"I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooing over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train... Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit holds the door back for me. I am evidently his idea of a character... " The opening of NAKED LUNCH.
Well, wouldn't this guy be ANYONE's idea of a character? A heroin-addicted, gun-crazed, bisexual eccentric who accidentally shot his wife... and who also happens to be a genuine literary genius. Although much has been made of the "cut-up" or collage technique Burroughs pioneered (in which he writes his prose down, then cuts the paper into scraps which he then randomly repositions), the fact remains that he's also a writer capable of astonishing honesty and moments of transcendent beauty (and his "Dr. Benway" character is one of the great comic characters in modern literature). Burroughs' breakthrough novel NAKED LUNCH, written largely in Tangier while he was strung out on heroin, was also the subject of possibly the most famous obscenity trial of all time. Burroughs, just before his recent death, wrote such entertaining books as THE CAT INSIDE (about cats) and MY EDUCATION: A BOOK OF DREAMS (about - you guessed it - dreams). All aboard for Interzone...
Burroughs in the Media
FILMS: NAKED LUNCH (1991), directed by David Cronenberg. Yep, Cronenberg filmed the unfilmable. Disturbing, amusing, sad and mad. Great, in other words!
DRUGSTORE COWBOY (1989), directed by Gus Van Sant, who also directed the great Burroughs short "A Thanksgiving Prayer". Burroughs didn't write it, but his cameo appearance is absolutely appropriate to his persona!
Burroughs has been featured on probably dozens of recordings, one of the most recent being "The Priest They Called Him", with Kurt Cobain. (Our audio clip is from an old vinyl L.P. called "You're the One I Want to Share My Money With", on which Burroughs is featured along with Laurie Anderson).
William S. Burroughs Page is a good general Burroughs page.
The William S. Burroughs i-Zine
And don't forget to look for Burroughs in the discussion group alt.books.beatgeneration.
Search our Burroughs books! Enter complete words such as "Stephen" or use a trailing wildcard such as "Ste*". CAUTION: IF YOU SEARCH FOR MORE THAN ONE BOOK, YOU MAY GET LISTINGS FOR BOOKS FROM OTHER SELLERS, SO PLEASE BE SURE TO CHECK THE "BOOKSELLER" FIELD!
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