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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, Burroughs was part of a seminal, postwar literary and social movement that is still influencing contemporary American (and European) culture to this day. The Beat movement was partly a romantic rebellion of youth against middle-class mores, but they also carried on the modern tradition of the avant-garde which continually tries to change our conception of art through innovation and attack on artistic conventions. Burroughs's novels reflect both the Beat sensibility of revolt and the avant-garde tradition of innovation by introducing new subject matter and new techniques into fiction. As an experimentalist Burroughs extends the definition of art, and as a Beat he goes even further by trying to erase the boundary between life and art. Burroughs practices art as a mode of consciousness--a continual, developing process in which each "work" is a fragment of one "book," that is, all of the artist's creations.
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