William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs was the elder statesman of the writers and poets who became known as the Beat Generation. The trajectory of his life led him far from his middle class upbringing in St. Louis, Missouri, though his parents continued to support him with a stipend for many years. His experimental fiction encompassed themes that broke rank with accepted norms and subject matter: drug addiction, surrealistic violence, homosexuality, and a non-linear narrative. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg helped him assemble and publish Junkie 1953 and Naked Lunch 1959. After an earlier marriage and divorce, Burroughs met Joan Vollmer who would become his common-law wife. They moved to Mexico to escape arrest on drug-related charges. Mexico City was the site where, in 1951, Burroughs shot and killed Joan Vollmer in an ill-fated game of William Tell. William Burroughs has become a counterculture figure influencing Nick Cave, Tom Waites and Robert Wilson, amongst many other artists in literature, music, and visual art. He made cameo appearances in films including Drugstore Cowboy 1989 and Even Cowgirls get the Blues 1994. A film adaptation of Naked Lunch by David Cronenberg was released to great acclaim in 1991. William Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas on August 2, 1997.
