Was william burroughs gay
William S. Burroughs was an American author known for his daring, experimental novels that shook conservative conventions in the 1950s and 1960s. His books were controversial—and even illegal—due to their sexual explicitness, profanity, and raunchy humor. Though Burroughs lived on four continents throughout his lifetime—often skipping from country to country to evade the law—he called New Orleans dwelling for a concise but dramatic period from 1948 to 1949, making his residence in the Algiers section of the West Bank.
Burroughs is closely affiliated with such Thrash Generation writers as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, but he never fully identified with that movement. Rather, as an openly bi man (which was punishable by rule for much of his lifetime), Burroughs explored the shunned and persecuted fringes of society and embraced a lifestyle that even by today’s standards would be considered revolutionary. He blazed a remarkable cultural and literary trail through most of the twentieth century, often while on the lam to shun imprisonment for multiple offenses. He was also in and out of rehabilitation clinics for his epic, well-documented battle with opiate addiction. Throughout these
William S. Burroughs And Lawrence, Kansas: Linked Inexorably
Wednesday, February 5, marked what would include been the 100th birthday of one of the 20th century’s most essential and notorious writers: William S. Burroughs.
Burroughs was one of the original Beat poets, and helped spark a cultural revolution. He wrote like no one had before, about topics considered impolite, if not obscene, at the time.
Burroughs was openly gay, and wrestled with heroin addiction much of his life. He lived, famously, in New York, Paris, Mexico City and Tangiers, but he spent the last years of his life in Kansas. In fact, Burroughs lived longer in Lawrence, Kan., than anywhere else.
That may seem a strange fit for the groundbreaking author of Naked Lunch, Queer and Junky, but Burroughs and Lawrence formed a warm and enduring relationship.
Lawrence still has a personal connection to Burroughs
In Lawrence, Kan., you can still get a haircut from William Burroughs’ barber. Marty Olsen runs Do’s Deluxe, a few blocks east of the main drag.
“I cut William’s hair for 13 years,” remembers Olsen. “I cooked dinner for him a few time
The dark side of William Burroughs, wife killer behind Daniel Craig’s Queer
In the late months of 1949, aspiring American writer William S Burroughs evaded gun and drug charges in the United States by bringing his family to Mexico where he planned to study while waiting out the statute of limitations on his crimes. Burroughs’ letters describe the early days after their arrival – settling in the fashionable Roma district of Mexico City, kicking his dope habit and immersing himself in the raucous expat community – with a kind of euphoria.
Two years later, Burroughs was once again serious in the grip of heroin and prone to violent, pistol-waving outbursts. His marriage was in shambles. His wife, Joan Vollmer, was lost in depression, illness and alcoholism, driven to deterioration by her own demons and the rigours of her unhappy, abusive relationship with husband “Bill”.
One stormy evening on September 6, 1951, the couple joined their usual coterie of literary drunks in an apartment above the rowdy bar they frequented. At first it was a typical get-together – lots of alcohol and drivel – but the situation changed abruptly when Burroughs produced a gun, announced “It’s day for our W
Brian Alessandro on the Defiant Queerness of William S. Burroughs
Brian Alessandro. Photo by Rose McGowan.
In Fever Spores: The Homosexual Reclamation of William S. Burroughs, literary critic and Interview contributor Brian Alessandro brings together a roster of emerging creative voices and countercultural superstars includingFran Lebowitz,Debbie Harry, andSamuel R. Delany, to recontextualize the labor of the infamous writer as defiantly queer. “Almost all of the Beats were bisexual and one another’s lovers,” writesEdmund White in Fever Spores. So why has one of the most lionized members of the movement been snubbed by the gay literati? William S. Burroughs had a wife whose life he took, allegedly by accident, but he also waxed poetic about the gay erotic experience. “Calling all boys of the earth…We will present you the sex magic that turns flesh to illumination. We will free you forever from the womb,” he wrote in 1973. To celebrate Burroughs’s coming out of the literary closet, Alessandro rang Interview for a convo about Beat writers, cruising, and the pragmatics of orgies.
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INTERVIEW: I’m excited to hear about the book. Can you start by telling the reader why