William Burroughs Biography and List of Works

American writer of experimental novels, who lived in Mexico City, Tanger, Paris, and London. Burroughs' homosexual themes in THE NAKED LUNCH (1959) and the frankness with which he dealt with his own experiences as a drug addict sparked an obscenity trial in the U.S., but won him a following among writers, musicians, and film makers. Burroughs produced the bulk of his writing after he moved to London and took an apomorphine cure under the direction of Dr John Dent.

"We have lunch on the terrace of his mountain house. A heavily wooded garden with pools and paths stretches down to a cliff over the sea. Lunch is turbot in cream sauce, grouse, wild asparagrass, peaches in wine. Quite a change from the grey cafeteria food I have been subjected to in Western cities where I pass myself off as one of the faceless apathetic citizens searched and questioned by the police on every corner, set upon by brazen muggers, stumbling home to my burglarized apartment to find the narcotics squad going through my medicine chest again."
(from The Wild Boys, 1971)

Burroughs was born in St. Louis, Mo. into a successful business family. His mother was a direct descendant of Robert E. Lee, his grandfather the inventor of the Burroughs adding machine. After he graduated in English literature from Harvard University in 1936, he traveled in Europe, where he studied medicine in Venice for a year. He worked for an advertising agency in New York City and joined the army. Burroughs was trained as a glider pilot, but discharged as unfit for service in 1942. Rejecting his background, Burroughs plunged into an alternative life-style that included drugs, odd jobs, and bisexuality. While working in the shipyards of New York, he became addicted to heroin, or what he called Opium Jones, G(od's) O(wn) (Medicine).

In the mid-1940s Burroughs befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, with whom he would be linked as key figures in the Beat Movement. He was named in Kerouac' s novel On the Road as Old Bull Lee. In 1951 Burroughs accidently killed his second wife Joan Vollmer in Mexico. They were partying in a room above a bar when he announced to the assembled company he would perform a shooting in the Wilhelm Tell style. Vollmer placed a glass on top of her head, and Burrougs shot at it with the gun he carried - Vollmer fell dead. Burroughs was never tried for the accident. Their son William Burroughs III died at the age of 32 from drink and drug abuse. The author has stated, 'Im forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death...'.

For a time Burroughs lived in Tangier in a male brothel. In 1959 he published The Naked Lunch, a far-reaching cultural vision, for which addiction is a metaphor. The work is now accepted as a modern classic. Much of its structure was planned by Allen Ginsberg who gathered the scraps of paper and lurid rants that he found scattered around in Burroughs's room. The book consists of twenty-one satirical pieces that purport to lay bare the horrors of reality: hence the title. "Let them see what they eat." It features such characters as Dr Benway, a mad scientist dedicated to Automatic Obedience Processing, and the Lobotomy Kid, who manufactures the Complete All-American male, a blob of jelly. The work was first published by Olympia Press in Paris, In England it appeared in 1964, as part of DEAD FINGERS TALK, an amalgam which also included THE SOFT MACHINE and THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED. The nightmarish plunge into the mind of a junk addict contains large elements of science fiction and biological fantasy.

The search for homosexual and pharmaceutical freedom led Burroughs across the world. He wandered through the Amazon region of South America for the drug yage, the notorious "final fix", and recorded his experiences in THE YAGE LETTERS, published in 1963.

In his works Burroughs developed, with the painter Brion Gysin, a 'cut-up' method that employed cutting and blending several random texts into one hybrid narrative. Thus Burroughs attempts to avoid conventional language patterns and to restructure readers consciousness. He began writing in the 1930s, but his first book, JUNKIE: CONFESSION OF AN UNREDEEMED DRUG ADDICT, an volcanic torrent of words, was published in 1953 under the pen name William Lee. The Naked Lunch was completed after his treatment for drug addiction. Other works include The Soft Machine (1961), NOVA EXPRESS (1964), THE WILD BOYS (1971) and THE WESTERN LANDS (1987). The Wild Boys is set in the year 1988. Adolescent guerrilla packs of specialized humanoids are routing the forces of civilized nations and ravaging the earth. When wholesale slaughter erupts, the battle continues underground where the survivors evolve into The Wild Boys, hordes of pitiless homosexual warriors who move in and destroy the cities.

