William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II (1914–1997) was an American writer of experimental novels that evoke, in deliberately erratic prose, a nightmarish, sometimes wildly humorous world.[1] His sexual explicitness (he was an avowed and outspoken homosexual) and the frankness with which he dealt with his experiences as a drug addict won him a following among writers of the Beat movement.[1] Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", while J. G. Ballard considered him "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War".[4]

Early Life and Education

Burroughs was the grandson of the inventor of the Burroughs adding machine and grew up in St. Louis in comfortable circumstances.[1] Born on February 5th, 1914, to a wealthy family, his family's money would go on to protect him during some of the more challenging times of his life.[5] He grew up in patrician surroundings and attended private school in Los Alamos, New Mexico, chosen due to the climate as he suffered from sinus trouble.[7] He dropped out of his private boys' school in New Mexico two months before graduation because of depression brought on by rejection by another boy. The Los Alamos Ranch School was subsequently purchased by the U.S. government and turned into a research site for the building of the first atomic bomb.[10]

Burroughs graduated from Harvard University in 1936 and continued study there in archaeology and ethnology.[1] He took his undergraduate degree at Harvard College (Class of 1936) but rebelled inwardly against the life that the upper-class Harvard man was supposed to lead during the pre-war period.[7] As a youth Burroughs says he found himself alienated from a suburban social environment perceived as both boring and hostile. He felt his homosexuality was only part of the reason for his alienation, not the sole cause. Timid and solitary, he turned to extensive reading for solace and dreamed of becoming a writer.[10]

Key Influences and Mentors

In 1943 Burroughs moved to New York City, where he became friends with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, two writers who would become principal figures in the Beat movement.[1] Burroughs eventually traveled to New York and met writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in the mid-1940s. The three would be heralded as starting the Beat Movement, an artistic outpouring of nontraditional, free expression.[2]

Burroughs discovered the cut up in 1959 in Paris through his friend Brion Gysin, a painter. When Gysin began experimenting with cut ups in his own work, Burroughs immediately saw the similarity to the juxtaposition technique he had used in Naked Lunch and began extensive experiments with text.[15] Although Burroughs has credited Gysin with discovering the cut up, he has also acknowledged similar literary experiments in the works of Tzara, Stein, Eliot, and Dos Passos.[15]

Professional Development and Writing Career

Having tired of the academic world, he then held a variety of jobs.[1] Burroughs first took morphine about 1944, and he soon became addicted to heroin.[1] Burroughs had started to use opiates and descended into heroin addiction.[2]

He used the pen name William Lee in his first published book, Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict (1953, reissued as Junky in 1977), an account of the addict's life.[1] The work featured an unflinching, semi-autobiographical look at drug, or "junk," culture.[2]

With the help of Ginsberg and Kerouac, Burroughs wrote the novel Naked Lunch in Tangiers, which continued to follow the exploits of William Lee in a disturbing drug culture journey. The book featured nonlinear narrative forms with elements of sadomasochism, metamorphoses and satire.[2] Published in 1959, the book wouldn't be released in the United States until the 1960s due to a highly publicized governmental ban over its content, which pushed Burroughs into the spotlight.[2]

Personal Life

Burroughs developed a relationship with Joan Vollmer during this time as well and they would live together as husband and wife starting in 1945.[2] Burroughs was also open about his attraction to men, and he and Ginsberg had been lovers.[2]

In 1949 he moved with his second wife to Mexico, where in 1951 he accidentally shot and killed her in a drunken prank.[1] In 1951 Burroughs and his common-law wife Joan got drunk at a party in Mexico City, where they were living. They decided to do a "William Tell" act with Joan balancing a glass on her head and Burroughs shooting it off with a gun. He missed and Joan was killed.[7]

After Vollmer's death, Burroughs wrote many of his most famous works. In his novel Queer, he said "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death," which is now one of the most famous William S Burroughs quotes.[5]

Burroughs would face family tragedy yet again as his son Billy Burroughs Jr., also a writer, succumbed to substance addiction and died from alcohol-related trauma in 1981.[2]

Literary Innovation and the Cut-Up Technique

William S. Burroughs' cut-up technique, a method of rearranging text to create new meaning, has left a significant mark on literature and various art forms. Originating in the early 1960s, this innovative approach involves taking a written text, cutting it into pieces, and then rearranging these pieces to form a new composition.[11]

In the article 'The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin' (1961 / 1978), author William Burroughs explains how to cut-up a text: "The method is simple. Now cut down the middle and cross the middle.[16] Now rearrange the sections placing section four with section one and section two with section three. And you have a new page."

With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–1964).[4] This technique, rooted in earlier artistic movements like Dadaism, introduced an element of randomness and unpredictability into the creative process. Burroughs, influenced by his friend Brion Gysin, used the cut-up method extensively, challenging traditional narrative structures and uncovering hidden meanings within texts.[11]

Major Works and Literary Output

Across five decades, Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories, four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews.[6] He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his infamous "Shotgun Art".[6]

In 1952, Burroughs wrote a novel entitled Queer, though it was not published until 1985. The novel was so explicit and controversial that it could not be published when it was first written. It is primarily set in Mexico City around the time of Vollmer's death, though it focuses on Burroughs' interest in men, as the title suggests.[5]

Recognition and Legacy

In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France.[4] By the late 1970s Burroughs had lived long enough to be hailed by critics and the public as a major American writer. He was embraced by punk rockers in New York and became an iconic figure by the 1980s.[7]

"The importance of Burroughs's writing is undeniable," wrote Lewis in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Robert Cohen of the New York Times Book Review called Burroughs "arguably the most influential American prose writer of the last forty years."[10]

Relationship to William Gibson and Cyberpunk

The influence of the American writer William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) on artists from different backgrounds is well documented today. Few artists, however, have gone beyond the stage of simple influence to truly work to extend his work and take it in new directions. My work consisted in studying the works of two artists who made precisely this choice: the American writer William Gibson and the English musician, performer and essayist, Genesis P-Orridge.[19]

Concordances have rapidly been established by the critique between Gibson's corpus and the texts of William Burroughs. Thomas P. Dunn writes, in 1991, that Naked Lunch should perhaps be read as an introduction to Gibson's novelistic work, Burroughs' novel being, according to Dani Cavallaro, "a vital influence behind cyberpunk."[18]

The thesis also made it possible to demonstrate the investment, by William Gibson, of the Burroughsian cut-up technique (a technique which consists in cutting up texts before replacing the fragments thus obtained in a different order and generating sentences and a new texts) in order, on the one hand, to build a world which seems to be elaborated from perpetual restarts, and on the other hand to propose an alternative to the absolutism of the Word.[22]

Several years ago I spoke to the novelist William Gibson about Burroughs, and he said he believed that in deep time the writer might come to be remembered mainly as a spoken word artist.[23]

Later Years and Death

Fleeing Mexico, he wandered through the Amazon region of South America, continuing his experiments with drugs, a period of his life detailed in The Yage Letters, his correspondence with Ginsberg written in 1953 but not published until 1963, and the novel Queer (1985; film 2024). Between travels he lived in London, Paris, Tangier, and New York City but in 1981 settled in Lawrence, Kansas.[1]

In 1974, after having traveled and lived in such places and Tangiers, Paris, and London, Burroughs moved back to New York City where he obtained a position at the City College of New York teaching creative writing.[3]

Burroughs died in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1997 at the age of 83.[2][7] At the time of his death in 1997, Burroughs was keeping a journal, which was published posthumously as Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs. His passing brought a reassessment of his life and his works.[10]