On February 5, 1914, William Seward Burroughs II was born in Missouri in the US. He was born into a wealthy family, thanks to his grandfather (William Seward Burroughs I) having invented an early adding machine and founded the Burroughs Corporation. He attended Harvard, and enrolled in medical school in Vienna. World War II intervened, and he enlisted in the US Army. It turned out to be a questionable move; he was discharged early from the army, suffered from severe depression, became addicted to heroin. His addiction lasted the rest of his life.
When living in New York in the 1940s he met the poet Allen Ginsberg and the novelist Jack Kerouac, and the three of them became the informal founders of the Beat Generation. Probably influenced by his friends, Burroughs began writing too, and published his first novel, Junkie, in 1953. It was partly autobiographical, and employed techniques that became postmodern standards, including unreliable narrators and experimental prose. He also used what he called the “cut-up method,” which relied on physically snipping out passages of text from newspapers, magazines, and books, and pasting them together in new combinations. Possibly as a result, his work can be difficult to follow. His most famous work is Naked Lunch, published in 1959 in France. Obscenity laws postponed its US publication until 1962, but since then it’s been published in several editions (sometimes as “The” Naked Lunch), made into a film, and served as the inspiration for at least two band names.
Burroughs’ books were never hugely popular, but he met with a lot of critical acclaim, and was even called “the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius.” He was able to live without royalties from his writing thanks to a monthly allowance from his wealthy family. He sometimes worked at a series of menial jobs, though, and at times he travelled internationally. He was always fascinated with handguns, magic, and occult themes — and the guns obsession led him killing his wife in 1951 in Mexico City. It was an accident (he may have simply dropped the gun and it went off). He was convicted in absentia in the US, but only received a two-year suspended sentence. Afterward, Burroughs described killing his wife as a pivotal event that fundamentally changed him and his writing.
He spent long periods in Tangier (where heroin was easily available), Paris, and London. In London he came up with something he called the “playback” technique. It was developed out of his obsession with magic, and was a way to put hexes on people and places that annoyed him. He claimed that using “playback,” he was able to force a London coffee bar to close.
Burroughs returned to the US in the 1970s, living at first in New York, then moving to Kansas, where he lived the rest of his life. While there he began creating paintings by shooting spray cans. That led to a variety of aft techniques — his paintings have hung in over 50 galleries and museums.
He kept writing no matter where he lived or what else he was doing. He eventually believed that his writing was also a magical technique. His bibliography is pretty extensive. And of course there are also his many paintings, as well as many years’ worth of photographs. He died of a heart attack in 1997 at 83, and if anything his reputation has grown since. Posthumous collections of his work, including pieces he never published, have been released since 1997. If nothing else, his work is still pushing boundaries.
