beat list 1997

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Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 22:28:41 -0500

Reply-To: RACE --- <race@MIDUSA.NET>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: RACE --- <race@MIDUSA.NET>

Subject: more imaginings of the Godfather of the Johnson Family

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>From Mississippi - david rhaesa - 1992

anyway I introduced to mike the backcracker and Allen asked for some

networking and they discussed Ouji borads and Rikki and rebirthing karma

darma Buddah shit and Mike got out the Tibetan bowl and Jack said he=92d

heard of that from a monk in Leary=92s head on LSD and Burroughs sat ther=

silent stone

and Burroughs read the Sermon on the Mount while Sinead O=92Connor sang

Silent Night, Holy Night and the Carpenters sang We=92ve Only Just Begun

and Burroughs said he wanted to force feed Karen Carpenter some buffalo

meat he=92d shot when hunting with Black Elk in Outer Mongolia. he said

he was hunting for Ghenghis Kahn but settled for a Buffalo and the White

Buffalo and the Polar Bear went with him to stare down Stalin=20

and Stalin turned over in red square. Stalin did cucking cartwheels in

red square and Genghis Kahn and Mao watched grinning like a Cheshiere

cat from across the borderline....Nicholson grinned from across the

border sitting by the Laker bench and Burroughs climbed inside his

typewriter and went back to Kansas for a minute or two just to check the

burning house and then he returned to the dormitory recited some

thoughts about Hitler and Gandhi and dictators and Silent Night played

in the background like Simon and Garfunkel on the six o=92clock news and

the electrical circuitry in the center fried from the inside out and

then was repaired by ghosts a few days later.

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Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 23:22:42 -0500

Reply-To: Patricia Elliott <pelliott@SUNFLOWER.COM>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Patricia Elliott <pelliott@SUNFLOWER.COM>

Subject: Re: William Burroughs Is Dead

Comments: To: Rinaldo Rasa <rinaldo@GPNET.IT>

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Rinaldo Rasa wrote:

> David,

> the Burroughs death is televised by the three domestic TV channel,

> i hope that's appreciate by William S. Burroughs, who is in paradise!,

> (broadcasting nationwide, meaning audience 20 000 000 of italians),

> in primis the "Catholic" channel RAI UNO Corporation from Rome,

> that stated Burroughs tragic life & way of Life, Burroughs is/was

> the other side of the "American Dream" & latin pietas is the message,

rinaldo, i just want to let you know that i really appreciate the

quality of your posts. your are a dear and knowing man.

patricia

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 00:48:30 -0400

Reply-To: "Hipster Beat Poet." <jdematte@TURBO.KEAN.EDU>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: "Hipster Beat Poet." <jdematte@TURBO.KEAN.EDU>

Subject: wsb

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hi folks,

if it makes any kind of difference, I work in a book store and

ever since i started the job (2 months ago) i've been bugging my manager

to order beat books because we have customers who buy all the time. With

Burrough's death i'm sure we'll be flooded with copies of Naked Lunch.

While looking through the store's database i was trying to order a copy

of "Algebra of Need" but its out of print. Does anyone know how to get a

copy or know what it's about? I know it contains essays analysing

Burrough's stories.

thanks,

jason

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 01:07:04 -0400

Reply-To: Neil Hennessy <nhenness@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Neil Hennessy <nhenness@UNDERGRAD.MATH.UWATERLOO.CA>

Subject: The News

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He always knew. "A writer's will is the winds of dead calm in The Western

Lands." I heard today of Burroughs's final journey into The Land of the

Dead. If I had a God to pray to, I'd pray Burroughs makes it across the

Duad. Walk well in The Western Lands William S. Burroughs.

Neil Hennessy

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 01:36:47 -0400

Reply-To: Corduroy <corduroy@earthlink.net>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Corduroy <corduroy@EARTHLINK.NET>

Subject: Beat Generation Writer Burroughs Dead at 83

Comments: To: The Bohemian Mailing List <BOHEMIAN@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>

Comments: cc: Wayne Head <Wayne.Head@entex.com>,

Steve Silberman <digaman@hotwired.com>,

SealoveX@aol.com, Lee Ranaldo <Eyemote@aol.com>,

"John S. Hall" <JOHNSHALL@aol.com>,

John Ritter <John_Ritter@amdahl.com>,

Jennifer Kao <ambiente@earthlink.net>,

Jeffrey Michael Richards <jmricha1@midway.uchicago.edu>,

Jeff Barsalou <s007jpb@discover.wright.edu>,

Jack Bowman <mmbowman@bright.net>, GPS <zero@dircon.co.uk>,

Denny Russell <s002dbr@discover.wright.edu>,

Dan Levy <danlevy@panix.com>,

CRKSBOYE23@aol.com, Bob Holman <MouthMight@aol.com>,

blcr@web.net, Bil Brown <bil@orca.sitesonthe.net>

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LAWRENCE, Kans. (Reuters Limited) - Beat generation writer William S.