Burroughs warned of the "Control Machine", forces of conformity that would destroy the unique qualities of the individual. In Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded they are agents from outerspace and a virus from Venus. For his novels the author borrows material from all areas of popular culture. His influence can be seen in the works of J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, John T. Sladek, Norman Spinard, and others. Overt pastiches of his work include Barrington J. Bayley's The Four-Color Problem (1971) and Philip José Farmer's The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod (1968).Apart from the bands (Soft Machine, Dead Fingers Talk), which took their names directly from his works, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, REM, Nirvana, and others have paid homage to Burroughs. He even appeared in an advert for Nike and in a strange Japanese 'document', which depicts the search for Albert Einstein's brain - finally found in a class jar, owned by a downhill scientist.

Burroughs also appeared in several films. In Drugstore Cowboy he played Matt Dillon's elder brother. His other films include Twister and a U2 music video Last Night on Earth. Burroughs recorded with Laurie Anderson, Kurt Cobain, and Michael Stipe. He has been awarded the honour of inventing the music term "heavy metal".

In the mid-1960s Burroughs moved to London, before settling in Lawrence, Kansas. In 1983 Burroughs became a writer in residence to the University of Kansas and devoted his spare time to a vegetable garden. His last years Burroughs spent with cats and firearms. He also exhibited 'action paintings' produced by taking potshots at tins of paint. Burroughs died on August 2, 1997, in Lawrence.

For further reading: City of Words by T. Tanner (1971); The Incarnate Word by C. Nelson (1973); The Garden and the Map by J. Vernon (1973); Naked Angels by J. Tytell (1976); William Burroughs: The Algebra of Need by Eric Mottram (1977); Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs by Ted Morgan (1988); Everything is Permitted: The Making of 'Naked Lunch', ed. by Ira Silverberg (1992).

JUNKIE, (1953)
THE NAKED LUNCH, (1959)
EXTERMINATOR, (1960)
MINUTES TO GO, (1960)
THE SOFT MACHINE, (1961)
THE TICKET THAT EXPLODED, (1962)
THE YAGE LETTERS, (1963)
DEAD FINGERS TALK, (1963)
ROOSEVELT AFTER INAUGURATION, (1964)
NOVA EXPRESS, (1964)
WHITE SUBWAY, (1965)
TIME, (1965)
HEALTH BULLETIN, (1965)
EXTERMINATOR!, (1967)
SO WHO OWNS DEATH TV, (1967)
THEY DO NOT ALLWAYS REMEMBER, (1968)
ALI'S SMILE, (1969)
THE DEATH STAR, (1969)
JOB, (1969)
THE LAST WORDS OF DUTCH SCHULTZ, (1970)
ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION, (1970)
THE WILD BOYS, (1971)
EXTERMINATOR!, (1973)
PORTS OF SAINTS, (1973)
BRION GYSIN LET THE MICE IN, (1973)
EXTERMINATOR!, (1973)
WHITE SUBWAY, (1973)
THE BOOK OF BREATHING, (1974)
SNACK, (1975)
THE BOOK OF BREATHING, (1975)
THE RETREAT DIARIES, (1976)
COBBLE STONE GARDENS, (1976)
NAKED SCIENTOLOGY, (1978)
THE THIRD MIND, (1978)
BLADERUNNER: A MOVIE, (1979)
AH, POOK IS HERE AND OTHER TEXTS, (1979)
COLLOQUE DE TANGER, (1979)
LETTERS TO ALLEN GINSBERG, (1981)
CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT, (1981)
EARLY ROUTINES, (1981)
CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT, (1981)
SIDETRIPPING, (1982)
THE PLACE OF DEAD ROADS, (1984)
THE BURROUGHS FILE, (1984)
FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, (1984)
QUEER, (1985)
THE ADDING MACHINE, (1985)
THE PIANOPLAYERS, (1986)
ROUTINE, (1987)
WESTERN LANDS, (1987)
APOCALYPSE, (1988)
THE CAT INSIDE, (1988)
WILLIAM BUROUGHS: PAINTING, (1988)
PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS, (1988)
INTRZONE, (1989)
TORNADO ALLEY, (1989)
WORD VIRUS, (1999)