Born in Missouri in 1914, Burroughs was heir to a fortune - his grandfather founded what eventually became the Burroughs Corporation. He went to Harvard University and graduated with an arts degree in 1936.
Burroughs was married briefly to a woman so that she could get a visa and come to the U.S. Shortly afterward, he enlisted in the Army, but became depressed when he could not attain officer status, and his mother was able to get him a disability discharge.
First Fiction, Drug Addiction
His earliest writing was a novel he co-wrote with novelist Jack Kerouac, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, inspired by a murder committed by an acquaintance. This was not published until 2008, but Burroughs followed this up with a long list of sometimes brilliant novels.
Burroughs became a substance abuser in the mid 1940s when he and Joan Vollmer, a woman who would become his common-law wife, began using morphine and amphetamines, respectively. When police searched the writer's home in the late 1940s, they found letters he had written concerning the alleged transfer of marijuana, and Burroughs fled to Mexico with Vollmer to avoid a jail sentence.
In 1951, Burroughs killed Jane Vollmer trying to shoot an apple off her head while drunk. After this he fled back to the United States. By this time he had written the novels Junkie and Queer, based on life experiences as an addict and homosexual.
Naked Lunch
It was in 1954 that the writer began to compose Naked Lunch, the book for which he would become famous. The book, which Burroughs wrote in Tangier, features the "cut-up" method, a technique in which sentences were sliced up with scissors and re-arranged to form alternate phrasing.
Excerpts of the book began to be published in the United States, and when it was published in full in 1959, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, among other states, prosecuted it as obscene. In 1966, however, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the book was not obscene.
Burroughs followed up Naked Lunch with the novels The Soft Machine, The Ticket that Exploded, and Nova Express, written during his years living in Paris. Also highly experimental, these books are often classified as science fiction, involving shape-shifting characters and time travel.
Life in London and the U.S.
Burroughs moved to London in 1966 and in 1968 the writer covered the Democratic National Convention for Esquire magazine. In 1971 he wrote The Wild Boys, a futuristic novel that is a precursor to cyberpunk novels by William Gibson and others.
In the mid 1970s, Burroughs relocated back to the United States and continued writing. Around this time he associated with such artists as Andy Warhol, Patti Smith and Lou Reed, interviewed Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page for Crawdaddy magazine and co-wrote a screenplay of Junkie with actor Dennis Hopper.
William S. Burroughs spent the last 15 years of his life living in Kansas. By this time, he was a venerated elder statesman of the avant-garde. He made a film cameo in Drugstore Cowboy starring Matt Dillon, collaborated with such musicians as Laurie Anderson and Tom Waits and even delved into painting. He died in 1997 after a heart attack.
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