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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Burroughs interview I just read, and well, you know

11:30 / 19.04.02

"VB: Do you think you've learned a lot from living with your cats ?

WB: Oh heavens! I've learned immeasurably. I've learned compassion, I've learned all sorts of things from my cats, "cos cats reflect you, they really do. I remember when I was out at the stone house Ruskie sort of attacked one of the kitten. I gave him a light slap and then he disappeared. He was so hurt. And I knew where he was. I went out into the barn and found him sulking there, picked him up and carried him back. Just the slightest slap like that. This is his human, his human had betrayed him, slapped him, yeah. Oh heavens yes I've learned so much from my cats I can't tell you. They reflect you in a deep way. It just opened up in me a whole area of compassion that I can't tell you was so important. I remember lying in my bed and weeping and weeping and weeping to think that a nuclear catastrophy would destroy my cats. I could see people driving by saying: "Kill your dogs and cats," and this, you know, I spent literally hours just crying with grief. Oh my God, and then also the feeling that constantly could be some relationship between me and the cats, some special relationship and that I might have missed it. Yes, yes, did I ever. Some of this is in The cat Inside. Some of it was so extreme that I couldn't write it. I could not write it. Did I ever learn from my cats, my God, Oh my God. People, you know, think of me as being so cold - some woman wrote that I was someone who could not admit any feeling at all. My God. I am so emotional that sometimes I can't stand the intensity. Oh my God. Then they ask me if you ever cry ? I said Holy shit probably two days ago. I'm very subject to these violent fits of weeping, for very good reasons. Yes."

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/2776/clam7.html

11:39 / 19.04.02

He may have loved his cats but he hated women and dogs.

12:58 / 19.04.02

So what you're telling us is that William Burroughs, far from being a hip beat writer, was in fact a Mad Cat Woman type (caveat: I have tendencies this way myself) and probably wore Peruvian jumpers?

Or are you of the opinion that his inability to relate to humans but ability to relate to (and anthropomorphise) cats is emblematic of something in his writing, and if so what?

13:03 / 19.04.02

I think he falls more towards the Mad Cat woman type. I like his writing but you have to admit he was a complete fucking headcase.

13:47 / 19.04.02

as i recall, burroughs at one time used to kill cats - had been known to strangle them, i think (from the biog, 'literary outlaw'). he stopped murdering cats in favour of wife killing.

22:48 / 19.04.02

don't get the guy started on centipides...they were his real hate...

and i think he only ever killed one wife and i think that was proberly an accident...admitidly a very stupid one...i think this can of worms was opened here a year or so ago...oops...

loved his cats though...don't know why...obnoxious stuck up little fuckers!!

00:08 / 20.04.02

yeah, i have sometimes felt that the "burroughs=woman killing bastard" equation is incredibly simplistic and essentially a negative agenda; the implicit "gay men hate women" is part of what is disturbing, as well as the formula's role in writing off an important body of work that did a lot for language and gender. the formula reminds me the most of "yoko ono=broke up the beatles" or "valie solanis=crazy violent bitch".

as always, i think it's most important to judge the artist by the art. if one wants to muster an argument that burroughs is not a worthwhile artist BECAUSE he (accidentally?) killed his wife, then he would have to be not worthwhile because of the way that this atrocious event worked itself into his art. in this case, it's definately not a "good / bad" obvious answer, though a discussion about the relationship between the event and his work is probably interesting.

dismissing any work because of the artists actions is quite a fascistic and anti-intellectual stance. Heidegger anyone? Paul de Man? the problems of these writer's nazi affiliation is not that it makes their work irrelevant, its that it makes it much more complicated to understand. it seems that when decoding artwork based on biographical knowledge of the artist, we have a tendency to make the humans be much more simple than we know humans to be in real life. burroughs=wife killer is no more a relevant encapsulation of his 88 years on the earth than is Paul de Man=nazi a good enscapsulation of the man who invented literary deconstructionism.

does one hunt around after gayatri spivak to make sure she doesn't drive an expensive luxury car (she does)?

i'm not saying "so he killed her. big deal. i like mugwumps." i am saying it's irresponsible to dismiss a body of work based on a cursory biographic soundbite, when the information itself could teach us so much.

06:31 / 20.04.02

I think the criticism of Burroughs misogyny has a lot to do with his writing - female characters rarely turn up in his books, and when they do they're subject to pretty violent ridicule. If this wasn't the case, I think people would be more forgiving of the death of his wife - but he basically took pride in his misogyny, and that gives the death - even if it was accidental - a symbolic/symptomatic importance it might not, otherwise, have had.

I could go on but I prolly said all I have to say this time last year (nb, not that this will stop me arguing more...)

08:50 / 20.04.02

i'm not sure i was dismissing his work, tho it *is* hard to get too fanlike about a man who was so enthusiastic about wanting to 'wipe cunts off the face of the earth'. basically the original point - the cat thing - interested me because his stance changed so much.

i usually prefer reading about him than his stuff. the cut up idea has been interesting to do, sometimes they work really well.

