William Burroughs

BukFan Brad

BukFan Brad

postino said:
Do you think Burroughs "JUNKY" is good reading for a young person? However cool my method of discovering Bukowski was, discovering Burroughs was a fantastic story. I was over for an advisory supper, a freshman in high school, at my advisor's house. He was a hippy type, and living with another hippy type science teacher, probably bangin her. I was looking at their bookshelf and I saw Naked Lunch. I started reading it out loud to my advisory, not knowing what it was.
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I couldn't get into 'Naked Lunch', but love 'Junky' and 'Yage Letters'. The best way to experience 'Junky', for me, is listening to the man himself read it out. His voice is the only voice for reading 'Junky'. Pure mesmerism.

You guys probably know about this one already, but here's a great biography:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/William-S-Burroughs-Barry-Miles/dp/0297867253/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409748967&sr=1-1&keywords=william s burroughs barry miles
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
Naked Lunch is pretty weird and it's not exactly a novel, but a collection of stories which are not connected to each other. A few of them are funny and others not so much.
I like "Junky" and "Interzone". They're both written in straight narrative and easy to read.

The new Burroughs biography by Barry Miles is pretty good and very detailed. It's a must for serious fans of Burroughs and even if you're not a fan it's still very entertaining.
 
BukFan Brad

BukFan Brad

Your response reminded me of something Burroughs said about 'Naked Lunch' - that you can dip into it at any stage in the book, that it's not intentionally written to be read from cover to cover. Interesting approach.

I never thought much of his cut-ups being published into books, but I do find the technique useful for developing creative writing.
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
Right, I´ve read the bit about "you can dip into it at any stage in the book" too. Instead of publishing it as a novel, it should have been published as a collection of stories, I think. No wonder, people find it difficult to read if they think it's a novel since there's no connection between the chapters .

I never cared for his cut-up texts. Actually, I find it a bit silly to cut and paste more or less random words together. It's an interesting experiment, but the result is hardly a new work of literature.
You could say it's a way of recycling other people's words and I understand recycling is very popular nowadays. :p
 
PhillyDave

PhillyDave

“The essential doesn't change.” Beckett
I read somewhere that the band Wilco tried something in that tradition when working on the lyrics for many of the songs that ended up on their "Summerteeth" record. They took a typewriter and covered the sheet of paper so you could only read the line you were typing. Then the next person would jump in and write their line, etc. In order to make any kind of sense or make any of the lyrics interesting at all they then edited the "lyrics". Just an experiment, but a similarly inspired idea. Good record of folk-rock/pop-rock.
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
Johannes said:
William S. Burroughs on heroin addiction. Love the little laugh when the talk show host asks him about his "soul" at 0:50 :DD
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Nice video Johannes, but Burroughs is wrong about Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) he doesn't promote opiates as beneficial to health, he describes a tortuous descent into addiction with it, both physical and mental. Most of the Romantic Poets also experimented with it - not illegal then. Yes he lived quite a long time, but his addiction overshadowed it, many times.
 
5:28am

5:28am

I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but after rereading Junky and Queer it seems pretty obvious that Burroughs was a total misanthrope. It's a kick reading Burroughs hate on 'fags' as subhumans even as his character repeatedly hangs around gay bars.

Bukowski looks like Mr. Rogers compared to Old Bull Lee.
 
Johannes

Johannes

Founding member
Yes, but Junky and Queer are literary works. The misanthropy therein must not be confused with the authors emotional and/or mental state. There is a lot of misanthropy in Burroughs and Bukowskis work, no doubt. At least, what you would commonly call "misanthropy" at first glance.

Yet you can hardly call both authors (in person, that is) raging man-haters or something like that. More than anything they seem to be disappointed and hurt individuals, not fitting into their surroundings and responding to this with their literature, almost always mixing an hilarious sense of humor with their "misanthropy", both.

The distinction fag/queer also appears in Burroughs letters. For him it obviously was the distinction between some "wimpy screeching weakling" (fag) and some "manly straighforward homosexual" (queer). At least that's how he describes it himself in a letter to Allen Ginsberg, where he refuses to be called "Fag" but prefers "Queer" for this reasons.
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
True, one should distinguish between a book and its author.

