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.”