William Burroughs was one of the icons of the beat generation, a massively influential avant-garde author famous for his involvement in drug culture and for shooting his wife.
William Seward Burroughs II was born on February 5, 1914, in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Mortimer, ran a shop selling gifts and antiques, while his mother, Laura, looked after him and his older brother, also named Mortimer. William was named after his grandfather, the founder of what would become the Burroughs Corporation. His family was comfortably well off, but their respectable life never suited him and he began to rebel at an early age, though at first he did so mostly in secret, obsessively reading whatever subversive literature he could get his hands on and fantasizing about boys in his dorms at the Los Alamos Ranch School. Ultimately expelled when he was caught taking chloral hydrate, he nevertheless completed high school (at Taylor School in St Louis) and went on to Harvard. His parents were so pleased that when he graduated they gave him an allowance of $200 per month - enough to let him ignore the world of work and live exactly as he pleased.
The life that Burroughs was pleased to live was always a dangerous one. He lost his virginity to a prostitute and soon became involved in the underground New York gay scene, where he deliberately allowed himself to become a heroin addict, a factor which contributed to his distinctive cadaverous appearance. He also traveled in Europe, where he met Ilse Klapper, a woman on the run from the Nazis, and married her to get her into America. Though they later divorced, they remained firm friends. When Pearl Harbor was bombed Burroughs enlisted in the army, hoping to become an officer, but became severely depressed when classed as infantry; his mother obtained a discharge for him, arguing that his mental health had been too poor for him to understand what he was doing. Supporting her case was the fact that he had recently cut off part of his finger to try and impress a man he was obsessed with.
In 1944, Alan Ginsberg introduced Burroughs to Joan Vollmer Adams. The two shared a flat with Jack Kerouac and Edie Parker and gradually began a relationship that resulted in the birth of a son, William Burroughs Jr. They later moved to Mexico so Burroughs could escape sentencing for possession of marijuana and it was there, in 1951, that Burroughs shot Vollmer in the head and killed her. Though he was indicted for culpable homicide, he served only two weeks in prison, claiming the shooting had occurred as a result of a William Tell style stunt gone wrong, and he later returned to the USA. With his son in the care of Vollmer's parents, Burroughs had no one to deal with but himself, and it was this, he said, which forced him to become a writer. He had previously worked as a cub reporter and occasional essayist, but now he began the series of novels which would bring him international fame, including such classics as Junkie, Queer, The Ticket That Exploded, and Naked Lunch, the latter being filmed by David Cronenburg, and starring Peter Weller as the tormented author. He was a pioneer of the cut-up technique, slicing and splicing words and phrases to find hidden meanings, developing this with the painter Brion Gysin when the two of them were living in Tangier. He later moved to Paris, where his literary connections helped him narrowly escape jail for importing opiates, and where he lived in the Beat Hotel with Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky. After six years in London attempting to give up heroin, he returned to the United States to work with Terry Southern and Jean Genet and to spend time with his (then adult) son. He was briefly a member of the Church of Scientology, and gradually became involved in celebrity culture, going on reading tours and becoming friends with the likes of Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Dennis Hopper. He worked with Frank Zappa, Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson.
After the death of his son, whose body had rejected a liver transplant, Burroughs moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where he supported himself by working with musicians such as Nick Cave and Tom Waits. He died on August 2, 1997, from complications following a heart attack. His close friend Johnny Depp subsequently fulfilled his last wish by arranging for his ashes to be fired out of a cannon.
YUDDY
