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“Panorama of the City of Interzone. Opening bars of East St. Louis Toodleoo … at times loud and clear then faint and intermittent like music down a windy street…. The room seems to shake and vibrate with motion…”

That was how William S Burroughs introduced the global to the ‘Interzone’ in his heroin-and-hashish-soaked 1959 novel ‘Naked Lunch’. Those few bars of Duke Ellington were just the beginning. Rarely has a writer had as much of an impact on rock’n’roll as Burroughs, who was born 100 years ago today on 5 February 1914.

Kurt Cobain was such a big fan that he played discordant guitar on a spoken-word performance called ‘The “Priest” They Called Him’. The Beatles put him on the Sgt. Pepper’s sleeve. Jagger and Richards used his ‘cut-up’ technique of rearranging words from their notes to help them write lyrics for ‘Exile On Main St.’s ‘Casino Boogie’.

While Burroughs lived all over the world, including in London and in Tangier, in north Morocco, the city that inspired ‘Interzone’, he is perhaps most associated with the New York scene that he inhabited with fellow poets and writers like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. In later life, these writers became icons to the city’s burgeoning punk rock scene, particularly songwriters like Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Richard Hell.

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore moved to New York as a teenager to become a part of this scene. I spoke to him about his memories of the author as an old man:

What was your first impression of Burroughs?

I used to live near him in New York City. I first moved to New York in ’77 and he was living in ‘The Bunker’ in the Bowery, which was a sort of mythological place that John Giorno, the poet, resided in. Burroughs lived downstairs from him, underneath the street. I would see Burroughs walking around sometimes in the Bowery. You saw all those cats walking around at that time: Allen Ginsberg lived down the street from me with Peter Orlovsky. I would see them holding hands on the subway, which was fascinating. It was more of a small town in New York City in those days. Everybody knew each other. You would see all the people who were celebrated in that scene, such as those guys, and then the punk rock people like Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell and Patti Smith. Everybody lived in sort of the same area. There was this little village, and the tempat was starting to draw attention to itself because of CBGB.

Was he going to the shows?

pattismithwsbWhen I first saw William Burroughs he was sitting in the audience at CBGB when Patti Smith was playing. It was really interesting, because usually that club was just crammed full of kids my age, 19 or 20 years old. I remember going to see Patti Smith there, late 76 or early 77, and she was pretty much at her apex at that point. I remember the place being really crowded, and in the day CBGB had tables and chairs and they served hamburgers and there were dogs walking around. I don’t think it was really set up to deal with the capacity crowds that started coming in there. They got rid of the tables and chairs after a while, but they still had them then. I remember it being jam-packed and sitting tightly up against this little round wooden table, and all of a sudden people who worked there came into the middle of the room and just started yelling, pulling people out of the chairs and pushing people away. They slammed down a table right in the middle of the room and threw some chairs around it. Everybody was really upset while this was going on. Then they escorted William Burroughs and a couple of his friends in and sat them down very diplomatically at this table. I remember sitting there thinking: ‘Oh my God, it’s like William Burroughs’. He was this old, grey eminence in a tie and a fedora. He sat there and looked around at us. He didn’t seem to feel very guilty about taking up all this space. Then Patti came out in leather trousers and absolutely decimated the place. I remember that was probably the most fabulous Patti Smith performance I ever saw. She was on fire, knowing that William Burroughs was sat right in the middle of the room watching this concert.

There was another club downtown called The Mudd Club. I started going there and you’d never know what was going to happen. There were no flyers or anything. Sometimes it would be a band or some performance art or a poet or whatever. One of the first times I walked in there they set up a folding card table onstage and William Burroughs did a reading. He did it a few times during those first few years of The Mudd Club, 78-79. That was fabulous. It was a very neighbourhood thing, and he was really acerbic. Cutting and biting.