Burroughs, the counterculture author best known for the novel "Naked

Lunch" based on his experiences as a drug addict, died Saturday at the

age of 83.

So the news comes about that yet another hero comes to pass. First Leary,

followed

by Ginsberg, a short time on the edge of our seats with Dylan, and now

Burroughs.

Ironically, as a student and a member of a sub-culture of coffeehouse

pseudo-

intellectuals (all with Bukowski hanging out their backpockets) I have

witnessed

a resurgence of worship of these icons, only to witness the demise of the

idols a

short while later. I can only assume that many of you offer some sympathy

for

some of not all of the writers who have left our world recently, and with

this I

invite you to a few virtual shrines available on the 'net.

The Last Words of Dr. Benway

http://www.levity.com/corduroy/burroughs

Constructed in record time immediatly after the news of Burroughs' death,

The Last

Words contains interviews, biographies, samples, links, and bibliographies

pertaining

to the works of William Seward Burroughs. As it was with Ginsberg, many

memorial

sites are sure to appear, as well as articles from slower but more in-depth

news

sources, all of which should appear on The Last Words in time. Also, as it

was with

Ginsberg, the Last Words of Dr. Benway has a special section for reader

comments,

good-byes, thank-yous, and even a little slander if your heart so desires.

Ashes & Blues

http://www.levity.com/corduroy/ginsberg

Mentioned in the paragraph, this memorial site is dedicated to the Life and

Times of

Allen Ginsberg. If The Last Words wouldn't have taken up the evening as it

so required,

the official site for Jerry Aronson's The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg

would have

officially met the web. Being that there is now an obvious delay, the video

site should

appear shortly. Please check back before the week is out for a glimpse at

the video,

including highlights, quotes, and ordering information.

The Official Bob Dylan Website

http://www.bobdylan.com/

Currently the site only holds a little about his 41st album, but worth the

click to your

listof addresses nonetheless. Word has it that many talented people are

involved

with the site in one way or another-- two of which being Levi Asher of

Literary Kicks,

and myself, Christopher Ritter of Bohemian Ink (and all sites listed above).

(cR) Bohemian

Ink http://www.levity.com/corduroy/

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 01:42:44 -0700

Reply-To: runner <babu@ELECTRICITI.COM>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: runner <babu@ELECTRICITI.COM>

Subject: crib of ballard, burroughs, joyce

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cribbed from the patti smith list (thanx fiona w.):

-=-=-=-

J. G. Ballard called him "the first mythographer of the mid-twentieth

century, and the lineal successor to James Joyce, to whom he bears

more than a passing resemblance--exile, publication in Paris,

undeserved notoriety as a pornographer, and an absolute dedication to

the Word . . . His novels are the first definitive portrait of the

inner landscape of our mid-century, using its unique language and

manipulative techniques, its own fantasies and nightmares."

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:10:55 +0000

Reply-To: m.d.fascione@CITY.AC.UK

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Comments: Authenticated sender is <sk312@pophost.city.ac.uk>

From: Daniel Fascione <m.d.fascione@CITY.AC.UK>

Subject: OFF - Calling Alan Reese

Apologies to all for off topic.

Alan Reese are you there? I have lost your address. please mail me

off list.

Daniel

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 06:54:25 -0500

Reply-To: RACE --- <race@MIDUSA.NET>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: RACE --- <race@MIDUSA.NET>

Subject: Report from TUNA about radio

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A few New Englanders had wanted more details.

Tuna's radio salute will be Wednesday 1:30 - 3:30 at 90.1 on your radio

dial (do you still say dial these days?) He is up and listening to

stuff this morning - a salute percolating in his former east lawrence

brain.

david rhaesa

salina, Kansas

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 10:20:00 -0400

Reply-To: Michael Stutz <stutz@DSL.ORG>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Michael Stutz <stutz@DSL.ORG>

Subject: Re: William Burroughs Is Dead

Comments: To: Brian M Kirchhoff <howl420@juno.com>

In-Reply-To: <19970803.145415.3262.18.howl420@juno.com>

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On Sun, 3 Aug 1997, Brian M Kirchhoff wrote:

> i suppose this stands as testament to the fact that these men remained

> influential and important, _literally_ until their last days (and

> beyond). at least they were able to see some of the impact of their

> writing. (unlike the kafkas and poes of the world).

> burroughs didn't die in obscurity (as he may have had he stayed in

> london). he died at a time while people were still excited to hear him

> and talk to him. i can only hope he died content (i first typed happy,

> but i guess that may be asking too much.)

i can only speculate, but my impression is that his last years were quite

content. i think of him as a "writer's writer" in the role model way i think

of sonic youth -- unsullied in their art, recognized in their time, famous

yet able to lead reasonably happy, somewhat private lives. bill and allen

had good lives, i think.

i feel like having witnessed the passing of wordsworth and coleridge (only

our beats were better). i mean, there was something very powerful about

them, they were shamans and warriors and now, the idea of life without them

-- though inevitable and good and natural -- is downright unsettling.

everything outside my window is still the same today. why?

