William Burroughs‘ birthday today. We’ll draw your attention (as ever) to “the web’s leading resource dedicated to William S Burroughs, Reality Studio. This site, long a rich trove of invaluable Burroughs material, has recently had a refresher, an update. View its recent crisp, new, user-friendly, interface – here
and spotlighting today (from that site) Loomis Dean‘s photographs from his 1959 shoot at the legendary Beat Hotel in the Fall of 1959, when Dean accompanied reporter David Snell for an infamous commission for Life magazine.
Rebecca Roach, in her provocative and stimulating essay, “Endless Talk – Beat Writers and the Interview Form” from back in 2015, makes this astute observation:
“William Burroughs dated the invention of the cut-up – the splicing together of different texts – to October 1, 1959. This was also the day that he was interviewed by Paris-based Life journalists David Snell and Loomis Dean for Paul O’Neil’(sic)s article. More than a pleasing coincidence, for Burroughs and Gysin the cut-up and the interview text share a vital interrogative function.”
She goes on:
“Not that the Snell-Dean interview simply epitomised the cross-examination, as Burroughs acknowledged himself. In a letter to Ginsberg, he described the pair as “2 far out cats with real appreciation for my work that can’t be faked. Of course they have nothing to do with the final form of the story”. The distinction that Burroughs identifies between the circumstances of a conversation and the published “final form” was something that he and Gysin exploited in their cut-up experiments – while an interview might be an affirmative experience produced by like-minded individuals, the resultant dialogue could also be turned against the speaker..”
“2 far out cats with real appreciation for my work that can’t be faked” – Burroughs appreciation of Snell and Dean can be seen in an item offered recently for auction (and still-available – from Peter Harrington, London booksellers) – Snell’s signed copy of Burroughs’ 1961 Olympia Press edition of The Ticket That Exploded
Harrington’s accompanying notes are well-worth perusing:
“Snell’s opening line upon meeting his interviewee was “Have an Old Gold, Mr Burroughs”, a direct reference to Naked Lunch, in which two cops, O’Brien and Hauser, let themselves into Bill’s flat; Snell’s reference draws an excellent and knowing parallel between the two Life reporters and the cops, positioning himself as O’Brien: “they weren’t bad as laws go. At least O’Brien wasn’t. O’Brien was the con man, and Hauser the tough guy. A vaudeville team. Hauser had a way of hitting you before he said anything just to break the ice. Then O’Brien gives you an Old Gold – just like a cop to smoke Old Golds somehow… and starts putting down a cop con that was really bottled in bond. Not a bad guy”
Harrington goes on:
“Burroughs had no love for Life magazine, but he liked Snell and Dean, and exonerated them for their parts in the final piece, a vitriolic repudiation of the Beats penned by a staff writer. The Life article, a long list of character assassinations that targets Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, and various others, characterizes “The bulk of Beat writers (as) undisciplined and slovenly amateurs who have deluded themselves into believing their lugubrious absurdities are art simply because they have rejected the form, style, and attitudes of previous generations and have seized upon obscenity as an expression of ‘total personality'”. Burroughs is painted with broad brush strokes: “for sheer horror no member of the Beat Generation has achieved effects to compare with William S. Burroughs… a pale, cadaverous and bespectacled being who has devoted most of his adult life to a lonely pursuit of drugs and debauchery. He has, first in Mexico and then in Tangier, dosed himself with alcohol, heroin, marijuana, kif, majoun and a hashish candy”.
Burroughs’s mother was understandably horrified by the piece, while his response was more dismissive: “In order to earn my reputation I may have to start drinking my tea from a skull since this is the only vice remaining to me… I hope I am not ludicrously miscast as the wickedest man alive, a title vacated by the late Aleister Crowley”
The Life magazine article “outed” him. From 1959 onwards, Burroughs was (at least to a sensation-seeking and misinformed public), “The Wickedest Man Alive”
Jed Birmingham, writing in Reality Studio:
‘He (Burroughs) wrote to his horrified mother after the article appeared, “And remember the others who have held the title before.. Byron, Baudelaire, Poe, people are very glad to claim kinship now.. But really any one in the public eye that is anyone who enjoys any measure of success in his field is open to sensational publicity.”
Birmingham singles out. in particular, Dean’s photo of Burroughs sitting alone, smoking on his bed:
“In sending his story back to Life, Snell noted – “Fortunately or unfortunately, however, we do not see (him) smoking marijuana in any of the Dean pictures. He was fresh out. All the smoke you see curling around his nostrils is tobacco.”
“Life encouraged readers to see Burroughs smoking marijuana, even if he was not, just as the image of Burroughs on the bed served as a stand-in for Burroughs shooting heroin… Instead of portraying the addict in action, Dean captured the stasis of his daily life. This was the addict waiting for his connection as well as the poster for terminal addiction.”
“In terms of images of drug-taking, the photograph of Burroughs in his bedroom would prove to be one of the most sensational ever taken. Such is the power of suggestion.”
For Life’s own whitewashed posthumous presentation of Burroughs and the photo-shoot (on the 2007 occasion of the Burroughs Centennial) – see here
For previous Allen Ginsberg Project William Burroughs Birthday Celebrations (there are many of them) – see, for example, here. here. and here
William Burroughs at 110 – David S Wills over at Beatdom is hosting a month-long celebration – see here