Around that time they had the Nova Convention, which was one of the first celebrations of William S Burroughs. John Giorno instigated it. There were things that happened all over the city but there was a main concert which I got tickets for. There was a cavalcade of people announced for it: Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Keith Richards, Brion Gysin and all the literary people. Everybody was there, except Keith Richards never showed up. Much to the audience’s dismay, because I think he sold a lot of tickets! We were all excited to see what that was all about because it was purported that Keith Richards wrote the lyrics to ‘Satisfaction’ after reading William Burroughs. It was a great event, and that was the first real gracing of William Burroughs as a cultural icon. That was a wonderful thing.

PARIS — With determined indeterminacy, young Mathilde Louette initiated a perplexing but hip four-hour English-language celebration of William S. Burroughs’s 100th birthday on December 12 in Paris, where the writer lived, on and off, between 1958 and 1966. In her introduction to the Burroughs-inspired talks, discussions, and presentations, Louette reminded us that it was a Parisian publisher, Maurice Girodias, whose daring publishing house Olympia Press first put into print Monsieur Burroughs’s unforgettable, non-linear narrative work Naked Lunch, a dreamlike, highly sexual, and drug-charged stream of freely associated vignettes that, taken together, make for an impressionistic masterpiece (one that was briefly banned in Boston).

To begin the celebration in fascinating fashion, professor Didier Girard copiously explored Burroughs’s work in comparison to automatons (self-operating, human-like mechanisms) and two literary outcasts: Jean Genet and Denton Welch. Then author Benoît Delaune spoke on the creative cut-up technique and its implications. He reminded the audience that Burroughs, as influenced by Brion Gysin (an artist known primarily for his rediscovery of the Dada master Tristan Tzara‘s cut-up technique and for co-inventing the flickering kinetic sculpture “Dreamachine”) popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64), named after his 1964 novel Nova Express. (Do watch Andre Perkowski’s film adaptation of Nova Express.)

In brief, the cut-up method consists of cutting up and randomly reassembling various fragments of something to give them completely new and unexpected meanings. Burroughs, who died in 1997, employed the cut-up method so as to achieve an anti-narrative procedure that involved randomly splicing together phrases from various sources and inserting them into his own text. However, Delaune failed to mention that Burroughs and Gysin worked together in the early 1960s on a publishing project called The Third Mind that employed the cut-up method. It was the basis for an interesting art show of the same name at the Palais de Tokyo in 2007 that was curated by Ugo Rondinone.

This year will give us the Burroughs we envision — and yet the danger is that the diversity and impact of Burroughs’ writing, visual art, audio works, and film experiments will be lost in the endless refraction of the mythologizing mirror.

William S. Burroughs, literary scourge of the banal and the boring, best known as the author of the still outrageous Naked Lunch (1959), would have turned 100 on February 5.

Whether as novelist, essayist, painter, filmmaker, recording artist, mystic, expatriate, psychological patient, Scientologist, Beat progenitor, plagiarist, punk music godfather, anti-censorship activist, queer hero, science-fiction guru, junkie, fasilitas theorist, advertising tipe — or accidental murderer — the figure of Burroughs (1914-1997) casts as many shadows as the limits of each of these labels.

Those who remember the man Jack Kerouac billed as “Old Bull Lee” in On the Road (1957) as a heroin-shooting, wife-killing outlaw might imagine a birthday party for Burroughs as a Scientology auditing session where roller-skating boys with brightly colored codpieces pass across the cracked parking lots of a dead future.

And those marking the Burroughs century will have a thousand different version of Burroughs to choose from, and the celebrations will commemorate and mythologize, perhaps in equal parts. Burroughs’ myth — writ large — remains a powerful mirror for everyone from ex-Hippies to ad executives to cut-and-paste culture content creators (count me in the latter group).

If we get the government we deserve, this year will give us the Burroughs we envision — and yet the danger is that the diversity and impact of Burroughs’ writing, visual art, audio works, and film experiments will be lost in the endless refraction of the mythologizing mirror.

ndeed, Burroughs was certainly a presence in the circle of young writers who would later become the Beat Generation, and his friendships with Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (especially) were real and generative. Yet where Ginsberg’s “Howl” (1956) expresses its cynical dissatisfaction through a tipe of ecstatic anti-poetry inspiring generations of disaffected college students, and Kerouac’s On the Road sold a Romantic version of slacker transgression/transcendence, both looked for the “truth” underneath the lies of Eisenhower’s bomb-shelter America. Beat works believe that there is meaning — transcendental meaning — hiding from view, and these writers seek to access that meaning through drugs, sex, jazz (and let’s not forget the appropriation of black culture).

