Burroughs Live

BURROUGHS LIVE
Copyright 2001 Semiotext(e) All rights reserved. We gratefully acknowledge support from the California Arts Council Literature Program towards the publication of this book. Semiotext(e) 2571 W. Fifth Street Los Angeles, CA 90057 www.semiotexte.org
BURROUGHS LIVE
TH E COL L ECT E D INTERVI EWS 19601997
501 Philosophy Hall Columbia University New York, NY 10027
Distributed by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, England
ISBN: Printed in the United States of America
SEMIOTEXT(E) FOREIGN AGENTS SERIES
CONTENTS
Foreword by Sylvre Lotringer On Editing This Book by Sylvre Lotringer
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The Old Lines Are Breaking Down: American Celebrity

Semiotext(e), Schizo-Culture John Giorno, Almost Miss America 182 187 209 217 227
Introduction: Ladies and Gentlemen, These Our Actors...

William Burroughs, The Beginning Is Also The End 18
Georges-Grard Lemaire, Terrorism,Utopia and Fiction Michael White, Astral Evolution Sylvre Lotringer, Exterminating
A Burst of Silent Fireworks: The Early Years

William Burroughs, Came From Nowhere Joseph Barry, Burroughs After Lunch Allen Ginsberg/Gregory Corso, The Time-Birth-Death Gimmick Conrad Knickerbocker, White Junk 26 28 33 40
A Landscape I Never Saw Before: Dreams, Paintings, Afterlives

Jay Murphy, Nothing Is Inevitable Before It Happens 256 William Triplett,Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Intellectual Gunman 260 Brion Gysin, Port of Entry, 1960 Nicholas Zurbrugg, Space Art 265 271 282
Erasing the Policeman: Verbal Revolutions

Jeff Shiro, Revolt! Felix Scorpio, Tactics of Deconditioning Jean-Francois Bizot, Establishment Garbage AM/PA: Inspector J. Lee of the Nova Police Bob Palmer, Rolling Stone Interview Angelo Lewis, The White Threat 76 104 118 129 136 176
Simone Ellis, Observing the Unknown
Coda: I Have Done Everthing That I Could Do

Victor Bockris, Invasion 292
Footnotes Bibliography Index
BURROUGHS LIVE
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
FOREWORD
William Burroughs hated giving interv i ew s . He feared he would never be able to summon all that could be said at the moment. Being a natural comedian, he always made sure he had some routines up his sleeve to cover up the lapses and the blank spots. Usually, he pre-selected the topics he would explore in each encounter. Always the genial host, when I visited him in Lawrence, Kansas in 1988, he showed up with a copy of Edmund Whites recent biography of Jean Genet to fuel our conversation, knowing I was teaching French literature at Columbia University. Genet, of course, was also one of his favorite writers. But while he may have maintained some control of the subject-matter within most of these interviews, whats fascinating is the portrait that emerges of Burroughs summoning himself up for these occasions. Raised as a gentleman, he had a heightened sense of the art of conversation, and often spent a great deal of time putting his interviewer at ease, although at times his impatience with stupidity got the better of him.
Burroughs mind could be sharp, even cutting at times, maybe as a way of keeping his distances. And yet the interviews reveal much more than he himself would have expected. He was capable of being rattled by fame. His awkward dialogues with celebrities like David Bowie or Patti Smith show a more vulnerable, even adolescent side, of his personality. On the other hand, the various t r a n s c ripts of u n g u a rded conve rsations with locals or close friends in Lawrence also included in this volume show him witty and relaxed, idiosyncratic in his tastes and unabashedly sentimental about his cats. Adept at adopting roles, or moving through history in different garbs, he could change color according to the context. There are as many William S. Burroughs as there are interviews. He used them much as he used writing, as a means of trying on multiple characters, attitudes and voices. B u rroughs gave his first interv i ew to himself. In T h e Beginning Is Also The End, he set up a dialogue where his knowledge of drugs could be refracted through his characters .I t s interesting that this, one of Burroughs first literary texts, would take the form of an interview, as if he already had intimated that all interviews are fiction, and that fiction is never a statement but a performance of sorts, meant to address someone.The interview as an oblique manipulation: Burroughs was acutely aware of the fact that he had to hold the readers attention. In his second interview, published by City Lights, his friends Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg attempt to bring out the Burroughs they knew to the reader. Because Burroughs was known as a phenomenon long before he was known as a writer, the first interviews were encounters with a certain type as perceived by mid-century journalists. Actually the first serious interview about his work was not an i n t e rv i ew, but a cut-up of sort s . An English pro f e s s o r, E ri c Mottram,discovered tapes of Burroughs interviewed on the BBC while the controversy around the banning of Naked Lunch was r a ging in The Times Litera ry Supplement , and inters p e rs e d Burroughs remarks with his own commentary. The tone may
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bedoctoral, but the purpose was highly polemical. Mottram was the first person to publicly acknowledge Burroughs as a writer with a system of thought and a vision of history. This approach would later be pursued more exhaustively by the French critic Daniel Odier in a long interview (not included here) that was eventually adaptedor reappropriatedby Burroughs himself into a full-fledged book, The Job, published five years later, in 1969. Burroughs rightly saw the interview as an opportunity to p resent himself in a more sustained and re f l e c t ive fa s h i o n . Interviews also gave him a way of coming up with thoughts he would not have had a chance to express otherwise. By cutting in essays and out-takes and fictional fragments, Burroughs managed to give these transcripts the skeletal form of a literary text. In 1965, Conrad Knicke r b o c ker interv i ewed Wi l l i a m Burroughs for The Paris Review. Naked Lunch had recently been published in America. Speaking with this serious literary journali s t ,B u rroughs was freed from having to recite his sensational autobiography. Finally, he was able to describe his literary references, Swift, Kafka, Cline, the great satirical tradition, acknowledging the carny and carnivalesque aspects of his work often misread as sour and dark and unduly transgressive. Another great interview with Robert Palmer for Rolling Stone in 1972 gave him a chance to address the young generation and sketch a strategy for revolutionary change. But it was the more baroque and self-conscious interview he had with David Bowie a year later for the same magazine that effectively introduced Burroughs work to the culture at large, and paved the way for his uncanny penetration of the rock n roll world in the late 1970s. When I arrived in New York from Paris in 1972, I was amazed that so few people here had heard of William Burroughs. Since the publication of Naked Lunch in Paris in 1959, years before it was finally published in the United States, he had a huge intellectual following in France within the Rimbaldian modernist tradition. But in New Yo r k ,B u rroughs seemed to have fallen out of favor. His
subsequent novels The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962) and Nova Express (1964), which heavily relied on the cut-up method discovered by Brion Gysin in 1959, bewildered the readers and received little attention in traditional literary circles. His work had not yet crossed over into academe, and he had little connection with the contemporary art world. Mostly, he was perceived as a relic of the early 1960s. Exiled in London, depressed and isolated, his career was going downhill until he returned to New York, in 1974, to teach at City College, and decided to stay in America. I was then interested in forging connections between some French artists in concepts like Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze and their counterparts in the American art world. At that time, it seemed to me that the most exciting philosophy being done in America was taking place outside of academe.Towards that end, I invited the French philosophers to meet William Burroughs and John Cage at the Schizo-Culture conference, Semiotext(e)s first public event, in 1975.The topic was prisons and madness. Burroughs always said that the cut-up was an artificial production of schizophrenic speech by chance mechanisms. While the French were quite familiar with Burroughs work, he himself had no knowledge of their neo-anarchistic ideas about capitalism and schizophrenia, which happened to be close to his ow n .T h ey saw capitalism as a creative and free-wheeling machine, trying to endlessly tighten its grip in order to maintain a precarious balance.This control, as Burroughs realized, was no longer exerted directly, through confinement and disciplines, but through more subtle mechanisms involving word and image, binarism, digital language. Much later on Deleuze borrowed Burroughs name to characterize the new control societies, but Burroughs kept resisting their ideas with Yankee can-do fervor as overly intellectual. And yet, the association between Burroughs and continental theories, begun at this conference, suggested a new context for reading his work. (Burroughs and James Grauerholz eventually paid Michel Foucault a visit in Paris in the early 1980s, led by Edmund White).
