Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating Life and Times of Cultural Icon, 1 Nov 2007
This is no mere biography, but rather as the title suggests also a portrait of the times William Burroughs lived through, and to some extent even instigated. Burroughs lived a long and highly eventful life, and so the book details much travelling between four different continents, and a highly diverse cast list which includes some of the most famous artists and movers and shakers in the 20th century, from Jack Kerouac to Mick Jagger.
Born to a wealthy family, Burroughs rejected the upper-middle class life he saw and after his university educationn (and a period in between-wars Vienna studying medicine), he joined the legion of hustlers arond Times Square, eventually experimenting with and becoming addicted to heroin. But here, also, would converge the first glimmerings of the Beat generation, with friendships with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg developing, as well as his relationship with Joan Vollmer, who would become his common-law wife despite his homosexuality. Morgan is frank about Burroughs' sexual needs and desires, just as Burroughs himself was, and it's fascinating to read about the fluidity of sexuality in different circumstances.
The settings and friendships change frequently throughout the book - Mexico, Tangiers, Paris, London, New York; people such as Al Ansen, Maurice Girodias, Timothy Leary, Brion Gysin, Samule Beckett, Alex Trocchi - but they are deftly drawn, and for anyone wishing for an overview of the counterculture in the post-war era, this book serves as an excellent intorduction. For Burroughs was at the start of the Beat generation; he worked with Tim Leary on the consciousness-expanding possibilties of LSD (and deplored the latter's methods); he was venerated by the punks; and later on even did a collaboration with Kurt Cobain and Sonic Youth.
Burroughs is primarily known for two things - his drug addiction, and "Naked Lunch". Morgan shows the personal cost of the former, as many of his friends and associates have neither the toughness nor the rich parents always willing to post bail. Also, his son Billy has a cursed life, born from a woman with a large amphetamine habit which leaves him practically unable to function as an adult. Morgan describes the writing well, and makes the sometimes indecipherable sound downright interesting which is no mean feat - while "Naked Lunch" has a hallucinatory genius, the cutups on which Burroughs spent much of the 1960s are practically unreadable.
It is interesting and amusing that after a lifetime wandering the world, from South America to Morroca, Burroughs eventually settles down in Kansas, like Dorothy returning after her adventures, with his cats. Morgan even includes a section describing how he came to be chonse to write the book, referring to himself somewhat awkwardly as "the biographer", and openly admitting to thinking - and then dismissing the thought - that it wuld be convenient if Burroughs died whilew he was writing it, for closure.
That open, candid note is typical of this biography, a vast, sprawling book crossing many decades and oceans, social and sexual revolutions, and finally culminating with an old man in his mid-west bungalow. For anyone remotely interested in the Beats, in Burroughs himself, in drugs, in American literature, in the counterculture, this book will be a fascinating read.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Thorough Depiction of Life and Times, 25 Oct 2007
This is no mere biography, but rather as the title suggests also a portrait of the times William Burroughs lived through, and to some extent even instigated. Burroughs lived a long and highly eventful life, and so the book details much travelling between four different continents, and a highly diverse cast list which includes some of the most famous artists and movers and shakers in the 20th century, from Jack Kerouac to Mick Jagger.
Born to a wealthy family, Burroughs rejected the upper-middle class life he saw and after his university educationn (and a period in between-wars Vienna studying medicine), he joined the legion of hustlers arond Times Square, eventually experimenting with and becoming addicted to heroin. But here, also, would converge the first glimmerings of the Beat generation, with friendships with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg developing, as well as his relationship with Joan Vollmer, who would become his common-law wife despite his homosexuality. Morgan is frank about Burroughs' sexual needs and desires, just as Burroughs himself was, and it's fascinating to read about the fluidity of sexuality in different circumstances.
The settings and friendships change frequently throughout the book - Mexico, Tangiers, Paris, London, New York; people such as Al Ansen, Maurice Girodias, Timothy Leary, Brion Gysin, Samule Beckett, Alex Trocchi - but they are deftly drawn, and for anyone wishing for an overview of the counterculture in the post-war era, this book serves as an excellent intorduction. For Burroughs was at the start of the Beat generation; he worked with Tim Leary on the consciousness-expanding possibilties of LSD (and deplored the latter's methods); he was venerated by the punks; and later on even did a collaboration with Kurt Cobain and Sonic Youth.
Burroughs is primarily known for two things - his drug addiction, and "Naked Lunch". Morgan shows the personal cost of the former, as many of his friends and associates have neither the toughness nor the rich parents always willing to post bail. Also, his son Billy has a cursed life, born from a woman with a large amphetamine habit which leaves him practically unable to function as an adult. Morgan describes the writing well, and makes the sometimes indecipherable sound downright interesting which is no mean feat - while "Naked Lunch" has a hallucinatory genius, the cutups on which Burroughs spent much of the 1960s are practically unreadable.
It is interesting and amusing that after a lifetime wandering the world, from South America to Morroca, Burroughs eventually settles down in Kansas, like Dorothy returning after her adventures, with his cats. Morgan even includes a section describing how he came to be chonse to write the book, referring to himself somewhat awkwardly as "the biographer", and openly admitting to thinking - and then dismissing the thought - that it wuld be convenient if Burroughs died whilew he was writing it, for closure.
That open, candid note is typical of this biography, a vast, sprawling book crossing many decades and oceans, social and sexual revolutions, and finally culminating with an old man in his mid-west bungalow. For anyone remotely interested in the Beats, in Burroughs himself, in drugs, in American literature, in the counterculture, this book will be a fascinating read.
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by Barry Miles
by William S. Burroughs
by William S. Burroughs
by William S. Burroughs
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