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Burroughs later said that shooting Vollmer was a pivotal event in his life, and one which instigated his writing: "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan's death... I live with the constant threat of possession, for control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invador , the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my |
Burroughs later said that shooting Vollmer was a pivotal event in his life, and one which instigated his writing: "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan's death... I live with the constant threat of possession, for control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invador , the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out<ref>''Queer'', Penguin, 1985 p.xxiii</ref>. Yet he had begun to write in 1945. Burroughs and Kerouac collaborated on '']'', a mystery novel loosely based on the Carr/Kammerer situation that was left unpublished. Years later, in the documentary '']'', Burroughs described it as "not a very distinguished work." An excerpt of this work, in which Burroughs and Kerouac wrote alternating chapters, was finally published in "Word Virus" a compendium of William Burroughs' writing that was published after his death in 1997. | ||
After Vollmer's death, Burroughs drifted through ] for several months, looking for a drug called ], which could supposedly ease opiate addiction. He produced two novels during this time, ''],'' (written with the encouragement of Allen Ginsberg) exploring his morphine addiction, and '']'' exploring his homosexuality. He also compiled correspondence with Allen Ginsberg about his search for and experiences with Yage as '']''. ] published his first novel, ''Junkie'', in 1953 under the pen name William Lee. ''The Yage Letters'' and ''Queer'' were not published until 1963 and 1985 respectively. | After Vollmer's death, Burroughs drifted through ] for several months, looking for a drug called ], which could supposedly ease opiate addiction. He produced two novels during this time, ''],'' (written with the encouragement of Allen Ginsberg) exploring his morphine addiction, and '']'' exploring his homosexuality. He also compiled correspondence with Allen Ginsberg about his search for and experiences with Yage as '']''. ] published his first novel, ''Junkie'', in 1953 under the pen name William Lee. ''The Yage Letters'' and ''Queer'' were not published until 1963 and 1985 respectively. |
Revision as of 00:14, 11 December 2006
- This article is about the novelist. For the inventor, his grandfather, see William Seward Burroughs I. For his son, see William S. Burroughs, Jr.
William S. Burroughs | |
---|---|
Born | February 5, 1914 St. Louis, Missouri |
Died | August 2, 1997 Lawrence, Kansas |
Occupation | novelist, essayist |
Genre | Beat science fiction satire |
Literary movement | Beat Postmodern |
William Seward Burroughs II (pronounced ) (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997), more commonly known as William S. Burroughs, was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer. Much of Burroughs' work is semi-autobiographical, drawn from his experiences as an opiate addict, a condition which marked the last forty years of his life. He is a primary member of the Beat Generation, and is regarded as an avant-garde author who affected popular culture as well as literature. In 1984, he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Early life and education
Burroughs was born in 1914, the younger of two sons of 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.
Burroughs attended John Burroughs School in St. Louis where his first published essay, "Personal Magnetism," was published in the John Burroughs Review in 1929. He then attended 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 a fellow student.
Harvard University
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's 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. According to Ted Morgan's Literary Outlaw, "His parents, upon his graduation, had decided to give him a monthly allowance out of their earnings from Cobblestone Gardens, a tidy sum in those days. It was enough to keep him going, and indeed it guaranteed his survival for the next twenty-five years, arriving with welcome regularity. The allowance was a ticket to freedom; it allowed him to live where he wanted to and to forgo employment." However, Burroughs's parents never had a great fortune; they had sold the rights to his grandfather's invention and had no share in the Burroughs Corporation. Nevertheless, Burroughs lived a privileged life with little direction or need for a career; in fact, he noted in the Prologue to Junkie (novel) that until he became addicted to morphine, he did not worry about supporting himself.
Europe
After leaving Harvard, Burroughs' formal education ended, except for brief flirtations as a graduate student of anthropology at Harvard and as a medical student in Vienna, Austria. He traveled to Europe, which proved a window into Austrian and Hungarian Weimar-Era homosexuality; he picked up boys in steam baths in Vienna, and moved in a circle of exiles, homosexuals, and runaways. There, he met Ilse Klapper, a Jewish woman fleeing the country's Nazi government. The two were never romantically involved, but Burroughs married her, against the wishes of his parents, 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.
Beginning of The Beats
Burroughs enlisted in the U.S Army early in 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into World War II. But when he was classified as a 1-A Infantry, not an officer, he became dejected. His mother recognized her son's depression and got Burroughs a civilian disability discharge — a release from duty based on the premise he should have not been allowed to enlist due to previous mental instability. After being evaluated by a family friend, who was also a neurologist at a psychiatric treatment center, Burroughs waited five months in limbo at Jefferson Barracks outside St. Louis before being discharged. 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. When two of his friends from St. Louis, Lucien Carr, a University of Chicago student, and David Kammerer, Carr's homosexual admirer, left for New York City, Burroughs followed.