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Early in 1977, I suggested to Grauerholz that an event might be c reated along the lines of the S c h i z o - C u l t u re c o n f e re n c e, towards the end of putting Burroughs work back on the map in his own country. With the collaboration of poet and visionary impresario John Giorno, we staged The Nova Convention, a three-day event that mobilized the art, punk rock and academic worlds in lower Manhattan. Suddenly, Burroughs became an embodiment of what mattered at that moment: a mixture of drugs, punk resistance and literary experimentation. Interviewssalons, reallyset up between Burroughs and cultural luminaries Susan Sontag, Deborah Harry, C h ri s t o p h e r Isherwood, Tennessee Williams, Devo and others by Grauerholz and the journalist Victor Bockrisfollowed, resulting in Bockris publication in 1982 of With William Burroughs: Report From The Bunker, a series of edited transcripts, a few of which are presented here in extenso.The presence of Allen Ginsberg as interviewer-stage mother recurs throughout Burroughscareer. His bullish insistence may appear at first clownish or obnoxious, yet he repeatedly makes interviews designed to straighten the record, affirming of Burroughs intents and importance. In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Letters. (The applause, reports Burroughs biographer Ted Morgan, was scattered.) But from this point on, the interviews become more academic: he discusses his work with the scholars Nicholas Zurbrugg and Regina Weinreich. So by the time the second trilogy, Cities of the Red Night (1981), The Place of Dead Roads (1984) We s t e rn Lands ( 1 9 8 7 ) , was completed, Burroughs had finally become more accessible to mainstream, being profiled at his home in Lawrence, Kansas by the London Sunday Times with his face on the cover: Portrait of the Author as Gunman. And yet by then, the author had already de-emphasized his writing and was spending a great deal of his time making gunshot paintings. The last dozen interviews were mostly about his new creative medium.
The interviews contained in this book document the paradox of someone who continually denies being anyone except the various voices that traverse him. Burroughs openly discusses his nightmares and state of constant fear with Victor Bockris. His paranoia, fatalism, wasnt just a riff.Towards the end of his life, he speaks in the interviews with great unconclusiveness and candor about death and aging. Far from affirming his persona as El Hombre Invisible, the interviews remind us of the incredible specificity, fragility and singularity of Burroughs life, work and presence. Burroughs was fascinated with Dutch Schultzs last delirious statements because they left us guessing, he said,as to what these words referred to in terms of his life. Burroughs also wondered what his own writing was in terms of his life.The invasion by the Ugly Spirit, the one who shot Joan, could only be exorcised, he said, by facing the whole of American capitalism, Rockefeller, the CIA, everything he himself belonged to, and tried to get away from, by choosing an exile from himself. The inside, for Burroughs, could always be found outside and it is this that made him not just a writer, but a philosopher. And yet what a writer he was. Is there, Ginsberg wondered in 1992, after taking ailing Burroughs to an exorcism ceremony performed at his intention by an Indian shaman, is there an ultimate secret, the moment at which the spiritthe virus, the interstellar mob, the possession, the hostile forcemanaged to gain access, something that would be present in the Last Words, or in every word he ever wrote, however hard he tried to rub them out, like Lady Macbeth? But this may be too simplistic a question to ask, or to answer. In The Seventh Seal, Burroughs recalled, the man asked Death, What are your secrets? Death replied, I have no secrets. No writer has any secrets. Its all in his work. Sylvre Lotringer
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ON EDITI NG THIS BOOK
I always liked the interview format because it challenges the mind to come up with ideas in real time. Each interview is a little drama played between two people for an invisible audience. Ideally what is being published is the exact transcription of what happened and some of the interviews reprinted here retain the rush of this original exchange (Invasion). Like all rituals, though, or like music, interviews have a form, and they can only achieve their purpose if this form is found along the wayor after the fact. This is what many interviewers achieve by editing the transcript in various degrees,creating an event that, strictly speaking, never was and yet encapsulating what may have been present there in a virtual state. This is what I wanted to do as well with these interviews taken as a whole since they were never meant to fit together under the same cover. My intention wasnt to present a straight compilation of William Burroughs interviews, but to shape the heterogeneous material translated from several languages and collated from France, Germany, England and America into something that could be read like a book. Accordingly, I took the liberty of trimming from the
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interviews everything that could appear too redundant, or repetitive, occasionally re-editing them to make them more fluid, or recasting them in a question and answer mode whenever it was possible or fair to the interviewer, in order to fit the overall format. Some questions, at times, had to be reinvented from the context in order to maintain the momentum of the dialogue. Several interviews, more topical or of limited interest, published in the more popular press, were also collapsed and re-edited into one stronger statement. Quite a few of the interviews have never been published before, or have been completed and checked from original manuscripts. Others have been transcribed from radio programs or from private audiotapes. One of the functions of a book of this kind is to salvage from oblivion material that would otherwise be lost, or remain un-available.This includes discussions or dialogues involving Burroughs that are not, strictly speaking, interviews but scenes snatched from life (Snack), or that had been waiting to be given a final form (The Wishing Machine).The other reason for a book like this is to offer what no biography, however detailed, can: the possibility of spending time in the company of the writer, of asking him questions that one would have wanted clarified, catching glimpses of the way Burroughsintricate kind of mind, as he once himself described it, worked as it raised to the challenge and strove to spell out what had remained latent in his workwhat his sensitive antennae picked up unconsciously when tuning to the various currents of his time. This book has been 12 years in the making and has crossed the American continent from East to West and back in boxes several times over waiting for the last ditch effort that would finally pull it all together. Countless friends and assistants in New York and Los Angeles have participated in this endeavor, some of them thanked by name, others, including translators, buried in the book, and they all should be thanked here for their trust and enthusiasm. Special thanks are given to Barry Miles, biographer of William Burroughs, El Hombre Invisible (London:Virgin Press, 1992) who generously
provided most of the material published in England, some ephemeral and often impossible to locate.The lengthy bibliography at the end of this volume is the first one of its kind after Barry Miles and Joe Maynards ground-breaking William S. Burroughs: a Bibliography, 1953-1973 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,1978). This volume roughly respects the chronology of William Burroughs interviews and provides easy cross-referencing to Ted Morgans biography, Literary Outlaw: the Life and Times of William S. Burroughs (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1988) which stops eight years before Burroughs death. I am indebted to Barry Miles and Ted Morgan, but also to James Grauerholz and Ira Silverberg (Word Virus: The William Burroughs Reader. Grove Press, 1988) for the biographical sketches provided in front of each of the four parts carved out of Burroughscareer.And yet I didnt want to be a slave to chronology.Ive always thought of the past as a meaningless proposition, Burroughs said. Its always the present.The past and the future are contained in the present. (This could have been written by Gilles Deleuze). At both ends of this bookThe Beginning is The Endinterviews are organized more in terms of their emotional effect than in a strict order of succession. And it is fitting that it would be Allen Ginsberg who would provide an introduction to Burroughs Collected Interviews with an interview of his own, and who has the last word. By the same token the initial dialogue of Burroughs with Brion Gysin about his painting (Port of Entry, 1961) in the Beat Hotel in Paris is made to preface the Drawing Dialogue with painter Philip Taafe in Burroughs house in Lawrence, Kansas (1987) one year after Gysins death in Paris finally gave the old writer license to be a young painter. S.L.
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Introduction: Ladies and Gentlemen, These Our Actors...
