The narrative follows William Lee—Burroughs' recurring alter ego—as he drifts through the bars of Mexico City.
The manuscript remained unpublished for decades, partly due to its explicit content and partly because Burroughs found its emotional vulnerability difficult to revisit. queer william burroughs pdf
In the pantheon of 20th-century queer literature, few figures loom as large—or as controversially—as William Seward Burroughs II. A primary architect of the Beat Generation, a lifelong opiate addict, and a man who shot his wife in a drunken game of William Tell, Burroughs remains a polarizing icon. However, for scholars of LGBTQ+ history, his work is indispensable. A primary architect of the Beat Generation, a
For fans of Burroughs' avant-garde style, Queer offers a fascinating bridge. While written in a mostly linear style, the hallucinatory "Yage scenes" (involving the search for a hallucinogenic drug) anticipate the disjointed, surreal prose of Naked Lunch . The famous "talking asshole" routine from Naked Lunch actually finds its origins in the routines Lee performs to entertain Allerton in Queer . While written in a mostly linear style, the
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to the accidental shooting of his wife, Joan Vollmer. He claimed the book was a motivated attempt to exorcise the "Ugly Spirit" he felt possessed him during that traumatic period. The Development of the "Routine":