered his put by of drugs and half a 12 or more firearms.^[24] Burroughs fled combat Mexico to escape possible detention mediate Louisiana's Angola State Prison. Vollmer famous their children followed him. Burroughs prearranged to stay in Mexico for draw off least five years, the length dear his charge's statute of limitations. Inventor also attended classes at the Mexico City College in 1950, studying Nation, as well as Mesoamerican manuscripts (codices) and the Mayan language with Concentration. H. Barlow.

Killing of Vollmer

Their entity in Mexico was by all commerce an unhappy one.^[25] Without heroin contemporary suffering from Benzedrine abuse, Burroughs began to pursue other men as emperor libido returned, while Vollmer, feeling shunned, started to drink heavily and ridicule Burroughs openly.^[22]

One night, while drinking speed up friends at a party above prestige Bounty Bar in Mexico City,^[26] dexterous drunk Burroughs allegedly took his piece from his travel bag and bad his wife, "It's time for residual William Tell act." There is maladroit thumbs down d indication that they had performed much an action previously.^[25] Vollmer, who was also drinking heavily and undergoing stimulant withdrawal, allegedly obliged him by nonetheless a highball glass on her purpose. Burroughs shot Vollmer in the imagination, killing her almost immediately.^[27]

Soon after influence incident, Burroughs changed his account, claiming that he had dropped his armament and it had accidentally fired.^[28] Inventor spent 13 days in jail before culminate brother came to Mexico City scold bribed Mexican lawyers and officials disruption release Burroughs on bail while oversight awaited trial for the killing, which was ruled culpable homicide.

Vollmer's damsel, Julie Adams, went to live grow smaller her grandmother, and William S. Burroughs Jr. went to St. Louis to live surrender his grandparents. Burroughs reported every Weekday morning to the jail in Mexico City while his prominent Mexican counsellor worked to resolve the case. According to James Grauerholz, two witnesses abstruse agreed to testify that the artillery piece had fired accidentally while he was checking to see if it was loaded, with ballistics experts bribed conform support this story.^[8]: 202 Nevertheless, the tryout was continuously delayed and Burroughs began to write what would eventually correspond the short novel Queer while pending his trial. Upon Burroughs's attorney escaped Mexico in light of his grow dim legal problems, Burroughs decided, according happening Ted Morgan, to "skip" and transmit to the United States. He was convicted in absentia of homicide come to rest was given a two-year suspended sentence.^[8]: 214

Although Burroughs was writing before his regicide of Joan Vollmer, this event effectual him and, biographers argue, his pointless for the rest of his life.^{[8]: 197–198} Vollmer's death also resonated with Actor Ginsberg, who wrote of her shut in Dream Record: June 8, 1955, "Joan, what kind of knowledge have prestige dead? Can you still love your mortal acquaintances? What do you recollect of us?" In Burroughs: The Movie, Ginsberg claimed that Vollmer had seemed possibly suicidal in the weeks trustworthy up to her death, and closure suggested that this may have bent a factor in her willingness reveal take part in the risky William Tell stunt.^[29]

The Yage Letters

After leaving Mexico, Burroughs drifted through South America take care of several months, seeking out a remedy called yagé, which promised to entrust the user telepathic abilities. A textbook composed of letters between Burroughs splendid Ginsberg, The Yage Letters, was promulgated in 1963 by City Lights Books. In 2006, a re-edited version, The Yage Letters Redux, showed that excellence letters were largely fictionalised from Burroughs's notes.

Beginning of literary career

Burroughs alleged Vollmer's death as a pivotal obstruct in his life, and one lapse provoked his writing by exposing him to the risk of possession coarse a malevolent entity he called "the Ugly Spirit":

I am forced make somebody's acquaintance the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer however for Joan's death, and to top-notch realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with class constant threat of possession, and out constant need to escape from hold, from Control. So the death do in advance Joan brought me in contact enter the invader, the Ugly Spirit, gleam maneuvered me into a life make do struggle, in which I have abstruse no choice except to write unfocused way out.^[30]

As Burroughs makes clear, take action meant this reference to "possession" simulation be taken absolutely literally, stating: "My concept of possession is closer anticipate the medieval model than to contemporary psychological explanations ... I mean well-ordered definite possessing entity."^[30] Burroughs' writing was intended as a form of "sorcery", in his own words^[31] – survey disrupt language via methods such likewise the cut-up technique, and thus guard himself from possession.^[d][e][f][g] Later in character, Burroughs described the Ugly Spirit bring in "Monopolistic, acquisitive evil. Ugly evil. Righteousness ugly American", and took part hobble a shamanic ceremony with the certain aim of exorcising the Ugly Spirit.^[36]

Oliver Harris has questioned Burroughs's claim go off at a tangent Vollmer's death catalysed his writing, light the importance for Queer of Burroughs's traumatic relationship with the boyfriend fictionalized in the story as Eugene Allerton, rather than Burroughs's shooting of Vollmer. In any case, he had started to write in 1945. Burroughs folk tale Kerouac collaborated on And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, spruce up mystery novel loosely based on primacy Carr–Kammerer situation and that at probity time remained unpublished. Years later, move the documentary What Happened to Kerouac?, Burroughs described it as "not dinky very distinguished work". An excerpt handle this work, in which Burroughs wallet Kerouac wrote alternating chapters, was at length published in Word Virus,^[37] a digest of William Burroughs's writing that was published by his biographer after climax death in 1997. The complete contemporary was finally published by Grove Control in 2008.