BURROUGHS LIVE
years living there you still feel that basic structural distaste for your insect servants.You feel it everytime they touch you. Well that is exactly the way I feel about my human servants. Consequently since my arrival some five hundred thousand years ago I have had one thought in mind.What you call the history of mankind is the history of my escape plan. I dont want love. I dont want forgiveness.All I want is out of here. QUESTION: Mr. Martin, how did all this start? How did you get here in the first place? If you found conditions so distastful why didnt you leave at once? God questions I mean good questions, young man. Obviously I am not omnipotent. My arrival here was a wreck. The ship came apart like a rotten undervest. The accident in which I lost my sight. I was the only survivor. The other members of the crew well you understand uh sooner or later So I decided to act sooner. And I have acted sooner ever since. The entire human film was prerecorded. I will explain briefly how this is done. Take a simple virus illness like hepatitis. This illness has an incubation period of two weeks. So if I know when the virus is in (and I do because I put it there) I know how you will look two weeks from now: yellow.To put it another way. I take a picture or rather a series of pictures of you with hepatitis. Now I put my virus negatives into your liver to develop. Not far to reach: remember I live in your body. The whole hepatitis film is prerecorded two weeks before the opening scene when you notice your eyes are a little yellower than usual. Now this is a simple operation. Not all of my negatives develop by any means. All ri g h t ,n ow back to basic junk. Some character takes a bang of heroin for the first time. It takes maybe sixty consecutive shots before I can welcome another addict. (Room for one more inside, sir). Having taken one shot it becomes mathematically probable that he will take another given the opportunity and I
THE BEGINNING IS ALSO THE END
1963 I am not an addict. I am the addict. The addict I invented to keep this show on the junk road. I am all the addicts and all the junk in the world. I am junk and I am hooked forever. Now I am using junk as a basic illustration. Extend it. I am reality and I am hooked on reality. Give me an old wall and a garbage can and I can, by God, sit there forever. Because I am the wall and I am the garbage can.That is I need a human host. I cant look at anything. I am blind. I cant sit anywhere. I have nothing to sit on. And let me take this opportunity of replying to my creeping opponents. It is not true that I hate the human species. I just dont like human beings. I dont like animals. What I feel is not hate. In your verbal garbage the closest word is distaste. Still I must live in and on human bodies. An intolerable situation you will agree. To make that situation clearer suppose you were stranded on a planet populated by insects.You are blind.You are a drug addict. But you find a way to make the insects bring you junk. Even after thousands of
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can always arrange that. Having taken two shots it becomes more probable that he will take a third. One negative developed makes others almost unavoidable.The same procedure can be applied to any human activities. If a man makes a certain amount of money by certain means he will go on making more money by the same means and so forth. Human activities are drearily predictable. It should now be obvious that what you call reality is a function of these, precisely predictable, because they are pre-recorded human activities. Now what could louse up a pre-recorded biological film? Obviously random factors.That is someone cutting my word and image lines at random. In short the cut up method of Brion Gysin which derives from Hassan I Sabbah and the planet Saturn.Well Ive had a spot of trouble before but nothing serious.There was Rimbaud.And a lot of people you never heard of for good reasons. People who got too close one way or another.There was Tristan Tzara and the Surrealist lark. I soon threw a block into that. Broke them all down to window dressers. So why didnt I stop Mr. Gysin in his tracks? I have ways of dealing with wise guys or I wouldnt be here. Early answer to use on anyone considering to interfere.Tricks I learned after the crash.Well perhaps I didnt take it serioulsy at first.And maybe I wanted to hear what he had to say about getting out. Always keep as many alternative moves open as possible. Next thing the blockade on planet earth is broken. Explorers moving in whole armies. And the usual do-good missions talk about educating the natives for selfgovernment. And some hick sheriff from the nova heat charging me with outrageous colonial mismanagement and attempted nova.Well they cant hang a nova rap on me.What I planned was simply to move out the biologic film to planet Venus and start over. Take along a few good natives to stock the new pitch, and for the rest, total disposal. Thats not nova thats manslaughter. Second degree. And I planned it painless. I dislike screaming. Disturbs my medications.
QUESTION: Mr. Martin, in the face of the evidence, no one can deny that nova was planned.The reports reek of nova. It will be obvious that I myself as an addict can only be a determined factor in someone elses equation. Its the old army game. Now you see me, now you dont. QUESTION: Mr. Martin, you say give me a wall and a garbage can and I can sit there forever.Almost in the next sentence you say All I want is out of here. Arent you contradicting yourself? You are confused about the word self. I could by God sit there forever if I had a self to sit in that would sit still for it. I dont .A s soon as I move in on any self all that self wants is to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Now there you sit in your so-called self. Suppose you could walk out of that self. Some people can incidentally. I dont encourage this but it happens and threatens to become pandemic. So you walk out of your body and stand across the ro o m .N ow what form would the being that walks out of your body have? Obviously it would have precisely your form. So all you have done is take the same form from one place to another. You have taken great trouble and pain (believe me there is no pain like flesh withdrawal consciously experienced) and you have gotten precisely back where you started.To really leave human form you would have to leave the whole concept of word and image. You cannot leave the human image in the human image.You cannot leave human form in human form. And you cannot think or conceive in non image terms by mathematical definition of a being in my biological film which is a series of images. Does that answer your question? I thought not. QUESTION: Mr. M a rt i n , tell us something about yo u rs e l f. Do you have any vices other than junk? Any hobbies? Any dive rs i o n s ?
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Your vices, other than junk, I manipulate, but do not share. Sex is profoundly distasteful to a being of my, uh, mineral origins. Hobbies? Chess. Diversions? I enjoy a good show and a good performer. Just an old showman. Well, when you have to kill your audience every few years to keep them in their seats its about time to pack in. QUESTION: Mr. Martin I gather that your plan to move the show to planet Venus, has, uh, miscarried. Is that correct? Yeah, it looks that way.The entire film is clogged. QUESTION: In that case, Mr. M a rt i n ,w h e re will you go, when you go, if you go? Thats quite a problem. You see Im on the undesirable list with every immigration department in the galaxy. Who him? Dont let him out here. QUESTION: Mr. Martin, dont you have any friends? There are no friends. I found that out after the crash. I found that out before the others.Thats why Im still here.There are no friends. There are allies. There are accomplices. No one wants friends unless he is shit scared or unless he is planning a caper he cant pull off by himself. QUESTION: Mr. M a rt i n , what about the others who were involved in this crash? Arent they still alive somewhere in some f o rm ? You dont have to look far.They are sitting right here. QUESTION: Who are these others?
There was an army colonel, a technician and a woman. QUESTION: Wont you have to come to some sort of terms with your, uh, former accomplices? To my disgruntled former associates I have this to say. You were all set to cross me up for the count down.You think I cant read your stupid virus mind lady? And you, you technical bastard with your mind full of formulae I cant read. And you, Colonel Bradly, waiting to shoot me in the back.The lot of you. Blind and paralyzed, I still beat you to the draw. QUESTION: Mr. Martin, what sort of place did you people come from? What sort of place did we come from. Well if you want the a n swer to that question, just look aro u n d , bu s t e r. Just look around. Ladies and Gentlemen, you have just heard an interview with Mr. Martin, sole survivor of the first attempt to send up a space capsule from planet earth. Mr. Martin has been called The Man Of A Thousand Lies.Well he didnt have time for a thousand but I think he did pretty well in the time allotted. And I feel reasonably sure that if the other crew members could be here with us tonight they would also do a pretty good job of lying. But please remember that nothing is true in space. That there is no time in spacethat what goes up under such auspices must come downthat the beginning is also the end. Ladies and gentlemen, these our actors, bid you at long last good night.
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A Burst of Silent Fireworks: The Early Years
BURROUGHS LIVE
CAM E F RO M N O W HE RE
Paris, 1960 Mademoiselle asked some headstrong people who have made names for themselves, by the force of their attacks on things they dont like about the world, to say what they would like for the 60s.Whatever one may think of them, certainly if more voices like these speak up, lively and idiosyncratic, we may look forward to the decade with cheerful curiosity. W.S. Burroughs is an American in Paris whom the Saturday Review describes as a writer of great power and artistic integrity. [Mademoiselle] CABLE: What do you want in next decade for world, not self? REPLY: Chre Mademoiselle, I am placed by you in the otherworldly selfless and detached position of a losing better before and/or after the race. I have nothing to lose. I wont be there for the finish. Safe in Not-Self, I
firmly extol the virtues of every horse until starting time: High Metal (carrying a lot of we i g h t ) :C o nversion and Peace. Houses of flexible, translucent but decently opaquein the right places p l a s t ic, all hues, i n f l a t a ble and deflatabl e, for the Pause T h a t Refreshes.Helicopters and every kind of motor vehicle. Gadgets, contrivances in dazzling number and variety, all mute and odorless. Soft sidewalks, floors, steps. Stratosphere Purple has become a household world. China Boy (good mud runner):Too little and too lately known, has developed a formidable boardinghouse reach with an Old China Hand. Is it fragile? Will it break? The Colonial Dames are invited to drink the bitter tea of general Yen. (Yen means opiumneed, or perhaps just plain need.Yen pox is opium ash taken with hot tea, if any.) Will they accept? He shrugged and reached for his yen pox, and China Boy kicked his brains out at the first hurdle and re-relegated him to his Club Seat in Not-Self. Bet my last Not-Self coupon on South Sea Bubble (unknown s t a bl e ) : Came from now h e re in the Stretch and crossed the Finnish Line in a burst of silent fireworks. I could not hear the cheers. My ears stopped with dust, sealing wax, losing stratosphere tickets in Pari-mutuel.10 Purple and other Not-Self debris, which swept across the track in a black wave of protest Photo Finish. Foul claimed.The Ju d g e s B ox is empty. Outraged spectators forced the living horse to eat his jockey, establishing an ominous pre c e d e n t , i nviting carn ivo rous disaster into Gre e n Pastures. Please accept My Most Distinguished Sentiments. Official in Absentia William Seward Burroughs
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BUR RO UGHS AF TE R LUNCH
When in Pa ri s, lives at Beat Hotel, 9 rue Gt-le-Coeur, which is about to be sold and character changed.Walk up to fifth floor, room 30. Has two-burner gas stove on table in one corner. Washstand in other. One window looks across narrow street to chimney pots.Wardrobe with maybe one change of suit, maybe not.Two chairs. A bed.Table with old Spanish portable. Sheet of paper in it with typing on it. Four wire file baskets hanging over table on wall. For mss in progress, material for fold-ins, proofs, etc. Would like whole wall of files for his work, and books, and two taperecorders. Has one nowout of order, boxes of used tapes spilling out on shelf like Krapps Last Tape. Room wa rm ; not neat, not disorderly. Just a room. One naked light bulb hanging over table. None over bed. JB: Do you read a lot?
