William Burroughs Case

"Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage." - William Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II got everything handed to him, from early on. Born into an entrepreneurs-family, who used to own the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, later Burroughs Corporation, he made it into Harvard University. Despite this promising groundwork, Burroughs decided that he was not suited for the path that was expected of him and rather making his own, very unique way of life and becoming one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

In the following paper, I will argue that William Burroughs became an icon of subculture, and the Beat-Generation in particular, throughout his colorful biography rather than trough his literary achievements.

Shooting his wife Joan in the head while playing "Wilhelm Tell", but using a glass instead of an apple, in Mexico made him famous and was the beginning of the path that made his life and actions reflect him more than his literature.

From the beginning Burroughs was about socializing. But only when he moved to New York and met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, his potential would have a major affect on anything. This group of younger college students looked for answers in Burroughs.

Other authors that were part of the Beat Generation and the subculture, like Jack Kerouac or Gregory Corso, distinguished themselves mainly through their work. "On the Road" is one of, if not the, most famous piece of literature that was written within the Beats. It really defined Kerouac for those who read his literature. It is spontaneous and tells the story of a restless soul.

"The Beats are American writers, but only their writings are famed. The people themselves are only a memory." (www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=8970).

Which is correct, but not when applied on William Burroughs. His writings are famed, but could do so only because they were fueled by the authenticity of the writer. Without the real life, real world experience behind it, it could have been seen as gibberish and the work of a mentally ill person.

He was the influence within the Beat Generation, the influence of subculture in itself and, most importantly, he didn't care. He was much more interested in his own life and the creation of recording the experienced, to take the time to understand the influence in a way that it could be used to manipulate for personal gain.

ENDE? The polarizing facet of Burroughs does not come from his work, it moves around his life and persona and the legend around a life-story that would not fit into a sequel of movies. His literature and poems and raps and articles, everything he produced, gave the popularity around him a place to start, a place to look. But the more one dives into the life of William S. Burroughs II. as it was recorded by himself and his companions and interpreted by many other people, the better one understands that the way he lived his life is the legend and the fuel that makes him the icon of subculture that he undoubtedly is and not as much the literature and his work in general.

ENDE?: The fact alone that Burroughs had a legacy that rushed on ahead while he was alive, is all the necessary evidence needed to establish the argument. (the argument that his biography made him more than his writing) He had changed the way people had looked at, worked with and felt literature and poetry. He had lay the groundwork for a group of people to influence a whole genre, and therefore even laying the groundwork for a whole genre to flourish (pop-culture?) and had influenced them also from within in a grand manner.

Literature and poetry were much more of a reality for Burroughs. More of a responsibility and an actual part of life that everybody needed and without anybody could, or at least should, live. He saw it (or them) rather like a social act then as a event that was reserved for the writer, almost like the artist would just be a medium.

Burroughs also invented literature, rather than following the conservative, set rules of it. He came up with the cut-up technique, where he would literally cut up pieces of text from newspapers or books or texts that he had written himself and rearrange them in random order, much like a collage would be assembled with fragments of pictures. That way the meaning of the new text would be something absolutely new. Burroughs believed that this was the only way to produce something truly new, as the brain works in learned patterns. Burroughs also believed that this technique could tell the future and felt certain it would.

This shows how little Burroughs was interested in the actual writing part of his work, he would much rather have understood that literature and poetry was something that was alive and changing, always developing in new ways and branching into different directions. That his audience would understand it was not of his concern, as he did not really care about them.

Also the fold-in technique was a technique that Burroughs came up with. Using two sheets of text, folding them in half vertically to combine them and then read across the "new page".