William S Burroughs profile picture

William S Burroughs

she used me like an ashtray heart...

About Me


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William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997)
"America is not a young land: it was old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting..."
I was a writer, social critic, painter and spoken word performer. Much of my work was semi-autobiographical, drawn from my experiences as an opiate addict, a condition which marked most of my life. I am often mistaken as an icon of the Beat Generation, although I never really felt comfortable identifying with any particular literary group. I am widely regarded as an avant-garde author who influenced popular culture and literature, and yet many critics claimed that my subject matter was disgusting and beyond inappropriate. If I were to sum up my so-called importance as a writer, I could say that I offered some alternatives to the problems of post-structuralism. I initiated a few discussions on addiction, and offered and promoted various solutions for the disease. I also tried to make clear my contempt for the rampant systems of control; my work seeks to release the human condition from those forms of control through pursuit of exterminating the word/junk/image virus.
I was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1984 and I wore my lapel pin until my death in 1997.
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I miss my cats
Thinking back to early adolescence, I recall a recurrent sesation of cuddling some creature against my chest. It is quite small, about the size of a cat. It is not a human baby and it is not an animal. Not exactly. It is part human and part something else. I can recall an occasion in the house at Price Road. I must be twelve or thirteen. I wonder what it is...a squirrel...not quite. I can't see it clearly. I don't know what it needs. I do know that it trusts me completely...
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Kim shoots a hole in the sky. Blackness pours out and darkens the earth. In the last rays of a painted sun, a Johnson holds up a barbed-wire fence for others to slip through. The fence has snagged the skyline...a great black rent. Screaming crowds point to the torn sky...
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My Interests

wild boys - martinis - shotguns - the amazon - tickets that explode - amateur surgery - exterminating word virus - eliminating addiction - defending interzone agents - erasing the word - turkish bath - james and michael - methadone - tangier - avoiding annexia - cannibis - my clark nova - cats - yage - correspondence - sweatlodge - mexico city - specialty canes for self defense - old croaker write like a major - collage - radioactivity - plunger down real tasty like - panorama of the city of interzone - gas flames - new orleans is a dead museum -

I'd like to meet:

Folks who know how to mind their own business...
Bring together state of news - Inquire onward from state to doer - Who monopolized Immortality? Who monopolized Cosmic Consciousness? Who monopolized Love Sex and Dream? Who monopolized Life Time and Fortune? Who took you from what is yours? Now they will give it all back? Did they ever give anything away for nothing? Did they ever give any more than they had to give? Did they not always take back what they gave when possible and it always was? Listen: Their Garden of Delights is a terminal sewer - I have been at some pains to map this area of terminal sewage in the so called pornographic sections of Naked Lunch and Soft Machine - Their Immortality Cosmic Consciounsness and Love is second-run grade-B shit - Their drugs are poison designed to beam in Orgasm Death and Nova Ovens - Stay out of the Garden of Delights - It is a man-eating trap that ends in green goo - Throw back their ersatz Immortality - It will fall apart before you can get out of The Big Store - Flush their drug kicks down the drain - They are poisioning and without any chemical corn - All that they offer is a screen to cover retreat from the colony they have so disgracefully mis-managed. To cover travel arrangements so they will never have to pay the constituents they have betrayed and sold out. Once the arrangements are complete they will blow the place up behind them.
Paregoric Babies of the World Unite. We have nothing to lose but Our Pushers. And THEY are NOT NECESSARY.
Look down LOOK DOWN along that junk road before you travel there and get in with the Wrong Mob...
A word to the wise guy.
-W.S.B.

Music:

Heavy Metal Be Bop - Patti Smith - Lou Reed - Jelly Roll Morton - Steely Dan (I invented phrase) - Soft Machine (ditto...) - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Moby - Fats Waller - Butthole Surfers - Brian Eno - Ornette Coleman - Throbbing Gristle - Ennio Morricone - Minutemen - Greenlief/Amendola duo - Duke Ellington - Tricky - Diamanda Galas - John Zorn - Painkiller - Albert Ayler - Morphine - Pole - Kryzystof Penderecki - Ruins - Son House - Ikue Mori - Coil - Lightnin' Hopkins - Ottomo Yoshihide - Carl Stone - Splatter Trio

Movies:

Anything by: Samuel Fuller - Pier Paolo Pasolini - John Waters - David Lynch - David Cronenberg - Peter Greenaway - Fritz Lang - Roman Polanski - Georges Franju - Alexandro Jodorovsky - John Huston - Gus Van Zant - Catherine Breillat - Jean Pierre Melville - Derek Jarman - Pedro Almodovar - Nicolas Rogue - Rainer Werner Fassbinder - David Lean - Stanley Kubrick - Stan Brackhage - Man Ray - Jean Cocteau - Luis Bunuel - Maya Deren - Quentin Tarantino - Andrei Tarkovsky - Michelangelo Antonioni

photo by gus van zant

Television:

worthless endeavor - waste of incandescence - transmission fade to black - explode nova mob message - record signal run it through multiple tape recorders - erase main line - flying scorpion men sank needles in empty flesh - garden of delights breed orgasm death - cut off nova junk lines - junk is image - the effects of junk can easily be produced and concentrated in sound and image track - erase the signal - eliminate word virus - without you i beyond pavement - combat troops in area - on all the living and the dead - outskirts of mexico city - plunger down -

