Conversations with William S. Burroughs
- ISBN-10
- 1578061830
- ISBN-13
- 9781578061839
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 234
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1999
- Publisher
- Univ. Press of Mississippi
- Author
- William S. Burroughs
Description
Although a rather shy, private man, William Burroughs gave a good many interviews during his lifetime, some in prominent publications, others in obscure forums. The interviews collected here provide an aperture into the philosophies, methods, and quirks of a man who wrote Queer, Junky, Naked Lunch, Nova Express, Cities of the Red Night, My Education, and many other works. When he died in 1997, Burroughs was likely one of the most widely recognizable figures in contemporary American literature. His image circulated on album jackets, in Nike commercials, and in films, as though proving his notion that pictures and words are viruses, invading any receptive host, taking hold, and replicating themselves. Not surprisingly, the topics Burroughs touches upon are wide-ranging: his relationships to the Beats, legends surrounding his personal life, drugs, gay liberation, collaboration, the cut-up technique, science fiction, politics, conspiracy theory, censorship, cats, guns, David Cronenberg's movie adaptation of Naked Lunch, shotgun art, dreams, and life in Lawrence, Kansas, where he spent his last years. From these interviews emerges a full, undiluted portait of a writer who is difficult to capture in biography. Speaking of the Paris Review interview Alfred Kazin calls Burroughs "an engineer of the pen, a calmly interested specialist of the new processes. When Burroughs makes philosophic and scientific claims for his disorderly collections of data, we happily recognize under the externally calm surface of the interview, the kind of inner frenzy that is his genius--and which, in all of us, his books make an appeal." Kazin's view applies as well for the other interviews in this collection. Allen Hibbard is an associate professor of English and the director of graduate studies at Middle Tennessee State University. He is the author of Paul Bowles: A Study of the Short Fiction and of many articles.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, 1960-1997
By William S. BurroughsBurroughs Live gathers all the interviews, both published and unpublished, given by William Burroughs, as well as conversations with well-known writers, artists, and musicians such as Tennessee Williams, Timothy Leary,...
-
Don't Hide the Madness: William S. Burroughs in Conversation with Allen Ginsberg
By William S. Burroughs, Allen GinsbergAn intense, compelling conversation between legendary Beat icons William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, featuring photos by Ginsberg, and details of Burroughs' shamanic exorcism of the demon that led him to shoot his wife and drove his ...
-
The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs
By William S. Burroughs, Daniel OdierThe Job is William S. Burroughs at work, attacking our traditional values, condemning what he calls "the American nightmare," and expressing his often barbed views on Scientology, the police, orgone...
-
Conversations: William S. Burroughs / Andy Warhol
By Victor BockrisDurant l'année 1980, Victor Bockris a organisé et enregistré quatre rencontres entre William Burroughs et Andy Warhol. Des rencontres informelles qui eurent lieu à la Factory et dans des restaurants...
-
The Job: Topical Writings and Interviews
By William S. Burroughs, Daniel OdierThe Job is William S. Burroughs at work, attacking our traditional values, condemning what he calls "the American nightmare," and expressing his often barbed views on Scientology, the police, orgone...
-
William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century
By Joan Hawkins, Alex Wermer-Colan... 197 Teasdale, Sara, 196–97, 200 Teenage Jesus and the Jerks (band), 86 Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 24, 381n15, ... 374,375; original edition of, 369–70, 372–73, 377; the Other Half, 373; publication history, 305,310,315, 369–70, ...
-
The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs
By William S. BurroughsProduced at a time when he was at his most extreme and messianic, The Job lays out his abrasive, incisive, paranoiac, maddened and maddening worldview in interviews interspersed with stories and other writing.
-
Port of Saints
By William S. Burroughs"The mind-boggling story of a man whose alternate selves take him on a fantastic journey through space, time, and sexuality."--Back cover.
-
My Education: A Book of Dreams
By William S. BurroughsAlways a rich source of imagery in Burroughs's own fiction, in this book, dreams become a direct and powerful force in themselves.
-
The Adding Machine
By William S. BurroughsAs satirist and parodist, William Burroughs has no peer, as these varied works, written over three decades, amply reveal.