William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination

305 Pages·2003·3.91 MB·English

by  Professor Oliver Harris

William
Burroughs
and the
Secret of
Fascination
Oliver Harris
William
Burroughs
and the
Secret of
Fascination
i
ii
William
Burroughs
William aBnudrr tohueghs
and the
Secret of
Secret of Fascination
Fascination
Oliver Harris
Southern Illinois University Press
Carbondale and Edwardsville
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Copyright © 2003 by the Board of Trustees,
Southern Illinois University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
06 05 04 03 4 3 2 1
Frontispiece: William Burroughs beside sphinx, Metropolitan Museum of Art, fall 1953.
© Allen Ginsberg Trust.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harris, Oliver (Oliver C. G.)
William Burroughs and the secret of fascination / Oliver Harris.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. Burroughs, William S., 1914—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Beat generation in literature. I. Title.
PS3552.U75 Z69 2003
813'.54—dc21
ISBN 0-8093-2484-9 (alk. paper) 2002004723
Printed on recycled paper.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. ∞
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A certain great and powerful king once asked a poet: “What can I give you of all
that I have?” He wisely replied: “Anything sir . . . except your secret.”
—Orson Welles, Mister Arkadin
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Contents
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
1
The Secret of Fascination 1
2
Junkie: The Procedure Here Is More or Less Impersonal 46
3
Queer: Welcome to Your Destiny 78
4
Queer Letters and Yage Letters 133
5
The Real Novel 179
6
Naked Lunch: Master-Pieces 215
Notes 249
Works Cited 261
Index 277
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viii
Preface
B
ehind the visible story of William Burroughs’ writing, there lies
another, secret history, and the aim of this book is to show both the
high stakes and the paradoxical difficulties of trying to reveal the
truth about his development as a writer. Since the first chapter maps out
and models what the rest of the book does, here I just want to acknowledge
some of the many things that I don’t do. I only deal with Burroughs’ writ-
ing of the 1950s, the first of four decades. I don’t make grand claims for
his importance or consider in any detail the great range of his themes or
treat Burroughs as a “man of ideas.” I don’t make an easy, linear story out
of the twisting, difficult material of my subject, and most of all, I don’t try
to do his humor. Twenty-five years ago, a reviewer of the first major criti-
cal study, Eric Mottram’s The Algebra of Need, claimed that Burroughs had
perfidiously denied his own gifts, which were “comic and exuberant rather
than admonitory and bleak.” He concluded: “It may be his just reward, then,
to be studied by people who don’t find him funny.” I half agree with the
first part but would like to put on record that the conclusion is wrong. More
than anything, I remember the loud laughter of Mottram, who was the
examiner for my doctoral thesis in 1988, and I think we shared the same
sense that Burroughs is comic the way that Kafka is, laughing at what is
not supposed to be funny, laughing not lightly but in the face of fear and
horror. The Burroughs I write about is a serious Burroughs, taken seriously,
but if I didn’t find him funny as well as frightening, I would never have
found him so fascinating.
This book has been a long time in the writing and rewriting. I started
my doctorate in 1984 mainly because of the way Peter Conrad, then my
most inspirational professor at Oxford, reacted to the idea. In so many
words, he told me it was a dead end, Burroughs was not just a waste of my
time and a poor career move but bad news. I have a picture of him in the
act of crossing himself to make the point, but this is probably apocryphal.
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