Call Me Burroughs: A Life

by Barry Miles

Overview

Fifty years ago, Norman Mailer asserted, "William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius." Few since have taken such literary risks, developed such individual political or spiritual ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media. Burroughs wrote novels, memoirs, technical manuals, and poetry. He painted, made collages, took thousands of photographs, produced hundreds of hours of experimental recordings, acted in movies, and recorded more CDs than most rock bands. Burroughs was the original cult figure of the Beat Movement, and with the publication of his novel Naked Lunch, which was originally banned for obscenity, he became a guru to the 60s youth counterculture. In Call Me Burroughs, biographer and Beat historian Barry Miles presents the first full-length biography of Burroughs to be published in a quarter century-and the first one to chronicle the last decade of Burroughs's life and examine his long-term cultural legacy. Written with the full support of the Burroughs estate and drawing from countless interviews with figures like Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and Burroughs himself, Call Me Burroughs is a rigorously researched biography that finally gets to the heart of its notoriously mercurial subject.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455511945
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/28/2014
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	736
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Barry Miles is the author of many seminal books on popular culture, including the authorized biography of Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now; Ginsberg: A Biography; William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible; Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats; and The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1957-1963. He also co-edited the Revised Text Edition of Naked Lunch. Miles was born in Cirencester, England.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Book 1 An Education