The title say it all, and I’ve got a lot of ground to cover so let’s just get on with it!

Burroughs was born on February 5, 1914, which would make him 100 years old today!
But he passed away on August 2, 1997
The S. in William S. Burroughs stands for Seward
Burroughs is actually Burroughs II
Burroughs’ father’s name was Mortimer Perry Burroughs
Mortimer ran a gift shop called Cobblestone Gardens
The II comes from his grandfather
William Seward Burroughs I was the founder of the Burroughs Adding Machine company
William S. Burroughs II named his son William Seward Burroughs III
Burroughs’ mother’s name was Laura Hammon Lee
Burroughs’ pen name was William Lee
Burroughs’ maternal grandfather was a minister
In the ’60s, Burroughs joined and left the Church of Scientology
In 1993 he became a member of the Illuminates of Thanateros
Laura Hammon Lee’s family claimed to be related to Confederate General Robert E. Lee
Burroughs’ uncle was Ivy Lee, the founder of modern PR
His family was not very affectionate
He was born in St. Louis, Missouri and lived on Pershing Avenue in the Central West End section of St. Louis
He attended the private school John Burroughs School, named after the naturalist
Burroughs was class of ’31
Burroughs’ first publishing achievement was at the school when his essay “Personal Magnetism” was published in 1929 in the John Burroughs Review
He didn’t graduate from John Burroughs School
On its website, John Burroughs School calls William S. Burroughs a “controversial author”
After John Burroughs School, he attended Los Alamos Ranch School, an elite boarding school in New Mexico
Another famous author later attended Los Alamos Ranch School: Gore Vidal (born 1925)
At the boys boarding school, Burroughs kept a diary about his attachment to another boy at the school
Burroughs was a virgin through high school
Burroughs dropped out of Los Alamos too
Next up, he went to Taylor School in Clayton, Missouri
From there, he went to Harvard to study art
At Harvard, he was part of Adams House
Back home on summer break, Burroughs became a cub reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
His beat? Police docket
Surprisingly, he hated the job and refused to cover gruesome stories
That summer he lost his virginity
He shed his virginity to a female prostitute
It was back at Harvard that he was introduced to gay culture when he traveled to New York City with his wealthy Kansas City friend Richard Stern
Stern was apparently a bit like Neal Cassady when it came to driving: he drove so fast that Burroughs wanted to get out of the car once
Burroughs graduated from Harvard in 1936
After he graduated, his parents gave him $200 a month
After Harvard, Burroughs went to Vienna to study medicine
There he became involved in the gay subculture
He also met his first wife there, Ilse Klapper, a Jewish woman fleeing the Nazis
Burroughs and Klapper were not romantically involved, but he married her in Croatia so she could move to the US
After they divorced in New York, they remained friends
By 1939, he had become so obsessed with a man that he severed his own finger — the last joint of his left little finger, to be exact
In 1942, Burroughs enlisted in the US Army
When he became depressed that he was listed as 1-A Infantry instead of officer, his mother called a family friend, a neurologist, to get him a civilian disability discharge due to mental instability
It took five months for him to be discharged, and he waited at Jefferson Barracks, near his family home
Afterward, he moved to Chicago
In Chicago, the Harvard grad became an exterminator
The Burroughs family was friends with another prominent family, the Carrs
William S. Burroughs II was eleven years old when Lucien Carr was born
During primary school in St. Louis, Burroughs had met David Kammerer, who was three years older than him
Kammerer had been Carr’s youth group leader and become obsessed with him, following him to the University of Chicago
When Carr fled to Columbia University in New York City, Kammerer followed — as did Burroughs, who moved a block away from Kammerer in the West Village
Carr met Allen Ginsberg at Columbia and introduced him to Burroughs and Carr
Burroughs met Joan Vollmer Adams around this time, and he moved in with her
In the summer of ’44, Carr killed Kammerer with his Boy Scout knife, and then went to Burroughs — Kammerer’s friend — for help
Burroughs flushed Kammerer’s bloody pack of cigarettes down the toilet and told Carr to get a lawyer and turn himself in, but instead Carr sought out help from Jack Kerouac
Burroughs and Kerouac were arrested as material witnesses, but Burroughs’ father posted bail for him (Kerouac married Edie Parker to get bail money)
Burroughs became involved in drugs around this time, becoming addicted to heroin
When Burroughs got arrested for forging a prescription, he was released to his parents in St. Louis
When he was finally allowed to leave, he went back to New York City for Joan Vollmer Adams, and together, with her daughter, moved to Texas
It was Joan who gave birth to William S. Burroughs III in 1947
After Texas, the family moved to New Orleans
Around this time, Burroughs was arrested after police found letters at Ginsberg’s place that incriminated him
Burroughs, Joan, and the kids went on the lam to Mexico
In Mexico, Burroughs decided to go back to school: he studied Spanish and the Mayan language at Mexico City College
He studied under R. H. Barlow, a homosexual from Kansas City who commit suicide through overdose in January 1951
He also decided to take up a game of William Tell. It didn’t go so well: he shot Joan in the head, killing her
He only spent 13 days in jail, after his brother bribed authorities to let him out while he waited for trial; witnesses were also bribed so Burroughs would appear innocent. Either way, Burroughs skipped town
Burroughs considers his killing of Joan to be the beginning of his life as a writer; he wrote Queer at this time
Queer was not published until 1985; Burroughs’ first book was actually Junkie, published in 1953 — four years before Kerouac’s On the Road came out
Burroughs III went to live with his grandparents in St. Louis; Joan’s daughter, Julie, went to live with her maternal grandmother
Burroughs himself went down to South America in search of the drug yage
From there, he moved to Palm Beach, Florida, with his parents
His parents paid for him to travel to Rome to see Alan Ansen
They didn’t hit it off romantically, so Burroughs left for Tangier, Morocco

