robby: (Default)
robby ([personal profile] robby) wrote2014-04-19 08:18 am

Done With Burroughs

I've read more than I wanted to know. Very depressing. His son died at an early age, alone in a ditch, of alcoholism and drug addiction. I'm on to something else, not dark and evil.

[identity profile] rfmcdpei.livejournal.com 2014-04-19 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)
After reading Naked Lunch, I was impressed mainly by the extent to which Burroughs seemed to really dislike women. (His wife's death made more sense.)

[identity profile] robby.livejournal.com 2014-04-19 06:32 pm (UTC)(link)
He didn't seem to care about anyone or anything. Until he was 50, his parents supported him, and enabled him to live beyond the pale. I stopped reading at the point he killed his wife, and then went to the internet and learned the fate of his poor neglected son.

[identity profile] mallorys-camera.livejournal.com 2014-04-19 08:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Burroughs is the most interesting of the Beats from a literary POV -- at least to me. I don't have any use of Kerouac or Ginsberg. Burroughs should never have fathered children -- that much is for sure. But I can't condemn his literary output based on that. Some of his collage stuff is extraordinary.

[identity profile] robby.livejournal.com 2014-04-19 09:21 pm (UTC)(link)
That's an important point. Nice guys don't make good beatniks.