"there is nobody left

come to in my bones

oh lord jesus

i feel so

alone"

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 12:36:28 -0400

Reply-To: GYENIS@AOL.COM

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Attila Gyenis <GYENIS@AOL.COM>

Subject: Re: the real story behind "beat"

In a message dated 97-08-02 12:21:00 EDT, SLPrdise@AOL.COM (MiKe KaNe)

writes:

<< i have transcripts from a 1962

senate hearing in which jack lobbied for beet (beat) farmers to receive a

government stipend to keep the beet industry >>

I believe that it was the same hearing where Popeye was lobbying for yams.

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:06:01 -0400

Reply-To: Richard Wallner <rwallner@CAPACCESS.ORG>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Richard Wallner <rwallner@CAPACCESS.ORG>

Subject: Last Time I Committed Suicide (review)

In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970804101218.26580C-100000@devel.nacs.net>

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(Found this review on CNN's database today...RJW)

Letter to Kerouac provides thin

basis for 'Suicide'

July 10, 1997

Web posted at: 11:06 a.m. EDT (1506 GMT)

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- I've often said that there's a great

movie to be made about the Beat Generation

writers of the early 1950s. Guys like Allen

Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack

Kerouac have always been more fascinating

to me as people than they are as writers. You

have to suspect that their free-falling

lifestyles would make for some prime

entertainment ... if you could just capture

their pharmaceutically speeding energy

without making the actors look like fools.

"Naked Lunch" is probably half that great

movie, and half David Cronenberg getting

off on being one sick puppy. Writer-director

Stephen Kay's "The Last Time I

Committed Suicide" isn't even that lucky,

with the period details and the wonderful,

driving music (from geniuses like Charlie

Parker, Miles Davis, and Charles Mingus)

being the most enjoyable aspects of the whole

production.

The story is based on a letter that was sent

by Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac in the

late 1940s, when Cassady was working at a

Goodyear tire factory in Denver.

Cassady is the inspiration for Kerouac's

trailblazing novel, "On the Road," and later

drove the bus for Ken Kesey and the Merry

Pranksters during their highly misguided

(and unproductive) early-'60s LSD

experiments.

By all accounts Cassady was a drug- and

alcohol-exposed live wire, John Belushi

before there was really a market for someone

like John Belushi. You wouldn't know

this from the way Thomas Jane portrays him in

"The Last Time I Committed

Suicide," though. Here, he seems more like a

sexually aggressive Dennis the

Menace, with his drinking limited to your

average Friday night intake of Miller High

Life and his more socially questionable

pill-popping all but non-existent.

As might immediately be expected from a movie

inspired by what was stuffed into an

envelope, the story is mighty thin. Cassady

works at the tire shop, and has a

girlfriend, Joan (Claire Forlani), who

inexplicably tries to kill herself one night.

While Joan is recuperating in the hospital,

Neal thoughtfully takes up with a

16-year-old hellcat named Cherry Mary

(Gretchen Mol, a live wire of a completely

different sort.) He also hangs out at the

pool hall with a much older buddy named

Harry (pseudo-actor Keanu Reeves). That is

all ye need to know. The rest is

supplied in "hey man" voice-overs by Cassady.

I've always been partial to Burroughs over

Kerouac and the far less prolific

Cassady. Even in his younger days, Burroughs

looked and sounded like death

warmed over, the Black Angel in a business

suit. He's always seemed vaguely

embarrassed by the course his life took after

he started in on the drug experiments,

but Kerouac was a little too self-satisfied,

pretending that fat, drunk and sitting on

his mother's couch is where his "vision" was

always leading him. That's not to say

that there wasn't a ton of angst involved,

but it was nothing that a couple of tall cold

ones couldn't settle.

Unfortunately, Cassady's voice-over in the

movie smacks of Kerouac's

bebop-inspired riffing. Though I know the

passage of time has blunted this stuff,

you can't help (during some of the more

purple-prosey moments) envisioning the

narrator as a cartoon tomcat wearing a

turtleneck, beret, and a pair of Ray-Bans.

Bongos optional.

Any screenwriter will tell you that

voice-over can be a highly problematic device

when writing a script -- too much and you're

being redundant, too little and what's

the point of using it? Kay gets the quantity

right, but Cassady's spelling out of every

plot point often seems like nothing more than

a springboard into what is supposed to

be a visual representation of the Beats'

fragmented poetry.

This is a big, big mistake. Kay drives

himself into a tizzy trying to make the leap

from jabbering language to jabbering visuals,

a transition that's destined to look

rather desperate. You name it and he throws

it into the mix -- jump cuts, tilting

cameras, spinning cameras, fake home movies

(a major cliche by now), slow

motion, unmotivated zooms, long dissolves,

and unexpected freeze-frames.

