Burroughs described Vollmer's death as a pivotal event in his life, and one that provoked his writing by exposing him to the risk of
possession by a malevolent entity he called "the Ugly Spirit": I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out. As Burroughs makes clear, he meant this reference to "possession" to be taken absolutely literally, stating: "My concept of possession is closer to the medieval model than to modern psychological explanations ... I mean a definite possessing entity." – to disrupt language via methods such as the
cut-up technique, and thus protect himself from possession. Later in life, Burroughs described the Ugly Spirit as "Monopolistic, acquisitive evil. Ugly evil. The ugly American", and took part in a shamanic ceremony with the explicit aim of exorcising the Ugly Spirit.
Oliver Harris has questioned Burroughs's claim that Vollmer's death catalysed his writing, highlighting the importance for
Queer of Burroughs's traumatic relationship with the boyfriend fictionalized in the story as Eugene Allerton, rather than Burroughs's shooting of Vollmer. In any case, he had begun to write in 1945. Burroughs and Kerouac collaborated on
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a mystery novel loosely based on the Carr–Kammerer situation and that at the time remained unpublished. Years later, in the documentary
What Happened to Kerouac?, Burroughs described it as "not a very distinguished work". An excerpt of this work, in which Burroughs and Kerouac wrote alternating chapters, was finally published in
Word Virus, a compendium of William Burroughs's writing that was published by his biographer after his death in 1997. The complete novel was finally published by Grove Press in 2008. Before killing Vollmer, Burroughs had largely completed his first novel,
Junkie, which he wrote at the urging of
Allen Ginsberg, who was instrumental in getting the work published as a cheap mass-market paperback.
Ace Books published the novel in 1953 as part of an
Ace Double under the pen name William Lee, retitling it
Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict (it was later republished as
Junkie, then in 1977 as
Junky, and finally in 2003 as ''Junky: the definitive text of 'Junk','' edited by Oliver Harris). Burroughs went to Rome to meet
Alan Ansen on a vacation financed from his parents' continuing support. He found Rome and Ansen's company dreary and, inspired by
Paul Bowles' fiction, he decided to head for the
Tangier International Zone, To Burroughs, all signs directed a return to Tangier, a city where drugs were freely available and where financial support from his family would continue. He realized that in the Moroccan culture he had found an environment that synchronized with his temperament and afforded no hindrances to pursuing his interests and indulging in his chosen activities. He left for Tangier in November 1954 and spent the next four years there working on the fiction that would later become
Naked Lunch, as well as attempting to write commercial articles about Tangier. He sent these writings to Ginsberg, his literary agent for
Junkie, but none were published until 1959 when
Interzone, a collection of short stories, was published. Under the strong influence of a
marijuana confection known as
majoun and a German-made
opioid called
Eukodol, Burroughs settled in to write. Eventually, Ginsberg and Kerouac, who had traveled to Tangier in 1957, helped Burroughs type, edit, and arrange these episodes into
Naked Lunch.
Naked Lunch Whereas
Junkie and
Queer were conventional in style,
Naked Lunch was his first venture into a
nonlinear style. After the publication of
Naked Lunch, a book whose creation was to a certain extent the result of a series of contingencies, Burroughs was exposed to
Brion Gysin's
cut-up technique at the
Beat Hotel in Paris in October 1959. He began slicing up phrases and words to create new sentences. At the Beat Hotel, Burroughs discovered "a port of entry" into Gysin's canvases: "I don't think I had ever seen painting until I saw the painting of Brion Gysin." The two would cultivate a long-term friendship that revolved around a mutual interest in artworks and cut-up techniques. Scenes were slid together with little care for narrative. Excerpts from
Naked Lunch were first published in the United States in 1958. The novel was initially rejected by
City Lights Books, the publisher of Ginsberg's
Howl, and
Olympia Press publisher
Maurice Girodias, who had published English-language novels in France that were controversial for their subjective views of sex and antisocial characters. Nevertheless, Ginsberg managed to get excerpts published in
Black Mountain Review and
Chicago Review in 1958. Irving Rosenthal, student editor of
Chicago Review, a quarterly journal partially subsidized by the university, promised to publish more excerpts from
Naked Lunch, but he was fired from his position in 1958 after
Chicago Daily News columnist
Jack Mabley called the first excerpt obscene. Rosenthal went on to publish more in his newly created literary journal
Big Table No. 1; however, the
United States Postmaster General ruled that copies could not be mailed to subscribers on the basis of obscenity laws.