Paris, 1963 Hadnt seen Burroughs since that night with Beckett. So went to signing Rue de Seine. English Book Store. Home away from home for beats, et al.This time came to work, notebook and all. Burroughs signing The Ticket That Exploded, Olympia (Lolita) Press. JOSEPH BARRY: You were born on Feb. 5 ,1 9 1 4 , in St. Louis. WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Like T.S. Eliot, but I still have a Midwest accent. [Ghost of a smile or smile of a ghost.] Eliot has lost his. Looks British anyway. Seedy British.Worn tweedy topcoat with worn velvet collar. A slightly stooped 5-foot-11; thin; thin-faced combo of Ralph Richardson13 and Buster Keaton. Its the poker face that gives him the Keaton lookreserved as an old-fashioned Mississippi gambler. Ralph Richardson hat curled brim.
WB: No, I dont read much. JB: Do you enjoy living in hotels? WB: I would prefer my own apartment; one room strictly for work, walls of books, files, tapes, etc. I live here because its cheap, $40 a month. Has made average of $200 a month since Naked Lunch was published in Paris in 1959 by Oly m p i a .S ays he does have tiny income from Grandpa Burroughs adding machine money.Went to school in St. Louis and Los Alamos. Harvard, BA in English Lit, 1936. Did grad work at Harvard in anthropology and archeology. Still interested in latter.Tried to get into glider pilots during war; has pilots license. BJ: Did you ever become a pilot? WB: I was turned down for physical reasons.
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Was pvt. detective for three weeksspotting embezzling clerksgot sick of it; was bartender and exterminator JB: How was that? WB: Killing roaches and bed bugs, not a bad job, a days work in two hours. After war went down to Mexico and South A m e ri c a . Especially Amazon region of Peru and Ecuador. As amateur anthropologist.Green hell country, really beautiful.Then went to Tangier for five, six years. Met Paul Bowles14, Brion Gysin.15 Got hooked on junk in Tangier. Went to London for cure. Back to Tangier to write Naked Lunch. Agent circulated mss among American publishers. No sale.Then Girodias16 of Olympia Press saw it, published it. Became bible of the beat. Finally published in U.S. last winter by Grove Press. Living in Paris and London. Half and half. London hotel like Pa ri s hotel, near Earls Court. About $3 a night. Loves fog, especially big one this winter. Finds English food cheaper and better. Gets up late in Paris. Has to get up early in London to get hotel breakfast. Married twice. First wife was German Jewish refugee still living in New York, working at travel agency. Second wife? Leads into Time story on Burroughs and Naked Lunch . Discuss a paragraph describing him as a former drug addict and jail-bird who mutilated a finger joint when he was drafted. Time story also mentioned Burroughs accidental shooting of wife in Mexico. No charges made. Authorities decided killing due to negligence. JB: I heard you didnt like that story much.
for cutting off finger joint, that happened three years before America was in war. JB: How did this finger-joint thing happen? WB: Skip it. JB: Back to Naked Lunch then.Were you on drugs at the time? WB: I was not on drugs when I wrote it. It couldnt have been possible for me to write it on junk. Some can. I cant. Junk dims down the whole creative process physiologically. Ive been off for six years. JB: Does junk make one see more? WB: You see less on junk, less of your physical surroundings than without it. However, the whole experience of addiction was useful. For me. Like a war experience. For a writer. I dont know if its useful for anyone else. Ive tried 10 cures, but none took. Then I went to London and saw Dr. Dent17 to try his apomorphine treatment. Now I just dont want junk. JB: Does it take any will power? WB: If you have to use will power, youre not free, because there is no such a thing as will power. But you should avoid alcohol. Ive given that up since the night we were with Mr. Beckett. JB: Why?
WB: Im considering suing Time. Ex-con is false; a con is a man convicted of a felony who has served time for it. Ive been in jail for a day or two waiting trial on narcotics, generally charged with misdemeanor, then the case was either dismissed or nolle prosse.As
WB: I dislike feeling I dont remember anything, and I dont remember much of that evening. Drinking was heavy.
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Recap evening for Burroughs. JB: Beckett had had two objections to your fold-in method. He called it plumbing over and over again.Youre using other writers work! he cried, anguish in his Irish voice and eagle face. And he said you seemed to believe that writers you used for fold-ins had answe rs . T h e re are no answers! Beckett shook and held his head.Our despair is total! Total! We cant even talk to each other. Thats what I felt in Naked Lunch and why I liked it. WB: I dont remember that conversation. But I dont agree with Mr. Beckett that there are no answers.There are. JB: But that night when I asked Beckett why he wrote, since he felt there was no communication between people, you interrupted (gently): A reporters question, Mr. Beckett, and Beckett just smiled and didnt answer. And why do you write, Bill? I had asked. To survive, you said. To make bread.
T H E T I M E - B I RT H - D E AT H G I M M I C K
1961 GREGORY CORSO: What is your department? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Kunst und Wissenschaft. CORSO: What say you about political conflicts? BURROUGHS: Political conflicts are merely surface manifestations. If conflicts arise you may be sure that certain powers intend to keep this conflict under operation since they hope to profit from the situation.To concern yourself with surface political conflicts is to make the mistake of the bull in the ring, you are charging the cloth. That is what politics is for, to teach you the cloth. Just as the bullfighter teaches the bull, teaches him to follow, obey the cloth. CORSO: Who manipulates the cloth?
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BURROUGHS: Death. ALLEN GINSBERG: What is death? BURROUGHS: A gimmick. Its the time-birth-death gimmick. Cant go on much longer, too many people are wising up. CORSO: Do you feel there has been a definite change in mans makeup? A new consciousness? BURROUGHS: Yes, I can give you a precise answer to that. I feel that the change, the mutation in consciousness, will occur spontaneously once certain pre s s u res now in operation are removed. I feel that the principal instrument of monopoly and control that prevents expansion of consciousness is the word lines controlling thought, feeling and apparent sensory impressions of the human host. GINSBERG: And if they are removed, what step?
womb you do not realize the word armor you carry; for example, when you read this page your eyes move irresistibly from left to right following the words that you have been accustomed to. Now try breaking up part of the page like this: Are there or just we can translate many solutions? for example color word color in the soft typewriter into political conflicts to attain consciousness monopoly and control CORSO: Reading that it seems you end up where you began, with politics and its nomenclature : c o n f l i c t , a t t a i n , s o l u t i o n , monopoly, controlso what kind of help is that? BURROUGHS: Precisely what I was sayingif you talk, you always end up with politics, it gets nowhere. I mean, man, its strictly from the soft typewriter. CORSO: What kind of advice you got for politicians? BURROUGHS: Tell the truth once and for all and shut up forever.
BURROUGHS: The forward step must be made in silence. We detach ourselves from word formsthis can be accomplished by substituting for words, letters, concepts, other modes of expressions: for example, color. We can translate word and letter into colorRimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote words can be read in silent color. In other words, man must get away from verbal forms to attain the consciousness, that which is there to be perceived, at hand. CORSO: How does one take that forward step, can you say? BURROUGHS: Well, this is my subject and this is what I am concerned with. Forward steps are made by giving up old armor because words are built into youin the soft typewriter of the
CORSO: What if people dont want to change, dont want no new consciousness? BURROUGHS: For any species to change, if they are unable and are unwilling to do soI might, for example, have suggested to the dinosaurs that heavy armor and great size was a sinking ship, and that they would do well to convert to mammal facilitiesit would not lie in my power or desire to reconvert a reluctant dinosaur. I can make my feeling very clear, Gregory, I feel like Im on a sinking ship and I want off. CORSO: Do you think Hemingway got off?