It all must have looked good in film school,

but powerful filmmaking, as much as

anything else, is knowing what to leave out.

The Beat writers were conveying the

racing thoughts and images that came pouring

out at them every day from the radio,

movies, magazines, and their own drug-addled

craniums. On a 30-foot tall screen it

looks obvious and gives you a major headache.

The actors, with one exception, are all quite

good. Thomas Jane is likable enough as

Cassady; he just seems to be held in check by

a director who doesn't know how far

he wants to go. Claire Forlani displays a

highly charismatic, numbed beauty as Joan.

She's given little to do, but I found myself

waiting for her to show up again during

the slower middle portion of the film. I've

never seen her before, but this is a very

promising performance. Gretchen Mol, as I've

already suggested, is the embodiment

of Cherry Mary. One hopes that she doesn't

get typecast as world class jailbait.

Then there's Keanu Reeves. Reeves is an

absolute mystery to me, an actor so openly

void of talent I wouldn't let him near a

senior class performance of "The Egg and I."

But here he is again, reciting his lines as

if they're non-related words strung together

as a memory exercise. He's an actor who begs

for a Burger King uniform, but his

hunka-hunka burnin' looks will keep him

periodically in front of me for the rest of

my life ... unless, of course, I outlive him.

I'm going to start working out right now,

just to make sure.

"The Last Time I Committed Suicide" is a

beer-soaked, but fairly spruced-up

rendering of some pretty sweaty times. The

degrading treatment of the women in the

film is its most offensive element, though

this is sadly in keeping with the characters'

world view.

Rated R. 95 minutes.

CNN In-Depth: Showbiz

Related sites:

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:31:20 +0000

Reply-To: Brian M Kirchhoff <howl420@JUNO.COM>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Brian M Kirchhoff <howl420@JUNO.COM>

Subject: clogginng the list

sorry to take up list space. i lost all of my saved messages last week

and i need to unsubscribe during my vacation. can someone forward me the

introductory message that explains how to do that. thanks. talk to

y'all in a couple of weeks.

Brian M. Kirchhoff

howl 420@juno.com

"I am the perfect man...the Buddha of this world!"

-Kerouac, Brooklyn Bridge Blues, Chorus 4 (unpublished)

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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 12:53:55 -0700

Reply-To: vic.begrand@sk.sympatico.ca

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Adrien Begrand <vic.begrand@SK.SYMPATICO.CA>

Subject: wsb tribute

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Here's a great obit from Salon Magazine...

I N + M E M O R I A M

william s. burroughs

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BY GARY KAMIYA | the last of the great

shockers is gone. Joyce's Bloom sat

contentedly amid the smell of his shit, Henry

Miller shoved pricks in our faces, Genet and

Celine ripped off the masks, but for pure

literary devastation, William S. Burroughs

trumped them all. He came in from another

galaxy and left the door open behind him. You

had to put on a space suit to read Burroughs,

and you still froze.

Burroughs brought the Big Cold into our

literature. He pushed literature way out, past

all the stop signs, into a wasteland where the

faces screamed like Francis Bacon portraits and the pain wasn't

literary.

He was the first writer to visit the other world of junk with a

functioning

camera, and nobody has ever run that nightmare movie so well. But it

wasn't just about dope -- that would have been a mere novelty act,

sensationalism for decadents. Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the

junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughly and

obsessively

rendered as Blake's.

Burroughs was the killer, the icy-faced old poet who recorded every

movement of the extraterrestrial machinery that was eating his flesh. He

was 20th century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was

the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of

dread. While the rest of the Beats were rehearsing their

fuck-you-mom-and-Eisenhower-too versions of Romanticism, Burroughs

was already unspeakably old, already a veteran of evil campaigns on

several really gnarly planets. Next to him, Ginsberg and the rest seemed

like schoolkids.

That this laconic Midwesterner -- "Old Bull Lee," Kerouac dubbed him in

"On the Road" -- ended up as the paterfamilias of his renegade

generation

is one of our odd half-century's better jokes. Some father figure! A

homosexual ex-junkie whose claim to fame rests on one book, who killed

his wife playing William Tell in Mexico City and whose epiphanic image

-- repeated ad nauseam when he later foolishly codified his "cut-up"

technique into a system -- was a teenage cock ejaculating while train

whistles blew nostalgically in the distance. Follow him!

But when you read "Naked Lunch," you understand why Burroughs was

the man. "Naked Lunch" remains one of the unquestionable masterpieces

of the 20th century -- eminently worthy of its honored place as the book

whose obscenity trial effectively ended literary censorship in America.