12:08 / 22.04.02

I dunno about all his works, but in Naked Lunch (it's a long time since I read it though) there's a dual protrayal of Mary - we see her dominating Johnny (rimming, using Steely Dan etc) in a way which obviously gives him pleasure; and we also see her revelling in the sexual aspect of his death by hanging, and (IIRC) feasting on his corpse (this episode is later 'revealed' to have been a film) - so domination by a woman is both pleasurable and dnagerous, and she is the source of horror as well as delight... (very cliched, but not totally misogynistic given that every single character in the book is really a cipher and she is no different).

19:00 / 27.04.02

Burroughs didn't have a lot of women characters in his works because he wrote from experience. And in his experience he didn't encounter women. i mean, I wrotea lot of stuff but I never had a woman as a main character in my story because... well because because i just don't. Doesn't mewan that they won't pop up in the future.

03:02 / 28.04.02

been acctually thinking about this concept recently, after becoming aware of HR's, from the extremly influencial hardcore band Bad Brains, strong homophobia (not staying in the same house as gays, telling them to burn in hell, disavowing a friend when he came out, etc.) In the end, I decided to divorce the art from the artist, though I do admit a sudden lack of interest in seeing Soul Brains (the new name for the reunited group)

On the subject of Burroughs, I also beleave it's in Literary Outlaw that the story of Burroughs possibly being sexually abused by a babysitter as a young child is brought up. The book draws a possible connection between this, in Burroughs later "problem" with women.

It should also be mentioned that Burroughs himself, and several friends, have said that he cared for Joan (that was her name right? I'm scattered brained tonight) more then he did a lot of people. (male or female) And that the, "he hated women and so he hated Joan" line that many people bring up (not saying SFD is bringing this up, but it is common) doesn't really ring true.

at the scarwash

07:29 / 20.01.05

just thinking about Saltchunck Mary in relation to the the works of WSB. I think that the fact that he doesn't present us with many female characters is not necessarily a misogynistic tendancy, but evidence that women did not fill many roles in his life. However, he did adopt Jack Black's Saltchunck Mary as a character because she did represent a female role that he could accept and understand--a nonsexual, matronly female figure who had as her primary role an econmic function.

trouser the trouserian

15:56 / 20.01.05

I visited Burroughs at his home in '95 along with my girlfriend and some American friends. One of the many things that sticks in mind about the few hours we were there is that a one point, the conversation had got very arcane (no surprise) and my partner, feeling left out, wandered over to look at one of his paintings. He got out of his chair and gave her a guided tour of all the art in his house, going into some detail about them - even took her into his 'inner sanctum'. I was struck by his warmth and attentiveness to her. Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it (...sigh).

01:29 / 23.01.05

Trouser, I am struck by the fact that you met Burroughs.

13:51 / 25.01.05

I think it's the fact that Burroughs has such a reputation for cold misanthropy that makes the above quote so damned moving. This man whose works reeked and dripped with depravity and the inhumanity of the human species... learned compassion from his cats.

Does this whole image oversimplify both his complex (i.e. human) personality and the circumstances of his life? Sure it does. Does the fact that he loves his cats excuse or justify any of the things that he has been accused of or may have done? Not necessarily, no. But taken, well, literarily, "The Redemption of Bill Burroughs" nearly brings tears to the eyes.

~L

08:23 / 26.01.05

i think people gwet too carried away with the literary outlaw thing. he was basically a satirist in the classical mode - the fact he felt the motivation to write about awful things was for the express purpose of saving people from them. how can this bespeak a lack of compassion?

02:49 / 27.01.05

That's a good point, and is part of why I talked about his "image" and "reputation" as a cold-blooded misanthrope, in the context of the quote and its emotional impact. But, it is also significant that he, himself, placed the blossoming of his compassion - his recognition of compassion as compassion - near the end of his life.

"Wising up the marks" does not necessarily represent compassion, which in itself arguably implies a degree of identification - and Burroughs's literary output carries a consistent theme of alienation, of an exile at once voluntary and mandatory from the main stream of humanity. To demonstrate to humanity the error of its ways could as easily be driven by a sense of detached superiority, a spiteful desire to rub our noses in it, or could simply be an outburst of despair, which is cynically expected to go unheeded (I'm not suggesting that any of these was Burroughs's primary motive, either, but simply illustrating that compassion need not be the root of satire).

~L

--

22:46 / 03.02.05

Well, what was the last thing he wrote in his diary? Something about "Love being all that mattered" or something along those lines, I forget.

Having read a good deal of Burroughs' material, I also think it's a farce to just simplify him as a misognist. The only book he did that really had a misogynist streak was "The Job", and (putting on my apologist hat here) he was heavily influenced by Gysin at that time period. People forget that scene is "City of the Red Nights" in which we get the perspective of one of the female witches at that pirate colony or whatever it was who expresses dismay that the only reason she's there is to provide babies for the male members or whatever. And, I mean, what kind of misogynist would hang out with Patti Smith, Lydia Lunch, and so on?

It's interesting someone mentioned Valerie Solanis, I recall an interview with Burroughs and Cronenberg (sometime ago) in which Burroughs said that he agreed with one part of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto in which Solanis states that perhaps bothe men and women are to blame for the state of the world.