William S. Burroughs

He briefly studied medicine at the University of Vienna and did graduate work at Harvard and Mexico City College. Supported by an allowance from his wealthy family, Burroughs traveled to Europe after his graduation, where he married Ilse Herzfeld Klapper in 1937, apparently to help her escape from the Nazis; they were divorced in 1946. In 1943 Burroughs accompanied his friend Lucien Carr to New York City, where he met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac at Columbia University. There he became involved in the local drug scene and began financing his habit with petty thievery. Although Burroughs was homosexual, he married Kerouac’s friend Joan Vollmer in 1946, and the couple moved first to Texas, where their son, Billy, was born in 1947, and then to Mexico City two years later. In 1951, Burroughs accidentally killed Vollmer while attempting to shoot a glass off the top of her head; both were drunk at the time. Burroughs left Mexico and traveled to South America, Europe, and eventually North Africa, where he met artist Brion Gysin, with whom he would later collaborate on several experimental art and literary projects. During this period Burroughs’s heroin habit began to seriously impair his ability to function and was reaching a point where he could no longer afford to supply his increasing need for the drug.