The odyssey of "Naked Lunch," as recounted in John De St. Jorre's

"Venus Bound," is a fascinating one. Burroughs wrote the book in

Tangier, Morocco, between 1954 and 1957. Writer Paul Bowles visited

Burroughs and described his somewhat unusual compositional technique:

"(Burroughs' hotel room) was the dirtiest place I had ever seen. 'What's

all this paper on the floor, Bill?' I asked. 'It's my new work,' he

said. He

told me it was all right to leave it there. There were hundreds of pages

yellow foolscap all over the floor covered with footprints, bits of old

cheese sandwiches, rat droppings -- it was filthy. When he finished a

page he'd just throw it on the floor. He had no copies and when I asked

him why he didn't pick it up, he said it was OK, it would get picked up

one day."

In 1957, a raft of Burroughs' Beat friends, including Allen Ginsberg,

Jack

Kerouac and Peter Orlovsky, arrived in Tangier and placed his chaotic,

provolone-encrusted manuscript in some order. And finally, in 1959, it

was published by Maurice Girodias' legendary Olympia Press, which

released it in Paris as No. 76 of the "Traveller's Companion" series.

(According to Girodias, he initially rejected the manuscript because of

its

moth-eaten condition and total lack of conventional narrative

organization. According to Terry Southern, however, the Frenchman

initially rejected it because it didn't have enough sex in it: "All the

way to

page 17!" Southern recollects Girodias as saying. "And it's still only a

blow job!" ) Grove Press published it in the U.S. in 1962. The state of

Massachussetts tried to suppress it in 1966 but lost, in a landmark

case.

Burroughs may turn out to be the last experimenter who could still

surprise us. Perhaps that's because his experimentations seem

organically

linked to actual experience. His vaunted "cut-up" technique, a kind of

literary version of 12-tone composition, would have been merely an

empty formalism -- except that it recapitulated the eternally recurring

nightmare logic of the junkie's brain. If hell circled around and around

without end, then Burroughs' sentences would, too. And they did.

The abysses and demons of "Naked Lunch" are justly celebrated -- the

horrific vision of an age of coming Total Control, the cosmic entropy

that

collapses everything into insect twitches, the time loops that make

escape

impossible. But often forgotten, beneath the book's monstrous

outer-space aspect, is how screamingly funny it is. "Naked Lunch"

combines audacious formal experimentation -- endlessly recurring motifs,

a deliriously non-linear narration, half-psychotic, half-allegorical

science

fiction-y themes -- with a deep-dish American slapstick humor made up

of equal parts Mad magazine, Jonathan Swift, Catskill comedy and

drag-queen bitchiness, all delivered in deliciously dead-on slang.

Burroughs is probably the hippest writer of slang since Mark Twain:

Certainly you'd have to go back to Twain to find another writer whose

jokes carry the vernacular rightness of Burroughs'.

Burroughs' trademark is the rapid and hilarious juxtaposition of

outrageous, cartoony metaphysical evil -- people turning into huge blobs

of ectoplasm, prolapsed rectums wandering around blindly feeling for

some action -- with casually deflating argot, sometimes that of a bland

bureaucrat but usually that of a world-weary New Yawk hustler.

Take the scene in "Naked Lunch" when a narc named Bradley the

Buyer, a man "so anonymous, grey and spectral the pusher don't

remember him afterwards" "hunts up a young junkie and gives him a

paper to make it." "'I just want to rub up against you and get fixed.'

'Ugh

... well all right ... But why cancha just get physical like a human?'

Later

the boy is sitting in a Waldorf with two colleagues dunking pound cake.

'Most distasteful thing I ever stand still for,' he says. 'Some way he

make

himself all soft like a blob of jelly and surround me so nasty. Then he

gets wet all over with green slime. So I guess he come to some kinda

awful climax ... I come near wigging with that green stuff all over me,

and he stink like a rotten old canteloupe.'"

And then, in one of those dazzling insane changes that the man runs,

Mahler to Captain Beefheart to Coltrane on the same page, Burroughs

pulls back, focuses wide and blows away the whole Beat tribe of

America-bashers: "And the U.S. drag closes in around us like no other

drag in the world, worse than the Andes, high mountain towns, cold wind

down from postcard mountains, thin air like death in the throat ... But

there is no drag like U.S. drag. You can't see it, you don't know where

comes from. Take one of those cocktail lounges at the end of a suburban

street -- every block of houses has its own bar and drugstore and market

and liquorstore. You walk in and it hits you. But where does it come

from? Not the bartender, not the customers, nor the cream-colored

plastic rounding the bar stools, nor the dim neon. Not even the TV. And

our habits build up with the drag ..."

Taken alone, any one of "Naked Lunch's" many voices -- allegoristic

sci-fi, drug-crazed fever visions, haunted personal memories -- would

pall. Together, however, they make a wild cocktail that captures, with

singular precision, something at once mad, hilarious, terrible and

essential.

I've read "Naked Lunch" four times -- for fun and terror. How many

avant-garde works can you read four times for any reason?

Others have pushed through the doors left open by Burroughs.

