William S. Burroughs is so interesting to me

I have a terribly short attention span and cannot read novels because of it. Therefore, despite the plethora of great beat books and hippie books, I have only read a few.

However, I have really enjoyed William Burroughs' work. He is one of the few people in the world (albeit deceased) who has extremely similar opinions and behaviors as I do. I feel a deep connection to him and enjoy reading biographical excerpts on him and his interesting life.

I, like Burroughs, was 'grabbed' by the beauty of the opioid experience at around the age of 22 and deal with the pleasures and pains of them daily. I am not bisexual like Burroughs, but I find his writings on sexuality to be very accurate. He is one of the only people I have read that truly delve into the raw experiences of being a drug addict: The constant concern about getting your next supply, Running out of scripts early, etc.

And the fact that this stuff was written decades ago makes it even more interesting. I think he is a heck of an interesting man. What are all of your takes on Burroughs?

One other author that I find captures the opioid experience perfectly is De Quincey in his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater". While my poor attention span prohibited me from reading the whole work, I was riveted by the sections called "Pleasures" which meticulously detailed the unique opioid bliss. I was shocked to see how some aspects of the opioid high which I thought were unique to my mind were experienced by this man 150 years ago. Fascinating! Talk about him too!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDR9zULPcFk"]William.S.Burroughs - The Junky's Christmas - YouTube

 

I listened to a Beat Generation CD on my first serious Mxe trip which featured poems and passages from Burroughs as well as others. I found Burroughs sections pretty intense and somewhat relatable. He had a very frank way with his words that made him seem real and relatable, even with the generation gap from his era to now. His passages went well with the colder tone of my high dose mxe experience.

 

His frankness is probably what draws me to him so much. Unlike many authors, he doesn't try to use overly elegant language and ridiculous metaphors. Yet the content he writes about is so interesting on its own that it doesn't need to be embellished. I have been looking at some YouTube videos of his readings and he is certainly a strange man live on the camera! Just like I expected...

 

I read Naked Lunch..and I have to be honest...I felt mind f**Ked afterwards. but it was a very interesting book! I also want to read Junky and Queer. I myself am a recovering addict so what he writes makes perfect sense to me-the running out early and grappling for the next fix. But yes i think he is very interesting as well!

 

Burroughs was a rare example of a junky who actually (supposedly) kicked the habit. I say supposedly because there has been some speculation as to whether or not he actually did kick it. I would say with confidence that he created as rich a world with his portrayal of Tangiers and overall Junkydom as Tolkien did with middle-earth. He was a living juxtaposition and unless you've spent some time in Missouri, you can't begin to understand how truly unlikely it is that this personality could have survived let alone mutated into what Burroughs became. He might has well have crawled as an infant out of an alien space craft. No offense to Missouri. I personally know people who read him and try to cull romance from his romance with addiction, but he was not glorifying it, nor was telling cautionary tails. He was singular in that he didn't give a shit less what people took from what he was saying. Ginsberg and Kerouac tried to pigeonhole him into being some kind of existential guru, but he was no teacher, no father figure. He was a murderer (he straight up shot and killed his wife and got away with it), a bit right of center and he struggled with something he called "the unclean spirit" throughout his life. Burroughs was not a "good" guy, but he was honest about it and he did have conscience, and I think if nothing else, his work is about human frailty and finding beauty, maybe even lustful desire, in human imperfection. If such a thing as a psychopath with a conscience could exist in one body, William Burroughs was that creature.

 

Burroughs was on Methadone for the last 10-15 years of his life. So he was still on opioids, just not IV heroin.

I agree that he is not a person to admire for his morals, but I admire his frankness.