As an author, essayist, visual artist, plus spoken word performer, William S. Burroughs spent a lifetime dismantling control mechanisms through subversive plus surreal art that have had far reaching influences in disukai banyak orang culture. In the year that would have marked his 100th birthday, publications, art exhibitions, films, plus other events worldwide have spent 2014 honoring Burroughs’s legacy. And on November 7, Toronto’s Music Gallery produced an evening of its own.

Arriving at the Music Gallery, audiences were immediately immersed in a den of dim lights, as two “dreamachines” spun idly atop tables in the room. Invented by Brion Gysin plus Ian Sommerville—friends plus collaborators of the man of the hour—many needed no introduction to these devices plus gravitated towards them without persuasion. For the uninitiated, they’re stroboscopic flicker devices that spin at a rate said to engage the alpha waves in users’ brains; allegedly inducing hypnagogic states plus “drugless” highs when users “view” them through closed eyelids. But on a more important level, the dreamachines afford users the unique ability to unlock their minds plus let them wander from the stable “realities” otherwise encountered through visual stimulation. Meanwhile, multi-woodwind specialist, composer, plus Burroughs scholar Glen Hall provided a multi-media portrait of William Burroughs that employed some of the same practices the visionary used himself; CCMC ditched structure entirely plus stuck to a formula they’ve excelled at since the 70s: free, authentic self expression.