Performance artists, evil unfettered cartoonists like S. Clay Wilson and

Crumb, high poets of modernist hallucination like Denis Johnson,

musicians like Jim Morrison and Lou Reed, numberless directors and

painters. But he will have no real follower, for he was an original. He

was

a lab-coated technician of an inner world whose dreadful charts are

documents -- and an artist who summoned new words to describe

experiences for which there had been no name. He walked the line

between art and experience, what happened and the telling of it, with an

amazing and dangerous style.

Adios, Bill ... The great gray wind is blowing forever now ... skin

sloughed off like old lizard parchment ... no more creepy ectoplasm and

twitch of unspeakable insect need ... sleep on, amigo. You're out of

this

cough-syrup burb for good ... you gave us new language for old dreams

...

Aug. 4, 1997

Bookmark: http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/newsreal.html

=========================================================================

Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 15:01:09 -0400

Reply-To: GYENIS@AOL.COM

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Attila Gyenis <GYENIS@AOL.COM>

Subject: McSorleys on Tuesday

Hello,

This is an open invitation for anybody interested in getting together at

McSorleys on Tuesday Night (tomorrow) for a beer or two and a chat or two.

This is not necessarily a beat thing, but more a social thing (an excuse to

drink beer). McSorleys -- New York's oldest bar, located on 7th Street

(forget off what Avenue but it's on the eastside, off 2nd Avenue maybe), at 8

pm. How will you know each other. Maybe by Kharma, or someone using a beat

term or terminology. Or maybe you'll meet someone who doesn't give a shit

about the beats but still interesting to talk to.

later, Attila

=========================================================================

Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:48:05 -0500

Reply-To: Sara Ellefson <Sara.Ellefson@INFORES.COM>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Sara Ellefson <Sara.Ellefson@INFORES.COM>

Subject: Burroughs

Mime-Version: 1.0

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I just found out this morning that Burroughs died over the weekend.

I've been off the list for a while cause of work and life and no time,

etc. Can someone please forward me info . . . what's going on? Any

events planned in Chicago?

Thanks

Sara.Ellefson@infores.com

=========================================================================

Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 18:11:04 -0400

Reply-To: Carrie Sherlock <csherloc@UOGUELPH.CA>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Carrie Sherlock <csherloc@UOGUELPH.CA>

Subject: Re: clogginng the list

Comments: To: Brian M Kirchhoff <howl420@JUNO.COM>

In-Reply-To: <19970804.133122.3262.20.howl420@juno.com>

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Diddo on that one. Could that same someone send a copy to me aswell.

Ta very much.

Carrie sherlock.

On Mon, 4 Aug 1997, Brian M Kirchhoff wrote:

> sorry to take up list space. i lost all of my saved messages last week

> and i need to unsubscribe during my vacation. can someone forward me the

> introductory message that explains how to do that. thanks. talk to

> y'all in a couple of weeks.

> Brian M. Kirchhoff

> howl 420@juno.com

> "I am the perfect man...the Buddha of this world!"

> -Kerouac, Brooklyn Bridge Blues, Chorus 4 (unpublished)

=========================================================================

Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 19:03:59 -0400

Reply-To: Michael Czarnecki <peent@SERVTECH.COM>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Michael Czarnecki <peent@SERVTECH.COM>

Subject: Fresh air - Burroughs

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Just heard on intro to fresh Air on NPR that they will be playing some

rearly recordings of Burroughs during the program. It's 7:03 eastern time

and the hour long program is just starting.

Michael

=========================================================================

Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 19:10:16 -0400

Reply-To: Michael Stutz <stutz@DSL.ORG>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Michael Stutz <stutz@DSL.ORG>

Subject: fare thee well

MIME-Version: 1.0

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[1][Masthead]

[]

[2][Navigation bar]

[3][Stocks] __________

______________

=20

[4][Search] [5][WIRED magazine]

[]

[6][Back] _Farewell, Junkie Godfather_

=20

_by [7]R.U. Sirius _

8:58am 4.Aug.97.PDT _"Kim had never doubted the existence of God or

the possibility of an afterlife. He considered that immortality was

the only goal worth striving for. He knew it was not something you

automatically get for believing in some arbitrary dogma like

Christianity or Islam. It is something you have to work and fight for,

like everything else in life."_

- _The Western Lands,_ William S. Burroughs, 1987

=20

A great liberator has passed from our midst. William S. Burroughs,

born 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri, died Saturday afternoon in Lawrence,

Kansas.

=20

Frequently called one of the greatest writers of the 20th century - as

often as not by people who never actually read his substantial body of

work - Burroughs ripped literature out by its Victorian roots,

examining the very elements of language. He experimented with it and

he changed it. And in the process he became a somewhat reluctant

harbinger of a revolution in culture itself. Burroughs was a writer,

but he was much more, and much less, than that.

=20

Burroughs would become an icon of apocalyptic hipster cynicism.

Simultaneously, he would be a kind of black-humored advice counselor

to avant garde psychedelicists and magicians seeking a "breakthrough

in the gray room." And he would eventually become an honored "man of

letters" within the literary establishment itself.

