William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American novelist, essayist, social critic and spoken word performer. Much of Burroughs' work is semi-autobiographical, drawn from his experiences as an opiate addict, which he often distored using surreal or graphic imagery, experimental structures, and a strong satirical voice. Burroughs stated that he saw all his writing as a single, vast book; indeed, the same characters and themes often reappear intermittently throughout his oeuvre.

Naked Lunch

After completing these works, Burroughs went to Rome and then to Tangier, Morocco. In Tangiers, opiates were available from drug stores and Burroughs got hooked on Eukodol, a German synthetic opiate and became infatuated with a young male prostitute, "KiKi," and featured him in his writing. He also befriended Brion Gysin, Jane Auer and Paul Bowles and began to write what would become Naked Lunch (Interzone, the surreal region that serves as the setting for a majority of the book combines aspects of New York, Mexico City and Tangiers).

Related Topics:
Rome - Tangier - Morocco - Eukodol - Male prostitute - Brion Gysin - Jane Auer - Paul Bowles - Naked Lunch

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In 1956, Burroughs attempted to cure his ongoing addiction with the help of John Dent, a London physician, by means of an experimental apomorphine treatment. Burroughs claimed the apomorphine treatment cured his addiction by blocking the body's opiate receptors, eliminating the addict's drive. After he became a well-known author, he became a vocal public advocate of apomorphine. Later investigation showed that apomorphine was not effective, but the science behind the treatment methodology later resulted in Narcan, which surprisingly worked much in the same way Burroughs had described.

Related Topics:
1956 - London - Apomorphine - Opiate - Receptors - Narcan

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After completing treatment, he moved to the legendary "Beat Hotel" in Paris, eventually accumulating a trunk of fragmentary, hallucinatory manuscripts created under the influence of majoun, a sort of cannabis jam. Ginsberg and Kerouac helped Burroughs edit these episodes into the magnum opus Naked Lunch. Kerouac thought up the title as a metaphor for a moment of revelation.

Related Topics:
Beat Hotel - Paris - Cannabis

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Naked Lunch is an amalgamation of experimental fiction and science fiction. It is a collage of disturbing, bizarre, and often obscene images. Burroughs's stated intention was to create a narrative that defied contemporary literary forms, a novel that the reader could start at any point in the book. The book also included many satirical elements, parodying the contrasts between the ?American Dream,? the reality of inner-city crime and drug culture and the interdependency between the two. Burroughs also seems to anticipate by many years the AIDS crisis and many other 20th century disasters. Naked Lunch was the only work associated with the Beat movement to address the U.S. civil rights crisis in a major way; there are repeated images of hanging (some of which parallel lynching), and the stereotype of the bigoted southern sheriff makes a few appearances as well.

Related Topics:
Science fiction - AIDS - 20th century - Civil rights - Hanging - Lynching - Stereotype - Bigot

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Burroughs sold Naked Lunch to Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias. After the novel was published in 1959, it became infamous across Europe and was very popular within various countercultures of the 1960s. In countries where the book was banned, copies and even printing plates were smuggled across borders.

Related Topics:
Olympia Press - Maurice Girodias - 1959 - 1960s

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Prominent authors, such as Norman Mailer and J. G. Ballard, called Naked Lunch a work of genius. Some compare Naked Lunch to T.S. Eliot's poem "The Wasteland," both for their liberal use of juxtaposed texts and their influence on their contemporaries.

Related Topics:
Norman Mailer - J. G. Ballard - T.S. Eliot

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After it was published in the United States, Naked Lunch was prosecuted as obscene by the state of Massachusetts, followed by other states. In 1966 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the work "not obscene" based on criteria developed, largely, to defend the book. The case against Burroughs's novel still stands as the last obscenity trial against a work of literature prosecuted in the United States.

Related Topics:
Obscene - Massachusetts - 1966 - Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

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Naked Lunch rocketed Burroughs to literary stardom and is still his best-known work. The trunk of manuscripts that produced Naked Lunch also produced The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1963). To a greater degree than Naked Lunch, these books incorporated the "cut-up technique," in which samples of writing are torn apart and placed back together in a random order. Some critics have deemed these three works as "the Cut-up Trilogy."

Related Topics:
The Soft Machine - 1961 - The Ticket That Exploded - 1962 - Nova Express - 1963 - Cut-up technique

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Burroughs did not use cut-ups in the slapdash or haphazard way sometimes imagined. He might cut up dozens of pages, then extract only a few lines or phrases which he deemed significant, or which struck his fancy.

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