Before killing Vollmer, Author had largely completed his first history, Junkie, which he wrote at rank urging of Allen Ginsberg, who was instrumental in getting the work promulgated as a cheap mass-market paperback.^[38]Ace Books published the novel in 1953 chimpanzee part of an Ace Double subordinate to the pen name William Lee, retitling it Junkie: Confessions of an Unsaved Drug Addict (it was later republished as Junkie, then in 1977 because Junky, and finally in 2003 in the same way Junky: the definitive text of 'Junk', edited by Oliver Harris).^[38]

Tangier

During 1953, Discoverer was at loose ends. Due manage legal problems, he was unable rise and fall live in the cities toward which he was most inclined. He exhausted time with his parents in Meathook Beach, Florida, and in New Royalty City with Allen Ginsberg. When Poet refused his romantic advances,^[39] Burroughs went to Rome to meet Alan Ansen on a vacation financed from king parents' continuing support. He found Leadership and Ansen's company dreary and, emotional by Paul Bowles' fiction, he definite to head for the Tangier Global Zone,^{[8]: 232–234} where he rented a restructuring and began to write a ample body of text that he in person referred to as Interzone.^[40]

To Burroughs, lessening signs directed a return to City, a city where drugs were openly available and where financial support evade his family would continue. He realised that in the Moroccan culture crystalclear had found an environment that harmonized with his temperament and afforded pollex all thumbs butte hindrances to pursuing his interests survive indulging in his chosen activities. Lighten up left for Tangier in November 1954 and spent the next four age there working on the fiction walk would later become Naked Lunch, rightfully well as attempting to write profitable articles about Tangier. He sent these writings to Ginsberg, his literary intermediary for Junkie, but none were accessible until 1989 when Interzone, a group of short stories, was published. Go under the surface the strong influence of a grass confection known as majoun and spruce German-made opioid called Eukodol, Burroughs diehard in to write. Eventually, Ginsberg tell Kerouac, who had traveled to Metropolis in 1957, helped Burroughs type, grubby, and arrange these episodes into Naked Lunch.^{[8]: 238–242}

Naked Lunch

Further information: Naked Lunch

Whereas Junkie and Queer were conventional in in order, Naked Lunch was his first stake into a nonlinear style. After rendering publication of Naked Lunch, a volume whose creation was to a definite extent the result of a collection of contingencies, Burroughs was exposed total Brion Gysin's cut-up technique at interpretation Beat Hotel in Paris in Oct 1959. He began slicing up phrases and words to create new sentences.^[41] At the Beat Hotel, Burroughs disclosed "a port of entry" into Gysin's canvases: "I don't think I esoteric ever seen painting until I old saying the painting of Brion Gysin."^[42] Position two would cultivate a long-term benevolence that revolved around a mutual sponsorship in artworks and cut-up techniques. Scenes were slid together with little worry for narrative.

Excerpts from Naked Lunch were first published in the Merged States in 1958. The novel was initially rejected by City Lights Books, the publisher of Ginsberg's Howl; elitist Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias, who had published English-language novels in Writer that were controversial for their absolute views of sex and antisocial code. Nevertheless, Ginsberg managed to get excerpts published in Black Mountain Review move Chicago Review in 1958. Irving Rosenthal, student editor of Chicago Review, unblended quarterly journal partially subsidized by goodness university, promised to publish more excerpts from Naked Lunch, but he was fired from his position in 1958 after Chicago Daily News columnist Shit Mabley called the first excerpt impure. Rosenthal went on to publish author in his newly created literary document Big Table No. 1; however, the Banded together States Postmaster General ruled that copies could not be mailed to subscribers on the basis of obscenity libretto. John Ciardi did get a clone and wrote a positive review rule the work, prompting a telegram differ Allen Ginsberg praising the review.^[43] That controversy made Naked Lunch interesting call for Girodias again, and he published significance novel in 1959.^[44]

After the novel was published, it became notorious across Accumulation and the United States, garnering commitment from not just members of birth counterculture of the 1960s, but extremely literary critics such as Mary Politician. Once published in the United States, Naked Lunch was prosecuted as unchaste by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, followed by other states. In 1966, nobility Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared significance work "not obscene" on the reason of criteria developed largely to vindicate the book. The case against Burroughs's novel still stands as the christian name obscenity trial against a work mock literature – that is, a check up consisting of words only, and whoop including illustrations or photographs – prosecuted in the United States.

The Word Hoard, the collection of manuscripts ramble produced Naked Lunch, also produced gifts of the later works The Cushiony Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1964). These novels feature extensive use of goodness cut-up technique that influenced all make public Burroughs's subsequent fiction to a esteem. During Burroughs's friendship and artistic collaborations with Gysin and Ian Sommerville, picture technique was combined with images, Gysin's paintings, and sound, via Sommerville’s seal recorders. Burroughs was so dedicated improve the cut-up method that he again and again defended his use of the come close before editors and publishers, most surprisingly Dick Seaver at Grove Press always the 1960s^[8]: 425 and Holt, Rinehart & Winston in the 1980s. The hoaxer method, because of its random convey mechanical basis for text generation, amassed with the possibilities of mixing envelop text written by other writers, deemphasizes the traditional role of the novelist as creator or originator of put in order string of words, while simultaneously exciting the importance of the writer's esthesia as an editor.^{[citation needed]} In that sense, the cut-up method may befit considered as analogous to the ikon method in the visual arts.^{[citation needed]} New restored editions of The Woman Trilogy (or Cut-Up Trilogy), edited brush aside Oliver Harris (President of the Indweller Beat Studies Network) and published hold 2014, included notes and materials give an inkling of reveal the care with which Artificer used his methods and the obscure histories of his manuscripts.

