Burroughs, William S. (1914-1997)
During the 1950s, William S. Burroughs blazed many trails to and from the elucidation of human suffering, and his obsession with the means to this end became an endur...
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William S. Burroughs
(1914–1997)
(Full name William Seward Burroughs. Also wrote under the pseudonym William Lee) American novelist, short story writer, and essayist.
Along with Jack Kerouac...
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An innovative and controversial author of experimental fiction, William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) is best known for Naked Lunch (1959), a bizarre account of his fourteen-year drug addiction and a surre...
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William Seward Burroughs , poet and novelist, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on 5 February 1914 to parents from two important American families. Burroughs's mother, Laura Lee, was a direct descendan...
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William Seward Burroughs was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, to Perry Mortimer Burroughs, son of the industrialist who invented the cylinder that made the modern adding machine possible, and Laura Lee,...
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Since the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959, William S. Burroughs has been well known as a legendary figure of the Beat Generation and as an important writer of experimental fiction. As a Beat writer...
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Fifty years after Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs first met in Manhattan, New York University sponsored a conference celebrating the legacy of the Beat Generation. Burroughs, ...
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Critical Essay by John Vernon
The world of William S. Burroughs is not a world of fantasy; it is real, it is "reality." But "reality" is defined by Western culture; it is i...
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Critical Essay by Alvin J. Seltzer
Burroughs' novels are so chaotic that life itself seems calm and ordered by comparison. Structure and plot simply do not exist; characters are flat, interchan...
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Critical Essay by Thomas M. Disch
"Cities of the Red Night" is a book of limited but, for its own happy few, intense appeal. Opium addicts who are sexually aroused by witnessing and/or e...
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Critical Essay by James Campbell
One of William Burroughs's many gifts is to employ the methods of caricature by exaggerating essential traits, and yet to avoid a two-dimensional effect. Reader...
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In the following essay, Oxenhandler examines Burroughs's poetic voice.
The artist's privilege is to liberate himself from his personal obsessions by incorporating them into the fabric of...
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In the following essay, Lydenberg analyzes Burroughs's literary voice as it is expressed on his experimental tape recordings.
Most writers don't use their voices in their work. … ...
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In the following essay, Shaviro explores Burroughs's place in the “landscape of postmodern biology.”
Seattle, 1993. Don't believe the hype. I find myself stranded in this o...
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In the following essay, Ahearn places Burroughs in the tradition of apocalyptic writing that includes William Blake and Lautréamont.
Aragon and Breton reveal much about the visionary impulse in...
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In the following essay, Foster examines Burroughs's rejection of the values of Western civilization.
Shortly before the suicide of Kurt Cobain, lead singer for the group Nirvana, I heard a cult...
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[In the following obituary, Severo reviews Burroughs's life and literary achievements.]
William S. Burroughs, a renegade writer of the Beat Generation who stunned readers and inspired adoring c...
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[In the following obituary, the writer provides an overview of Burroughs's life and career.]
William Burroughs saw himself as a campaigner against destruction of the self by all the agents that...
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[In the following obituary, Obejas appreciates Burroughs's influence on modern music and art.]
"But I'm dying," says William Burroughs in his flat, unflinching voice on the...
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[In the following obituary, Varadajan offers highlights of Burroughs's career.]
The writer William Burroughs, widely acknowledged as the world's first hippy, has died, aged 83.
Burroughs...
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[In the following essay, Weil summarizes the highlights of Burroughs's life and career.]
William S. Burroughs, 83, whose efforts to transmute into literature the events and visions of a torment...
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[In the following essay, which originally appeared in 1980 in Occidem, Parkinson approaches Naked Lunch as continuing the "peculiar American tradition of hilarity" in literature.]
I want...
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[In the following essay, Stephenson discusses Burroughs's middle and late works in the context of Gnostic thought, focusing principally on the themes of The Soft Machine.]
In the following I wa...
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[In the following essay, Punday analyzes the meaning of the narrative structure of Cities of the Red Night based on linguist A. J. Greimas' theoretical construction of the semiotic square.]
Wil...
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[In the following essay, Wood explains the connection between Burroughs's works and cyberpunk writing.]
The work of William S. Burroughs has often been credited as a primary influence on cyberp...
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[In the following essay, Eburne examines the influence of the Cold War-era ideological construct of "otherness" in Naked Lunch and in Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans, comparing i...
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[In the following review of the first volume of The Letters of William S. Burroughs, Campbell gleans the "facts" of Burroughs's early writing career from his correspondence, obser...
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[In the following review, Cohen detects an "autumnal, elegiac" tone in the imagery of My Education.]
William S. Burroughs is now 80. Is this a shock? Certainly his skeletal, impassive, t...
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[In the following review, Weissman assesses the dream-like aspects of My Education.]
William Burroughs has the greatest speaking voice I've ever heard in my life. A gravelly deadpan, direct fro...
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William S. Burroughs was born on February 5, 1914. His grandfather had invented the modern adding machine. In 1950 William had left his town to escape from the conditions as a homosexual and a "Junky"...
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Burroughs, William S. (1914-1997)
William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William S(eward) Burroughs
