Remembering William S. Burroughs

  

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Core Beat Generation member, writer, and cultural iconoclast William S. Burroughs died on this date -- August 2 --  in 1997. He needs no introduction to regular readers of The Daily Beat. His importance to the Jack Kerouac story cannot be overestimated.

Burroughs appeared in several of Kerouac's works: as Old Bull Lee in On The Road; Frank Carmody in The Subterraneans; Bull Hubbard in Book of Dreams, Desolation Angels, Doctor Sax, and Visions of Cody; Bull in Tristessa; Bill/William Seward Burroughs in Lonesome Traveler; Wilson Holmes Hubbard in Vanity of Duluoz; Bill Dennison in The Haunted Life and Other Writings; and, Will Dennison in The Town and the City and And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. 

For a sense of the man, read Kerouac's February 1958 letter to Burroughs on pp. 133-135 of Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969 (Penguin, 1999). In part:

He is tall, with thin lips, spectacles, wears gray felt hats and walks down the street with a vigorous pump of his arms like a mad German genius of the 19th century, thru casbahs, medinas & Mexico Thieves Markets of the world.

RIP, Mr. Burroughs. You were one-of-a-kind, junky or not.