>Burroughs named by every artist I like >Music, Cinema, Writing the all loce this fella >Watched the naked lunch movie >blownaway.pgn >"I should give this guy a read" >Learn more about him >People talk about his style and books >Get hyped as shit >3 years pass >I have a lot of free time now >"I'm finally gonna read Burroughs, I'm so fucking hyped" >Expect something abrasive, dark, experimental, out of the line and unique
>The most straight forward and ordinary drug story I ever read
And critis told me he was even better than Ballard. Am I missing something?
Ok, now read Naked Lunch. Junkie is completely different from the body of his work. It's a good intro though. Now dig deeper user-kun.
Asher Hernandez
okay, now read Cities of the Red Night.
Benjamin Cruz
you picked easily the most straightforward of all o his books and if you've really did as much research on the fella as you say you have i have a hard time imagining you didn't know what you were getting into
Aiden Martinez
I didn't do research. I just got hyped to death. I knew that Naked Lunch was his most iconic and I'm gonna read it... But this one was reccomend me by a friend who said it was his best, and I'm kind of dissapointed. How does it compare to junkie?
Cooper Ross
well, Naked Lunch is abrasive, experimental, out of the line and unique I wouldn't call it "dark" though, the darkest thing about it is its humour
Asher Phillips
Okay, now read the tattoos on the bodies of bikers in a mass grave and create a narrative from it.
Gavin Gray
Junky and Queer aren't like the rest of his corpus, and Junky is the best of his books (as a book) that I've read. (I haven't read Queer, but I heard it's like Junky.) Most of his work is bleak, transgressive, sardonic comedy routines, often presented in non-linear or surreal narratives, with lots of experimental (at the time) techniques, although his body of work is varied, so it's difficult to describe as a whole. Burroughs is massively overrated, being name-dropped by airhead musicians who don't understand literature and adopt authors as fashion accessories to complement their image, and I haven't read most of his novels, because I don't care for them. He's remarkable for being "ahead of his time" for lack of a better phrase, but his much work isn't valuable in itself, and is painfully dated. He was an original, but what he originated wasn't good. His books are more interesting as cultural artifacts than works of art. His fellow Beats Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey were much better writers. Later authors did postmodernism (uh-oh) much better. Burroughs is just edgy. There's some interesting ideas there, but the presentation is cheap, and he lacks substance. He isn't a bad writer by any means, but he's someone you have to read in your teens or early 20s, and even then I wouldn't recommend him. That's just my personal impression and it's not like I wrote my thesis on Ghost of Chance or anything.
Henry Parker
I like his ideas on the occult and art but the guy was an actual pedophile and that just depresses me.
Wyatt Wright
He passed his son around to his pedo friends, then abandoned him. His son killed himself. Drank himself to death.
Kevin Hughes
Drugs and drug users are boring and inconsequential, likewise the Literature about them.
Adam Gonzalez
Thanks for your honesty. I'll try reading some of his other stuff just out of curiosity. I'll admit that I kind fell for the memes on this one, it's true that everyone name drops him. I'm getting in the whole beat thing latley and I've read ginsberg, keruac, corso and Cassady. I don't know if it's a moment for me of what but I've yet to find something to find something I genuinely liked about this whole movement. Hope that the other burroughs books will change my mind. Holy shit. Source on this? Didn't he shoot his wife or something too?
Tyler Thomas
Yeah shot her in the head and bribed mexican courts to rule it an accident. Burroughs was a malignant person, but there are so many of those, he was just a very articulate one of them.
Ian Diaz
Dude, Junky was before Burroughs got into his chopped-up novel style. It's a good place to start with how accessible it is, but really you're wanting The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and for fuck's sake you know about Naked Lunch.
Aaron Scott
What Kerouac did you read? Try Kesey, too. Yeah, the Beats are overblown.
Also a novelist. I guess a good way to end up in the gutter is to be fucked by Alan Gingsberg as a kid. His father also moved to Morocco to fuck child prostitutes. There's a special place in Hell for these people.