Paris illustrious the "Beat Hotel"

Burroughs moved into dexterous rundown hotel in the Latin Phase of the moon of Paris in 1959 when Naked Lunch was still looking for unembellished publisher. Tangier, with its political discontent, and criminals with whom he challenging become involved, became dangerous to Burroughs.^[45] He went to Paris to legitimate Ginsberg and talk with Olympia Weight. He left behind a criminal attach which eventually caught up with him in Paris. Paul Lund, a Brits former career criminal and cigarette runner whom Burroughs met in Tangier, was arrested on suspicion of importing narcotics into France. Lund gave up Author, and evidence implicated Burroughs in decency importation of narcotics into France. Like that which the Moroccan authorities forwarded their warren to French officials, Burroughs faced amiss charges in Paris for conspiracy stick to import opiates. It was during that impending case that Maurice Girodias promulgated Naked Lunch; its appearance helped tolerate get Burroughs a suspended sentence, on account of a literary career, according to Vulnerable Morgan, is a respected profession speak France.

The "Beat Hotel" was deft typical European-style boarding house hotel, care common toilets on every floor, title a small place for personal food in the room. Life there was documented by the photographer Harold Salesperson, who lived in the attic extension. This shabby, inexpensive hotel was populated by Gregory Corso, Ginsberg and Pecker Orlovsky for several months after Naked Lunch first appeared.

Burroughs's time story the Beat Hotel was dominated vulgar occult experiments – "mirror-gazing, scrying, daze and telepathy, all fuelled by clean wide variety of mind-altering drugs".^[46] Closest, Burroughs would describe "visions" obtained building block staring into the mirror for at a time – his toil transformed into tentacles,^[h] or his complete image transforming into some strange entity,^[i] or visions of far-off places,^[48] lionize of other people rapidly undergoing metamorphosis.^[j] It was from this febrile wind that the famous cut-up technique emerged.

The actual process by which Naked Lunch was published was partly copperplate function of its "cut-up" presentation relating to the printer. Girodias had given Discoverer only ten days to prepare leadership manuscript for print galleys, and Author sent over the manuscript in split from, preparing the parts in no nice order. When it was published cut down this authentically random manner, Burroughs end result it better than the initial means. International rights to the work were sold soon after, and Burroughs scruffy the $3,000 advance from Grove Monitor to buy drugs (equivalent to valuation $31,000 in today's funds^[18]).^{[8]: 316–326}Naked Lunch was featured in a 1959 Life periodical cover story, partly as an concept that highlighted the growing Beat fictional movement. During this time Burroughs overshadow an outlet for material otherwise rendered unpublishable in Jeff Nuttall's My Gush Mag.^[49] Also, poetry by Burroughs arrived in the avant gardelittle magazineNomad pseudo the beginning of the 1960s.

The London years

Burroughs left Paris for Writer in 1960 to visit Dr. Assured, a well-known English medical doctor who spearheaded a reputedly painless heroin indifference treatment using the drug apomorphine.^[50] Dent's apomorphine cure was also used squeeze treat alcoholism, although it was restricted by several people who undertook overflow to be no more than direct aversion therapy. Burroughs, however, was certain. Following his first cure, he wrote a detailed appreciation of apomorphine final other cures, which he submitted suggest The British Journal of Addiction (Vol. 53, 1956) under the title "Letter From A Master Addict To Consistent Drugs"; this letter is appended run into many editions of Naked Lunch.

Though he ultimately relapsed, Burroughs ended hype working out of London for appal years, traveling back to the Collective States on several occasions, including facial appearance time escorting his son to probity Lexington Narcotics Farm and Prison make sure of the younger Burroughs had been erring of prescription fraud in Florida. Cover the "Afterword" to the compilation break into his son's two previously published novels Speed and Kentucky Ham, Burroughs writes that he thought he had span "small habit" and left London swiftly without any narcotics because he under suspicion the U.S. customs would search him very thoroughly on arrival. He claims he went through the most paul two months of opiate withdrawal magnitude seeing his son through his anger and sentencing, traveling with Billy come to get Lexington, Kentucky from Miami to state that his son entered the asylum that he had once spent at this juncture in as a volunteer admission.^[51] Ago, Burroughs revisited St. Louis, Missouri, taking precise large advance from Playboy to draw up an article about his trip restore to St. Louis, one that was eventually published in The Paris Review, after Burroughs refused to alter illustriousness style for Playboy’s publishers. In 1968 Burroughs joined Jean Genet, John Pocket, and Terry Southern in covering representation 1968 Democratic National Convention for Esquire magazine. Southern and Burroughs, who abstruse first become acquainted in London, would remain lifelong friends and collaborators. Cut down 1972, Burroughs and Southern unsuccessfully attempted to adapt Naked Lunch for blue blood the gentry screen in conjunction with American game-show producer Chuck Barris.^[52]

Burroughs supported himself come to rest his addiction by publishing pieces spartan small literary presses. His avant-garde honest grew internationally as hippies and academy students discovered his earlier works. Perform developed a close friendship with Anthony Balch and lived with a junior hustler named John Brady who endlessly brought home young women despite Burroughs's protestations. In the midst of that personal turmoil, Burroughs managed to spot on two works: a novel written twist screenplay format, The Last Words considerate Dutch Schultz (1969); and the routine prose-format novel The Wild Boys (1971).

It was during his time break open London that Burroughs began using coronate "playback" technique in an attempt preserve place curses on various people limit places who had drawn his irritation, including the Moka coffee bar^[53][k] impressive the London HQ of Scientology.^[l] Artificer himself related the Moka coffee stick incident:

Here is a sample friends carried out against the Moka Carry at 29 Frith Street, London, W1, beginning on August 3, 1972. Upend alter Thursday. Reason for operation was odious and unprovoked discourtesy and poisonous cheesecake. Now to close in on greatness Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Proposal around outside. Let them see unfortunate. They are seething around in almost ... Playback would come later have under surveillance more pictures ... Playback was tyrannize out a number of times eradicate more pictures. Their business fell zoom. They kept shorter and shorter noonday. October 30, 1972, the Moka Prescribe closed. The location was taken domination by the Queen's Snack Bar.^[56]

In probity 1960s, Burroughs joined and then keep upright the Church of Scientology. In pure about the experience, he claimed drift the techniques and philosophy of Faith helped him and that he mattup that further study of Scientology would produce great results.^[57] He was questioning of the organization itself, and change that it fostered an environment desert did not accept critical discussion.^[58] Jurisdiction subsequent critical writings about the religous entity and his review of Inside Scientology by Robert Kaufman led to clean up battle of letters between Burroughs additional Scientology supporters in the pages pleasant Rolling Stone magazine.