Canadian Creative Music Collective (CCMC) member plus disukai banyak orang Canadian poet Paul Dutton opened the CCMC’s set with a collection of spit, guttural growls, plus garbled speech from what seemed like every recess of his diaphragm, while musician/composers John Kamevaar plus John Oswald combined an interesting mix of saxophone plus synthetic percussion blasts (with Michael Snow away on tour, the group performed as a trio). It was a bit disappointing that CCMC wrapped their set after barely half an hour, but shaming them for denying anything more would be an exercise in futility plus bad faith. As Toronto’s longest-running free-improvising group they’ve spent 40 years liberated from resmi restrictions like genre, melody, plus music theory, so expecting them to perform any longer would’ve been a serious error. After CCMC finished the roughly 25-minute piece they introduced themselves with, things seemed complete when Dutton declared “And that appears to be that.” But then he started rambling about playing some more, plus Oswald took it as a cue to accompany the verse with some crackle-and-pop percussion. Neglecting his instrument, Kamevaar initially looked somewhat impatient with the exercise, but eventually he cracked a smile plus joined in after Dutton mumbled something about how the piano had been completely silent all night.

ST. LOUIS — Even sober, William S. Burroughs had visions. As a young child, he saw a green reindeer the size of a cat. Another time, he woke to see tiny men scrambling among his building blocks, he said.

“He was one of those children who never really got over the magical kingdom. Part of him stayed there,” says biographer Barry Miles.

Burroughs’ kingdom, literally speaking, began in a comfortable house in the Central West End of St. Louis, at 4664 Pershing Ave. (known as “Berlin Avenue” before World War I). Later, the family would flee the smoggy city for the suburb of Ladue. Over his life, Burroughs traveled much of the global and found myriad substances to induce more visions and dreams, which he recorded in books or used as inspiration for art of one kind or another.

The 100th anniversary of Burroughs’ birth was on Feb. 5, 1914, and his literary kingdom is international, a destination for both scholars and modern beatniks. Novels such as “Naked Lunch,” “Junky” and “Queer” retain an outlaw reputation more than 50 years after he wrote them. The Burroughs oeuvre enthralls dedicated members.

“His work still has the power to shock, which is pretty hard these days,” Miles says.

Miles’ 700-page biography shows how Burroughs’ life was mirrored in his writing while warning that some of Burroughs’ tales were likely exaggerated.

One thing that wasn’t exaggerated was Burroughs’ addictions, even though he lived until 83.

“Considering what he did to his body over the years, it’s a miracle he survived as long as he did,” Miles said in a telephone interview. Much of Miles’ knowledge of Burroughs and other Beat writers is first hand: The British writer knew him in the 1960s in London and lived at Allen Ginsberg’s commune in New York. Miles, a member of the underground himself and producer of music and poetic happenings, has also written biographies of Paul McCartney, Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg and others. Miles is also the author of “In the Sixties,” “In the Seventies” and “London Calling: A Countercultural History of London since 1945.”

William S. Burroughs, the bespectacled countercultural icon that lived a life more extreme than you could possibly imagine, would be 100 years old this year. A wealth of tributes, reminiscences plus events have been taking place across the international for the ‘Burroughs Centennial’, reflecting the writer’s continuing influence since his death in 1997. Into this wide sweep of Burroughs related phenomena, Sonic Youth founder plus punk Renaissance man Thurston Moore has put together an exhibition displaying documentation from 1978’s Nova Convention, at the Red Gallery in the aching heart of hipster Shoreditch.

In his program note, Moore remembers how, at 19, he sat in the Entermedia Theatre in New York City to hear the poets plus musicians gathered to pay tribute to the then 64-year old Burroughs: Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, Brion Gysin, Ed Sanders plus John Giorno, just a small selection of those inspired by his work. And what a night! Zappa reading the ‘Talking Asshole’ section from Naked Lunch, Giorno intoning his meditations of love plus life, Patti Smith apparently wielding a clarinet for her performance plus Eileen Myles causing a stir with her re-enactment of Burroughs’ fatal ‘William Tell’ shooting of his second wife in Mexico City. These moments are documented in the photographs plus materials of the exhibition itself, with a spattering of examples of Burroughs’ work and, in a nice touch, recent work from Moore’s classes at Naropa University that is still influenced by Burroughs today.

