William S. Burroughs
Sign in to saveAmerican novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer (1914–1997)
AI overview
William S. Burroughs was an American writer and artist (1914–1997) who worked across multiple forms including novels, short stories, essays, painting, and spoken word performance. He is remembered as an influential and controversial figure in 20th-century literature and culture.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1914
- Died
- 1997
- Works
- 341
Top works
- Lettres
- Le festin nu
- Naked Lunch
- Narkotyki
- The Moroccan; James Brown
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 63,844
- Total plays
- 630,438
Tags
Article
William Seward Burroughs II (/ˈbʌroʊz/; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced both underground and popular culture and literature. Much of Burroughs's work is highly experimental and features unreliable narrators. Also noted as semi-autobiographical, his work often drew from his experiences with drug addiction, and featured his various places of residence as settings in much of his work. With Brion Gysin, Burroughs popularized the cut-up, an aleatory literary technique. His writing also engaged frequent mystical, occult, or otherwise magical themes, constant preoccupations in both his fiction and real life.
Born into a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, Burroughs attended Harvard University, where he studied English, then anthropology as a postgraduate, and went on to medical school in Vienna. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve during World War II. After being turned down by both the Office of Strategic Services and the Navy, he veered into substance abuse, beginning with morphine and developing a heroin addiction that would affect him for the rest of his life. In 1943, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac while living in New York City. This liaison would become the foundation of the Beat Generation, later a defining influence on the 1960s counterculture.
Gallery (4)
Connections
Categories
1914 births1997 deaths20th-century American LGBTQ people20th-century American male artists20th-century American male writers20th-century American murderers20th-century American novelists20th-century American painters20th-century American poets20th-century American short story writers20th-century pseudonymous writersAmerican anarchists