Loosing oneself in the creative chaos of William S. Burroughs

Translated by Elena Ciullo

William S. Burroughs was able to animate a complex literary movement, to move away from the pre-aligned tracks of literature and participate to the most revolutionary art movement of all time called Beat Generation.
In the past year he came back to being a topic of discussion after the release in cinemas of Queer, the new movie by Luca Guadagnino taken from the novel of the author. The plot, remained unfinished in the book, is based on the author’s stay in Mexico through his alter ego Willim Lee, who, like him, tries to flee the law and the obligations imposed by an “ordinary” life following what pleasures him, namely drugs and boys. He falls in love with the young Eugene, who does not reciprocate him but rather tortures him with indecisiveness, which brings the protagonist to look for increasingly powerful drugs.

The work Queer is an autobiographic part of Burroughs’ life, that has been a torturous labyrinth of writing and drugs in a continuous search for a sense of self and his art. The author was born in 1914 in a wealthy family employed in the production of mechanical calculators and soon became the black sheep: after the prestigious studies in literature and anthropology at Harvard, he takes more anarchist paths that will led him to become an inspiration for the Beat Generation. The family does not approve his homosexuality nor tries to help him with his addiction, but limits themselves to tolerate that crazy son providing financial help and keeping at a safe distance.

Burroughs rejects the linear life proposed by his family and in 1943 seeks refuge in New York alongside other authors like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg e Neal Cassidy.

Together with them he participates in a complex literary and cultural movement whose pillars are dissoluteness, the distance from imposed norms and both artistic and narcotic substances experimentation. In this period he begins to write his first works, mostly autobiographic, inspired and tormented by the new morphine and heroin addiction. Junky is the first literary expression of his tumultuous relationship with drug, writing and the ups and downs that the one or the other causes him. To succeed in bearing the costs of drugs he becomes robber and drug dealer, loses the support of the family and finds small jobs as barman, labourer and journalist, also ending up in some criminal circles. 

However, Burroughs has not yet bottomed out: the lowest point in his life, what will torment him for the rest of his life, comes during the stay in Mexico City with his wife Joan Vollmer. United by the passion for drugs, they share a reckless life in name of alteration. One day they were trying to imitate the game of Guglielmo Tell, in which an apple placed on the head of a person is hit in the middle by a skilled archer, but Burroughs, instead of hitting a glass of cognac on the head of Joan, hits her temple, causing her death short after. This period coincides with the writing of Queer, which will be published only in 1985, both because of the content considered too explicit for an age in which homosexuality was a taboo, and because of the emotional charge that work had for Burroughs. From this moment on, the life of the author becomes an escape from his demons: seeking refuge in writing he travels across Latin America, Europe and North Africa.

In 1959 Pasto Nudo is published, first volume of a tetralogy that includes The soft machine (1961), The ticket that exploded (1962) and Nova Express (1964). It is the most important work of his life, composed thanks to Kerouac and Ginsberg, who help him reorganizing the sheets and the fragments written in the grip of hallucinations and delirium after escape from Mexico. Burroughs continues with his literary research dedicating himself to science fiction works and distancing himself from his demons only through writing. 

After a life of reckless behaviours, Burroughs dies for an heart attack in 1997 in his house in Kansas. His mates from the Beat Generation considers him a genius, a troublesome and non-model figure, yet eccentric and creator of a new literary genre. From the first autobiographic works to the last science fiction novels, Burroughs has written books able to inspire new generations. His own life is a work that attracts the attention of many generations. The movie Queer by Luca Guadagnino is the most recent example of the fact that a literary work is able to last over time and open a door on the life of an author, sparking the desire to know more. We are lucky, Burroughs gave us enough material to know him completely.