William S Burroughs And The Cult Of Rock N Roll

William S. Burroughs's fiction and essays are legendary, but his influence on music's counterculture has been less well documented—until now. Examining how one of America's most controversial literary figures altered the destinies of many notable and varied musicians, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll reveals the transformations in music history that can be traced to Burroughs. A heroin addict and a gay man, Burroughs rose to notoriety outside the conventional literary world; his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, was banned on the grounds of obscenity, but its nonlinear structure was just as daring as its content. Casey Rae brings to life Burroughs's parallel rise to fame among daring musicians of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, when it became a rite of passage to hang out with the author or to experiment with his cut-up techniques for producing revolutionary lyrics (as the Beatles and Radiohead did). Whether they tell of him exploring the occult with David Bowie, providing Lou Reed with gritty depictions of street life, or counseling Patti Smith about coping with fame, the stories of Burroughs's backstage impact will transform the way you see America's cultural revolution—and the way you hear its music.

A history of the writer’s impact on some of the biggest names in rock music from the Beatles to Bowie, and his role as a secret architect in the genre. William S. Burroughs’s fiction and essays are legendary—but his influence on music’s counterculture has been less well documented―until now. Examining how one of America’s most controversial literary figures altered the destinies of many notable and varied musicians, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll reveals the transformations in music history that can be traced to Burroughs. A heroin addict and a gay man, Burroughs rose to notoriety outside the conventional literary world; his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, was banned on the grounds of obscenity, but its nonlinear structure was just as daring as its content. Casey Rae brings to life Burroughs’s parallel rise to fame among daring musicians of the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, when it became a rite of passage to hang out with the author or to experiment with his cut-up techniques for producing revolutionary lyrics (as the Beatles and Radiohead did). Whether they tell of him exploring the occult with David Bowie, providing Lou Reed with gritty depictions of street life, or counseling Patti Smith about coping with fame—the stories of Burroughs’s backstage impact will transform the way you see America’s cultural revolution―and the way you hear its music. “[Rae] writes with the passion of a teenager discovering new sounds, and the control and self-assuredness of a seasoned academic . . . William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll celebrates not only the gifted mind and bizarre life of a writer who changed literature forever with his magic and ideas; it also finally gives him the place he deserves in the pantheon of rock and roll.” —NPR “William S. Burroughs was as much a quiet rock star as he was an artist or a writer. His inroads into audio, spoken word, and music created paths that we still follow. Casey Rae’s book is a labor of love that offers a map to understanding Burroughs’s complex relationship to music and other art forms.” —Chris Stein, co-founder of Blondie “[A] fascinating new book . . . Rae is an engaging storyteller and often an enlightening one . . . I’m grateful for Rae’s study and recommend it highly, not only to those (still) interested in Burroughs and rock music, but to anyone curious about the possibilities for creative synergy between the arts.” —Journal of Popular Music Studies

William S. Burroughs's fiction and essays are legendary, but his influence on music's counterculture has been less well documented-until now. Examining how one of America's most controversial literary figures altered the destinies of many notable and varied musicians, William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock 'n' Roll reveals the transformations in music history that can be traced to Burroughs. A heroin addict and a gay man, Burroughs rose to notoriety outside the conventional literary world; his masterpiece, Naked Lunch, was banned on the grounds of obscenity, but its nonlinear structure was just as daring as its content. Casey Rae brings to life Burroughs's parallel rise to fame among daring musicians of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, when it became a rite of passage to hang out with the author or to experiment with his cut-up techniques for producing revolutionary lyrics (as the Beatles and Radiohead did). Whether they tell of him exploring the occult with David Bowie, providing Lou Reed with gritty depictions of street life, or counseling Patti Smith about coping with fame, the stories of Burroughs's backstage impact will transform the way you see America's cultural revolution-and the way you hear its music.

William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century is the definitive book on Burroughs’ overarching cut-up project and its relevance to the American twentieth century. Burroughs’s Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Ticket That Exploded) remains the best-known of his textual cut-up creations, but he committed more than a decade of his life to searching out multimedia for use in works of collage. By cutting up, folding in, and splicing together newspapers, magazines, letters, book reviews, classical literature, audio recordings, photographs, and films, Burroughs created an eclectic and wide-ranging countercultural archive. This collection includes previously unpublished work by Burroughs such as cut-ups of work written by his son, cut-ups of critical responses to his own work, collages on the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, excerpts from his dream journals, and some of the few diary entries that Burroughs wrote about his wife, Joan. William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century also features original essays, interviews, and discussions by established Burroughs scholars, respected artists, and people who encountered Burroughs. The essays consider Burroughs from a range of starting points—literary studies, media studies, popular culture, gender studies, post-colonialism, history, and geography. Ultimately, the collection situates Burroughs as a central artist and thinker of his time and considers his insights on political and social problems that have become even more dire in ours.

In this trenchant science-fiction screen treatment written in the mid-1970s, William S. Burroughs outlines the coming medical-care apocalypse: a Dante-esque horror show brought to a boil by a mutated virus and right-wing politics, set in a future all too near. The author of Naked Lunch, Junky, Port of Saints, Cities of the Red Night, Queer, and Exterminator treats this topical story in ultimate terms, with the dry, sophisticated humor he has mastered like no other modern writer.

This novel following a “hallucinatory spiritual odyssey in the Sahara by a pot-smoking black scholar . . . will stimulate adventurous souls” (Kirkus Reviews). Ulys O. Hanson, an African-American professor of the History of Slavery, who is in North Africa on a mysterious foundation grant, sets off across the Sahara on a series of wild adventures. He first meets Hamid, a mad Moroccan who turns him on, takes him over, and teaches him to pass as a Moor. Mya, the richest woman in creation, and her seventh husband, the hereditary Bishop of the Farout Islands, also cross his path with their plans to steal the Sahara and make the stoned professor the puppet Emperor of Africa. The Process is a unique literary journey from “an idiosyncratic and restless spiritual wanderer, a jack-of-all trades who made innovative contributions to poetry, prose and the visual arts” (Publishers Weekly).

The definitive version of William Burroughs' political satire masterpiece, published for the first time in its entirety.