William S. Burroughs - The Gay Gun and other pieces 

rose--- I agree about the low number of comments. I am 56 and was an active addict for 15 years, now being medically guided to maintenance...(Christmas of 2015 ran out of junk and "went down the rabbit hole for 4 days...visions so real that I remember them more than anything I have experienced in so-called Real Life. If I had not escaped to these "realms", one of which I refer to as the Land Of The Dead, I would not have survived the torments my physical body was going through...loved ones said, "ENOUGH") It is my opinion that WSB's written and spoken word pieces are of most interest to the addict, recovered or not. I have spoken with people who have never had dalliances with narcotics and they attempted to read Naked Lunch-- "Just couldn't get through it, disjointed mess." Well, I guess if one has not been baptized by the fire of an opiate habit, one WOULD have trouble understanding much of Uncle Bill's works, JUNKY the lone exception and even then most of it's readers are addicts. Of course, there are the notable exceptions to the rule and I don't presume to cast you in any category save for very intelligent. Best wishes. Michael.

i wouldn't say Burroughs readings are only decipherable by those on opiates. that is a huge misconception

you're gorgeous rose :)

A lot of people like yourself make that journey to Lawrence and he was apparently most welcoming. Especially to the likes of us who (week me anyway) think he was the greatest artist and cultural icon of the twentieth century. Most people still haven’t heard of him and yet his influence cannot be measured. He left a legacy of greatness and I’ll always think of him as a personal hero. Glad to meet another line mind. x

Agreed

Luv ya Bill

Possibly methadone, though the voice is a mixture of southern roots, an affect he used as part of his performance of the skits that would make up his novels, and probably the fact that he was a junky for a long time, off and on for most of his life. His writing was influenced more by these skits and his experiences with the psychedelic Yaje, or ayahuasca which was called yaje or telepathonine (active ingrediant they later realized was DMT) when he was traveling with Dr. Shultes sometime in late 50's I believe. So like most things he was about 60 years aheadd of the curve. Probably your comment is a joke about that but the phrase, "outside of something asking do i really want to go with this one," is confusing. Not sure what you are actually asking/saying.

Well, probably methadone actually. Though he did quit for extended periods multiple times during his life. Interesting point in an audio version of the Yaje letters recently published on scribd in the prologue which claims that Burroughs not Schultes was the first western individual to make the distinction between the psychedelic ingrediënt (the leaves of psychotria virdis) and the other ingrediënt which they later discovered was also necessary as it inhibits an enzyme in the stomach the degrades DMT before it can reach the brain thereby destroying its psychedelic capacity, possibly this has something to do with the fact that at least trace amounts of DMT are endogenous, at the time the few western botanists who knew about Yaje thought that the root Banastari cappi (MaoI inhibitor) was the main ingrediënt which means that Burroughs actually made a lasting contribution to ethnography though Schultes later got the credit for it.

The golden handcuffs. I see now.

You can get away with Murder when your family is wealthy. Hunter anyone?

Ditto. Burroughs was, in my humble opinion, one of only three writers endowed with the gift of prophecy, the other two being George Orwell and Aldous Huxley (a huge honorable mention to Ray Bradbury for his ever more prescient "Fahrenheit 451". William was the last lone voice crying in the wilderness against the psychotic "War on Drugs" (he saw and foretold the police state "War" decades earlier). Even in the journal he kept during the majority of the last year of his life, published as "Last Words" (MUST READ for any lover of this man), Burroughs took the attack to the enemies of freedom; Anti-drug warriors, bigots, assholes in general and they all fall under the main villain-- BUREAUCRACIES, which Burroughs rightly describes as a virus. He had COME OUT ( I daresay, he was never closeted to begin with!) of the closet when it was dangerous to life and liberty. As was mentioned by someone in the bio flick "A Man Within", WSB was a member of TWO despised classes back in the dark, keep a low profile 1950's; Gay and an addict. Yes, THAT'S COURAGE! Take care!

Bravery is a rare commodity esp. these days.

He's a demented man who has admitted to victimizing young boys overseas. The things that supposedly decent people will forgive...

Show me your proof. He was a very caring man in actuality and nothing in my research suggests any of his sexual relations were anything but consensual. You’re also putting present-time markers on a man who for the most part (his sexual years I mean) was living in countries with cultural norms disparate to western mores. If you can provide any link to such as what you suggest he “admitted to” then I’d love to see it. Otherwise you’re just spouting hate-speech, which he would have inured himself to very early on in his career and wouldn’t have given a speck of interest to. Research before you try to besmirch his character.

@@rohanlancemould28 And who uses the term "Hate Speech" when defending a man who you admitted, went elsewhere to satisfy his sick ways?