Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of February 5th
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It is the 36th day of the year, leaving 329 days remaining in 2022.
He was part of the Beat Generation, writing "post modern" fiction and something called "paranoid fiction." He was known for his erratic writing, sometimes under the influece of various drugs, and for the explicit autobiographical nature of his story telling.
He wrote about his gay love, his heroin addiction, and his belief in the occult and other mystical themes. He was also an artist, displaying thousands of his paintings. He appeared in many films, and performed with musical artists throughout the land.
He was a Harvard graduate who later befriended beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He wandered much of his life, living in the United States, South America, Mexico, and Europe.
His best selling novel, The Naked Lunch, was the target of censors for its explicit sexual content. He was also involved in at least two murders -- he was arrested as a material witness after writer Lucien Carr allegedly killed a man and confessed to Burroughs and Kerouac. Burroughs himself was arrested and later convicted in absentia on manslaughter charges after shooting his wife, Joan Vollmer, in Mexico.
Burroughs was a prolific, influentual, if unconventional writer who experiemented with style and form. He helped create something called the "cut-up technique," which involved slicing phrases and clauses and splicing them together to creates new sentences. The Britannica Encyclopaedia said The Naked Lunch abandoned "plot and coherent characterization (and) used a drug addict's consciousness to depict a hideous modern landscape."
Burroughs died in 1997 at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, where he had lived since 1981.
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