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BURROUGHS: Probably not. [Next day] GINSBERG: What about control? BURROUGHS: Now all politicians assume a necessity of control, the more efficient the control, the better.All political organizations tend to function like a machine, to eliminate the unpredictable factor of affectemotion. Any machine tends to absorb, eliminate, Affect.Yet the only person who can make a machine move is someone who has a motive, who has Affect. If all individuals were conditioned to machine efficiency in the performance of their duties there would have to be at least one person outside the machine to give the necessary orders; if the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine would slow down and stop forever. Any unchecked impulse does, within the human body and psyche, lead to the destruction of the organism. GINSBERG: What kind of organization could a technological society have without control? BURROUGHS: The whole point is, I feel the machine should be eliminated. Now that it has served its purpose of alerting us to the dangers of machine control. Elimination of all natural sciencesif anybody ought to go to the extermination chambers, definitely scientists.Yes, Im definitely anti-scientist because I feel that science represents a conspiracy to impose as the real and only universe, the universe of scientists themselvestheyre realityaddicts,theyve got to have things real so they can get their hands on it. We have a great elaborate machine which I feel has to be completely dismantledin order to do that we need the people who understand how the machine worksthe mass media unparalleled opportunity.
GINSBERG: Who do you think is responsible for the dope situation in America? BURROUGHS: Old A rmy game: I act under ord e rs . A s Captain Ahab said, You are not other men but my arms and legs Mr. Anslinger 11 has a lot of arms and legs, or whoever is controlling him. Same thing as the Eichman case: hes the front man who has got to take the rap. Poor bastard, I got sympathy for him. CORSO: Could you, or do you, think it wise to say who it will be or just what force it will be that will destroy the world? BURROUGHS: You want to create a panic? Thats top secret want to swamp the lifeboats? CORSO: O. K .H ow did them lifeboats get there in the first place? BURROUGHS: Ta ke, for instance, some Indians in South America Ive seen. There comes along this sloppy cop with his shirt buttons all in the wrong hole.Well then, Parkinsons law goes into operationtheres need not for one cop but seven or eight, need for sanitation inspectors, rent collectors ,e t c. ; so after a period of years problems arise, c ri m e, dope taking and traffic, juvenile delinquency. So the question is asked:What should we do about these problems?The answer, as Gertrude Stein on her deathbed said, comes before the questionin short ,b e f o re the bastards got there in the first place! Thats all GINSBERG: What do you think Cuba and the FLN12 think about poets? And what do you think their marijuana policy is? BURROUGHS: All political movements are basically anti-creativesince a political movement is a form of war. Theres no
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place for impractical dreamers around here, thats what they always say. Your writing activities will be directed, kindly stop horsing around. As for the smoking of marijuana, it is the exploitation for the workers. Both favor alcohol and are against pot. CORSO: I feel capital punishment is dooming the U.S.A.
tage in the so-called undeveloped areas that have a high birth rate and high death rate because, man, they can plow under those mutations. The country with a low birth rate and low death rate will be the hardest hitand so the poor may indeed inherit the earth, because theyre healthier. GINSBERG: What do you think of White Supremacy?
BURROUGHS: Im against capital punishment in all form s ,a n d I have written many pamphlets on this subject in the manner of Swifts Modest Proposal pamphlet incorporated into Naked Lunch; these pamphlets have marked Naked Lunch as an obscene book. Most all methods of capital punishment are designed to inflict the maximum of humiliationnot attempts to prevent suicide. GINSBERG: What advice do you have for American youth who are drawn to political action out of sympathy for the American revolution? BURROUGHS: I wouldnt be in your positionold say. If there is any political move that I would advocate, it would be an alliance between America and Red China, if theyd have us. CORSO: What about the Arab peoplehow are they faring? BURROUGHS: Theyre stuck back thousands of years and they think theyre going to get out with a TV set. CORSO: What about the Negroes, will they make itnot only the ones in the South, but everywhere? BURROUGHS: Biologically speaking, the Afro-Asiatic block is in the ascendancyalways remember that both Negro and White are minority groupsthe largest race is the Mongoloid group. In the event of atomic war there is a tremendous biological advan-
BURROUGHS: The essence of White Supremacy is this: they are people who want to keep things as they are. That their childrens childrens children might be a different color is something very alarming to themin short they are committed to the maintenance of the static image. The attempt to maintain a static image, even if its a good image, just wont work. CORSO: Do you think Americans want and could fight the next war with the same fire and fervency as they did World War II? BURROUGHS: Undoubtedly, yes, because they remember what a soft time they had in the last onethey sat on their ass.
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WHITE JUNK
S t .L o u i s, 1965 Firecrackers and whistles sounded the advent of the New Year of 1965 in St. Louis, and strip teasers ran from the bars in Gaslight Square to dance in the street when midnight came.William Seward Burroughs III, who had watched television alone that night, was asleep in his room at the ChasePark Plaza Hotel, St.Louis most elegant.After an absence of 20 years, he had returned to his birthplace from Tangier. At noon the next day he was ready for the interview. He wore a gray lightweight Brooks Brothers suit with a vest, a blue-striped shirt from Gibraltar cut in the English style, and a deep blue tie with small white polka dots. His manner was not so much pedagogic as didactic or forensic. He might have been a partner in a private bank, charting the course of huge but anonymous fortunes.A friend of the interviewer, spotting him across the lobby, thought he was a British diplomat. At the age of 50, he is trim; he performs a complex abdominal exercise daily and walks a good deal. His face carries no excess flesh. His expression is taut, and his features are intense and chiseled. He did not smile during the interview and laughed
only once, but he gives the impression of being capable of much dry laughter under other circumstances. His voice is sonorous, its tone reasonable and patient; his accent is mid-Atlantic, the kind of regionless inflection Americans acquire after many years abroad. He speaks elliptically, in short, clear bursts. On the dresser of his room sat a European transistor radio, several science fiction paperbacks, and Romance, by Joseph Conrad; The Day Lincoln Was Shot, by Jim Bishop; and Ghosts in American Houses, by James Reynolds. A Zeiss Ikon camera in a scuffed leather case lay on one of the twin beds beside a copy of Field & Stream. On the other bed were a pair of long shears, clippings from newspaper society pages, photographs and a scrapbook on which he had been working when the interviewer arri ve d .H e had begun three scrapbooks several months earlier in Tangier.They consisted of typed material, photographs, and printed matter en collage in French ledger books. One was devoted to Gibraltar, and the other two to general subjects. A Facit portable typewriter sat on the desk, and gradually one became aware that the room, although neat, contained a great deal of paper. After a brief discussion of the use of the tape recorder to prepare cut-up interviews, he settled in a chair next to a window. He smoked incessantly, alternating between a box of English Ovals and a box of Benson & Hedges. As the interview progressed, the room filled with smoke. He opened the window.The temperature outside was 70 degrees, the warmest New Years Day in St. Louis history; a yellowjacket flew in and settled on the pane. The 12th-story room overlooked the ample roofs of the houses on a series of private streets with gates at both ends, once the most substantial neighborhood in St. Louis. In one of these homes, at 4664 Pershing Avenue, he had been born.The bright afternoon deepened.The faint cries of children rose up from the broad brick alleys in which he had played as a boy. [C.K.] CONRAD KNICKERBOCKER: You grew up here? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Yes. I went to John Burroughs School and the Taylor School, and was out West for a bit, and then went to Harvard.
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CK: Any relation to the adding machine firm? WB: My grandfather.You see, he didnt exactly invent the adding machine, but he invented the gimmick that made it wo r k ,n a m ely, a cylinder full of oil and a perforated piston that will always move up and down at the same rate of speed.Very simple principle, like most inventions.And it gave me a little money, not much, but a little. CK: What did you do at Harvard? WB: Studied English Lit. John Livingston Lowes.Whiting. I sat in on Kittredges course. Those are the main people I recall. I lived in Adams House and then I got fed up with the food and I moved to Claverly Hall, where I lived the last two years. I didnt do any writing in college. CK: Why and when did you start to write? WB: I started to write about 1950; I was 35 at the time; there didnt seem to be any strong motivation. I simply was endeavouring to put down in a more or less straightforward journalistic style something about my own experiences with addiction and addicts. CK: Why did you feel compelled to record these experiences? WB: I didnt feel compelled. I had nothing else to do. Writing gave me something to do every day. I dont feel the results were at all spectacular. Junky is not much of a book, actually. I knew very little about writing at the time. CK: Where was this?
