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).