Matthew Jones
Subterraneans, on the road and Pic. Yeah, I'll try kesey too out of sense of completion. Even fucking gingsberg was an animal like that? Holy shit. This is fucking disgusting. Is there any actual proof to this or they are just rumors? Also >Billy was 13 >Billy was introduced to marijuana, and he experienced several episodes of grown men attempting to rape him Oh boy
Nolan Stewart
>moralist /mu/cuck surprised by literary degeneracy heh... *throws cigarette* you aint seen nothin, kid... *rolls up sleeves*
Jose Flores
Burroughs is trash. The only worthwhile beatnik is Kerouac.
Luke Roberts
>Burroughs was born in Conroe, Texas, to William S. Burroughs and Joan Vollmer. His mother was addicted to amphetamines, and his father was a heroin addict. Herbert Huncke, a friend of his parents, relates that when Joan was pregnant he would drive into Houston to obtain Benzedrine, an inhaled amphetamine, for her. >On September 6, 1951, Billy's father accidentally shot and killed his mother in a drunken game of 'William Tell' in Mexico City. >When Billy was 13, his grandparents asked William S. Burroughs to take Billy back. He agreed, and Billy was sent alone by air to Tangiers, Morocco, to live with his father. In Tangiers, Billy was introduced to marijuana, and he experienced several episodes of grown men attempting to rape him. >Burroughs Jr. underwent a liver transplant in 1976 after developing cirrhosis. >cirrhosis at 29
holy...so this is the power of counter-culture
Matthew Hughes
He's an insufferable cunt. Like every fucking one involved in the movement
Christian Hill
>Like every fucking one involved in the movement
Too true, but Kerouac is the most tolerable cause he hated the beatniks too
Jaxon Johnson
>Read Nova Express
Landon Collins
Should I read Nova express or naked lunch first?
Lucas Lewis
Heroin is so fucking good
Gabriel Morris
Oh look, another Burroughs thread where plebs haven't read the Western Lands
Ethan Miller
Ginsberg was one of the most evil people to ever live.
Caleb Walker
From his poetry I only get that he's a massive faggot, why you think that he was evil?
Cooper Brown
he was a jewish pedo and so were a lot of the beats either pedos or absolute evil degenerates who encouraged debilitating drug habits in their friends, traded wives, fucked men and were in general awful sociopaths. also heavily funded by CIA and british intel
burroughs had talent, but was undeniably an evil person; ginsberg's howl is good but evil, and he himself is irredeemable. Deleuze is sort of this way too, kind of an evil person but undeniably talented. Heidegger too, lots of intellectuals are like this
James Jones
yeah i gotta admit that thing where ginsburg is like "so what if a man's dick is kinda big for a little kid, he'll stretch out after a day or two" i was like yooo man FUCK the beats
Evan Smith
>Jewish pedos 'degger is not evil for wanting to cleanse the world of this
Mason Jenkins
Didn't keruac married the daughter of a Sheriff to avoid jail or some shit like that?
Connor Wood
This-
Plus he was in nambla so he wanted this shit legal.
Asher Wilson
I always like to view Burroughs within the cold war context - his books are in some sense about psychological warfare and weaponry of this era. The stillness of it. The ideas of paranoia and going against the nuclear family idealism run rampant in his work. his novels are cut-up composites of detective & science fiction with a sense of black humor about them. I tend to look at his novels almost as satirical plays on genre - how might soft machine function as a sci-fi novel for instance, taken to the extreme and full of sardonic, bleak wit.
Aaron Rivera
Don't touch my boi Gilles.
Blake Clark
> inconsequential But The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross proved that mushrooms (namely hallucinogenic ones) guided human growth and religious expression
Adam Robinson
As other people have said you just read his earlier tame works.
To give you an idea of late Burroughs this is from 'The Soft Machine'.
Joshua Garcia
>How does it compare to junkie?
Junkie is a barely disguised autobiography. Cities of the Red Night is an hallucinatory mindfuck that tries to re-write history from the point of view of 18th century anarchist pirate communities, among other things.
Anthony Nguyen
>Burroughs is just edgy.
how many of his books have you actually read?
>He passed his son around to his pedo friends,
> leaves his son with his more responsible brother > moves to Marrakech
yeah, right.
Nolan Stewart
no
William Collins
Read him when I was a teenager. Under a half dozen of his books.
Burroughs abandoned his son after murdering his mother. Billy Jr came and visited him in Africa and caught a train.