William S. Burroughs: (Critical Lives)

Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) is an iconic figure of the Beat generation. In this revealing study Phil Baker traces this cult writer's life - from the New York underworld of the 1940s to Mexico and the South American jungle, Tangier and the writing of Naked Lunch, Paris and the Beat Hotel, 1960s London, and small-town Kansas - in order to investigate his work as an autobiographical explorer of altered consciousness and inner space, reporting back from the frontiers of his experience. After accidentally shooting his wife in 1951, Burroughs felt it was his destiny to struggle with the 'Ugly Spirit' that had possessed him. His early absorption in psychoanalysis gave way to Scientology and demonology, and he came to believe in an increasingly magical universe, sending curses and operating a 'wishing machine'. His paranoid vision and his lifelong preoccupation with freedom and its opposites - all forms of addiction and control - finally evolved into a concern with ecology and an all-out ethical conflict between good people who live and let live, or 'Johnsons', and those who impose themselves on others, wrecking the planet in the process. Drawing on newly available material, and rooted in Burroughs's vulnerable emotional life and seminal friendships, this insightful book provides a lucid and powerful account of his career and significance.

About the Author :
Phil Baker’s previous books include a critical study of Samuel Beckett and a cultural history of absinthe. He lives in London and walks everywhere.

Review :
'Baker's vivid critical study of the Beat novelist Burroughs zings with the same energy and humour as his subject's fiction. Judiciously matching the biography to the books, Baker follows Burroughs's peregrinations from his relationship with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in New York, to Mexico, where he accidentally shot dead his wife, and eventually to Tangier, where he wrote his best-known work, The Naked Lunch. A literary life that is as entertaining as it is indispensable as a guide to Burroughs's writing.' - Sunday Times 'lucid and readable ... manages to pick its through way through most of Burroughs's major motivations and curious obsessions, and serves as a good introductory text for general readers, as well as a model of concision for Beat aficionados. Repeatedly, in various ways, it asks: just what possessed Burroughs?' - Times Literary Supplement 'Baker's book is an excellent introduction' - Stride Magazine