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William Seward Burroughs was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1914, the grandson of of the founder of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. A Harvard graduate, his family wealth helped finance his exploration into the world of heroin addiction.
Involvement with the Beat movement, notably the figures of Ginsberg and Kerouac, together with images glimpsed during his junk sessions, informs much of his fiction, including The Naked Lunch (1959) and The Soft Machine (1961).
One mode of writing employed by Burroughs was the "cut-up" method whereby he took scissors to a variety of texts and rearranged them in a random collage. In so doing he aimed to counteract the institutionalised powers behind the publications and return authority to the words themselves.
In The Naked Lunch he wrote: "There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing. ... I am a recording instrument. ... I do not presume to impose "story" "plot" "continuity." ... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function. ... I am not an entertainer. ...
Burroughs died on August 2nd 1997.
Extensive list of links to Burroughs sites
Films (Internet Movie Database)
Other Portraits (Keele American Studies Portrait Gallery)
Please contact the webmaster with any queries : page last updated March 21, 2006
