William S. Burroughs

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“The Coming Together Of People I Find Obscene As A Principle. It Is Not Human.”

January 11, 2016 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

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So sad to hear of the death of David Bowie, one of the great creative minds of his era and a constant reader. Rolling Stone, the magazine that today publishes Sean Penn’s jungle flatulence, sat Bowie and William S. Burroughs down for a chat in 1974. The two artists may have arrived at a similar place, but they sure came to it from different angles, the rock star as the man who fell to Earth and the writer seemingly escaped from the planet’s core like a mole. In a section that begins with the Ziggy Stardust backstory, Bowie ultimately voices concerns about the Global Village in much the same way that Marshall McLuhan had. An excerpt:

William S. Burroughs:

Where did this Ziggy idea come from, and this five-year idea? Of course, exhaustion of natural resources will not develop the end of the world. It will result in the collapse of civilization. And it will cut down the population by about three-quarters.

David Bowie:

Exactly. This does not cause the end of the world for Ziggy. The end comes when the infinites arrive. They really are a black hole, but I’ve made them people because it would be very hard to explain a black hole on stage.

William S. Burroughs:

Yes, a black hole on stage would be an incredible expense. And it would be a continuing performance, first eating up Shaftesbury Avenue.

David Bowie:

Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a starman, so he writes ‘Starman’, which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch on to it immediately. The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village. They don’t have a care in the world and are of no possible use to us. They just happened to stumble into our universe by black-hole jumping. Their whole life is travelling from universe to universe. In the stage show, one of them resembles Brando, another one is a Black New Yorker. I even have one called Queenie the Infinite Fox.

Now Ziggy starts to believe in all this himself and thinks himself a prophet of the future starman. He takes himself up to incredible spiritual heights and is kept alive by his disciples. When the infinites arrive, they take bits of Ziggy to make themselves real because in their original state they are anti-matter and cannot exist in our world. And they tear him to pieces on stage during the song ‘Rock ‘n’ roll suicide’. As soon as Ziggy dies on stage the infinites take his elements and make themselves visible. It is a science fiction fantasy of today and this is what literally blew my head off when I read Nova Express, which was written in 1961. Maybe we are the Rodgers and Hammerstein of the seventies, Bill!

William S. Burroughs:

Yes, I can believe that. The parallels are definitely there, and it sounds good.

David Bowie:

I must have the total image of a stage show. It has to be total with me. I’m just not content writing songs, I want to make it three-dimensional. Songwriting as an art is a bit archaic now. Just writing a song is not good enough.

William S. Burroughs:

It’s the whole performance. It’s not like somebody sitting down at the piano and just playing a piece.

Bowie: A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle. The rock stars have assimilated all kinds of philosophies, styles, histories, writings, and they throw out what they have gleaned from that.

William S. Burroughs:

The revolution will come from ignoring the others out of existence.

David Bowie:

Really. Now we have people who are making it happen on a level faster than ever. People who are into groups like Alice Cooper, The New York Dolls and Iggy Pop, who are denying totally and irrevocably the existence of people who are into The Stones and The Beatles. The gap has decreased from twenty years to ten years.

William S. Burroughs:

The escalating rate of change. The media are really responsible for most of this. Which produces an incalculable effect.

David Bowie:

Once upon a time, even when I was 13 or 14, for me it was between 14 and 40 that you were old. Basically. But now it is 18-year-olds and 26-year-olds – there can be incredible discrepancies, which is really quite alarming. We are not trying to bring people together, but to wonder how much longer we’ve got. It would be positively boring if minds were in tune. I’m more interested in whether the planet is going to survive.

William S. Burroughs:

Actually, the contrary is happening; people are getting further and further apart.

David Bowie:

The idea of getting minds together smacks of the flower power period to me. The coming together of people I find obscene as a principle. It is not human. It is not a natural thing as some people would have us believe.•

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“Did I Ever Tell You About The Time I Performed An Appendectomy With A Rusty Sardine Can?”

February 2, 2015 in Books, Videos | Permalink

William S. Burroughs reading in 1981 from Naked Lunch on Saturday Night Live, the rare pleasing moment during the the show’s most arid patch, those years when Tony Rosato could be a cast member and Robert Urich a host. Lauren Hutton intros him.

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“The Damage To Health From Addiction Is Minimal”

May 16, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

William S. Burroughs, in 1977, offering questionable advice regarding drugs, though, in all fairness, he had conducted a great deal of field research. Heroin use certainly didn’t diminish his powers with Junky. The prose is flawless.

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“He Sought Out Many ‘Cures’ For His Problems”

May 21, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

William S. Burroughs was more deeply involved in Scientology than we know according to a new book by David S. Wills. The writer just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit on the topic. A few passages follow.

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Question:

What initially brought Burroughs to the Scientologists? 

David S. Wills:

Well that’s the first half of the book right there… In a nutshell, he was a deeply disturbed man. He was abused as a child, troubled by his homosexuality, accidentally killed his wife, and was hooked on drugs for decades. He sought out many “cures” for his problems and despite being obviously intelligent in many ways, was incredibly gullible. Ultimately, he came to Scientology for a magic fix, and for a while, he actually believed he was getting it. In fact, as late as 1994 (3 yrs prior to his death) he was convinced of some of its merits.

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Question:

I heard many rumors that scientology cures you of being gay that many high profile celebrities join to get cured of gay. Any truth to that?

David S. Wills:

Long ago, L. Ron Hubbard listed homosexuals as among the lowest forms of human beings (this has subsequently been changed in his books). I have no idea about the rumors of other celebrities… but it is highly likely that Burroughs sought a “cure” for his homosexuality in Scientology. He went through periods of feeling it was a handicap and remarked on a number of occasions that Scientology (temporarily) cured him of various “handicaps”.