Books:

Mine?
Well, OK:
Queer
Junkie
Exterminator
Early Routines
Naked Lunch
The Soft Machine
The Ticket That Exploded
Nova Express
The Wild Boys
Electronic Revolution
White Subway
Last Words of Dutch Shultz
The Job
Ali's Smile
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
The Adding Machine (essays)
Port of Saints
Cobble Stone Gardens
The Retreat Diaries
The Yage Letters
Ah Pook is Here (and other texts)
Cities of the Red Night
Place of Dead Roads
The Western Lands
My Education
The Cat Inside
The Third Mind
Interzone
Dead Fingers Talk
The Burroughs File
Letters to Allen Ginsberg
Letters, Volume 1 (1945-1951)
Word Virus (The William S. Burroughs Reader)
Tornado Alley
The Seven Deadly Sins
Ghost of Chance
Painting and Guns
The Junkie's Christmas and other Yuletide Stories
Paper Cloud, Thick Pages
Last Words
I may have forgotten a few...my memory isn't what it used to be...

Heroes:

Joan Lee, Marquis De Sade, James Grauerholz, William Seward Hall, Brion Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, all the Indians and all the Green Boys, Rabelais, Inspector Lee of the Nova Police, Joe the Dead, Jim McCrary, Jacques Derrida, Gary Cooper, Roland Barthes, Hassan i Sabbah, Michael Emerton, Jean Genet, Barry Miles, David Cronenberg, James Joyce, Julia Kristeva, Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Alva Starr, Marbles, Boy Jones, Mike Chase, Frank the Lip, Odor Eaters of Tibetan Mythology, Gregory Corso, William Tell, The Johnson Family, Doc Benway, Samuel Beckett, Kim Carsons, Michael Portman, Mr. Bradly, Mr. Martin, John Cage, Laurie Anderson, Peter Orlovsky, Denton Welch, Angela Davis, Paul Bowles, Alan Ansen, The Effects Boys - Uranian Willy - Kiki

burroughs with brion gysin

My Blog

Regarding Invitations

Dear Friends, Every day I receive several invitations to join discussion groups. Thank you for your invitations, but I hardly have time to visit MySpace - I still have many duties in the Western Lands...
Posted by William S Burroughs on Sun, 11 Feb 2007 02:05:00 PST

journal entry .16: moms (updated 2/11/07)

Everyone has a mom. This is mine...her name is Margaret. If you are a frequent visitor here on my blog, you'll know she's about to move out of her dwelling on planet earth and come join the luck...
Posted by William S Burroughs on Wed, 07 Feb 2007 11:17:00 PST

journal entry .15: rumi visits the western lands

Dear Friends, I composed this one for a friend - I used Rumi as a source for the cut-up. It came out nicely, so I brought it over here to the desk for some further developments. The original post cont...
Posted by William S Burroughs on Sun, 04 Feb 2007 03:31:00 PST

journal entry .14: i am overwhelmed

Thank you for all the happy birthday wishes!!! I sent a cut-up to everyone that took the time to write and send your kind wishes. I tried to personalize the introduction for my dea...
Posted by William S Burroughs on Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:38:00 PST

journal entry .13: talking cursors must die!

If I hear that fucking talking smiley face say, "I'm counting down the minutes 'til I can be with you again", one more time, I'm going to blow the whole fucking universe to smithereens... W.S.B....
Posted by William S Burroughs on Sat, 03 Feb 2007 06:28:00 PST

journal entry .12: reading burroughs

*This journal entry is dedicated to Nathaniel Dear Friends, People have often told me that they like my books, but they don't understand them. Of course, many people have told me that they h...
Posted by William S Burroughs on Wed, 31 Jan 2007 11:11:00 PST

journal entry .10: on the platform

I am sitting at the station waiting for the train to the Western Lands - Leonard Cohen spills from the speakers reminding me that love is a dream we all dream - a dream that bursts when our eyes are o...
Posted by William S Burroughs on Mon, 22 Jan 2007 02:10:00 PST

journal entry .9: happy new year

dear friends, this post is for everyone take this time and say it say enjoy it all and change with time recordings - my experience first with junk was during the jupiter war - man with a pipe suddenly...
Posted by William S Burroughs on Mon, 01 Jan 2007 11:11:00 PST

Journal Entry .8: Ulysses and the Wandering Stars

This journal entry is dedicated to Alva Starr Dear Friends, Since things have been relatively quiet around the Western Lands over the last few days, I've had a chance to do a little rea...
Posted by William S Burroughs on Sat, 23 Dec 2006 02:44:00 PST

Journal Entry . 7: Now Hear This

(this journal entry is dedicated to Alva Starr, "Insatiable" Know It All, Nisaba, and Sister Sophie) Dear Friends, I know that most of you think I'm just a cranky old fart with an enormous obses...
Posted by William S Burroughs on Thu, 14 Dec 2006 12:18:00 PST