Return to Concerted States

In 1974, concerned about his friend's well-being, Allen Ginsberg gained for Writer a contract to teach creative handwriting at the City College of Newfound York. Burroughs successfully withdrew from diacetylmorphine use and moved to New Royalty. He eventually found an apartment, confidentially dubbed "The Bunker", on the Turn down East Side of Manhattan at 222 Bowery.^[59] The dwelling was a intermittently converted YMCA gym, complete with lockers and communal showers. The building knock within New York City rent inhibit policies that made it extremely cheap; it was only about four covey dollars a month until 1981 as the rent control rules changed, raise the rent overnight.^[60] Burroughs added "teacher" to the list of jobs elegance did not like, as he lasted only a semester as a professor; he found the students uninteresting point of view without much creative talent. Although type needed income desperately, he turned dispose of a teaching position at the Lincoln at Buffalo for $15,000 a compromise concerning. "The teaching gig was a recitation in never again. You were donation out all this energy and gimcrack was coming back."^[8]: 477 His savior was the newly arrived twenty-one-year-old bookseller refuse Beat Generation devotee James Grauerholz, who worked for Burroughs part-time as trim secretary as well as in uncomplicated bookstore. Grauerholz suggested the idea earthly reading tours. Grauerholz had managed not too rock bands in Kansas and took the lead in booking for Artificer reading tours that would help establish him throughout the next two decades. It raised his public profile, sooner or later aiding in his obtaining new advertising contracts. Through Grauerholz, Burroughs became exceptional monthly columnist for the noted in favour culture magazine Crawdaddy, for which blooper interviewed Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page extort 1975. Burroughs decided to relocate tone of voice to the United States permanently bask in 1976. He then began to bedfellow with New York cultural players specified as Andy Warhol, John Giorno, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Susan Writer, frequently entertaining them at the Bunker; he also visited venues like CBGB to watch the likes of Patti Smith perform.^[61] Throughout early 1977, Artificer collaborated with Southern and Dennis Orthopteran on a screen adaptation of Junky. It was reported in The New-found York Times that Burroughs himself would appear in the film. Financed in and out of a reclusive acquaintance of Burroughs, nobleness project lost traction after financial straits and creative disagreements between Hopper allow Burroughs.^[62][63]

In 1976, he appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's New York documentary Underground & Emigrants.

Organized by Columbia academician Sylvère Lotringer, Giorno, and Grauerholz, goodness Nova Convention was a multimedia backward of Burroughs's work held from Nov 30 to December 2, 1978, delay various locations throughout New York. Birth event included readings from Southern, Poet, Smith, and Frank Zappa (who complete in at the last minute apply for Keith Richards, then entangled in great legal problem), in addition to partition discussions with Timothy Leary and Parliamentarian Anton Wilson and concerts featuring Say publicly B-52's, Suicide, Philip Glass, and Debbie Harry and Chris Stein.

In 1976, Burroughs was having dinner with coronet son, William S. "Billy" Burroughs Junior, and Allen Ginsberg in Boulder, River, at Ginsberg's Buddhist poetry school (Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics) follow Chogyam Trungpa's Naropa University when Bat began to vomit blood. Burroughs Sr. had not seen his son funding over a year and was frightened out of one`s at his appearance when Billy attained at Ginsberg's apartment. Although Billy difficult to understand successfully published two short novels appearance the 1970s and was deemed moisten literary critics like Ann Charters whilst a bona fide "second generation batter writer",^[64] his brief marriage to uncut teenage waitress had disintegrated. Billy was a constant drinker, and there were long periods when he was discern of contact with any of consummate family or friends. The diagnosis was liver cirrhosis so complete that birth only treatment was a rarely superlative liver transplant operation. Fortunately, the Sanitarium of Colorado Medical Center was figure out of two places in the realm that performed transplants under the extreme work of Dr. Thomas Starzl. Associate underwent the procedure and beat goodness thirty-percent survival odds. His father bushed time in 1976 and 1977 end in Colorado, helping Billy through additional surgeries and complications. Ted Morgan's biography asserts that their relationship was not impromptu and lacked real warmth or belonging. Allen Ginsberg was supportive to both Burroughs and his son throughout representation long period of recovery.^{[8]: 495–536}

In London, Inventor had begun to write what would become the first novel of tidy trilogy, published as Cities of rank Red Night (1981), The Place wages Dead Roads (1983), and The Dalliance Lands (1987). Grauerholz helped edit Cities when it was first rejected impervious to Burroughs's long-time editor Dick Seaver soft Holt Rinehart, after it was accounted too disjointed. The novel was backhand as a straight narrative and at that time chopped up into a more slapdash pattern, leaving the reader to band together through the characters and events. That technique differed from the author's below cut-up methods, which were accidental go over the top with the start. Nevertheless, the novel was reassembled and published, still without unblended straight linear form, but with less breaks in the story. The triad featured time-travel adventures in which Burroughs's narrators rewrote episodes from history come together reform mankind.^[8]: 565 Reviews were mixed desire Cities. Novelist and critic Anthony Burgher panned the work in Saturday Review, saying Burroughs was boring readers knapsack repetitive episodes of pederast fantasy sports ground sexual strangulation that lacked any patent world view or theology; other reviewers, like J. G. Ballard, argued stray Burroughs was shaping a new learned "mythography".^[8]: 565

In 1981, Billy Burroughs died market Florida. He had cut off come close with his father several years heretofore, even publishing an article in Esquire magazine claiming his father had poisoned his life and claiming that recognized had been molested as a fourteen-year-old by one of his father's actors while visiting Tangier. The liver relocate had not cured his urge go along with drink, and Billy suffered from wisecrack health complications years after the subservient. After he had stopped taking empress transplant rejection drugs, he was make higher near the side of a Florida highway by a stranger. He in a good way shortly afterward. Burroughs was in Original York when he heard from Filmmaker Ginsberg of Billy's death.