The exhibition consists primarily of a wall of James Hamilton photographs that document the Nova Convention itself. Hamilton, then a staff photographer for the Village Voice roamed around backstage catching the performers plus friends chatting, drinking plus laughing in a police line-up of countercultural celebrities, from Allen Ginsberg to Terry Southern, John Cage plus Phillip Glass. Goofing around plus chatting, the legendary figures of the artistic underground look like nothing so much as good friends having a good time (as they were). Facing these photographs on the other wall are framed examples of Burroughs’ recorded output, the vinyl artwork of Call Me Burroughs plus Elvis of Letters displayed proudly along the wall in LP frames. The clearest intersection of music plus Burroughs’ writing, these records are the first point of contact with his work for many. In conversation Moore explained that he hoped to rotate the record sleeves during the exhibition’s run to give a broader sweep of the depth of Burroughs’ recorded output, which spanned from simple spoken word to the orchestral bombast of Dead City Radio.

Gilt plus red plush. Rococo bar backed by pink shell. The air is cloyed with a sweet evil substance like decayed honey. Men plus women in evening dress sip pousse-cafés through alabaster tubes. A Near East Mugwump sit naked on a bar stool covered in pink silk. He licks warm honey from a crystal goblet with a long black tongue. His genitals are perfectly formed — circumcised cock, black shiny pubic hairs. His lips are thin plus purple-blue like the lips of a penis, his eyes blank with insect calm.

THE RECENT PASSING of Lou Reed resurrected the old quip by Brian Eno about the Velvet Underground — that hardly anyone bought their records, but everyone who did became a musician. William S. Burroughs, born 100 years ago today, may well be the Velvet Underground of American literature. A writer of vivid, hallucinatory prose works swimming with drug use, queer sex, plus sci-fi viscera, Burroughs has always been an author whose name is dropped more often than his books are picked up. Still, in the second half of the 20th century, few figures had such a pervasive effect in virtually every field of culture from the most rarified avant-garde to the massively popular.

Writers stamped with his influence include J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Kathy Acker, Alan Moore, Lester Bangs, Dennis Cooper, plus William Gibson, but his impact extends far beyond the literary. Burroughs collaborated with the painter Brion Gysin in Paris plus London in the 1950s plus 1960s, plus in the 1980s embarked on his own painting career (the sneers of the art establishment deterred his painting roughly as much as the sneers of the literary establishment had deterred his writing; like the innumerable cultural icons devoted to his work, Burroughs was not the tipe to be impressed by the fussy incomprehension of the New Yorker set). With Robert Wilson plus Tom Waits, he created the musical The Black Rider. His writing is a regular touchstone for the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, especially in his collaborations with Felix Guattari. His works include two experimental films co-directed with Antony Blach in the early ‘60s, plus it’s hard to imagine the visceral visual language of filmmakers like David Cronenberg without Burroughs’ splattery corporeal imaginary; in 1991 Cronenberg attempted a bold cinematic adaptation of Naked Lunch, with the author’s blessing. Almost as remarkable as his literary influence is his lasting impact on populer plus experimental music. During his life, he collaborated with or was referenced by Sonic Youth, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Coil, Joy Division, Laurie Anderson, R.E.M., Blondie’s Chris Stein, plus Ministry, as well as, suitably, Lou Reed plus John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Steely Dan are named after a remarkable dildo from Yokohama that features in one of the most explicit sections of Naked Lunch. The term “heavy metal music” is taken from that book, too. The Soft Machine was a Burroughs novel before it was a British band. The “Johnny” in Patti Smith’s “Land”? That’s a reference to Burroughs’ Wild Boys. And Burroughs’ last filmed appearance was in the video for U2’s “Last Night on Earth.”

Three Rooms Press presents NAKED BURROUGHS: A 100 Year celebration of Beat icon plus postmodern trailblazer William S. Burroughs on Friday, February 7, at Cornelia Street Cafe. The event will be highlighted by tribute readings plus discussions by performance artist plus Burroughs associate PENNY ARCADE, poet STEVE DALACHINSKY plus spoken word artist KAT GEORGES. Also on tap will be an audience grup reading of an excerpt from Burroughs’ iconic masterpiece NAKED LUNCH. Three Rooms Press co-director PETER CARLAFTES hosts.

