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.Equally important, Bur-world.And then, before the end of the decade, roughs s acutely felt isolation abroad forced him toBurroughs had gone leaving cold-war America making a vital, even desperate, investment of cre-to escape his criminalization as a homosexual and ative energy in his long-distance correspondenceBurroughs, William Seward 33with Ginsberg.After the break-up of the original and social status, brought up by an oversensitive,Beat scene in the late 1940s, letter writing became doting mother and a rather distant, businessmanthe chief means for many of these writers to main- father.He was also the heir to two upper-middletain personal and cultural solidarity.The paradox class families that played significant parts in thein Burroughs s case was that, by generating much modernization of corporate America.His paternalof his fiction through letter writing, he actually grandfather and namesake was a Northern inven-needed the geographic separation to write so that tor who, in the late 1880s, perfected the modernhe became most materially involved in Beat liter- adding machine and founded the internationalary and personal relations while most physically re- company that bore the Burroughs name (althoughmoved from any Beat context.the family connection to the firm was broken inSecond, Burroughs s fellow writers fabricated 1929).His mother, Laura Lee, was the daughter ofhim as a legendary figure through their fictional a Southern Methodist minister whose brother, Ivy,portraits.This was part of the larger Beat project also achieved national fame: One of the pioneers ofof group mythmaking but with a crucial difference.modern public relations, Burroughs s uncle earnedKerouac in particular created a series of highly am- the nickname Poison Ivy for his machinations onbivalent fantasy images of Burroughs that, in his behalf of the captains of American industry.Theabsence from America, inaugurated the mystique Burroughs Lee partnership therefore embodiedof an underground reputation.From ON THE ROAD, traditions of American capitalism that their sonwhere  Old Bull Lee (the character based on Bur- seemingly a disaffected insider from birth wouldroughs) appears as  something out of an old evil spend a literary career working to subvert.dream, to VANITY OF DULUOZ, where he is called Nevertheless, after attending Los Alamos a shadow hovering over western literature, Ker- Ranch School for Boys in New Mexico, Burroughsouac mythologized Burroughs so seductively that, in 1932 entered Harvard University, the properwhen his own writing came to be published, it was training ground for a man of his class.On gradu-seen as the product of this already known quasi- ation in 1936, however, instead of following thefictional persona.Burroughs s role in the Beat expected career trajectory, Burroughs joined whatGeneration was to be its shadowy, rather menacing he called the international queer set on a Euro-dark genius, all the more alluring for being so am- pean tour.In Vienna, he stayed to study medicinebiguously presented.and then, flouting his family s expectations, mar-Since the often sensational dramas of Bur- ried Ilse Klapper, a German Jew, so that she couldroughs s personal life appeared to follow the fan- escape the Nazi occupation (they separated on ar-tasy role scripted for him, it is no surprise that rival in New York).biographical studies have been mired in mystifi- In 1938 Burroughs returned to Harvard tocation ever since.Compounding the difficulties, study anthropology and while living there with hisBurroughs accepted such confusions of fact and boyhood friend, Kells Elvins, made his first maturefiction for both artistic and philosophical reasons, effort at writing ( Twilight s Last Gleamings, aas well as expedience.His insistence to Conrad comic sketch that featured the debut of Dr.Ben-Knickerbocker in a 1965 interview for The Paris way, later a key character in NAKED LUNCH).TheReview that  there is no accurate description of the following summer, Burroughs moved to Chicagocreation of a book, or an event (collected in Bur- and then in the fall moved back to New York toroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S.take anthropology classes at Columbia.In AprilBurroughs 1960 1997), is a radical warning against 1940 Burroughs was forced by his parents whoreceived wisdom, urging us to doubt not only the still supported him with a generous monthly allow-official story of his literary history and biography ance to begin psychoanalytic treatment after abut also the very possibility of a true account.traumatic episode fictionalized a dozen years laterWilliam Seward Burroughs II was born on Feb- in  The Finger. This black-humor short story nar-ruary 5, 1914, in St.Louis, Missouri.The younger of rates the incident when Burroughs cut off a fingertwo sons, he was a child of privilege, modest wealth, joint in a futile effort to impress a young man.The34 Burroughs, William Sewardtale not only reveals the masochistic nature of Bur- subcultures.In summer 1945 Burroughs and Ker-roughs s sexual desire but, as a template for future ouac also had a go at collaborative writing with routines (sardonic, usually comical and dark,  And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks,sketches), suggests the psychoanalytical basis of his based on Carr s notorious killing in August 1944need to write [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]