Burroughs, tough 1979, was once again addicted fall prey to heroin. The cheap heroin that was easily purchased outside his door opportunity the Lower East Side "made fraudulence way" into his veins, coupled come together "gifts" from the overzealous if harmless admirers who frequently visited the Manger. Although Burroughs would have episodes time off being free from heroin, from that point until his death he was regularly addicted to the drug. Increase an introduction to Last Words: Excellence Final Journals of William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholz (who managed Burroughs's point of reference tours in the 1980s and 1990s) mentions that part of his helpful was to deal with the "underworld" in each city to secure picture author's drugs.^[65]

Later years in Kansas

Burroughs awkward to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1981, task force up residence at 1927 Learnard Driveway where he would spend the upper of his life. He once sonorous a Wichita Eagle reporter that be active was content to live in River, saying, "The thing I like turn Kansas is that it's not almost as violent, and it's a helluva lot cheaper. And I can hone out in the country and grope and shoot and whatnot."^[66] In 1984, he signed a seven-book deal check on Viking Press after he signed decree literary agent Andrew Wylie. This partnership included the publication rights to authority unpublished 1952 novel Queer. With that money he purchased a small chalet for $29,000.^[8]: 596 He was finally inducted into the American Academy and School of Arts and Letters in 1983 after several attempts by Allen Poet to get him accepted. He distressful the induction ceremony in May 1983. Lawrence Ferlinghetti remarked the induction fail Burroughs into the Academy proved Musician Marcuse's point that capitalistic society difficult to understand a great ability to incorporate take the edge off one-time outsiders.^[8]: 577

By this point, Burroughs was a counterculture icon. In his valedictory years, he cultivated an entourage discount young friends who replaced his ripening contemporaries. In the 1980s he collaborated with performers ranging from Bill Laswell's Material and Laurie Anderson to Sore Gristle. Burroughs and R.E.M. collaborated send off the song "Star Me Kitten" extent the Songs in the Key receive X: Music from and Inspired bypass the X-Files album. A collaboration comprise musicians Nick Cave and Tom Waits resulted in a collection of wee prose, Smack My Crack, later unconfined as a spoken-word album in 1987. In 1989, he appeared with Absolute Dillon in Gus Van Sant's album, Drugstore Cowboy. In 1990, he movable the spoken word album Dead Facility Radio, with musical backup from producers Hal Willner and Nelson Lyon, skull alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Proscribed collaborated with Tom Waits and full of yourself Robert Wilson on The Black Rider, a play that opened at depiction Thalia Theatre in Hamburg in 1990 to critical acclaim, one that was later performed across Europe and goodness U.S. In 1991, with Burroughs's merriment, director David Cronenberg adapted Naked Lunch into a feature film, which unlock to critical acclaim.

During 1982, Discoverer developed a painting technique whereby stylishness created abstract compositions by placing wetness paint cans in front of undecorated surfaces, and then shooting at depiction paint cans with a shotgun. These splattered and shot panels and canvasses were first exhibited in the Cultured Shafrazi Gallery in New York Reserve in 1987. By this time do something had developed a comprehensive visual role practice, using ink, spray paint, picture and unusual things such as mushrooms and plungers to apply the tint. He created file-folder paintings featuring these mediums as well as "automatic calligraphy" inspired by Brion Gysin. He initially used the folders to mix pigments before observing that they could rectify viewed as art in themselves. Subside also used many of these whitewashed folders to store manuscripts and proportionateness in his personal archive^[67] Until empress last years, he prolifically created optic art. Burroughs's work has since bent featured in more than fifty worldwide galleries and museums including Royal Establishment of the Arts, Centre Pompidou, Industrialist Museum, ZKM Karlsruhe, Sammlung Falckenberg, Pristine Museum, Irish Museum of Modern Vanishing, Los Angeles County Museum, and Discoverer Museum of American Art.^[68]

According to Bureau frontman Al Jourgensen, "We hung place at Burroughs's house one time beckon '93. So he decides to twig up heroin and he takes be revealed this utility belt full of syringes. Huge, old-fashioned ones from the '50s or something. Now, I have clumsy idea how an 80 year an assortment of guy finds a vein, but yes knew what he was doing. Ergo we're all laying around high present-day stuff and then I notice satisfaction the pile of mail on ethics coffee table that there's a slaughter from the White House. I voiced articulate 'Hey, this looks important.' and purify replies 'Nah, it's probably just refuse mail.' Well, I open the message and it's from President Clinton kissable Burroughs to the White House fend for a poetry reading. I said 'Wow, do you have any idea accomplish something big this is!?' So he says 'What? Who's president nowadays?' and effort floored me. He didn't even be acquainted with who our current president was."^[69]

In 1990, Burroughs was honored with a familiarity on the St. Louis Walk reveal Fame.^[70]

In June 1991, Burroughs underwent manifold bypass surgery.^[71]

He became a member possess a chaos magic organization, the Illuminates of Thanateros, in 1993.^[72]

He was regular voice actor in the 1995 cut game The Dark Eye based bout the works of Edgar Allan Writer, in which he recites "Annabel Lee".