Chapter 1

1 St. Louis Toodle-oo 9

Chapter 2

1 The Green Reindeer 20

2 The Autobiography of a Wolf 26

Chapter 3

1 Kells Elvins 32

2 Meet the Johnson Family 36

Chapter 4

1 "I Know What's Best for Boys!" 41

2 Billy Bradshinkel 49

Chapter 5

1 Harvard 51

Chapter 6

1 Mitteleuropa 60

2 Mrs. Burroughs 63

3 Enter Dr. Benway 67

Chapter 7

1 Count Alfred Korzybski 72

2 Jack Anderson 74

3 St. Louis Return 78

4 A Very Private Pilot 81

Chapter 8

1 Mrs. Murphy's Rooming House 86

Book 2 The Beat Generation

Chapter 9

1 Greenwich Village 1943 95

2 Derangement of All the Senses 98

Chapter 10

1 The Gathering Storm 107

2 A Death in the Family 108

Chapter 11

1 New Romantics 114

2 An Alternative Education 117

3 Junk 121

Chapter 12

1 Joan 128

2 The Wolfeans and the Non-Wolfeans 134

Book 3 Down Mexico Way

Chapter 13

1 Farmer Bill 147

Chapter 14

1 Burroughs in East Texas 156

2 Texas Justice 164

Chapter 15

1 The Big Easy 167

Chapter 16

1 Return to the Valley 177

Chapter 17

1 Mexico City 182

2 Back on Junk 187

3 The Mexican Dream Unravels 191

4 In Search of Yagé 198

Chapter 18

1 The Low Shot 205

Chapter 19

1 Marker Comes Through 218

Chapter 20

1 Yagé Found 226

2 Into Peru 235

Chapter 21

1 Reunion in New York 240

2 When in Rome 248

Book 4 The Classic Stations of the Earth

Chapter 22

1 Bill and the Boys 251

2 Bar la Mar Chica 256

Chapter 3

1 Morphine Minnie 260

2 Kells in Morocco 264

Chapter 24

1 Looking for Ritchie 268

2 The Socco Chico Set 270

3 The Talking Asshole 273

4 Remittance Men at Large 277

Chapter 25

1 Dr. Dent 284

2 Villa Delirium 288

3 "The Jihad Jitters" 294

Chapter 26

1 More Orgones 298

2 Interzone 301

Chapter 27

1 Freeland 309

Book 5 The City of Light

Chapter 28

1 The Beat Hotel 315

2 A Friendship Renewed 318

3 Librairie Anglaise and the Mistral 325

Chapter 29

1 Enter Jacques Stern 330

2 Louis-Ferdinand Céline 333

Chapter 30

1 Brion Gysin 339

2 Psychic Discoveries 342

Chapter 31

1 The Naked Lunch 349

2 Busted 355

3 Ian Sommerville 357

Chapter 32

1 The Writing of Silence 361

2 Cut-Ups 362

Book 6 London Town

Chapter 33

1 The Western Suburbs 369

2 Mikey Portman 377

3 L'Homme Invisible 381

Chapter 34

1 The Soft Machine 384

2 "Word Falling-Photo Falling" 386

3 Paul Bowles 389

Chapter 35

1 The Psychedelic Summer 392

2 An American Interlude 397

3 New York 400

Chapter 36

1 The Edinburgh Literary Festival 402

2 The Ticket That Exploded 406

Chapter 37

1 Billy Burroughs Jr. 414

2 Living in the Marshan 419

3 Cut-Ups, Columns, and Grids 421

4 Television with Dan Farson 423

5 The Loteria Building 426

6 Return to Villa Delirium 428

Book 7 Burlington Billy

Chapter 38

1 "St. Louis Return" 433

2 On Set 438

Chapter 39

1 The Rushmore 444

2 Chappaqua Continues 447

3 Montagu Square 450

4 Groovy Bob 452

Chapter 40

1 Dalmeny Court 454

2 Palm Beach and Lexington 460

Chapter 41

1 Operating Thetan 465

Chapter 42

1 Chicago 1968 475

2 Back in Blighty 479

Chapter 43

1 Eater the Seventies 485

2 The Rolling Stones 488

Chapter 44

1 John Brady 497

Book 8 The Prodigal Son Returns

Chapter 45

1 James Winston Grauerholz 509

2 Ian's Death 520

Chapter 46

1 Billy Jr. 523

2 The Bunker 525

3 Junky 527

Chapter 47

1 Rocky Mountain Horror Show 529

2 Horror Hospital 534

3 Nova Convention 537

4 Cities of the Red Night 540

Chapter 48

1 New York Days 546

2 Heroin 550

3 "We Must Hold the Bunker at All Costs" 553

Book 9 Return to Roots

Chapter 49

1 Tornado Alley 563

2 Painting with Guns 569

Chapter 50

1 Learnard Avenue 575

2 Brion 584

Chapter 51

1 Painting 595

2 Last Boy 601

3 Opera 603

4 Folders 605

5 Aliens 607

Chapter 52

1 The Quotidian Life 609

2 Kurt Cobain 619

3 "I Had Not Thought Death Had Undone So Many" 623

Endwords 629

Notes 637

Bibliography 675

Index 693

Editorial Reviews

12/01/2013
In addition to writing extensive histories and biographies on the Beat movement, London underground culture, and 1960s music titans, Miles (Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now) was also friend and editor to William S. Burroughs (1914–97). This book's title comes from Burroughs's debut recording of the same name, which Miles had a hand in releasing. Drawing from thousands of conversations, interviews, writings, recordings, and other sources, this work all but resurrects Burroughs in print as it documents the roots and development of his mysterious creative techniques. His personality is a unique mix of "newscaster," monk, and junkie, and Miles explores the influence of cultures such as Tangiers and Mexico on the man, both personally and artistically. A meticulous description of each of his love and sex interests (the vast majority men and boys) is provided as is a thorough portrait of his place among various literary luminaries (e.g., Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac). This is a complete biography, and as such it is important to understand that since Burroughs had some repetition in his life, many parts of the book are repetitious as well. For this reason, a shorter biography of only part of his life, such as Jorge García-Robles's The Stray Bullet (reviewed above), may be more suitable. VERDICT Highly recommended for readers of Burroughs, Beat historians, and fans of Beat lit, biography, LGBT lit, and experimental artists.—Benjamin Brudner, Curry Coll. Lib., Milton, MA

Library Journal

In Call Me Burroughs, his authoritative new biography, Barry Miles avoids unduly romanticizing Burroughs's outlaw status…Nor, wisely, does Miles minimize the depth and tenacity of Burroughs's addictions…Miles's book is emphatically not, however, the familiar story of a gifted writer's substance-soaked decline, probably for the simple reason that Burroughs's genius for surreal black comedy tempered with hard, practical thought never deserted him…Although he occasionally simplifies Burroughs's story…[Miles's] access and wealth of detail will make this the go-to biography for many years to come.

