After Burroughs returned to the United States, he was convicted of manslaughter in absentia and received a two-year suspended sentence. He later told investigators that he had been showing his pistol to friends when it fell and hit the table, firing the bullet that killed Vollmer. Burroughs initially claimed that he shot Vollmer while drunkenly attempting a "William Tell" stunt. Naked Lunch became the subject of one of the last major literary censorship cases in the United States after its US publisher, Grove Press, was sued for violating a Massachusetts obscenity statute.īurroughs killed his second wife, Joan Vollmer, in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs found success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), but is perhaps best known for his third novel, Naked Lunch (1959). Their mutual influence became the foundation of the Beat Generation, which was later a defining influence on the 1960s counterculture. In 1943, while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and the Navy, he developed a heroin addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, initially beginning with morphine. In 1942, Burroughs enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve during World War II.
Burroughs attended Harvard University, studied English, studied anthropology as a postgraduate, and attended medical school in Vienna. He was a grandson of inventor William Seward Burroughs I, who founded the Burroughs Corporation, and a nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee.
īurroughs was born into a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "Shotgun Art". Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences he was initially briefly known by the pen name William Lee. William Seward Burroughs II ( / ˈ b ʌr oʊ z/ February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature.
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