As for Burroughs, he was also confused about his sexuality because in some of his letters he talks about his lust for boys while in other letters he wants to "switch to cunt" because he thinks being gay is a disease.
 
5:28am

5:28am

Good points.

The only thing I'd add is that Burroughs appears much less sympathetic to his characters than most. Even Bukowski and Celine show characters with rare moments of humanity. Does that make sense?
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
I guess it does. I think it may have to do with the kind of people he mingled with (the people in "Junky" and Allerton in "Queer" who will only have sex with Burroughs once a week to Burroughs dismay). Also, "Junky" is written very matter-of-fact-ly, almost like a report written from a distance. In such report-like books there's seldom room for feelings.
 
Bruno Dante

Bruno Dante

Currently reading You Can't Win and apparently it was very influential to Burroughs, to the extent he used lots of the material from it in Junkie.
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
I have´nt read "You Can't Win", but I would like to since it was a big influence on Burroughs, at least when he was younger.
 
BukFan Brad

BukFan Brad

Good point, 'Skygazer', I remember coming away feeling depressed after reading De Quincey's book. Quite dark, I remember.

On the Romantic poets, I'm pretty sure that Coleridge was addicted to opium through his laudanum intake.

I'll check out that game, 'Dark Eye', 'zobraks' - sounds great! Is there a site somewhere where one can listen to his reading of Poe's short story?

'You Can't Win' is a good read, endorsed by Burroughs. I also love Bukowski's endorsements of John Fante and, above everything else, Celine's brilliant work: 'Journey to the End of the Night'. If any book blew me away, it was that one!
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
BukFan Brad said:
I remember coming away feeling depressed after reading De Quincey's book. Quite dark, I remember.
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A cautionary tale and what I like about it most was the lack of self pity and the explicit nature of his writing, the language of course is a bit of an obstacle initially, then you get used to it - it's a good read, historical piece, one episode when he describes trying to shake off the physical effects of withdrwing and he is taking about 5-6 baths a day due to the sweating - very clean for those days.:wb:

BukFan Brad said:
On the Romantic poets, I'm pretty sure that Coleridge was addicted to opium through his laudanum intake.
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The only one most often quoted as not a user is William Wordsworth.
Not all of them would have been addicted or even habitual but certainly, in terms of use, it was quite widespread.
Interesting that the Beats are lauded for their experimental, wild lifestyle and edgy literature, when 130 yrs (not being at all accurate there) prior to them, the Romantics were a fast set,
with free love. hard drugs and radical politics all on the menu, makes the Beats look like a bunch of schoolgirls really.
I'll take Mary Shelley's Frankenstein over Jack Kerouac's On the Road every time.
 
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BukFan Brad

BukFan Brad

I was never a fan of Kerouac but, oddly enough, I enjoy listening to him reading (especially with those recordings where his readings are interspersed with jazz - 'American Haikus' was one of these, I think). His way of replicating notes and creating sound effects with his voice is brilliant. I've got a great album called 'Jazz and the Beat Generation' which introduced me to a lot of the jazz musicians that the Beats were into. Of the Beats, my favourite is Burroughs and I don't mind some of Corso. But my ultimate favourite is the Buk - who to me is the strongest of them all - he hated movements, groups, gangs, tribes, nations -- people who hide in their numbers. He was a genuine outsider, a struggling worker who despised the system, and worked hard for his art and what I admire about him the most is that he didn't have any rich family background to fall back on (in the way Burroughs did). He inspires me to believe that going it out on your own is the only way forward for an artist. I like the notion of an artist disappearing into a crowd, working any kind of crappy job and carving out his own niche - drawing out real-life experiences that other struggling people will appreciate and understand, all that while avoiding other artists at all costs. ;-)
 
5:28am

5:28am

I gave my copy of Junky to an acquaintance in Mexico City during Day of the Dead weekend.

It was a good weekend.
 
Andreas

Andreas

She's gone on holiday by mistake.
Joking aside, I sent her a message around last Christmas, telling that I (we) miss her Scottish voice on this forum, but she didn't answer.
 
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Joseph K

Joseph K

Kind of nice that a lot of us know at least a few posters here in real life so if anyone falls under a bus there's at least one person here to say "old [your name here] kicked the bucket last week". Gloomy thought though!
 
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