A Life of Alternative Paths
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Thus begins the biography of a man who spent his life exploring alternative paths, from sexuality and ways of writing to the use of substances and methods of resisting authority. Born into a wealthy St. Louis family, Burroughs would live a very different life from his relatives, living in cheap hotels, meeting strange men for sex, and writing revolutionary books. And yet his parents supported him financially and seem to have appreciated his work, even if they couldn’t fully understand what he was up to. Indeed, after Joan’s shooting, with Burroughs facing trial for murder, his brother Mort traveled to Mexico City to assist him. Afterwards, his parents took in Burroughs’ young son Billy, raising the child while his father continued his world travels.

Burroughs was completely unsuited for parenthood, as Billy’s tragic life shows. At the age of sixteen, Billy was sent to live with his father in Tangier. Burroughs had not seen his son since he was seven. Life in an exotic foreign country, especially with his father’s irregular eating habits and lack of interest in schooling, was not to the boy’s liking, and he left six months later. Suffering from both mental and physical health issues, notably alcoholism and liver disease, he died in 1981 at age 33, his life “a nagging unsolved problem” for Burroughs.

While Tangier may not have been an ideal place to raise a child, it was for Burroughs an incredibly productive place. An international zone in a French colony with no taxes, visa requirements, or residency limitations, everything was available for the right price, including drugs and sex. Burroughs’ experiences here, beginning in 1954, encouraged him to become a writer, inspiring Naked Lunch and Interzone (1989). His years there were some of the happiest of his life and found him writing, drinking, sharing drugs with his fellow expatriates, and forming relationships with young Moroccan boys. He would return to Morocco several times, with partners and with his son, trying to recapture those glorious first experiences.

During the course of his surprisingly long life, Burroughs met and befriended many creative people who shared his unorthodox views, from Allen Ginsberg, who helped him assemble Naked Lunch from his scattered writings, to Herbert Huncke, the Times Square hustler whose stories helped inspire the Beat Generation. Having met Burroughs while trying to sell him stolen morphine, Huncke thought at first that the well-dressed man was a narc and refused to do business with him. Burroughs also knew Jack Kerouac, although each writer would frequently criticize the other’s work and personal life, causing tension.

Miles includes many details that may surprise some readers. Although most of his romantic and sexual relationships were with men—indeed, he preferred to play the bottom—he was married twice, first to an older Austrian woman trying to escape, then to Joan, whom he truly loved. He chose to spend his last years in the Midwest, where he grew up, although he continued to travel abroad. This biography, while long and detailed, reads quite quickly and provides fascinating insights into the life of an unconventional writer.

 

Charles Green is a writer based in Annapolis, Maryland.