The New York Times Book Review - Ann Douglas

★ 12/09/2013
The pioneering American countercultural writer and artist William Burroughs emerges as his own greatest character in this raucous biography. Biographer and Burroughs editor Miles (Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats) pens a dense, detailed, yet wonderfully readable and entertaining narrative that illuminates, without sensationalizing, Burroughs’s manifold peculiarities: his avid sexual interest in teenaged boys; his use of hashish, hallucinogens, and heroin; his petty crimes and drug-dealing; his love of casual gunplay (he fatally shot his wife during a game of William Tell); his obsession with other-worldly phenomena, from Scientology, to UFO abductions, to his own theories of giant intergalactic insects that control everything; his hair-trigger psychodramas with intimates and complete strangers; his embrace of every experience, especially those that appalled and disgusted him; the fastidious manners and banker’s wardrobe that made his anti-social provocations seem even more subversive. Miles’s exhaustively researched account draws on the writer’s blunt, self-revealing private writings along with reminiscences from Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, and other associates to flesh out Burroughs’s personality, surroundings, and equally colorful circle of acquaintances, who were forever doing interesting things like getting mauled by lions. Miles just puts it all on paper with aplomb and deadpan wit, showing how the gross-out surrealism of Burroughs’s fiction flowed from the lurid creativity of everyday life.Agent: James Macdonald Lockhart, the Antony Harwood Agency (U.K.). (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"CALL ME BURROUGHS is riddled with... weird anecdotes laced with gallows humor, bizarre coincidences and profane punch lines. It's a massive undertaking made complicated by Burroughs' peripatetic lifestyle and rampant drug use. To say he was a difficult man to pin down is understatement, but Miles is up to the task."—LA Times

"The Burroughs of Miles's 600-plus pages is both ghastlier and more impressive than previous models, sliding through the world like a cross between Sam Spade and Flat Stanley."'—The Atlantic

"Miles just puts it all on paper with aplomb and deadpan wit, showing how the gross-out surrealism of Burroughs's fiction flowed from the lurid creativity of everyday life."—Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)

"One long, strange, profoundly American literary life. Burroughs's work has had a profound if often oblique influence on the writing of his century and this one. I can scarcely imagine what it would be like to read Barry Miles's biography without being thoroughly familiar with the outline of the narrative. Truly, stranger than fiction."—William Gibson

"CALL ME BURROUGHS takes us deeply inside the magical life of the great writer. Miles's decision to tell the epic story through William Burroughs's search for his 'Ugly Spirit' makes for sensational reading. Brilliant, tragic, controversial, and inspiring, CALL ME BURROUGHS is a beautiful work."—Victor Bockris, author of With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker, Conversations with William Burroughs and Andy Warhol, and Burroughs in the Bunker

"CALL ME BURROUGHS is the most intimate portrait to date of one of the twentieth century's most complicated, troubled, and influential figures. Miles's deep knowledge of the man and the work also provides a cultural history of the scene in Tangiers in the 1950s, the Beat era, and the emerging Punk scene in New York in the 1980s. It is a compelling biography and social history unlike any other."—Ira Silverberg, co-editor of Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

"CALL ME BURROUGHS is full of energy and surprise and is a delight to read. Barry Miles combines his intimate knowledge of Burroughs with the meticulous research of Burroughs's companion James Grauerholz, to produce an extremely accurate, readable, and entertaining biography of one of the most inventive writers of the twentieth century. Reading this extraordinary book is like hanging around with Burroughs himself and is impossible to forget."—Bill Morgan, author of I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg and The Typewriter Is Holy