Joan Vollmer
In 1944, Burroughs began living with Joan Vollmer Adams in an apartment they shared with Jack 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. The murder involved Lucien Carr, who had killed David Kammerer in a confrontation over Kammerer's incessant and unwanted advances. During this time, 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 an amphetamine, Benzedrine, which was sold over-the-counter as a decongestant inhalant at that time. 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 soon arrested for forging a narcotics prescription and was sentenced to return to his parents' care in St. Louis. Vollmer's addiction lead to a temporary psychosis which resulted in her admission to hospital and the custody of her child was endangered. Yet after Burroughs completed his "house arrest" 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.
Burroughs was arrested after police searched his home and found letters between him and Allen 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 shot and killed Vollmer in a drunken game of "William Tell" at a party above the American-owned Bounty Bar in Mexico City. He spent 13 days in jail before his brother came to Mexico City and distributed funds to Mexican lawyers and officials which allowed Burroughs to be released on bail while he awaited trial for the killing, which was ruled culpable homicide. 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. Burroughs reported every Monday morning to the jail in Mexico City while his prominent Mexican attorney worked to resolve the case. According to James Grauerholz two witnesses had agreed to testify that the gun had gone off accidentally while he was checking to see if it was loaded, and the ballistics experts were bribed to support this story. Nevertheless, the trial was continuously delayed and Burroughs began to write what would eventually become the short novel Queer while awaiting his trial to start. However, when his attorney fled Mexico after his own legal problems involving a car accident and altercation with the son of a government official, Burroughs decided, according to Ted Morgan, to "skip" and return to the United States. He was convicted in absentia of homocide and sentenced to two years, which was suspended.
Birth of a writer
Burroughs later said that shooting Vollmer was a pivotal event in his life, and one which instigated his writing: "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan's death... I live with the constant threat of possession, for control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invador , the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out. Yet he had begun to write in 1945. Burroughs and Kerouac collaborated on And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a mystery novel loosely based on the Carr/Kammerer situation that was left unpublished. Years later, in the documentary What Happened to Kerouac?, Burroughs described it as "not a very distinguished work." An excerpt of this work, in which Burroughs and Kerouac wrote alternating chapters, was finally published in "Word Virus" a compendium of William Burroughs' writing that was published after his death in 1997.
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, Junkie, (written with the encouragement of Allen Ginsberg) exploring his morphine 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, Junkie, in 1953 under the pen name William Lee. The Yage Letters and Queer were not published until 1963 and 1985 respectively.
Naked Lunch
Burroughs went to Rome and then to Tangier, 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 Junkie and Queer were conventional in style, Naked Lunch — although not Burroughs's first foray into the cut-up technique — was his first venture into a non-linear style which shortly thereafter led him into slicing phrases and words up to create new sentences. He was inspired by his friend, Brion Gysin who had been employing the same technique with his paintings. Scenes were slid together with little care for narrative. Perhaps thinking of his crazed medic, Dr Benway, he described Naked Lunch as a book that could be cut into at any point. Although in no sense science fiction, the book does seem to forecast — with eerie prescience — such later phenomena as AIDS, liposuction and the crack pandemic.
Burroughs's "Interzone" could be seen as a metaphorical vision of what the Internet may become someday in the future, but the term probably was derived from the "International Zone" in Tangier, where (as in Interzone), everything could be had for a price. When in Tangier, Burroughs's homonymous son Billy came to live with him, but they could not get along. A few months later Billy returned to Palm Beach to live with his grandparents again.
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 the counterculture of the 1960s — and at this time Burroughs pursued a friendship during his visits to London and Tangier with A Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess. 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 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, followed by other states. 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 later works The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1963). It must be noted that beside their genesis in the "Word Hoard" the aforementioned novels feature extensive use of the cut-up technique and that this technique had an immense influence on all of Burroughs subsequent work until he felt he exhausted the method and its possibilities. His friendship and artistic collaborations with Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville during this period cannot be over-emphasized in their importance and in the impact they had on his development as a writer.
Exile returns
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, John Giorno, Patti Smith, Susan Sontag, Dennis Hopper, Terry Southern, and Mick Jagger.
The 1970s also saw Burroughs join, then leave the Church of Scientology . 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.
