Happy Birthday William Seward Burroughs, El Hombre Invisible, a figure who looms large through the last half of the 20th Century counterculture. Seeping into literature, painting, film and music. Whose image greets me every morning I wander into my own living room, as my dreams awake.
Burroughs who was born 5 February, 1914 was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author who wrote in the paranoid fiction genre, and his influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature, a reputation he owes to his lifelong subversion of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism.
He is best known for his third novel "Naked Lunch" (1959), a highly controversial work that underwent a court case under the US sodomy laws. In spite of courting controversy his whole career, he was not without his supporters. American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac, for example, called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift."
While American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and political activist Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius.” He was also a close personal friend of American poet Allen Ginsberg and American singer-songwriter, poet, and visual artist Patti Smith.
An iconlclast who himself became an icon, explorer of the outer boundaries of culture and identity.
An iconlclast who himself became an icon, explorer of the outer boundaries of culture and identity.
Though he died on 2 August, 1997 at the age of 83 from complications of a heart attack he had suffered the previous day. Happy birthday Uncle Bill.
Everything is Permuted ( a cut-up)
Nothing is True.
Everything is Permuted.
The word writes and re-writes itself.
It is no coincidence that the means of magic is found in the words we use.
Language is a virus.
let them intermingle.
Everything is permuted.
Mutating and metamorphosing.
A soundless hum.
Forged prisms of uniqueness.
Traversing life.
Mosaics of Juxtaposition.
Tools of precognition or subversion.
Everything is permitted..
' Take the air. '
There are no accidents.
Although it's very difficult to get it right.
Get with it or just say silent.
Allies wait with heavy commitments.
Eveything is permuted.
( Happy birthday; William S. Burroughs)
"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative. " - William Burroughs
Material ( with William S. Burrough) - seven souls
( an earlier post on the centenary of his birth can be found here :- http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/destroy-all-rational-thought.html
Everything is Permuted ( a cut-up)
Nothing is True.
Everything is Permuted.
The word writes and re-writes itself.
It is no coincidence that the means of magic is found in the words we use.
Language is a virus.
let them intermingle.
Everything is permuted.
Mutating and metamorphosing.
A soundless hum.
Forged prisms of uniqueness.
Traversing life.
Mosaics of Juxtaposition.
Tools of precognition or subversion.
Everything is permitted..
' Take the air. '
There are no accidents.
Although it's very difficult to get it right.
Get with it or just say silent.
Allies wait with heavy commitments.
Eveything is permuted.
( Happy birthday; William S. Burroughs)
Material ( with William S. Burrough) - seven souls
( an earlier post on the centenary of his birth can be found here :- http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/destroy-all-rational-thought.html
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