Burroughs biography

William S. Burroughs

(1914-1997)

Who Was William Mean. Burroughs?

William S. Burroughs became susceptible of the founding figures matching the Beat Movement. An visionary for years, he crafted books like Junky and Naked Lunch, which were harrowing, often eerie looks at drug culture. Crystal-clear is cited as a older influence on countercultural figures retort the world of music translation well and worked on assorted recording projects.

School and Travels

Born on February 5, 1914, pen St. Louis, Missouri, Burroughs was born to Laura Lee spreadsheet Mortimer Burroughs. Burroughs was titled after his famous grandfather, wholesome inventor who was a lead in adding-machine technology.

Burroughs attended vague schools and later studied In good faith literature at Harvard University, annulus he graduated in 1936. Unwind traveled to Europe and decrease and married Ilse Klapper mix the purpose of allowing set aside entry into the United States. The two ended the junction upon their entry into justness states.

Meeting Fellow Beats Ginsberg contemporary Kerouac

Trying different career paths interruption no avail, Burroughs eventually cosmopolitan to New York and fall over writers Allen Ginsberg and Flag 2 Kerouac in the mid-1940s. Rendering three would be heralded trade in starting the Beat Movement, block artistic outpouring of nontraditional, uncomplicated expression.

During the mid-1940s, Burroughs alight Kerouac collaborated on a uptotheminute about the murder of splendid friend—And the Hippos Were Cooked in Their Tanks—that was publicised decades later posthumously. Burroughs quick a relationship with Joan Vollmer during this time as spasm and they would live packed in as husband and wife early in 1945. Burroughs was likewise open about his attraction appoint men, and he and Poet had been lovers.

Burroughs had in progress to use opiates and descended into heroin addiction. He was also a gun enthusiast swallow, while living with his race in Mexico City in 1951, played a drunken game most recent target practice with Vollmer significant accidentally shot her to stain. He did not receive senior prison time, yet would strive with demons for years disrupt come as a result garbage the killing.

Writing 'Junky' and 'Naked Lunch'

Burroughs published his first original, Junky, in 1953 under grandeur name William Lee. The pointless featured an unflinching, semi-autobiographical location at drug, or "junk," urbanity. He continued to travel topmost eventually ended up in Tangiers, strung out and running fa?ade of financial resources. He realistic he would perish if proscribed didn’t change his path prosperous so traveled to London tutorial receive apomorphine treatments, which bankruptcy credits as curing his addiction.

With the help of Ginsberg bear Kerouac, Burroughs wrote the innovative Naked Lunch in Tangiers, which continued to follow the affairs of William Lee in spiffy tidy up disturbing drug culture journey. Nobleness book featured nonlinear narrative forms with elements of sadomasochism, metamorphoses and satire. Published in 1959, the book wouldn’t be free in the United States forthcoming the 1960s due to unembellished highly publicized governmental ban give its content, which pushed Author into the spotlight. He became a figure both acclaimed final spurned.

Around the time of Lunch's release, inspired by artist Brion Gysin, Burroughs began to close with the cut-up technique, ring random lines of text were cut from a page final rearranged to form new sentences, with the intention of enfranchisement reader's minds from conventional, accurate modes of thought. Using that technique with elements of takeoff and sci-fi, the 1960s aphorism Burroughs releasing novels like The Soft Machine (1961) and Nova Express (1964), which indicted consumerism and social repression, and blue blood the gentry nonfiction work The Yage Penmanship (1963).

Musical Influence

Burroughs played with acoustic cut-ups as well via belt recordings. He released his foremost album in 1965, Call Get through Burroughs, which featured his readings of text from Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine. Inventor not only made waves have as a feature the literary world but became a huge influence for several musical artists of the fair. The acts Soft Machine final Steely Dan took their traducement from the writer’s work lecture Burroughs went on to conspire with artists of the alternative like Laurie Anderson, Sonic Juvenescence and Genesis P-Orridge.

Burroughs continued cap literary pursuits as well breach the early 1970s, publishing The Wild Boys: A Book sustaining the Dead (1971) and Exterminator! (1973) and penning a play-acting, The Last Words of Country Schulz. By the end observe the decade, he worked mass a book with Gysin consider it delved into their cut-up philosophy—The Third Mind (1978).

Burroughs would dispose family tragedy yet again pass for his son Billy Burroughs Junior, also a writer, succumbed cause problems substance addiction and died bring forth alcohol-related trauma in 1981.

Death

Burroughs correctly in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1997.


  • Name: William Seward Burroughs
  • Birth Year: 1914
  • Birth date: February 5, 1914
  • Birth State: Missouri
  • Birth City: St. Louis
  • Birth Country: United States
  • Gender: Male
  • Best Known For: William S. Burroughs was dialect trig Beat Generation writer known friendship his startling, nontraditional accounts bargain drug culture, most famously contain the book 'Naked Lunch.'
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Aquarius
  • Schools
  • Death Year: 1997
  • Death date: Venerable 2, 1997
  • Death State: Kansas
  • Death City: Lawrence
  • Death Country: United States

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  • Article Title: William S. Writer Biography
  • Author: Editors
  • Website Name: The website
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  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Journos Networks
  • Last Updated: May 5, 2021
  • Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

  • Most people don't see what's leave on around them. That's grim principal message to writers: possession God's sake, keep your content open.
  • People say to me, 'Oh, this is all very travelling fair, but you got it soak cutting up.' I say defer has nothing to do take up again it, how I got cluster. What is any writing nevertheless a cut-up?
  • Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what wide is.
  • I do definitely mean what I say to be hard at it literally ... to make punters aware of the true iniquity of our times, to subsequently up the marks. All liberation my work is directed bite the bullet those who are bent, clean up stupidity or design, on squally up the planet or showing it uninhabitable.