In 1981 his son Billy (who was also a famous novelist by then) died of liver cancer. Allen Ginsberg, old time friend of his father, had been looking after Billy for years — Billy and Burroughs Sr. could not get along very well. In the mid 70s, Billy began to express hostility towards his father. He published a damning article in Esquire magazine, explaining how his life was "ruined" by his father’s actions. Among other things, Billy revealed that he was sexually molested in Tangier by friends of his father. The estrangement between father and son was never reconciled. In spite of that, Burroughs wrote an afterword to a 1993 compilation of his son's books.
By late 1980s, Burroughs had become a counterculture giant and collaborated with performers ranging from Bill Laswell's Material and Laurie Anderson to Throbbing Gristle, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy 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
Later years in Kansas and recognition and fame
Burroughs moved to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1983 and lived the remainder of his life there. He became a member of a chaos magic organization, the IOT (The Illuminates of Thanateros), in 1993. He lived with several cats who became significant in his personal mythology, and was watched over by friends and proteges. In 1991, with Burroughs's 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, Gus van Sant, Sonic Youth and Ministry.
A collaboration with other writers of the opiate sub-culture, including Nick Cave and Tom Waits, resulted in a collection of short prose, "Smack my Crack", later released as a spoken word album in 1987.
Burroughs died aged 83 in Lawrence, at 6:50 p.m. on August 2, 1997 from complications of the previous day's heart attack. He is interred in the family plot in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri at these coordinates: 38°41′25″N 90°13′54″W / 38.690310°N 90.231720°W / 38.690310; -90.231720. 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 and a memoir by Burroughs entitled Evil River, after initially being announced for a 2005 release, is now scheduled for release by Viking Press on October 30, 2006.
Literary style
The major body of Burroughs's novels can be divided into three different categories:
- Junkie and Queer are quite straightforward novels with linear narratives.
- Naked Lunch, a fragmentary 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 (besides Naked Lunch) 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 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 autobiographical 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's 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 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.
— William S. Burroughs, A Review of the Reviewers
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).
Legacy
The best known pictures of Burroughs were taken by photographer John Minihan, who photographed him between 1963 and 1991 and developed such a good relationship with the writer that he became, in effect, his official photographer.
Burroughs is often called one of the greatest and most influential writers of the twentieth century, most notably by Norman Mailer whose quote on Burroughs, "The only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius", appears on many Burroughs publications. Others, however, consider him overrated. Others still consider his concepts and attitude more influential than his prose. Prominent admirers of Burroughs's work have included British critic and biographer Peter Ackroyd, and the authors J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Jean Genet, William Gibson, and Ken Kesey.
Burroughs continues to be named as an influence by contemporary writers of fiction. Both the New Wave and, especially, the cyberpunk schools of science fiction, admirers from the late 1970s, early 1980s milieu of this sub-genre including William Gibson and John Shirley, to name only two. First published in 1982, the British slipstream fiction magazine (which later evolved into a more traditional science fiction magazine) Interzone paid tribute to him with its choice of name.
He is also cited as a major influence by musicians Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Pier Nine Brawl and Ian Curtis of the band Joy Division. 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's 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 themes of drugs, homosexuality and death, common to Burroughs'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, helped make homosexuality seem cool and highbrow, providing gay liberation with a delicious edge." Splatterpunk writer Poppy Z. Brite has also continuously referenced this aspect of Burroughs' work.
Burroughs's 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's works). This is an echo of the hospital scene in the movie Repo Man, made during Burroughs's lifetime, in which both Dr. Benway and Mr. Lee (a Burroughs pen name) are paged.
The song "Seven Souls" by Material, which features Burroughs, figured prominently in the 2006 season premiere episode of "The Sopranos" entitled "Members Only."
Burroughs was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in St. Louis, Missouri.
Appearances in media
Burroughs participated on numerous album releases by Giorno Poetry Systems, including The Nova Convention (also featuring Frank Zappa, John Cage and Philip Glass) and You're the Guy I Want to Spend My Money With (with John Giorno and Laurie Anderson). He featured doing a spoken word piece entitled "Sharkey's Night," on the Laurie Anderson album Mister Heartbreak. In addition, Burroughs provided vocal samples for the soundtrack of Anderson's 1986 concert film, Home of the Brave and cameoed in it. 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 also made an appearance in the video for "Just One Fix."
In 1968, an abbreviated version of the film Häxan (77 minutes as opposed to the original's 104 minutes) was released subtitled Witchcraft Through The Ages. This version featured an eclectic jazz score by Jean-Luc Ponty and dramatic narration by William S. Burroughs, produced by Anthony Balch.