Doors open at 5:45. Admission is $8 which includes (naturally) a free drink! Cornelia Street Cafe is at 29 Cornelia Street, in the West Village, between W. 4th Street at Bleecker (http://corneliastreecafe.com/).

Information on key performers:
PENNY ARCADE is a performance artist, actress plus playwright, best known for her show Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! She has worked with numerous underground film plus theater artists including John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous, Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, Quentin Crisp plus Andy Warhol. She is a co-founder of the LOWER EAST SIDE BIOGRAPHY PROJECT, an oral history of New York’s Bohemian culture from the 50s to the present.

STEVE DALACHINSKY is a New York downtown poet plus author of the PEN Award-winning book THE FINAL NITE plus Other Poems (2006). Dalachinsky’s main influences are the Beats, Blake, The Odyssey, obsession, socio-political angst, human disappointment, music (especially Jazz), plus visual art with leanings toward abstraction. His work is spontaneous plus leans towards transforming the image rather than merely describing it, in what he now refers to as transformative description/descriptive transformation.

DAVID LAWTON is a spoken word artist plus actor, who former MC5 manager plus White Panther founder John Sinclair calls “a fine poet plus terrific performer.” His most recent books is the poetry collection SHARP BLUE STREAM (2012), which includes homages to Herbert Huncke plus other Beat icons.

KAT GEORGES is a New York spoken word artist, designer plus co-director of Three Rooms Press. Her books include the poetry collection OUR LADY OF THE HUNGER plus PUNK ROCK JOURNAL. She will read an excerpt from Burroughs’ classic novella JUNKY.

About the Monthly:
THE MONTHLY at Cornelia Street Cafe, hosted by Three Rooms Press, brings together writers, artists, philosophers plus scientists to discuss a monthly theme. Past themes have included women in love, conspiracy theories (on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination), plus illegal Leaves of Grass, an exploration of grass-related ideas from Walt Whitman to the War on Drugs.

100 Year Tribute to William S. Burroughs
Friday, February 7, 2014, 6 pm | Cornelia St. Cafe

Featuring William Burroughs discussions plus readings starring

The exhibition, which celebrates the centenary of the birth of William S. Burroughs, will be on view from Tuesday, Jan. 28, through Friday, June 13, in the Special Collections Exhibition Gallery located on the second floor in the Morris Library.

Burroughs was born Feb. 5, 1914, in St. Louis, Mo., the grandson of William Seward Burroughs, the inventor of the adding machine. He attended private schools in St. Louis plus New Mexico plus received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1936.

After graduating from Harvard, Burroughs spent time traveling, took graduate courses in psychology plus anthropology at Columbia University plus Harvard University plus eventually moved to New York City in 1943. In New York, he met Allen Ginsberg plus Jack Kerouac, friends plus writers with whom he was associated for his entire literary career.

For much of the 1950s plus 1960s, Burroughs traveled incessantly plus lived for various periods in New York, Texas, Mexico City, New Orleans, Paris, Tangier plus London. Although his first book, Junky (Burroughs’ preferred spelling), was published in 1953, it was not until his best known work, the highly experimental novel The Naked Lunch was published in 1959 that he began to gain recognition as a writer.

The career of Burroughs as a writer was characterized by ongoing experimentation. He produced a series of writings that expanded upon the techniques he discovered during the composition of The Naked Lunch. His innovative plus experimental writing style, his insistence on confronting systems of authority plus control, plus his explorations of drugs, sex, magic plus dreams, perception plus reception, utopias plus dystopias, technology, art, plus the written word radically shifted the landscape of American literature plus culture in the 20th century.

During the course of his career, Burroughs wrote 18 novels, six collections of short stories plus four collections of essays. He published countless poems, stories plus articles in magazines plus journals, plus he was also an accomplished artist plus performer.

Other books by William Burroughs include The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962), Dead Fingers Talk (1963), Nova Express (1964), The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (1971), Exterminator! (1973), Cities of the Red Night (1981), The Place of Dead Roads (1984), Queer (1985) plus The Western Lands (1987).