William S Burroughs
In an increasingly materialistic society where 'Icon' has become the first person singular of the verb 'to profit to the detriment of one's fellow man,' William Burroughs became and remained one of the cultural cornerstones of another America, a dark stirring vibrant culture that would assail and reinvent the twentieth century in its own image.

Along with Kerouac and the recently departed Ginsberg, he has become synonymous with the 'Beat Generation'. But uniquely, his influence extended well beyond the 'beatniks', so that even today, the counter-culture bears his mark and the mainstream, through a variety of forms, reflects his influence. Unlike most, he also chose not just to live 'on the edge', but to throw himself bodily over it.
As a drug user- first arrested for possession nearly fifty years ago- his advice to his readers was unsurpassable. It is a repository of 'forbidden pleasures' and his first book, Junky (1953), is a photographic recreation of life on the needle. Anyone who reads it comes away more than aware of the terrors of addiction. Burroughs hid nothing from his readers:

'A junky runs on junk time. When his junk is cut off the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for the non-junk time to start…..Junk sickness is the reverse side of the junk kick. You cannot escape from junk sickness anymore than you can escape from junk kick after a shot.'
In many ways, Junky is akin to Primo Levi's If This is a Man, a document so burdened with the terrible truth of the human condition that it is both uplifting and depressing. It is a small piece of perfection, totally devoid of affectation or pretension. Junky, like all Burroughs' best work- goes straight for the jugular (via the mainline?). The Naked Lunch (1959), is probably the most controversial work in the Burroughs canon. The title, suggested by Jack Kerouac, refers to just what it is impaled on the fork feeding your physical needs. Need: addiction- dependence- sex- power (and its structures). Collected in dribbles and slabs by Buroughs's bum-chum, Allen Ginsberg , it is a truely extraordinary journey. The best of the rest? Read 'em yourself and find out. Oh, Ok then, for me, Cities of the Red Night, (Pub
1991) is a tale of libertarian pirates prowling the Caribbean in the golden age of piracy, which gives a glimpse at an escape from the physical torment as envisaged by the author. Queer, released in 1985 is stylistically far closer to Junky than Burrough's other work as it was written just after. It's a shame that it languished for so many years unseen as it is far more than an auto biographical travelogue- it's about loneliness, alienation, love and is a more tender yet less cynical piece than Burroughs would produce again.
Burroughs' own experiences reappear again and again in his fiction, His characters are one dimensional, with no explanation or justification for their actions. His doctors are junk hungry Frankensteins. His judges hand down sentences with comforting aphorisms such as "If you can't be just, be arbitrary". His policemen are gangsters (and sometimes junkies), desperate for convictions and confessions. He had particular contempt for psychiatrists, who were portrayed as parasites sucking rebellion and individuality out of those deemed fit for their particular services. The great irony is that Burroughs' various addictions made him dependant on the very power structures which he despised.
In Mexico City in 1951 when, in a pivotal moment in his life, a botched a William Tell exhibition ended with Burroughs putting a hole through his 2nd wife's forehead. Jumping bail, he then begun a long nomadic existence for nearly quarter of a century, beginning in a male brothel in Tangiers and drifting between Paris, London, and America until he finally settled in New York in 1974. In 1981, after his sons death from liver failure, aged 33, Burroughs moved for the last time to Lawrence, Kansas, where he lived out his retirement with his guns and his cats.
In his lifetime, which covered most of the 'great prohibition', Burroughs saw the slaughter of the drug wars and despised the hypocrisy they espoused. The main body of work which made his reputation, was written under the influence of heroin, opium, cannabis, speed, cocaine and alcohol. Ideally, Burroughs may have chosen sobriety, his work alludes to freeing himself constantly- but it also keeps telling us that it's not the drugs that screw you up- it's the people who are prepared to patronise coerce and imprison you back to conformity...

by Gary Sutton

LETTER FROM A MASTER ADDICT ON DANGEROUS DRUGS

This is a terrific book of Burroughs' own letters written between 1945 and 1959 mostly to Allen Ginsberg.