Burroughs appeared in a number of cameos in films and videos, such as David Blair's Wax: or the Discovery of Television among the Bees, 1991,in which 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 (host: Lauren Hutton; musical guest: Rick James). The reading received mixed responses.
A documentary titled "Burroughs", directed by Howard Brookner, was released in 1984. It included footage of Burroughs and many of his friends and colleagues.
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 Burroughs's eyes. His scenes were filmed only a few weeks before his death.
In March 2006 the title track from the Material album Seven Souls, which features Burroughs, was played during the opening montage of the first episode of the sixth season of The Sopranos.
Burroughs narrated part of the 1980 documentary Shamans of the Blind Country by anthropologist and filmmaker Michael Oppitz. http://www.musethno.unizh.ch/de/publikationen/michael_oppitz.html
Notes
- Grauerholz, James. The Death of Joan Vollmer Burroughs: What Really Happened?. American Studies Department, University of Kansas. Online.
- Morgan, Ted. Literary Outlaw. New York: Avon, 1988.
- Queer, Penguin, 1985 p.xxiii
Bibliography
Novels and other long fiction
- Junkie (1953)- (ISBN 0-14-200316-6)
- Naked Lunch (1959) (ISBN 0-8021-3295-2)
- The Soft Machine (1961) (ISBN 0-8021-3329-0)
- The Ticket That Exploded (1962) (ISBN 0-8021-5150-7)
- Dead Fingers Talk (1963) - excerpts from Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded combined together to create a new narrative
- Nova Express (1964) (ISBN 0-8021-3330-4)
- The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969) (ISBN 1-55970-211-7)
- The Wild Boys: A Book Of The Dead (1971) (ISBN 0-8021-3331-2)
- Port of Saints (1973) (ISBN 0-912652-64-0)
- The Book of Breething (aka "Ah Pook Is Here") (1974)
- Blade Runner, a movie (1979) (ISBN 0-912652-46-2)
- Cities of the Red Night (1981) (ISBN 0-03-053976-5)
- The Place of Dead Roads (1983) (ISBN 0-312-27865-9)
- Queer (written 1951-3; published 1985) (ISBN 0-14-008389-8)
- The Western Lands (1987) (ISBN 0-14-009456-3)
- Ghost of Chance (1991) (ISBN 1-85242-457-5)
- My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995) (ISBN 0-14-009454-7)
Stories
- Valentine's Day Reading (1965)
- Time (1965)
- APO-33 (1966)
- So Who Owns Death TV? (1967)
- The Dead Star (1969)
- Ali's Smile (1971)
- Mayfair Academy Series More or Less (1973)
- White Subway (1973) - later included in The Burroughs File
- Exterminator! (1973) (ISBN 0-14-005003-5) (a different book than the 1960 volume)
- Snack... (ISBN 0-85652-014-4) (1975)
- Cobble Stone Gardens (1976) - later included in The Burroughs File
- Dr. Benway (1979)
- Die Alten Filme (The Old Movies) (1979) - later included in The Burroughs File
- Streets of Chance (1981)
- Early Routines (1981)
- Sinki's Sauna (1982)
- Ruski (1984)
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1984)
- The Cat Inside (1986)
- The Whole Tamale (c.1987-88)
- Interzone (1987) (ISBN 0-14-009451-2)
- Tornado Alley (1989)
- Seven Deadly Sins (1992)
- Paper Cloud; Thick Pages (1992)
Non fiction
- The Yage Letters (1963) (with Allen Ginsberg)
- The Job (1969) (ISBN 0-14-011882-9) (with Daniel Odier)
- Jack Kerouac (1970) (with Claude Pelieu)
- The Electronic Revolution (1971)
- The Retreat Diaries (1976) - later included in The Burroughs File
- Letters to Allen Ginsberg 1953-1957 (1976)
- Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs (2000) (ISBN 0-8021-3778-4)
- Evil River (scheduled for release February 28, 2007) (ISBN 0-670-81351-6)
Collections
- Roosevelt After Inauguration and Other Atrocities (1965)
- Ali's Smile/Naked Scientology (1978)
- Ah Pook is Here, Nova Express, Cities of the Red Night (1981) (ISBN 0-312-27846-2)
- The Burroughs File (1984)
- The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985) (ISBN 1-55970-210-9)
- Uncommon Quotes Vol. 1 (1989)
- Selected Letters (1993)
- Burroughs Live : The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, 1960-1997 (2000) (ISBN 1-58435-010-5)
- The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945-1959
- Word Virus : The William Burroughs Reader (1998) (ISBN 0-00-655214-5)
Collaborations
- And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (1945 - unpublished) (with Jack Kerouac)
- Minutes To Go (1960) (with Sinclair Beilles, Gregory Corso and Brion Gysin)
- The Exterminator (1960) (with Brion Gysin)
- Brion Gysin Let the Mice In (1973) (with Brion Gysin)
- Sidetripping (1975) (with Charles Gatewood)
- Colloque de Tangier (1976) (with Brion Gysin)
- The Third Mind (1977) (with Brion Gysin)
- Colloque de Tangier Vol. 2 (1979) (with Brion Gysin and Gérard-Georges Lemaire)
- Apocalypse (1988) (with Keith Haring)
Many of Burroughs's 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's death. An expanded edition of Yage Letters entitled Yage Letters Redux was published in April 2006.