John Ciardi did get a copy and wrote a positive review of the work, prompting a telegram from Allen Ginsberg praising the review. This controversy made
Naked Lunch interesting to Girodias again, and he published the novel in 1959. After the novel was published, it became notorious across Europe and the United States, garnering interest from not just members of the
counterculture of the 1960s, but also literary critics such as
Mary McCarthy. Once published in the United States,
Naked Lunch was prosecuted as
obscene by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, followed by other states. In 1966, the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the work "not obscene" on the basis of criteria developed largely to defend the book. The case against Burroughs's novel still stands as the last obscenity trial against a work of literature – that is, a work consisting of words only, and not including illustrations or photographs – prosecuted in the United States. The
Word Hoard, the collection of manuscripts that produced
Naked Lunch, also produced parts of the later works
The Soft Machine (1961),
The Ticket That Exploded (1962), and
Nova Express (1964). These novels feature extensive use of the cut-up technique that influenced all of Burroughs's subsequent fiction to a degree. During Burroughs's friendship and artistic collaborations with Gysin and
Ian Sommerville, the technique was combined with images, Gysin's paintings, and sound, via Sommerville's tape recorders. Burroughs was so dedicated to the cut-up method that he often defended his use of the technique before editors and publishers, most notably Dick Seaver at
Grove Press in the 1960s He went to Paris to meet Ginsberg and talk with
Olympia Press. He left behind a criminal charge which eventually caught up with him in Paris. Paul Lund, a British former career criminal and cigarette smuggler whom Burroughs met in Tangier, was arrested on suspicion of importing narcotics into France. Lund gave up Burroughs, and evidence implicated Burroughs in the importation of narcotics into France. When the Moroccan authorities forwarded their investigation to French officials, Burroughs faced criminal charges in Paris for conspiracy to import opiates. It was during this impending case that
Maurice Girodias published
Naked Lunch; its appearance helped to get Burroughs a suspended sentence, since a literary career, according to Ted Morgan, is a respected profession in France. The "
Beat Hotel" was a typical European-style
boarding house hotel, with common toilets on every floor, and a small place for personal cooking in the room. Life there was documented by the photographer
Harold Chapman, who lived in the attic room. This shabby, inexpensive hotel was populated by
Gregory Corso, Ginsberg and
Peter Orlovsky for several months after
Naked Lunch first appeared. Burroughs's time at the Beat Hotel was dominated by occult experiments – "
mirror-gazing,
scrying,
trance and
telepathy, all fuelled by a wide variety of mind-altering drugs". Later, Burroughs would describe "visions" obtained by staring into the mirror for hours at a time – his hands transformed into tentacles, or his whole image transforming into some strange entity, or visions of far-off places, or of other people rapidly undergoing metamorphosis. It was from this febrile atmosphere that the famous
cut-up technique emerged. The actual process by which
Naked Lunch was published was partly a function of its "cut-up" presentation to the printer. Girodias had given Burroughs only ten days to prepare the manuscript for print galleys, and Burroughs sent over the manuscript in pieces, preparing the parts in no particular order. When it was published in this authentically random manner, Burroughs liked it better than the initial plan. International rights to the work were sold soon after, and Burroughs used the $3,000 advance from
Grove Press to buy drugs (equivalent to approximately $ in today's funds). Also, poetry by Burroughs appeared in the
avant garde little magazine Nomad at the beginning of the 1960s.
The London years Burroughs left Paris for London in 1960 to visit Dr. Dent, a well-known English medical doctor who spearheaded a reputedly painless heroin withdrawal treatment using the drug
apomorphine. Dent's apomorphine cure was also used to treat alcoholism, although it was held by several people who undertook it to be no more than straightforward aversion therapy. Burroughs, however, was convinced. Following his first cure, he wrote a detailed appreciation of apomorphine and other cures, which he submitted to
The British Journal of Addiction (Vol. 53, 1956) under the title "Letter From A Master Addict To Dangerous Drugs"; this letter is appended to many editions of
Naked Lunch. Though he ultimately relapsed, Burroughs ended up working out of London for six years, traveling back to the United States on several occasions, including one time escorting his son to the
Lexington Narcotics Farm and Prison after the younger Burroughs had been convicted of prescription fraud in Florida. In the "Afterword" to the compilation of his son's two previously published novels
Speed and
Kentucky Ham, Burroughs writes that he thought he had a "small habit" and left London quickly without any narcotics because he suspected the US customs would search him very thoroughly on arrival. He claims he went through the most excruciating two months of opiate withdrawal while seeing his son through his trial and sentencing, traveling with Billy to
Lexington, Kentucky from Miami to ensure that his son entered the hospital that he had once spent time in as a volunteer admission. Earlier, Burroughs revisited St. Louis, Missouri, taking a large advance from
Playboy to write an article about his trip back to St. Louis, one that was eventually published in
The Paris Review, after Burroughs refused to alter the style for
Playboy’s publishers. In 1968 Burroughs joined
Jean Genet,
John Sack, and
Terry Southern in covering the
1968 Democratic National Convention for
Esquire magazine. Southern and Burroughs, who had first become acquainted in London, would remain lifelong friends and collaborators. In 1972, Burroughs and Southern unsuccessfully attempted to adapt
Naked Lunch for the screen in conjunction with American game-show producer
Chuck Barris. Burroughs supported himself and his addiction by publishing pieces in small literary presses. His avant-garde reputation grew internationally as hippies and college students discovered his earlier works. He developed a close friendship with
Antony Balch and lived with a young hustler named John Brady who continuously brought home young women despite Burroughs's protestations. In the midst of this personal turmoil, Burroughs managed to complete two works: a novel written in screenplay format,
The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969); and the traditional prose-format novel
The Wild Boys (1971). It was during his time in London that Burroughs began using his "
playback" technique in an attempt to place
curses on various people and places who had drawn his ire, including the Moka coffee bar and the London HQ of Scientology. Burroughs himself related the Moka coffee bar incident: Here is a sample operation carried out against the Moka Bar at 29 Frith Street, London, W1, beginning on August 3, 1972. Reverse Thursday. Reason for operation was outrageous and unprovoked discourtesy and poisonous cheesecake. Now to close in on the Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Stand around outside. Let them see me. They are seething around in there ... Playback would come later with more pictures ... Playback was carried out a number of times with more pictures. Their business fell off. They kept shorter and shorter hours. October 30, 1972, the Moka Bar closed. The location was taken over by the Queen's Snack Bar. In the 1960s, Burroughs joined and then left the
Church of Scientology. In talking about the experience, he claimed that the techniques and philosophy of Scientology helped him and that he felt that further study of Scientology would produce great results. He was skeptical of the organization itself, and felt that it fostered an environment that did not accept critical discussion. His subsequent critical writings about the church and his review of
Inside Scientology by Robert Kaufman led to a battle of letters between Burroughs and Scientology supporters in the pages of
Rolling Stone magazine. ==Return to United States==