Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Bad Boy Un-Beat Burroughs: Killer Queer

This American Life aired a special BBC radio documentary about William S Burroughs back in January for the 100th year anniversary of his birthday. It also talks about all of the pop culture references Burroughs' works influenced.


It has many clips of Burroughs talking about what in his life influenced his work, such as growing up in St. Louis, writing with Allen Ginsberg (The Yage Letters Redux), and writing with Jack Kerouac (And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks).  

The Yage Letters Redux were letters exchanged between Ginsberg and Burroughs while Burroughs traveled down in South America searching for the hallucinogenic ayahuasca or yage vine. When Ginsberg goes in search of the vine, Burroughs writes to him and describes how the Cut-Up Method works to break through to what words really mean. The documentary touches on the Cut-Up Method, but here is a video of Burroughs that explains and shows the method in action:



And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks was a hard-boiled, almost mystery-esque novel written in alternating chapters by Kerouac and Burroughs. It is set in New York City and revolves around the true-murder Rob Wilson has mentioned Kill Your Darlings is about. It's about a gay tryst gone wrong that ends in a murder that affected the Beats.

Although he spent a stint of time in San Francisco, Burroughs was more of a world traveler, spending more of his time in Tangiers and Mexico City, but his influence on the gay community was widespread, as the radio documentary discusses.

If Jack Kerouac was the King of the Beats, Ginsberg was the Jeremaic Prophet, and Burroughs was the older bad-boy too cool to call himself Beat.

Oh, and he loved cats.


1 comment:

  1. I've read The Yage Letters and he is a very fascinating writer who also led a fascinating and slightly disturbing life (which makes me glad to know he liked cats). He writes in a very open way, confessing everything, in a style that portrays the drug use and mind full of rambling thoughts.

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