Catherine Currier, my mother's mother, was born in 1914. My grandmother's father, hale and hearty and in his thirties, died in 1918 thanks to the Spanish Influenza. On her thirty-first birthday, the crew of the Enola Gay dropped an A-Bomb -- flippantly named Little Boy -- on Hiroshima.
On today's date, February 5, also in 1914, William Seward Burroughs was born, making him six months older than my grandmother. She's now on the verge of turning ninety-three; Burroughs has been gone nearly ten years, the length of the legendary Trojan War and the length of time I've spent living in the Detroit area.
I don't know if it's because they were both born in 1914, the year The Great War started, or what, but both Burroughs and my grandmother seemed to share a similarly mordant sense of the world. Even their way of talking sounds the same. It's weird. I love hearing their voices, their delivery.
One of my favorite Burroughs novels is Junky, which was orginally released in 1953 as Junkie under the pen name William Lee. It's straightforward, deceptively simple, droll, noirish and at times really funny, especially as read aloud by Burroughs.
A snippet from the Prologue:
I went to a progressive school with the future solid citizens, the lawyers, doctors and businessmen of a large Midwest town. I was timid with the other children and afraid of physical violence. One aggressive little lesbian would pull my hair whenever she saw me. I would like to shove her face in right now, but she fell off a horse and broke her neck years ago.
When I visited my grandmother (with my parents) on her 90th birthday, she wanted to have some pizza and beer, so that's one of the things we did with her. When the current president came on her TV, she quipped: "Every time I see his little rat-like face, I want to bite it." Instead, though, she turned off the tube, sipped her beer, and mischievously smiled, something Burroughs might have done, too.
Today's Rune: Breakthrough.
Viva Catherine J. Currier and William S. Burroughs!
7 comments:
I love Burrough's role in "Drugstore Cowboy."
This man is perhaps the most functional heroin addict ever. I hate to say it, but good for him.
I know I need to read more Burroughs. Will instead or Edgar. I'll get to it. I promise I will.
Hey, found your blog through Bird on a wire. Good stuff. I'm a Burroughs fan too. I'll definitely be back to read more. I have to support any blog written by a fellow writer.
Thank you all for the comments! Simon, so true. Drugstore Cowboy is great (don't leave a hat on a bed!)
Charles, if you do, tread selectively -- some of the cut-ups seem insane at times.
James, welcome! Glad you stopped by and I'll do the same. I checked yours quickly and see you're in Florida. On a day like today in Detroit, lucky! Now that it's warmed up to ten degrees here, I can go to the corner store and get some more coffee :->
Erik,
Junky was great wasn't it - but also Naked Lunch - now I wasn't a big fan of the movie though many were....
What about his foray into music with Kurt Cobain? "The Priest They Called Him."
Danny, a few parts of the movie version were okay, but much of it was grotesque. I didn't like it much, either.
As for Burroughs and music, yeah, the older her got, the more he appeared in every multi-media form. Ever see the Nike ads? Totally weird, but effective. He's on some other albums as well. (Which reminds me that Ginsberg did that bit with The Clash)
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