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"Burroughs, William S (1914-1997)"
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William S. Burroughs' \The Revised Boy Scout Manual\ : an electronic revolution
\"An updated and satirical version of William S. Burroughs' The Revised Boy Scout Manual, which turns the purpose of that manual on its head to become a set of rationales and instructions for destabilizing the state\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The green ghost : William Burroughs and the ecological mind
The Green Ghost , by Chad Weidner, uncovers the ecological context of literary texts by William Burroughs. Until now, much scholarly work on Burroughs has focused on the sensational aspects of his life and innovative writing. By rereading canonical and ignored texts while pushing the boundaries of ecocritical theory and practice, Weidner provides a fresh perspective on Burroughs and suggests new theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the work of other Beat writers.
Using an ecocritical lens, Weidner explores the toxicity in Naked Lunch, while at the same time teasing out latent ecological questions embedded in Burroughs’s later works. The author’s analysis of unknown and miniature “cut-ups,” texts that have been disassembled and rearranged to create new texts, provides a new understanding of these cryptic forms. Weidner also examines in detail books by Burroughs that have been virtually ignored by critics, exposing the deep ecology of the Beat writer’s vision.
In calling attention to Burroughs’s narrative strategies that link him to an environmental political position, The Green Ghost reveals the work of the Beat writer as a ripe source for ecocritical dialogue.
eBook
The Stray Bullet
William S. Burroughs arrived in Mexico City in 1949, having slipped out of New Orleans while awaiting trial on drug and weapons charges that would almost certainly have resulted in a lengthy prison sentence. Still uncertain about being a writer, he had left behind a series of failed business ventures-including a scheme to grow marijuana in Texas and sell it in New York-and an already long history of drug use and arrests. He would remain in Mexico for three years, a period that culminated in the defining incident of his life: Burroughs shot his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, while playing William Tell with a loaded pistol. (He would be tried and convicted of murder in absentia after fleeing Mexico.)
First published in 1995 in Mexico, where it received the Malcolm Lowry literary essay award,The Stray Bulletis an imaginative and riveting account of Burroughs's formative experiences in Mexico, his fascination with Mexico City's demimonde, his acquaintances and friendships there, and his contradictory attitudes toward the country and its culture. Mexico, Jorge García-Robles makes clear, was the place in which Burroughs embarked on his \"fatal vocation as a writer.\"
Through meticulous research and interviews with those who knew Burroughs and his circle in Mexico City, García-Robles brilliantly portrays a time in Burroughs's life that has been overshadowed by the tragedy of Joan Vollmer's death. He re-creates the bohemian Roma neighborhood where Burroughs resided with Joan and their children, the streets of postwar Mexico City that Burroughs explored, and such infamous figures as Lola la Chata, queen of the city's drug trade. This compelling book also offers a contribution by Burroughs himself-an evocative sketch of his shady Mexican attorney, Bernabé Jurado.
eBook
Adapting the beat poets
In the post-World War II era, authors of the beat generation produced some of the most enduring literature of the day. More than six decades since, work of the Beat Poets conjures images of unconventionality, defiance, and a changing consciousness that permeated the 1950s and 60s. In recent years, the key texts of Beat authors such as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac have been appropriated for a new generation in feature-length films, graphic novels, and other media.
In Adapting the Beat Poets: Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouc on Screen, Michael J.Prince examines how works by these authors have been translated to film. Looking primarily at three key works—Burroughs' Naked Lunch, Ginsberg's Howl, and Kerouac's On the Road—Prince considers how Beat literature has been significantly altered by the unintended intrusion of irony or other inflections. Prince also explores how these screen adaptations offer evidence of a growing cultural thirst for authenticity, even as mediated in postmodern works. Additional works discussed in this volume include The Subterraneans, Towers Open Fire, The Junky's Christmas,and Big Sur.
By examining the screen versions of the Beat triumvirate's creations, this volume questions the ways in which their original works serve as artistic anchors and whether these films honor the authentic intent of the authors. Adapting the Beat Poets is a valuable resource for anyone studying the beat generation, including scholars of literature, film, and American history.
eBook
Retaking the universe : William S. Burroughs in the age of globalization
William S. Burroughs is one of America's most influential and widely studied writers. A leading member of the Beat movement, his books and essays continue to attract a wide readership. His films, paintings, recordings and other projects that grew out of his literary production, together with his iconic persona as a counter-culture (anti-)hero, mean his work has become a broad cultural phenomenon. This collection of essays by leading scholars offers an interdisciplinary consideration of Burroughs's art. It links his lived experience to his many major prose works written from 1953 on, as well his sound, cinema and media projects. Moving beyond the merely literary, the contributors argue for the continuing social and political relevance of Burroughs's work for the emerging global order. Themes include: Burroughs and contemporary theory; debates on 'reality'; violence; magic and mysticism; cybernetic cultures; language and technology; control and transformation; transgression and addiction; the limits of prose; image politics and the avant-garde.
eBook
PULLING DOWN THE SKY
This article brings queer critical attention to Apocalypse, a 1988 collaboration of ten prints by artist Keith Haring (1958-1990) and poetry by William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) that reverses the apocalyptic trajectory of its apparent, albeit distant, source text, the Book of Revelation. Through image and text these two artists queer the perspective of Revelation, replacing the otherworldly vantage point of apocalpytic with an earthly view, specifically from Greenwich Village, a center of queer culture in the 1980s. This queering of the text, which disorients Revelation's narrative and symbols, involves a critique of phallo-centric culture embodied in white, middle-class religiosity. Haring and Burroughs offer an ambivalent eschatology, vacillating between end-time hope and early AIDS crisis negativity.
Journal Article