WB: In Mexico City. I was living near Sears Roebuck, right around the corner from the University of Mexico. I had been in the army four or five months and I was there on the GI Bill studying native dialects. I went to Mexico partly because things were becoming so difficult with the drug situation in America. Getting drugs in Mexico was quite easy, so I didnt have to rush around, and there wasnt any pressure from the law. CK: Why did you start taking drugs? WB: Well, I was just bored. I didnt seem to have much interest in becoming a successful advertising executive or whatever, or living the kind of life Harvard designs for you. After I became addicted in New York in 1944, things began to happen. I got in some trouble with the law, got married, moved to New Orleans and then went to Mexico. CK: There seems to be a middle-class voyeurism in this country concerning addiction, and in the literary world downright reverence for the addict. You apparently dont share these points of view. WB: No,most of it is nonsense. I think drugs are interesting principally as chemical means of altering metabolism and thereby altering what we call reality, which I would define as a more or less constant scanning pattern. CK: What do you think of the hallucinogens and the new psychedelic drugsLSD-25? WB: I think theyre extremely dangerous, much more dangerous than heroin.They can produce overwhelming anxiety states. Ive seen people try to throw themselves out of window s ;w h e reas the heroin addict is mainly interested in staring at his own toe. Other
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than deprivation of the drug, the main threat to him is an overdose. Ive tried most of the hallucinogens, without an anxiety reaction, fortunately. LSD-25 produced results for me similar to mescaline. Like all hallucinogens, LSD gave me an increased awa re n e s s ,m o re a hallucinated viewpoint than any actual hallucination. You might look at a door knob and it will appear to revolve, although you are conscious that this is the result of the d ru g . Also, Van Goghish colors, with all those swirls, and the crackle of the universe. CK: Have you read Henri Michauxs book on mescaline?19 WB: His idea was to go into his room and close the door and hold in the experiences. I had my most interesting experiences with mescaline when I got outdoors and walked aroundcolors, sunsets, gardens. It produces a terrible hangover, though, nasty stuff. It makes one ill and interferes with coord i n a t i o n .I ve had all the interesting effects I need, and I dont want any repetition of those extremely unpleasant physical reactions. CK: The visions of drugs and the visions of art dont mix? WB: Never. The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts and feelings. They are pain killers, pure and simple.They are absolutely contraindicated for creative wo r k ,a n d I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizersthe whole spectrum of sedative drugs. As for visions and heroin, I had a hallucinatory period at the very beginning of addiction, for instance, a sense of moving at high speed through space, but as soon as addiction was established, I had no visions visionat all and very few dreams. CK: Why did you stop taking drugs?
WB: I was living in Tangier in 1957, and I had spent a month in a tiny room in the Casbah staring at the toe of my foot.The room had suddenly filled up with empty Eukodol cartons; I suddenly realized I was not doing anything. I was dying. I was just apt to be finished. So I flew to London and turned myself over to Dr. John Yerbury Dent for treatment. Apomorphine is simply morphine boiled in hydrochloric acid; its non-addicting.What the apomorphine did was to regulate my metabolism. Its a metabolic regulator. It cured me physiologically. Id already taken the cure once at Lexington, and although I was off drugs when I got out, there was a physiological residue. Apomorphine eliminated that. Ive been trying to get people in this country interested in it, but without much luck.The vast majoritysocial wo r ke rs ,d o c t o rs h ave the cops mentality toward addiction.A probation officer in California wrote me recently to inquire about the apomorphine treatment.Ill answer him at length. I always answer letters like that. CK: Have you had any relapses? WB: Yes, a couple. Short. Both were straightened out with apomorphine and now heroin is no temptation for me. Im just not interested. Ive seen a lot of it around. I know people who are addicts. I dont have to use any will power. Youve got to reach a state of mind in which you dont want it or need it. CK: You regard addiction as an illness, but also a central human fact, a drama? WB: Both, absolutely. Its as simple as the way in which anyone happens to become an alcoholic. They start drinking, thats all. They like it and they drink, and then they become an alcoholic. I was exposed to heroin in New Yorkthat is, I was going around with people who were using it. I took it; the effects were pleasant. I went on using it and became addicted. Remember that if it
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can be readily obtained, you will have any number of addicts.The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. Its as psychological as malaria. Its a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them. In Iran, for instance, opium has sold in shops until quite recently, and they had three million addicts in a population of 20 million. There are also all forms of spiritual addiction. Anything that can be done chemically can be done in other ways, that is, if we have sufficient knowledge of the processes involved. Many policemen and narcotics agents are precisely addicted to power, to exercising a certain nasty kind of power over people who are helpless. The nasty sort of power: white junk I call itrightness; theyre right, right, rightand if they lost that power, they would suffer excruciating withdrawal symptoms. The picture we get of the whole Russian bureaucracy, people who are exclusively preoccupied with power and advantage, this must be an addiction. Suppose they lose it? Well, its been their whole life. CK: Can you amplify your idea of junk as image? WB: Its only a theory and, I feel, an inadequate one. I dont think anyone really understands what a narcotic is or how it wo r k s ,h ow it kills pain. My idea is sort of a stab in the dark. As I see it, what has been damaged in pain is, of course, the image, and morphine must in some sense replace this.We know it blankets the cells and that addicts are practically immune to certain viruses, to influenza and respiratory complaints. This is simple, because the influenza virus has to make a hole in the cell receptors. When those are covered, as they are in morphine addiction, the virus cant get in. As soon as morphine is withdrawn, addicts will immediately come down with colds and often with influenza. CK: Certain schizophrenics also resist respiratory disease.
WB: A long time ago I suggested there were similarities in terminal addiction and terminal schizophrenia.That was why I made the suggestion that they addict these people to heroin, then withdraw it and see if they could be motivated; in other words, find out whether theyd walk across the room and pick up a syringe. Needless to say, I didnt get very far, but I think it would be interesting. CK: Narcotics, then, disturb normal perception WB: And set up instead a random craving for images. If drugs werent forbidden in A m e ri c a ,t h ey would be the perfect middleclass vice. Addicts would do their work and come home to consume the huge dose of images awaiting them in the mass media. Junkies love to look at television. Billie Holiday said she knew she was going off drugs when she didnt like to watch TV. Or theyll sit and read a newspaper or magazine, and by God, read it all. I knew this old junkie in New York, and hed go out and get a lot of newspapers and magazines and some candy bars and several packages of cigarettes and then hed sit in his room and hed read those new s p a p e rs and magazines right straight thro u g h . Indiscriminately. Every word. CK: You seem primarily interested in bypassing the conscious, rational apparatus to which most writers direct their efforts. WB: I dont know about where fiction ordinarily directs itself, but I am quite deliberately addressing myself to the whole area of what we call dreams. Precisely what is a dream? A certain juxtaposition of word and image. Ive recently done a lot of experiments with scrapbooks. Ill read in the newspaper something that reminds me of or has relation to something Ive written. Ill cut out the picture or article and paste in a scrapbook beside the words from my book. Or, Ill be walking down the street and Ill suddenly see a scene from my book and Ill photograph it and put
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it in a scrapbook. Ill show you some of those. Ive found that when preparing a page, Ill almost invariably dream that night something relating to this juxtaposition of word and image. In other wo rd s ,I ve been interested in precisely how word and image get around on very, very complex association lines. I do a lot of exercises in what I call time travel, in taking coordinates, such as what I photographed on the train, what I was thinking about at the time, what I was reading and what I wrote; all of this to see how completely I can project myself back to that one point in time. CK: In Nova Express, you indicate that silence is a desirable state. WB: The most desirable state. In one sense a special use of words and pictures can conduce to silence. The scrapbooks and time travel are exercises to expand consciousness, to teach me to think in association blocks rather than in wo rd s .I ve recently spent a little time studying hieroglyphic systems, both the Egyptian and the Mayan. A whole block of associationsboom!like that! Words, at least the way we use them, can stand in the way of what I call non-body experience. Its time we thought about leaving the body behind. CK: Marshall McLuhan said that you believed heroin was needed to turn the body into an environment that includes the universe. But from what youve told me, youre not at all interested in turning the body into an environment. WB: No, junk narrows consciousness. The only benefit to me as a writer (aside from putting me into contact with the whole carny world) came to me after I went off it.What I want to do is to learn to see more of whats out there, to look outside, to achieve as far as possible a complete awareness of surroundings. Beckett wants to go inward. First he was in a bottle and now he is in the mud. I am aimed in the other directionoutward.