=20

Burroughs' writing resonated deeply within the best minds of several

generations, because it reflected both the frantic horror and

liberatory potential of our unmoored scientific and technological

epoch. But it was his presence and his voice that would enter the

public imagination. He was the great gray gentleman junkie Godfather,

and you didn't need to be particularly literate to pick up the vibe.

Burroughs looked and sounded like death itself.

=20

Recalling a childhood incident, Burroughs would write frequently about

"the St. Louis matron who said I was a walking corpse." But his

spectral presence had a charming, dapper, dignified quality. And to

_hear_ Burroughs read his own writing was to understand that he wasn't

just a talented experimentalist, he was the funniest goddamned

stand-up comedian of his time.

=20

Burroughs first came to prominence when his second novel, _Naked

Lunch,_ became the subject of an obscenity trial in the early '60s. He

emerged, along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, as one of the

major icons of the beat literary movement. But it was in the 1980s and

'90s that Burroughs became an omnipresent pop culture apparition.

=20

Appearing with recording artists ranging from Laurie Anderson to

Ministry, in films such as _Drugstore Cowboy,_ and referenced by every

punk and post-punk artist from the United States to Slovenia,

Burroughs was able to semi-retire in relative comfort in Lawrence,

Kansas, where he moved to escape the hardcore druggie party scene that

had developed around his infamous "bunker" in New York's Bowery.

=20

Eventually the man who once wrote "Words, colors, light, sound, stone,

wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who

can use them. Loot the Louvre! ... Steal anything in sight...." would

even appear in a Nike advertisement. For William S. Burroughs - junkie

faggot, interdimensional voodoo tactician, and antediluvian comedian -

the American dream lived perversely. A boy from Kansas with the

courage to write about talking assholes, junky scammers, and

autoerotic asphyxiated young boys spurting semen while being sodomized

by venal government operatives could make a name for himself.

=20

Now he's passed over to the other side, what he referred to as "The

Western Lands." He believed in an afterlife - in a magical universe. I

hope that, for William, the other side is as imaginative,

entertaining, and dignified as he was.

=20

_Related Wired Links:_

[INLINE]

=20

_[8]Godard, Burroughs Join 'Network Conspiracy'

1.May.97

=20

[9]Cultural Cracks and Pocket Universes=20

11.Jul.97

=20

[10]Ginsberg: A Web unto Himself=20

7.Apr.97

=20

[11]Burroughs Pops Online Cherry with Drag Queens=20

20.Feb.97

=20

Find related stories from the Web's top news sites with [12]NewBot

=20

[13][Back] [14][Navigation strip]

=20

[15]Feedback: Let us know how we're doing.

=20

[16]Tips: Have a story or tip for Wired News? Send it.

=20

[17]Copyright =A9 1993-97 Wired Ventures Inc. and affiliated companies.

=20

[18][HotWired and HotBot]

[] []

[19]Click Here for NetObjects

=20

[20]Farewell, Junkie Godfather

=20

[Culture]

CULTURE

Today's Headlines

=20

[21]Handheld Musuem Ready to Hit the Pavement

=20

[22]Virtual Plants, Insects Twine through Net

=20

[23]Farewell, Junkie Godfather

=20

[24]UUNET Given the 'Death Penalty'

=20

[25]Gossip Tabloid Invades the Web!!!

=20

[26]AOL Spends Like Crazy on Asylum

=20

[27]America's Progressive-est Home Videos

=20

[28]Six Ways to Say 'What's Your Age and Sex?'

=20

[29]Net Surf: Microsoft's ITV

=20

[30]Net Surf: Alexa's New Navigation Service

=20

[31]Geek Backtalk: Part II

=20

[32]Click Here for NetObjects [INLINE] _

References

1. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5739.html#mas=

thead.map

2. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5739.html#nav=

1.map

3. http://www.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/redirect/10010/http://stocks.wired.co=

4. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5739.html#nav=

2.map

5. http://www.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/redirect/10012/http://www.wired.com/w=

ired/

6. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture

7. mailto:rusirius@well.com

8. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/3545.html

9. http://www.wired.com/news/news//story/5132.html

10. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/2981.html

11. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/2173.html

12. http://www.wired.com/newbot/

13. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture

14. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5739.html#nav=

strip.map

15. mailto:news_feedback@wired.com

16. mailto:tips@wired.com

17. http://www.wired.com/wired/full.copyright.html

18. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5739.html#nav=

3.map

19. http://www.wired.com/event.ng?Type=3Dclick&ProfileID=3D19&RunID=3D25&=

AdID=3D354&Redirect=3Dhttp:%2F%2Fwww.netobjects.com%2Fanti-chaos%2Fhotwired=

=2Ehtml

20. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5739.html

21. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5727.html

22. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5720.html

23. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5739.html

24. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5732.html

25. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5718.html

26. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5717.html

27. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5683.html

28. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5685.html

29. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5755.html

30. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5649.html

31. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/5632.html

32. http://www.wired.com/event.ng?Type=3Dclick&ProfileID=3D19&RunID=3D25&=

AdID=3D354&Redirect=3Dhttp:%2F%2Fwww.netobjects.com%2Fanti-chaos%2Fhotwired=

=2Ehtml

=========================================================================

Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 20:25:20 -0700

Reply-To: Tellyman <Tellyman@BIGFOOT.COM>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: Tellyman <Tellyman@BIGFOOT.COM>

Organization: nah

Subject: Re: the real story behind "beat"

Comments: To: GYENIS@AOL.COM

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

> I believe that it was the same hearing where Popeye was lobbying for yams.

