William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, credited as a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of hasty stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He as a consequence collaborated upon projects and recordings later numerous performers and musicians and made many appearances in films. He was next briefly known by the pen name William Lee. Burroughs created and exhibited thousands of paintings and further visual artworks, including his celebrated 'Shotgun Art'.

Burroughs was born into a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a grandson of inventor William Seward Burroughs I, who founded the Burroughs Corporation, and a nephew of public relations official Ivy Lee. Burroughs attended Harvard University, studied English, studied anthropology as a postgraduate, and attended medical scholastic in Vienna. In 1942, Burroughs enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve during World War II. After monster turned next to by the Office of Strategic Services and the Navy, he developed the heroin addiction that affected him for the on fire of his life. In 1943, while lively in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Their mutual move became the instigation of the Beat Generation, which was unconventional a defining influence upon the 1960s counterculture.

Burroughs killed his second wife, Joan Vollmer, in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs initially claimed that he shot Vollmer even if drunkenly attempting a "William Tell" stunt. He forward-looking told investigators that he had been showing his pistol to connections when it fell and hit the table, firing the bullet that killed Vollmer. After Burroughs returned to the United States, he was convicted of manslaughter in absentia and conventional a two-year suspended sentence.

Much of Burroughs' work is semiautobiographical, and is primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict. He lived in Mexico City, London, Paris and the Tangier International Zone near Morocco, and with traveled in the South American Amazon rainforest. His play in features frequent mystical, occult, or otherwise magical themes – a constant preoccupation for Burroughs, both in fiction and in genuine life. Burroughs found feat with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), but is perhaps best known for his third novel, Naked Lunch (1959). Naked Lunch became the subject of one of the last major teacher censorship cases in the United States after its US publisher, Grove Press, was sued for violating a Massachusetts obscenity statute. With Brion Gysin, Burroughs then popularized the theoretical cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–1964).

In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1984, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer past Jonathan Swift"; he owed this reputation to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political, and economic systems of enlightened American society, articulated in often darkly droll sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer confirmed him "the deserted American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".