CK: Have you been able to think for any length of time in images, with the inner voice silent? WB: Im becoming more proficient at it, partly through my work with scrapbooks and translating the connections between words and images. Try this. Carefully memorize the meaning of a passage, then read it; you find you can actually read it without the wo rds making any sound whatever in the minds ear. Extraordinary experience, and one that will carry over into d re a m s . When you start thinking in images, without wo rd s , youre well on the way. CK: Why is the wordless state so desirable? WB: I think its the evolutionary trend. I think that words are an around-the-world, ox-cart way of doing thingsawkward instrumentsand they will be laid aside eventually, probably sooner than we think. This is something that will happen in the space age. Most serious writers refuse to make themselves available to the things that technology is doing. Ive never been able to understand this sort of fear. Many of them are afraid of tape recorders and the idea of using any mechanical means for literary purposes seems to them some sort of sacrilege.This is one objection to the cut-ups.Theres been a lot of that, a sort of superstitious reverence for the word. My God, they say, you cant cut up these words.Why cant I? I find it much easier to get interest in the cut-ups from people who are not writersdoctors, lawyers, or engineers, any open-minded, fairly intelligent personthan from those who are. CK: How did you become interested in the cut-up technique? WB: A friend, Brion Gysin, an American poet and painter, who has lived in Europe for 30 years, was, as far as I know, the first to create cut-ups. His cut-up poem, Minutes to Go, was broadcast
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by the BBC and later published in a pamphlet. I was in Paris in the summer of 1960; this was after the publication there of Naked Lunch. I became interested in the possibilities of this technique, and I began experimenting myself. Of course, when you think of it,The Waste Land was the first great cut-up collage, and Tristan Tzara had done a bit along the same lines. Dos Passos used the same idea in The Camera Eye sequences in U.S.A. I felt I had been working toward the same goal; thus it was a major revelation to me when I actually saw it being done. CK: What do cut-ups offer the reader that conventional narrative doesnt? WB: Any narrative passage or any passage, say, of poetic images is subject to any number of variations, all of which may be interesting and valid in their own right. A page of Rimbaud cut up and rearranged will give you quite new images. Rimbaud images real Rimbaud imagesbut new ones. CK: You deplore the accumulation of images and at the same time you seem to be looking for new ones. WB: Yes, its part of the paradox of anyone who is working with word and image, and after all, that is what a writer is still doing. Painter too. Cut-ups establish new connections between images, and ones range of vision consequently expands. CK: Instead of going to the trouble of working with scissors and all those pieces of paper, couldnt you obtain the same effect by simply free associating at the typewriter? WB: Ones mind cant cover it that way. Now, for example, if I wanted to make a cut-up of this [picking up a copy of The Nation], there are many ways I could do it. I could read cross-column; I
could say:Todays mens nerves surround us. Each technological extension gone outside is electrical involves an act of collective environment. The human nervous environment system itself can be reprogrammed with all its private and social values because it is content. He programs logically as readily as any radio net is swallowed by the new environment.The sensory order.You find it often makes quite as much sense as the original. You learn to leave out words and to make connections. [Gesturing] Suppose I should cut this down the middle here, and put this up here.Your mind simply could not manage it. Its like trying to keep so many chess moves in mind, you just couldnt do it.The mental mechanisms of repression and selection are also operating against you. CK: You believe that an audience can be eventually trained to respond to cut-ups? WB: Of course, because cut-ups make explicit a psycho-sensory process that is going on all the time anyway. Somebody is reading a new s p a p e r, and his eye follows the column in the pro p e r Aristotelian manner, one idea and sentence at a time. But subliminally he is reading the columns on either side and is aware of the person sitting next to him. Thats a cut-up. I was sitting in a lunchroom in New York having my doughnuts and coffee. I was thinking that one does feel a little boxed in New Yo r k ,l i ke living in a series of boxes. I looked out the window and there was this great big Yale truck.Thats cut-upa juxtaposition of whats happening outside and what youre thinking of. I make this a practice when I walk down the street. Ill say, when I got to here I saw that sign; I was thinking this, and when I return to the house Ill type these up. Some of this material I use and some I dont. I have literally thousands of pages of notes here, raw, and I keep a diary as well. In a sense its traveling in time. Most people dont see whats going on around them.Thats my principal message to writers: for Gods sake, keep your eyes open.
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Notice whats going on around you. I mean, I walk down the street with friends. I ask, Did you see him, that person who just walked by ? N o, they didnt notice him. I had a very pleasant time on the train coming out here. I havent traveled on trains in years. I found there were no drawing rooms. I got a bedroom so I could set up my typewriter and look out the window. I was taking phot o s ,t o o. I also noticed all the signs and what I was thinking at the time, you see. And I got some extraordinary juxtapositions. For example, a friend of mine has a loft apartment in New York. He s a i d : E ve ry time we go out of the house and come back, if we leave the bathroom door open, theres a rat in the house. I look out the window, theres Able Pest Control. CK: The one flaw in the cut-up argument seems to lie in the linguistic base on which we operate, the straight declarative sentence. Its going to take a great deal to change that. WB: Yes, it is unfortunately one of the great errors of Western thought, the whole either/or proposition.You remember Korzybski20 and his idea of non- Aristotelian logic. Either/or thinking just is not accurate thinking. Thats not the way things occur, and I feel the Aristotelian construct is one of the great shackles of Western civilization. Cut-ups are a movement toward breaking this down. I should imagine it would be much easier to find acceptance of the cut-ups from,possibly, the Chinese, because you see already there are many ways that they can read any given ideograph.Its already cut up. CK: What will happen to the straight plot in fiction? WB: Plot has always had the definite function of stage direction, of getting the characters from here to there, and that will continue, but the new techniques such as cut-up will involve much more of the total capacity of the observer. It enriches the whole esthetic experience, extends it.
CK: Nova Express is a cut-up of many writers? WB: Joyce is in there. Shakespeare, Rimbaud, some writers people havent heard about, someone named Jack Stern. Theres Kerouac. I dont know, when you start making these fold-ins and cut-ups you lose track. Genet, of course, is someone I admire very much. But what hes doing is classical French prose. Hes not a verbal innovator. Also Kafka, Eliot, and one of my favorites is Joseph Conrad. My story, They Just Fade Away, is a fold-in (instead of cutting, you fold) from Lord Jim. In fact, its almost a retelling of the Lord Jim story. My Stein is the same Stein as in L o rd Jim . R i c h a rd Hughes is another favo rite of mine. A n d Graham Greene. For exercise, when I make a trip, such as from Tangier to Gibraltar, I will record this in three columns in a notebook I always take with me. One column will contain simply an account of the trip, what happened. I arrived at the air terminal, what was said by the clerks, what I overheard on the plane, what hotel I checked into. The next column presents my memories; that is, what I was thinking at the time, the memories that were activated by my encounters; and the third column, which I call my reading column, gives quotations from any book that I take with me. I have practically a whole novel alone on my trips to Gibraltar. Besides Graham Greene, Ive used other books. I used The Wonderful Country by Tom Lea on one trip. Lets see, and Eliots The Cocktail Party; In Hazard by Richard Hughes and Im reading The Wonderful Country and the hero is just crossing the frontier into Mexico.Well, just at this point I come to the Spanish frontier, so I note that down in the margin. Or Im on a boat or a train, and Im reading The Quiet American. I look around and see if theres a quiet American aboard. Sure enough, theres a quiet sort of young American with a crew-cut drinking a bottle of beer. Its extraordinary, if you really keep your eyes open. I was reading Raymond Chandler, and one of his characters was an albino gunman. My God, if there wasnt an albino in the room. He wasnt a
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gunman. Who else? Wait a minute, Ill just check my coordinate books to see if theres anyone Ive forgottenConrad, Richard Hughes, science fiction, quite a bit of science fiction. Eric Frank Russell21 has written some very, very interesting books. Heres one, The Star Virus. I doubt if youve heard of it. He develops a concept here of what he calls Deadliners who have this sort of seedy look. I read this when I was in Gibraltar, and I began to find Deadliners all over the place. The story has a fishpond in it, and quite a flower garden. My father was always interested in gardening. CK: In view of all this, what will happen to fiction in the next 25 years? WB: In the first place, I think theres going to be more and more merging of art and science. Scientists are already studying the creative process, and I think the whole line between art and science will break down, and that scientists, I hope, will become more creative and writers more scientific. And I see no reason why the artistic world cant absolutely merge with Madison Avenue. Pop art is a move in that direction.Why cant we have advertisements with beautiful words and beautiful images? Already some of the ve ry beautiful color photogr a p hy appears in whiskey ads, I notice. Science will also discover for us how association blocks actually form. CK: Do you think this will destroy the magic? WB: Not at all. I would say it would enhance it. CK: Have you done anything with computers? WB: Ive not done anything, but Ive seen some of the computer poetry. I can take one of those computer poems and then try to find correlatives of it, that is, pictures to go with it; its quite possible.