Is that where "I yam what I yam, and thats all that I yam" came

from??

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 00:05:28 -0400

Reply-To: "Hipster Beat Poet." <jdematte@TURBO.KEAN.EDU>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: "Hipster Beat Poet." <jdematte@TURBO.KEAN.EDU>

Subject: let us all be creative

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

hey folks,

what if someone actually made a Beat Generation movie which used

material from Barry Miles and Anne Charters just to name a few? Who would

play which beat? Assuming the movie will focus on how they all met at

Columbia and from associating with friends of other friends, maybe we

can speculate and make a list?

possible candidates:

william burroughs= steve buscemi? Gary Oldman?

Allen Ginsberg= Jeff Goldblume?

Jack Kerouac= "Older jack could be played by Al Pacino possibly"

Lucien Carr= Leonardo DiCaprio

Joan Vollmer= Uma Thurman (okay i'm starting to digress into Hollywood)

Brion Gysin= Rutger Hauer

please add and/or suggest different ones.

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 01:12:01 -0400

Reply-To: "Diane M. Homza" <ek242@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: "Diane M. Homza" <ek242@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>

Subject: Re: let us all be creative

Reply to message from jdematte@TURBO.KEAN.EDU of Tue, 05 Aug

>hey folks,

> what if someone actually made a Beat Generation movie which used

>material from Barry Miles and Anne Charters just to name a few? Who would

>play which beat? Assuming the movie will focus on how they all met at

>Columbia and from associating with friends of other friends, maybe we

>can speculate and make a list?

>possible candidates:

>william burroughs= steve buscemi? Gary Oldman?

>Allen Ginsberg= Jeff Goldblume?

>Jack Kerouac= "Older jack could be played by Al Pacino possibly"

>Lucien Carr= Leonardo DiCaprio

>Joan Vollmer= Uma Thurman (okay i'm starting to digress into Hollywood)

>Brion Gysin= Rutger Hauer

>please add and/or suggest different ones.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Lucien Carr....oh my....somehow he just seems a little

too pouty to play fun-luvin' Lucien...or maybe his portrayal of Romeo just

sticks in my brain too well...

Diane. (H)

"Everyone I've ever loved has killed me a little."

--Richard Powers, _The Gold Bug Variations_

ek242@cleveland.freenet.edu

Diane M. Homza

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 00:24:53 -0500

Reply-To: LISA VEDROS <2ndbeat@TELAPEX.COM>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: LISA VEDROS <2ndbeat@TELAPEX.COM>

Subject: Second Beat #5

Comments: To: BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU.

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

well...with second beat #5 we had planned to stop the theme issues for a

bit and go back to our usual chaotic mess of a magazine. Sadly (as you all

probably know already) William S. Burroughs died Saturday. Therefore our

fifth issue will be a memorial tributee to him. In the words of my partner

Domenic, "No one should have to do two memorial issues in one year." but

sadly, we must. Any submissions will be gladly accepted, as with the

Ginsberg issue. Still only a buck, if anyone wants to order WAY in advance.

Scheduled print date: Mid-September. any submissions, questions, anything:

<2ndbeat@telapex.com> is where you should send them. Thanks for all the

interest and orders and money and stuff from all you wonderful beat kats

out there. We hope we're keeping you interested and those of you who've

received any of our issues to date, we hope you're enjoying them. Thanks

again,

Thadeus D'Angelo, Camellia City Books

=========================================================================

Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 08:23:26 -0400

Reply-To: MATT HANNAN <MATT.HANNAN@USOC.ORG>

Sender: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

From: MATT HANNAN <MATT.HANNAN@USOC.ORG>

Subject: Re: fare thee well

Mime-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

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Wired is much admired for it's style and "cutting edge" journalism, too bad they

didn't have room in the budget for a fact-checker's salary. St. Louis moves to

Kansas from paragraph 1 to paragraph 9. Burroughs was very much the

upper-middle class St. Louis boy gone bad...... Kansas was an afterthought,

'tho I'm sure he grew to love it (If he ever loved anything other than his sweet

cats).

sign me,

a nitpicking nosepicker with the language virus,

love and lilies,

matt

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________

Subject: fare thee well

Author: Michael Stutz <stutz@DSL.ORG> at Internet

Date: 8/4/97 7:10 PM