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Question:

What is a misconceptions that you had about Scientology that later changed?

David S. Wills:

I thought that the whole Xenu/space opera thing was of more importance. The tabloids and South Park really play it up, but it didn’t get incorporated until later, and even then it was for the high-level members. Really, for the average Scientologist, that wasn’t even a part of it.

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Question:

Did they try to convert you?

David S. Wills:

No. Most Scientologists and ex-Scientologists I talked to were pretty open but not pushy. They were willing to explain concepts but not force them upon me. Interestingly, I did speak to someone who had letters from a Scientologist who’d used Burroughs to convert young people in the 60s.

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“This Is The First Time I’ve Ever Had Hare”

December 11, 2012 in Videos | Permalink

Rivaling dinner with Andre and breakfast with Blassie: William S. Burroughs and Andy Warhol eat rabbit in 1980. (Thanks Biblioklept.)

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“How Could Electrodes Improve Sex?”

October 10, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Bibliokept, a prescient if utopian passage about the intersection of sex and technology from a 1972 Penthouse interview with William S. Burroughs:

“Penthouse:

How could electrodes improve sex?

William S. Burroughs:

Well, socially, first of all. Here’s one person over here and another person over here, and they want something sexually but they can’t get together and society will see that they don’t. That’s why the law persecuted magazines carrying advertisements for sex partners. But advertisements are a crude method; the whole process could be done on a computer. Perhaps people could be brought together on terms of having reciprocal brainwaves. Everyone could be provided through the computer with someone else who was completely sexually compatible. But it’s more important than this. If the human species is going to mutate in any way, then the mutations must come through sex–how else could they? And sooner or later the species must mutate or it dies out.”

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“His Attunement To Contemporary Language Is Probably Unequaled In American Writing”

July 3, 2011 in Books, Excerpts | Permalink

One literary outlaw opined on another in Terry Southern’s 1964 piece about William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. An excerpt:

“The element of humor in Naked Lunch is one of the book’s great moral strengths, whereby the existentialist sense of the absurd is taken towards an informal conclusion. It is an absolutely devastating ridicule of all that is false, primitive, and vicious in current American life: the abuses of power, hero worship, aimless violence, materialistic obsession, intolerance, and every form of hypocrisy. No one, for example, has written with such eloquent disgust about capital punishment; throughout Naked Lunch recur sequences to portray the unfathomable barbarity of a “civilization” which can countenance this ritual. There is only one way, of course, to ridicule capital punishment—and that is by exaggerating its circumstances, increasing its horror, accentuating the animal irresponsibility of those involved, insisting that the monstrous deed be witnessed (and in Technicolor, so to speak) by all concerned. Burroughs is perhaps the first modern writer to seriously attempt this; he is certainly the first to have done so with such startling effectiveness. Social analogy and parallels of this sort abound in Naked Lunch, but one must never mistake this author’s work for political comment, which, as in all genuine art, is more instinctive than deliberate—for Burroughs is first and foremost a poet. His attunement to contemporary language is probably unequaled in American writing. Anyone with a feeling for English phrase at its most balanced, concise, and arresting cannot fail to see this excellence.”

Another Terry Southern post:

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William S. Burroughs Shooting Shakespeare (1995)

April 7, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“He’s dead, man.”

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“Getting Drugs In Mexico Was Quite Easy, So I Didn’t Have To Rush Around”

January 10, 2011 in Books, Excerpts | Permalink

Burroughs published "Junky" under the pen name "William Lee" in 1953. (Image by Christiaan Tonnis.)

I have zero interest in drugs, but I think William S. Burroughs’ first novel, Junky, is pretty much perfect writing, even though he wasn’t particularly enamored with this work. In a 1965 Paris Review Q&A, a chain-smoking Burroughs recalled how the writing of Junky came about. An excerpt:

“Interviewer: When and why did you start to write?

Burroughs: I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn’t seem to be any strong motivation. I was simply endeavoring to put down in a straightforward, journalistic style something about my experiences with addiction and addicts.

Interviewer: Why did you feel compelled to record these experiences?

Burroughs: I didn’t feel compelled. I had nothing else to do. Writing gave me something to do every day. I don’t feel the results were at all spectacular. Junky is not much of a book, actually. I knew very little about writing at that time.

Interviewer: Where was this?

Burroughs: In Mexico City. I was living near Sears, Roebuck, right around the corner from the University of Mexico. I had been in the Army for four or five months and I was there on the GI Bill, studying native dialects. I went to Mexico partly because things were becoming so difficult with the drug situation in America. Getting drugs in Mexico was quite easy, so I didn’t have to rush around, and there wasn’t any pressure from the law.”

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Great Photography: William S. Burroughs’ Belongings

January 18, 2010 in Photography | Permalink

Don't make me give you a lethal karate blow. (Image courtesy of Christiaan Tonnis.)

The always wonderful boingboing tipped me off to a group of immaculate photos by Peter Ross of the personal effects left behind by the late, great writer William S. Burroughs. For whatever reason, I always find it interesting to look at the typewriters of authors who lived before the advent of word processing. I wonder if people in the future will look back fondly at the laptops that writers use today. Since most people trade in their computers for new models every few years, it’s unlikely. Back in the day, writers often clung to their hunt-and-peck machines like they were talismans. Also: Is anyone surprised that Burroughs walked around in shoes that had holes in them, possessed an air pistol and blow darts or owned candles shaped like skulls? And of course he had a copy of The Medical Implications of Karate Blows.

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