Burroughs's son, William S. Burroughs Jr., also wrote two novels: Speed and Kentucky Ham. These books are often erroneously credited to his father.
Recordings (partial list)
- Call Me Burroughs (1965) - The English Bookshop, Paris (reissued in 1995 by Rhino Word Beat)
- The Nova Convention (1979) by Burroughs and others - LP GPS 14-15
- Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981) - LP Industrial Records IR0016
- You're the Guy I Want to Spend My Money With (1981) with John Giorno and Laurie Anderson - LP GPS 20-21 et al
- Mister Heartbreak (1984) by Laurie Anderson - Burroughs speaks the lyrics to the song "Sharkey's Night"
- Home of the Brave (1986) by Laurie Anderson - a sample of Burroughs intoning "Listen to my heart beat" is incorporated into the song "Late Show"
- Smack my Crack(1987) with Tom Waits and various artists
- Like A Girl I Want To Keep Coming (1989) by John Giorno - LP Giorno Poetry System
- Seven Souls (1989) by Material - Burroughs collaborates with Bill Laswell, later remixed in 1998 as The Road to the Western Lands
- Dead City Radio (1990) - Island Records
- the "Priest" they called him (1992) - Burroughs narrates and Kurt Cobain plays guitar
- Break Through In Grey Room (1992) - A collection of readings and cutups - Sub Rosa Records
- Just One Fix (1992) by Ministry - Burroughs speaks the lyrics to the song "Quick Fix" and created the cover art
- The Black Rider (1992) - Musical co-authored with Tom Waits and Robert Wilson, sings on "T'ain't No Sin"
- Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales (1993) - Island Records (features the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy)
- The Elvis of Letters (1995) with Gus van Sant
- 10%: file under Burroughs (1996) - 2 CD set; Disc one: "Beats" (dance music using Burroughs's voice and Brion Gysin); Disc two: "Beat" (acoustic sounds and voices)
- Songs in the Key of X (1996) - Burroughs performs with R.E.M. on "Star Me Kitten"
- Stoned Immaculate: The Music of the Doors (2000) - Burroughs reads poetry by Jim Morrison over music provided by The Doors on the track "Is Everybody In?"
References
- Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0 14 01 .5102 8 (pbk)
- 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.
- Gilmore, John. Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywod Death Trip. Searching for Rimbaud. Amok Books, 1997.
- Joe Ambrose, Terry Wilson, Frank Rynne. Man From Nowhere; Storming the Citadels of Enlightenment with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. 1992
External links
- Burroughs S-Press homepage.
- 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's 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
- Link to 1973 Oui article by William Burroughs on visiting Joujouka with Ornette Coleman, Hamri, Brion Gysin and Robert Palmer
- Brion Gysin, Tangier Beat Generation, Joe Ambrose, Joujouka
- Reporters Redacteurs d'Interzone
- Other Minds Archive: William Burroughs Press Conference at Berkeley Museum of Art on November 12, 1974 Streaming audio.
- Naropa Audio Archives: William S. Burroughs class on the technology and ethic of wishing (June twenty fifth, 1986) Streaming audio and 64 kbit/s MP3 ZIP file.
- Naropa Audio Archives: William S. Burroughs lecture on public discourse. (August eleventh, 1980) Streaming audio and 64 kbit/s MP3 ZIP file.
- Interzone Creations Creations inspired by Burroughs & Gysin's work.
- 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's 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
- 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
- Official Site of Underwires -- French band inspired by the work of William S. Burroughs.
- John Gilmore on William S Burroughs Paris 1959
- Please use a more specific IMDb template. See the documentation for available templates.
- William Burroughs Studies |In Psikeba
- Burroughs Book Covers A selection of worldwide front covers of books by William S. Burroughs
- Pictorial Map of The East Village---Featuring William Burroughs and other luminaries.
- Operation Overload - Phil Hine & Dave Lee take a look at William S. Burroughs' work
Video
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