William Burroughs’s Advice for Young People

That was pretty good.

I’d love for you to write something about that for the site.

What’s funny is that I’m hugely influenced by Burroughs but in an incredibly strange way. Obviously, I employ his and Gysin’s cut up technique quite a bit in my art and music and try and tap into the Third Mind as much as I can, buuuuuuut, I honestly don’t like his writing much. Never have. I actually didn’t even make it through the book he did about his dreams because I thought it was incredibly boring. For my money, Henry Miller did what Burroughs did a billion times better but never gets that sort of credit. Miller’s writing alternates between structure and anti-structure effortlessly which is where Burroughs floundered. Nothing he writes sticks in my head because there’s no structure for it to process, so I forget it the second I’m done reading. It creates a cool altered state sort of mood but that’s all it does.

That being said, Naked Lunch the movie, by David Cronenberg is up there with my all time favorites. He took Burrough’s writing and assembled a narrative regarding his life around it. Total fucking godhead.

This is awesome.