William s burroughs gay

So why has one of the most lionized members of the movement been snubbed by the gay literati? So many musicians knew him. In the summer ofI published an essay by a writer named Tom Cardamone who wrote about William S. Burroughs, his radical queerness, and how it helped him through a rough patch when he was facing homophobia as a young man living in Florida.

I think they were also intent on reclaiming him into the gay canon because for the past 40 or 50 years he was co-opted by punk literature, by drug addiction literature, by science fiction fan boys and girls literature, by psychedelic and surreal literature.

We want to have permission to do bad things and be punished like anybody else. So much Beat writing is by definition unpalatable. But a big part of me still pines for that lawlessness. It is partially a sequel to his novella Junkie.

Brian Alessandro on the : The Romanticized Squalor of Queer Luca Guadagnino makes William S

William S. Burroughs had a wife whose life he took, allegedly by accident, but he also waxed poetic about the gay erotic experience. You know, I married my husband three years ago, and I love him very much. Queer is a novella by American author William S.

Burroughs. Are there any movements or spaces you see now that are bringing that back successfully? It was first published inand adapted into a feature-length film of the same name in In Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S.

Burroughs, literary critic and Interview contributor Brian Alessandro brings together a roster of emerging creative voices and countercultural superstars including Fran Lebowitz, Debbie Harry, and Samuel R. Delany, to recontextualize the work of the infamous writer as defiantly queer.

Whatever young generation, as they emerge and find their way, they invariably happen upon Burroughs because he had punk rock, revolutionary ideas. It seems like Burroughs embodies a lot of that lawlessness. Why do you think they were drawn to this project specifically?

Edmund White once said that he would like to see more bad gay guys in literature. He said yes, and that opened the door to Debbie Harry and Chris Stein talking to me about being friends with Burroughs and hanging out in Kansas and shooting guns with him.

Would he have a shot? Burroughs gave him permission, as he put it, to write frankly about things he would have been too shy to write about otherwise. Tony Kushner never met him, but he was able to give us a really thorough critical analysis.

Tom and I stayed in touch, and in the fall ofwe started talking about possibly turning it into a book. We want to be viewed as complex multi-dimensional people. Some key facts about late American novelist William S. Burroughs whose short novel, Queer, is the basis of Luca Guadagnino’s new film.

Another reason why maybe contemporary gay culture has been a little bit squeamish about embracing him is because of that. We were talking, Fran Lebowitz and I, about how he would fare in this climate, with social media and cancel culture.

They seem to be very careful. Burroughsliterary critic and Interview contributor Brian Alessandro brings together a roster of emerging creative voices and countercultural superstars including Fran LebowitzDebbie Harryand Samuel R. Delany, to recontextualize the work of the infamous writer as defiantly queer.

Debbie Harry and Chris Stein were very close with him.