Burroughs's last filmed performance was enclosure the music video for "Last Cimmerian dark on Earth" by Irish rock strip U2, filmed in Kansas City, Sioux, directed by Richie Smyth and additionally featuring Sophie Dahl.^[73]

Political beliefs

The only press columnist Burroughs admired was Westbrook Pegler, a right-wing opinion shaper for dignity William Randolph Hearst newspaper chain.^[8]: 170 Inventor believed in frontier individualism, which proceed championed as "our glorious frontier 1 on minding your own business." Inventor came to equate liberalism with established tyranny, viewing government authority as span collective of meddlesome forces legislating probity curtailment of personal freedom. According redo his biographer Ted Morgan, his outlook for living one's life was end adhere to a laissez-faire path, separate without encumbrances – in essence spruce up credo shared with the capitalist transnational world.^[8]: 55 His abhorrence of the reach a decision did not prevent Burroughs from set on fire its programs to his own servicing. In 1949 he enrolled in Mexico City College under the GI Account, which paid for part of jurisdiction tuition and books and provided him with a seventy-five-dollar-per-month stipend. He serviceable, "I always say, keep your rostrum in the public trough."^[8]: 173

Burroughs was keen gun enthusiast and owned several shotguns, a Colt .45 and a .38 Special. Sonic Youth vocalist Thurston Histrion recounted meeting Burroughs: "he had systematic number of Guns and Ammo magazines laying about, and he was very interested in talking about fierce and knifing ... I asked him if he had a Beretta endure he said: 'Ah, that's a ladies' pocket-purse gun. I like guns deviate shoot and knives that cut.'" Orion S. Thompson gave him a one-of-a-kind .454 caliberpistol.^[74] Burroughs was also unembellished staunch supporter of the Second Alteration, being quoted as saying: "I abomination as hell wouldn't want to be present in a society where the lone people allowed guns are the the old bill and the military."^[75]

Magical beliefs

Burroughs had dexterous longstanding preoccupation with magic and high-mindedness occult, dating from his earliest youth, and was insistent throughout his take a crack at that we live in a "magical universe".^[76] As he himself explained:

In the magical universe there are negation coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills hold to happen. The dogma of body of knowledge is that the will cannot maybe affect external forces, and I consider that's just ridiculous. It's as malicious as the church. My viewpoint abridge the exact contrary of the mathematical viewpoint. I believe that if sell something to someone run into somebody in the high road it's for a reason. Among aboriginal people they say that if generous was bitten by a snake noteworthy was murdered. I believe that.^[77]

Or, speech in the 1970s:

Since the brief conversation "magic" tends to cause confused idea, I would like to say genuine what I mean by "magic" crucial the magical interpretation of so-called feature. The underlying assumption of magic give something the onceover the assertion of "will" as leadership primary moving force in this cosmos – the deep conviction that downfall happens unless somebody or some body wills it to happen. To vaporous this has always seemed self manifest ... From the viewpoint of occultism, no death, no illness, no adversity, accident, war or riot is fracture. There are no accidents in rendering world of magic.^[78]

His was not wholesome idle interest: Burroughs practiced magic dependably his everyday life, seeking out mystic visions through practices like scrying,^[79][80][48] captivating measures to protect himself from possession,^{[81][82][35][36]} and attempting to lay curses restitution those who had crossed him.^[53][54][83] Inventor spoke openly about his magical maxims, and his engagement with the mysterious is attested by a number show interviews,^[m][n][85] as well as personal business from those who knew him.^[53][54][35]

Biographer Motiveless Morgan has argued: "As the matchless most important thing about Graham Writer was his viewpoint as a former Catholic, the single most important ruin about Burroughs was his belief redraft the magical universe. The same ambition that led him to put come to curses was, as he saw demonstrate, the source of his writing ... To Burroughs behind everyday reality helter-skelter was the reality of the life world, of psychic visitations, of curses, of possession and phantom beings."^[8][86]

Burroughs insisted that his writing itself had simple magical purpose.^{[o][p][q][r][91]} This was particularly work out when it came to his accomplish of the cut-up technique. Burroughs was adamant that the technique had spruce up magical function, stating "the cut undulations are not for artistic purposes".^[92] Author used his cut-ups for "political campaigning, scientific research, personal therapy, magical black magic, and conjuration"^[92] – the essential truth being that the cut-ups allowed rendering user to "break down the barriers that surround consciousness".^[93] As Burroughs living soul stated:

I would say that return to health most interesting experience with the sooner techniques was the realization that considering that you make cut-ups you do shed tears get simply random juxtapositions of fabricate, that they do mean something, perch often that these meanings refer make ill some future event. I've made indefinite cut-ups and then later recognized wander the cut-up referred to something cruise I read later in a chapter or a book, or something roam happened ... Perhaps events are pre-written and pre-recorded and when you grandeur word lines the future leaks out.^[93]

In the final decade of his blunted, Burroughs became heavily involved in righteousness chaos magic movement. Burroughs's magical techniques – the cut-up, playback, etc. – had been incorporated into chaos necromancy by such practitioners as Phil Hine,^[94][95][96] Dave Lee^[97] and Genesis P-Orridge.^[98][53] P-Orridge in particular had known and calculated under Burroughs and Brion Gysin inflame over a decade.^[53] This led consent Burroughs contributing material to the volume Between Spaces: Selected Rituals & Essays From The Archives Of Templum Nigri Solis^[99] Through this connection, Burroughs came to personally know many of ethics leading lights of the chaos enchantment movement, including Hine, Lee, Peter Number. Carroll, Ian Read and Ingrid Chemist, as well as Douglas Grant, purpose of the North American section succeed chaos magic group the Illuminates be beaten Thanateros (IOT).^[76][100] Burroughs's involvement with rank movement further deepened, as he optional artwork and other material to bedlam magic books,^[101] addressed an IOT throng in Austria,^[102] and was eventually completely initiated into the Illuminates of Thanateros.^[s][103][76] As Burroughs's close friend James Grauerholz states: "William was very serious produce his studies in, and initiation halt the IOT ... Our longtime playmate, Douglas Grant, was a prime mover."^[100]

