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Fwd: Author William S. Burroughs Dies

I found this unfortunate news item in my mailbox tonight.

--Bob Farace


---------------------
Forwarded message:
Subj:    Author William S. Burroughs Dies
Date:    97-08-02 23:18:44 EDT
From:    AOL News

<HTML><PRE><I>.c The Associated Press</I></PRE></HTML>

      By MARIA SUDEKUM
      KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - William S. Burroughs, the stone-faced
godfather of the ``Beat generation'' whose experimental novel
``Naked Lunch'' unleashed an underground world that defied
narration, died Saturday. He was 83.
      Burroughs died at 6:50 p.m. in Lawrence, Kan., at Lawrence
Memorial Hospital, about 24 hours after suffering a heart attack,
said Ira Silverberg, his longtime New York publicist.
      ``The passing of William Burroughs leaves us with few great
American writers. His presence in the American literary landscape
was unparalleled,'' Silverberg said.
      Published in 1959, ``The Naked Lunch'' used unconventional
writing techniques to depict an underground world fighting a
technological society that was self destructing.
      ``The Naked Lunch'' was both praised as literary genius and
dismissed as indecipherable garbage because Burroughs wrote it
without standard narrative prose, used abrupt transitions, placed
the chapters in random order and wrote in a stream-of-conciousness
style.
      The book also was the subject of a precedent-setting obscenity
trial because of its violence and explicit sex. Publishers
eventually won an appeal in Boston, and the book was published in
the United States in 1962.
      ``Naked Lunch,'' which prompted Norman Mailer to say Burroughs
was possibly the most talented writer in America, made Burroughs
famous as a spokesman for the Beat generation.
      Burroughs continued his unconventional style by using a
technique called cut-ups in subsequent books, including ``The Soft
Machine'' (1961), ``The Ticket that Exploded'' (1962), and ``Nova
Express'' (1964). Cut-ups involved random cutting and pasting and
folding into his own writing quotations from other authors,
newspapers and other media.
      Burroughs was an important influence on other Beat writers such
as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who were fledging writers when
they met Burroughs in New York in the 1940s.
      The three are now considered the core of the Beat movement,
which flourished in the 1950s by condemning middle-class life and
praising individualism. Kerouac's ``On the Road,'' Ginsberg's
``Howl'' and Burroughs' ``The Naked Lunch,'' are generally
considered the most important works to come out of the movement.
      ```Naked Lunch' was pretty much the essence of his work,'' said
Morris Dickstein, a professor of English at City University of New
York. ``It came out when writers were trying to do something new to
explore the irrational side of the mind, to try and get away from
conventional techniques.''
      Born in 1914 in St. Louis, Burroughs was the grandson and
namesake of the inventor of the adding machine, but he said that
his parents were not wealthy and were rejected by the city's elite.
      Burroughs was educated at the John Burroughs School and Taylor
School, both in St. Louis, and at a prep school in Los Alamos, N.M.
He received a bachelor's degree in English from Harvard University
in 1936 and did some graduate work in ethnology and archeology.
      After moving to New York City, Burroughs developed a heroin
addiction and was a junkie for about 15 years. During this period
he lived in Texas, New Orleans, Mexico City, South America,
Northern Africa, Paris and London. He did little writing at the
time, but his experiences were the fodder for many of his books.
      He married a German-Jewish refugee, but only to enable the woman
to emigrate to the United States. They were divorced in 1946. The
same year, Burroughs entered into a common law marriage with Joan
Vollmer.
      In later years, Burroughs acknowledged he was homosexual and
said Vollmer was the only woman with whom he ever had a serious
relationship.
      Burroughs' life was changed forever in 1951 when, after a day of
drinking and drugs, he accidentally shot and killed Vollmer.
Burroughs, who always had a penchant for guns, said he was trying
to shoot a glass off his wife's head and instead shot her in the
forehead.
      In a biography published in 1982, ``Literary Outlaw,'' Burroughs
said that shooting led to his becoming a serious writer.
      ``I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never
have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of
the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my
writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a
constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death
of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit and
maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have had no
choice except to write my way out.''
      Burroughs was charged with the equivalent of involuntary
manslaughter and fled Mexico.
      The couple had a son, Bill Jr., in 1947. He was an alcoholic and
drug addict who died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1981.
      Burroughs essentially disappeared from the literary scene while
living in London in the early 1970s. His influence began to grow
again when, at Ginsberg's urging, he returned to New York City in
1974.
      Shortly after his return, Burroughs met James Grauerholz, who
became his secretary and began renewing Burroughs' career by
scheduling readings across the country and in Europe.
      Burroughs continued to influence artists and musicians through
the hippies of the 1960s and the punks of the 1970s. Musicians such
as David Bowie, Lou Reed and Patti Smith have cited Burroughs as an
important influence.
      ``He gave them techniques to get inside the dark side of the
mind,'' said Dickstein, who wrote a book on the 1960s called
``Gates of Eden.'' ``He explored the fantastic, the irrational, so
he freed them from a pretty rational form of literary narration.''
      Burroughs began using drugs again and Grauerholz, who went to
school at the University of Kansas, persuaded Burroughs to move to
Lawrence, Kan., in 1981.
      Burroughs began to write more conventional narratives after his
move to Kansas, including ``Place of the Dead Roads,'' in 1984, and
``The Western Lands,'' in 1987.
      He also began a second career as a visual artist, as well as
writing screenplays, appearing in films (``Drugstore Cowboy'' and
``Twister''), writing an opera text, and even appearing in a Nike
television ad.
      ``In the last few years, he became a figure that people looked
up to as a pioneer of the avant garde,'' said Dickstein. ``He
became an elder statesman for a lot of people.''
      AP-NY-08-02-97 2312EDT
      <HTML><PRE><I><FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=2> Copyright 1997 The
Associated Press.  The information 
contained in the AP news report may not be published, 
broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without 
prior written authority of The Associated Press.<FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE=3>
</I></PRE></HTML>


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