Tag Archives: William S. Burroughs

On the Road. 60

Today I came across an article in the Independent celebrating Jack Kerouac’s On the Road at 60. I read Kerouac’s book when I was an undergrad writing my own poems and short stories, and scheming my own cross-country road trip which I actually took in 1992. Kerouac’s book, page-to-page, was both the best and worst [...]

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Go Rimbaud

So I found an interesting article at Please Kill Me yesterday. It seems that poet/rocker Patti Smith may have bought the childhood home of French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Along with Jim Morrison and William S. Burroughs, Rimbaud is one of Smith’s great heroes — her song “Land” from her classic album, Horses, features the singalong [...]

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Guns. Blood. Art.

Sitting down to get a week of blog posts started I turned to {R}emnants for some ideas and found this doozy that Ezra had left there. It’s an article written by a guy whose grandfather was a gun runner who ran with William S. Burroughs. It’s a great tale about history, genetics, and the people [...]

Posted in Books | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

WSB VS Nazis

Last night I stumbled across a piece at the ce399 Research Archive which pointed to a piece of William S. Burroughs’ writing from the mid-1980′s, and posited that the author might have predicted the new rise of global fascism. Here’s a look… And what would the future look like if such groups actually exist and [...]

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Naked Thanksgiving

As is our way, we stick to traditions around these parts. We hate the rituals of the bourgeois and we shun the religions of the rich, but we still feel an attachment to the best of our own, and we fly this same freak flag every year: Here’s William S. Burroughs’ “A Thanksgiving Prayer..” Stay [...]

Posted in Books, Counter Culture | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Anderson vs Burroughs

Performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson was one of the only women inside of William Burrough’s clique of friends and collaborators during the 1970′s, while some critics were pointing to what they saw as misogyny in Burrougs’ writings and statements to the press, women like Anderson and punk priestess Patti Smith befriended WSB, and were [...]

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Howard and Bill

Burroughs: The Movie is a 1983 documentary by Howard Brookner about the author William S. Burroughs. Brookner shot the film for five years with Burroughs’ full cooperation. The two became good friends before Brookner died of AIDS in 1989. In 2012 Brookner’s archive was discovered in a variety of locations, and the filmmaker’s nephew, Aaron [...]

Posted in Cinema | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bowie Cuts Up

The late great David Bowie made changing his artistic identity look easy by borrowing freely from every creative discipline within his reach — Bowie studied mime, played the saxophone and was well-versed in Beat Generation lit… Here Bowie demonstrates his own application of Burroughs’ and Brion Gysin’s “Cut-Up” technique… Stay Awake! Please subscribe to my YouTube [...]

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Last Words

After being mortally shot in a restaurant urinal, German-Jewish American gangster Dutch Schultz slipped into fever and hallucination before dying. Schultz’s surrealistic screed of last words has since become a thing of literary legend. Here’s the Wiki… Schultz’s last words were a strange stream-of-consciousness babble, spoken in his hospital bed to police officers who attempted [...]

Posted in Cinema | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Anderson/Burroughs

In the 1970′s few women were allowed in William Burroughs’ clique of male friends and colleagues. I’ve seen lots of lovely pictures of Burroughs with Patti Smith and I’ve read that she had a crush on the writer. According to this new BBC program, another woman who had access to The Bunker – as Burroughs’ [...]

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment
© 2024 Joe Nolan's Insomnia. All Rights Reserved.
Built by Paper Lion. #teamwork