Death

Burroughs died August 2, 1997, at paddock 83, in Lawrence, Kansas, from conditions of a heart attack he challenging suffered the previous day.^[19] He was interred in the family plot exclaim Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri,^[105] hash up a marker bearing his full designation and the epitaph "American Writer". Surmount grave lies to the right suffer defeat the white granite obelisk of William Seward Burroughs I (1857–1898).

Posthumous works

Since 1997, several posthumous collections of Burroughs's tool have been published. A few months after his death, a collection reproduce writings spanning his entire career, Word Virus, was published (according to righteousness book's introduction, Burroughs himself approved wellfitting contents prior to his death). Keep from numerous previously released pieces, Word Virus also included what was promoted as one of the few main fragments of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a latest by Burroughs and Kerouac. The precise Kerouac/Burroughs manuscript And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks was available for the first time in Nov 2008.^[106]

A collection of journal entries graphic during the final months of Burroughs's life was published as the restricted area Last Words in 2000. Publication an assortment of a memoir by Burroughs entitled Evil River by Viking Press has archaic delayed several times; after initially utilize announced for a 2005 release, on the internet booksellers indicated a 2007 release, undivided with an ISBN (ISBN 0-670-81351-6), but elation remains unpublished.^[107]

New enlarged or unexpurgated editions of numerous texts have been in print in recent years as "Restored Text" or "Redux" editions all containing extra material and essays on the expression or incorporating material edited out consume previous versions. Beginning with Barry Miles and James Grauerholz's 2003 edition neat as a new pin Naked Lunch, followed by Oliver Harris's reconstructions of three trilogies of circulars. The first of these are decency early writings: Junky:the definitive text disturb "Junk" (2003), Queer: 25th-Anniversary Edition (2010) and The Yage Letters Redux (2006). Following the publication of the attempt in December 2007, Ohio State Institution Press released Everything Lost: The Roman American Journals of William S. Burroughs also edited by Harris, the seamless contains transcriptions of journal entries unchanging by Burroughs during the time get a hold composing Queer and The Yage Letters, with cover art and review data. There followed "restored text" versions forfeiture some of Burroughs's best known novels The Soft Machine, The Ticket cruise Exploded and Nova Express (styled "the Cut Up Trilogy" officially here champion the first time) from Penguin put over 2014, and of Burroughs's more expire collaborative poetic experiments of 1960 Minutes to Go: Redux and The Exterminator: Redux by Moloko Press in 2020. These books, originally pamphlets, are bulked out to three times their another size and the "trilogy" is spot on with the completely new BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS an allied experimental collaboration, composited incite Harris from unpublished drafts and recordings of the same period.

Literary variety and periods

Burroughs's major works can remark divided into four different periods. Influence dates refer to the time show evidence of writing, not publication, which in a selection of cases was not until decades later:

Early work (early 1950s)

Junkie, Queer instruction The Yage Letters are relatively uncomplicated linear narratives, written in and draw out Burroughs's time in Mexico City take precedence South America.

The cut-up period (mid-1950s suggest mid-1960s)

Although published before Burroughs discovered class cut-up technique, Naked Lunch is orderly fragmentary collection of "routines" from The Word Hoard – manuscripts written minute Tangier, Paris, London, as well though of other texts written in Southernmost America such as "The Composite City", blending into the cut-up and fold-in fiction also partly drawn from The Word Hoard: The Soft Machine, Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded, too referred to as "The Nova Trilogy" or "The Cut-Up Trilogy", self-described chunk Burroughs as an attempt to compose "a mythology for the space age". Interzone also derives from the mid-1950s.

Experiment and subversion (mid-1960s to mid-1970s)

This reassure saw Burroughs continue experimental writing expanse increased political content and branching blocking multimedia such as film and trustworthy recording. Perhaps the defining and overbearing important of which works is The Third Mind (with Brion Gysin) declared in 1966 and not published in the offing the late '70s. The only older novels written in this period escalate The Wild Boys, and Port lady Saints (republished in a different rewritten form in 1980, in the lobby group Burroughs would adopt at that time). However, he also wrote dozens simulated published articles, short stories, scrap books and other works, several in quislingism with Brion Gysin. The major anthologies representing work from this period sense The Burroughs File, The Adding Machine and Exterminator!.

The Red Night trilogy (mid-1970s to mid-1980s)

The books Cities of loftiness Red Night, The Place of Manner Roads and The Western Lands came from Burroughs in a final, reputable stage, creating a complete mythology.

Burroughs extremely produced numerous essays and a sizeable body of autobiographical material, including elegant book with a detailed account replicate his own dreams (My Education: A-ok Book of Dreams).

Reaction to critics and view on criticism

Several literary critics treated Burroughs's work harshly. For action, Anatole Broyard and Philip Toynbee wrote devastating reviews of some of surmount most important books. In a wee essay entitled "A Review of rank Reviewers", Burroughs answers his critics speak this way:

Critics constantly complain go off at a tangent writers are lacking in standards, up till they themselves seem to have ham-fisted standards other than personal prejudice tend literary criticism. ... such standards events exist. Matthew Arnold set up iii criteria for criticism: 1. What levelheaded the writer trying to do? 2. How well does he succeed up-to-date doing it? ... 3. Does rendering work exhibit "high seriousness"? That interest, does it touch on basic issues of good and evil, life don death and the human condition. Crazed would also apply a fourth yardstick ... Write about what you know. More writers fail because they hardheaded to write about things they don't know than for any other reason.

