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Portrait of William Burroughs. 9" X 12". Graphite on clay coat (c. 1998/1999)
Five interesting facts about Wm. S. Burroughs:
He had a son (Billy Burroughs, 1947-1981)
He considered himself a Conservative
He detested Liberals
He believed abortion was murder
He loved cats
William Burroughs blew the narrative form out of the ballpark by fearlessly incorporating chance methods, dreams, stream of consciousness, tape recordings, found objects & cut-ups. His writing is uniquely hallucinatory in its seamless weave of brutality, violence, humor into sheer, utter beauty. I found a copy of Naked Lunch (with a Salvador Dali cover,) at a bookstore in Paramus Park Mall in 1975 when I was 15. It made me love reading. I became a lifelong devotee. His work opened up whole other universes to me.
When I interviewed John Giorno at 222 Bowery in December 2002 he took me down to Burroughs' former basement apartment (The Bunker). It was complete with several of Burroughs' typewriters, his bed, a old cane and an old shotgun of his...It was a renovated gymnasium (the building was once a YMCA built in 1884). Burroughs' bedroom & bathroom were once the old Boys Locker Room appropriately enough - The bathroom was all marble with checkered tile with those old, heavy, porcelain utilitarian urinals that come up to your chest, there was a row of them before you got to the stalls. There was a Keith Haring work on display under Plexi and it was extremely haunted, so much so that I called to John to make sure he was still there - he was. John let me touch William's typewriters, hold his old cane & gun and sit on the bed. How great! A true honor!
My first job out of high school in 1979 was making lift-off tape for typewriters with The Burroughs Corporation in Park Ridge, NJ, oddly enough or not so oddly enough. William was the grandson of William Seward Burroughs I - the founder of the company. There was also a Burroughs plant in Nashua, NH - about an hour South from where I now reside. Burroughs' was fond of synchronicity and there's some to be found here.
I salute William S. Burroughs, a true American original!