"By any standard Burroughs's was an unusual life, full of scandal, subversion, and sensitivity hidden behind a cold blue gaze. Miles enriches this 'life of an artist' with decades of dedicated immersion in the work both published and unpublished, digging deep into archival material and manuscripts, incorporating journals of friends and acquaintances. With great authority and verve, he brings up to date the legacy of a true American original who grows, even years after his death, in fascination."—Regina Weinreich, author of Kerouac's Spontaneous Poetics and editor of Kerouac's Book of Haikus

From the Publisher

"By any standard Burroughs's was an unusual life, full of scandal, subversion, and sensitivity hidden behind a cold blue gaze. Miles enriches this 'life of an artist' with decades of dedicated immersion in the work both published and unpublished, digging deep into archival material and manuscripts, incorporating journals of friends and acquaintances. With great authority and verve, he brings up to date the legacy of a true American original who grows, even years after his death, in fascination."

Regina Weinreich

"CALL ME BURROUGHS is full of energy and surprise and is a delight to read. Barry Miles combines his intimate knowledge of Burroughs with the meticulous research of Burroughs's companion James Grauerholz, to produce an extremely accurate, readable, and entertaining biography of one of the most inventive writers of the twentieth century. Reading this extraordinary book is like hanging around with Burroughs himself and is impossible to forget."

Bill Morgan

"CALL ME BURROUGHS is the most intimate portrait to date of one of the twentieth century's most complicated, troubled, and influential figures. Miles's deep knowledge of the man and the work also provides a cultural history of the scene in Tangiers in the 1950s, the Beat era, and the emerging Punk scene in New York in the 1980s. It is a compelling biography and social history unlike any other."

Ira Silverberg

"CALL ME BURROUGHS takes us deeply inside the magical life of the great writer. Miles's decision to tell the epic story through William Burroughs's search for his 'Ugly Spirit' makes for sensational reading. Brilliant, tragic, controversial, and inspiring, CALL ME BURROUGHS is a beautiful work."

Victor Bockris

"One long, strange, profoundly American literary life. Burroughs's work has had a profound if often oblique influence on the writing of his century and this one. I can scarcely imagine what it would be like to read Barry Miles's biography without being thoroughly familiar with the outline of the narrative. Truly, stranger than fiction."

William Gibson

2013-11-07
A ponderous revisiting of the strange and terrible life of the godfather of America's Beat movement. In this strange season for literary biographies, we've already worked through J. Michael Lennon's warm but thorough portrait of a combative Norman Mailer and the controversial and revelatory Salinger, by David Shields and filmmaker Shane Salerno. William Burroughs (1914–1997) is an equally bizarre figure whose hallucinatory and experimental works of art and unpredictable journey rained influence down the generations from Jack Kerouac to Kurt Cobain. This wedge of biographical examination is no less doorstop-worthy but hardly the definitive biography of the mad genius of Lawrence, Kan. First of all, Miles (In the Seventies: Adventures in the Counterculture, 2011, etc.) carries some fairly weighty credibility, having known Burroughs and his contemporaries from 1965 on. However, the author has already exhaustively covered the Beat movement in numerous biographies, not least in William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible (1993). Here, it's seldom that we hear that laconic drawl and snarling wit that Burroughs carried into old age, which is clearly missed. Instead, Miles goes down the well-worn path of meticulously tracking his subject through time and place instead of through attitude and output. Even the pivot point of the novelist's life--the 1951 misadventure in Mexico during which Burroughs shot and killed his wife--elicits little in the way of emotional insight into that furious whirlwind. Answers from a man the author knew and interviewed many times could have changed the way Burroughs is painted; pointing instead to a confessional sliver of text from the Tom Waits collaboration The Black Rider is avoidance. While segments about the writing of groundbreaking works like Naked Lunch and heroin-fueled binges in Tangiers and Paris are satisfyingly voyeuristic, the biography is ultimately neither sensational enough to court controversy nor keen enough to be useful to future scholars.

Kirkus Reviews