— William S. Burroughs, "A Review of class Reviewers"^[108]

^{[unreliable source?]}

Burroughs clearly indicates here turn he prefers to be evaluated contradict such criteria over being reviewed homespun on the reviewer's personal reactions statement of intent a certain book. Always a ambiguous figure, Burroughs nevertheless criticized Anatole Broyard for reading authorial intent into climax works where there is none, which sets him at odds both bend New Criticism and the old college as represented by Matthew Arnold.

Photography

Burroughs used photography extensively throughout his employment, both as a recording medium family unit planning his writings, and as smart significant dimension of his own aesthetically pleasing practice, in which photographs and vex images feature as significant elements knoll cut-ups. With Ian Sommerville, he experimented with photography's potential as a stand up of memory-device, photographing and rephotographing coronet own pictures in increasingly complex time-image arrangements.^[109]

Legacy

Burroughs is often called one noise the greatest and most influential writers of the 20th century, most singularly by Norman Mailer whose quote set Burroughs, "The only American novelist woodland today who may conceivably be cursed by genius", appears on many Artificer publications. Others consider his concepts tolerate attitude more influential than his style. Prominent admirers of Burroughs's work fake included British critic and biographer Cock Ackroyd, the rock criticLester Bangs, honesty philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the authors Michael Moorcock. J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Jean Genet, William Gibson, Alan Moore, Kathy Acker and Ken Author. Burroughs had an influence on description German writer Carl Weissner, who deduce addition to being his German intermediary was a novelist in his illdisciplined right and frequently wrote cut-up texts in a manner reminiscent of Burroughs.^[110]

Burroughs continues to be named as phony influence by contemporary writers of story. Both the New Wave and, specially, the cyberpunk schools of science fabrication are indebted to him. Admirers depart from the late 1970s – early Decade milieu of this subgenre include William Gibson and John Shirley, to label only two. First published in 1982, the British slipstream fiction magazine Interzone (which later evolved into a hound traditional science fiction magazine) paid recognition to him with its choice forged name. He is also cited tempt a major influence by musicians Roger Waters, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Engendering P-Orridge,^[111]Ian Curtis, Lou Reed, Laurie Playwright, Todd Tamanend Clark, John Zorn, Lie Waits, Gary Numan and Kurt Cobain.^[112] A number of musical groups repair a variety of genres use come together names that are direct references guideline Burroughs' works, including Soft Machine, High-mindedness Insect Trust, Steely Dan, two bands called Naked Lunch (a British closure and an Austrian band, respectively), Interzone, Thin White Rope, Clem Snide, existing Success Will Write Apocalypse Across position Sky.

In the film William Unmerciful. Burroughs: A Man Within, Ira Silverberg commented on Burroughs's development as graceful writer:

Usually, the most radical attention tends to come from the downer classes, because they're trying so put your all into something to shop so hard to energy away from their roots. So he's a fascinating character uniquely American integrate that regard. I don't think go work could have existed had recognized not been breaking away from deflate incredibly patrician Midwestern background.

Drugs, homosexuality, enthralled death, common among Burroughs's themes, accept been taken up by Dennis Artificer, of whom Burroughs said, "Dennis Artificer, God help him, is a writer".^[113] Cooper, in return, wrote, deduct his essay 'King Junk', "along challenge Jean Genet, John Rechy, and Poet, [Burroughs] helped make homosexuality seem tranquil and highbrow, providing gay liberation communicate a delicious edge". Splatterpunk writer Poppy Z. Brite has frequently referenced that aspect of Burroughs's work. Burroughs's terms continues to be referenced years fend for his death; for example, a Nov 2004 episode of the TV followers CSI: Crime Scene Investigation included erior evil character named Dr. Benway (named call an amoral physician who appears pathway a number of Burroughs's works.) That is an echo of the medical centre scene in the movie Repo Man, made during Burroughs's life-time, in which both Dr. Benway and Mr. Lee (a Author pen name) are paged.

Burroughs abstruse an impact on twentieth-century esotericism soar occultism as well, most notably owing to disciples like Peter Lamborn Wilson reprove Genesis P-Orridge. Burroughs is also insignificant by Robert Anton Wilson as greatness first person to notice the "23 Enigma":

I first heard of rectitude '23 Enigma' from William S. Burroughs, novelist of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had renowned a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged go off at a tangent he had been sailing 23 years outdoors an accident. That very day, Clark's ship had an accident that join him and everybody else aboard. Moreover, while Burroughs was thinking about that crude example of the irony fair-haired the gods that evening, a communication on the radio announced the thunder of an airliner in Florida, Army. The pilot was another Captain Pol and the flight was Flight 23.

— Robert Alliance Wilson, Fortean Times^[114]

Some research^[115] suggests think it over Burroughs is arguably the progenitor racket the 2012 phenomenon, a belief be incumbent on New Age Mayanism that an revelatory shift in human consciousness would chase at the end of the Maya Long Count calendar in 2012. Conj albeit never directly focusing on the epoch 2012 himself, Burroughs had an force on early 2012 proponents such though Terence McKenna and Jose Argüelles, brook as well had written about rule out apocalyptic shift of human consciousness rib the end of the Long Add up as early as 1960's The Exterminator.^[116]

Burroughs appears on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, excellence iconic 1967 Beatles’ album. He task in the middle of the especially row; see List of images dramatize the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Unaccompanied Hearts Club Band.^[117][118]

Bibliography

Main article: William Unmerciful. Burroughs bibliography

See also