CK: Does the fact that it comes from a machine diminish its value to you? WB: I think that any artistic product must stand or fall on whats there. CK: Therefore, youre not upset by the fact that a chimpanzee can do an abstract painting? WB: If he does a good one, no. People say to me, Oh, this is all very good, but you got it by cutting up. I say that has nothing to do with it, how I got it. What is any writing but a cut-up? Somebody has to program the machine; somebody has to do the cutting up. Remember that I first made selections. Out of hundreds of possible sentences that I might have used, I chose one. CK: Incidentally, one image in Nova Express keeps coming back to me and I dont quite understand it: the gray room,breaking through to the gray room. WB: I see that as very much like the photographic darkroom where the reality photographs are actually produced. Implicit in Nova Express is a theory that what we call reality is actually a movie. Its a film, what I call a biologic film. What has happened is that the underground and also the Nova police have made a b re a k t h rough past the guards and gotten into the darkroom where the films are processed, where theyre in a position to expose negatives and prevent events from occurring.Theyre like police anywhere. All right, youve got a bad situation here in which the Nova mob is about to blow up the planet. So the Heavy Metal Kid calls in the Nova police. Once you get them in there, by God, they begin acting like any police.Theyre always an ambivalent agency. I recall once in South America that I complained to the police that a camera had been stolen and they
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ended up arresting me. I hadnt registered or something. In other words, once you get them on the scene they really start nosing around. Once the law starts asking questions, theres no end to it. For Nova police, read technology, if you wish. CK: Mary McCarthy has commented on the carnival origins of your characters in Naked Lunch. What are their other derivations? WB: The carny world was the one I exactly intended to createa kind of mid-western, small-town, cracker-barrel, pratfall type of folklore, very much part of my own background.That world was an integral part of America and existed nowhere else, at least not in the same form. My family was southern on my mothers side. My grandfather was a circuit-riding Methodist minister with 13 children. Most of them went up to New York and became quite successful in advertising and public relations. One of them, my uncle, was a master image-maker, Ivy Lee, Rockefellers publicity manager. CK: Is it true you did a great deal of acting out to create your characters when you were finishing Naked Lunch? WB: Excuse me, there is no accurate description of the creation of a book, or an event. Read Durrells Alexandria novels for four different ways of looking at the same thing. Gysin saw me pasting pictures on the wall of a Paris hotel room and using a tape recorder to act out several voices.Actually, it was written mainly in Tangier, after I had taken the cure with Dr. Dent in London in 1957. I came back to Tangier and I started working on a lot of notes that I had made over a period of years. Most of the book was written at that time. I went to Paris about 1959 and I had a great pile of manuscripts. Girodias was interested and he asked if I could get the book ready in two weeks. This is the period that Brion is referring to when, from manuscripts collected over a period of years, I assembled what became the book from some thousand pages, something like that.
CK: But did you actually leap up and act out, say, Dr. Benway? WB: Yes, I have. Dr. Benway dates back to a story I wrote in 1938 with a friend of mine, Kells Elvins, who is now dead.Thats about the only piece of writing I did prior to Junky. And we did definitely act the thing out. We decided that was the way to write. Now heres this guy, what does he say, what does he do? Dr. Benway sort of emerged quite spontaneously while we were composing this piece. Something Ive been meaning to do with my scrapbooks is to have files on every character, almost like police files: habits, idiosyncrasies, where born, pictures. That is, if I ever see anyone in a magazine or newspaper who looks like Dr. Benway (and several people have played Dr. Benway, sort of amateur actors), I take their photogr a p h s .M a ny of my characters first come through strongly to me as voices.Thats why I use a tape recorder.They also carry over from one book to another. CK: Do any have their origins in actual persons? WB: Hamburger Mary is one. There was a place in New York called Hamburger Marys. I was in Hamburger Marys when a friend gave me a batch of morphine syrettes. That was my first experience with morphine and then I built up a whole picture of Hamburger Mary. She is also an actual person. I dont like to give her name for fear of being sued for libel, but she was a Scientologist who started out in a hamburger joint in Portland, Oregon, and now has 11 million dollars. CK: What about Heavy Metal Kid? WB: There again, quite complicated origins, partly based on my own experience. I felt that heavy metal was sort of the ultimate expression of addiction, that theres something actually metallic in addiction, that the final stage reached is not so much vegetable as
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mineral. Its increasingly inanimate, in any case. You see, as Dr. Benway said, Ive decided that junk is not green, but blue. Some of my characters come to me in dreams, Daddy Long Legs, for instance. Once, in a clinic, I had a dream. I saw a man in this rundown clinic and his name in the dream was Daddy Long Legs. Many characters have come to me like that in a dream, and then Ill elaborate from there. I always write down all my dreams.Thats why Ive got that notebook beside the bed there. CK: Earlier you mentioned that if junk had done nothing else, it at least put you in contact with the world. WB: Yes, the underworld, the old time thieves, pickpockets and people like that.Theyre a dying race; very few of those old timers left.Yeah, we l l ,t h ey were show business. CK: Whats the difference between the modern junkie versus the 1944 junkie? WB: For one thing, all these young addicts; that was quite unknown in 1944. Most of the ones I knew were middle-aged men or old. I knew some of the old-time pickpockets and sneak thieves and short-change art i s t s .T h ey had something called The Bill, a short-change deal. Ive never been able to figure out how it works. One man I knew beat out all the cashiers in Grand Central with this thing. It starts with a $20 bill.You give them a $20 bill and then when you get the change you say, Well, wait a minute, I must have been dreaming, Ive got the change after all. First thing you know, the cashiers short $10. One day this shortchange artist went to Grand Central, even though he knew it was burned down, but he wanted to change $20. Well, a guy got on the buzzer and they arrested him.When they got up in court and tried to explain what had happened, none of them could do it. I keep stories like this in my files.
CK: In your apartment in Tangier? WB: No, all of it is right here in this room. CK: In case Tangier is blown up, its all safe? WB: We l l ,m o re than that. I need it all. I brought everything.Thats why I have to travel by boat and by train, because, well, just to give you an idea, thats a photographic file [thud]. Those are all photographs and photographs. When I sit down to write, I may suddenly think of something I wrote three years ago which should be in this file over here. It may not be. Im always looking through these files.Thats why I need a place where I can really spread them out, to see whats what. Im looking for one particular piece of paper, it often takes me a long time and sometimes I dont find it. Those dresser drawers are full of files.All those drawers in the closets are full of files. Its pretty well organized. Heres a file,The 1920 Movie, which partly contains some motion picture ideas. Heres All the Sad Old Showmen; has some business about bank robbers in it. Heres The Nova Police Gazette. This is Analog, which contains science fiction material.This is The Captains Logbook. Ive been interested in sea stories, but I know so little about the sea, I hesitate to do much. I collect sea disasters such as the Mary Celeste. Heres a file on Mr. Luce. CK: Do you admire Mr. Luce?22 WB: I dont admire him at all. He has set up one of the greatest word and image banks in the world. I mean, there are thousands of photos, thousands of words about anything and everything, all in his files. All the best pictures go into the files. Of course, theyre reduced to micro-photos now. Ive been interested in the Mayan system, which was a control calendar.You see, their calendar postulated really how everyone should feel at a given time, with lucky
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days, unlucky days, et cetera. And I feel that Luces system is comparable to that. It is a control system. It has nothing to do with reporting. Time, Life, Fortune is some sort of police organization. CK: Youve said that your next book will be about the American West and a gunfighter. WB: Yes, Ive thought about this for years and I have hundreds of pages of notes on the whole concept of the gunfighter. The gun duel was a sort of Zen contest, a real spiritual contest like Zen swordsmanship. CK: Would this be cut-up, or more a conventional narrative? WB: Id use cut-ups extensively in the preparation, because they would give me all sorts of facets of character and place, but the final version would be straight narrative. I wouldnt want to get bogged down in too much factual detail, but Id like to do research in New Mexico or Arizona, even thought the actual towns out there have become synthetic tourist attractions. Occasionally I have the sensation that Im repeating myself in my work, and I would like to do something differentalmost a deliberate change of style. Im not sure if its possible, but I want to try. Ive been thinking about the western for years.As a boy I was sent to school in New Mexico, and during the war I was stationed in Coldspring,Texas, near Conroe. Thats genuine backwoods country, and I picked up some real characters there. For instance, a fellow who actually lived in east Texas. He was always having trouble with his neighbors, who suspected him of rustling their cattle, I think with good reason. But he was competent with a gun and there wasnt anyone who would go up against him. He finally was killed. He got drunk and went to sleep under a tree by a campfire.The fire set fire to the tree and it fell on him. Im interested in extending newspaper and magazine formats to so-called literary materials.Here, this is one of my attempts.This
is going to be published in a little magazine, The Sparrow. CK: [Reading]The Coldspring News,All the News That Fits We Print, September 17, 1899, William Burroughs, Editor. Heres Bradley Martin again. WB: Ye s ,h e s the gunfighter. Im not sure yet whats going to happen after Clem accuses him of rustling cattle. I guess Clem goes into Coldspring and theres gunplay between him and the gunfighter. Hes going to kill Clem, obviously. Clem is practically a dead man. Clem is going to get likkered up and think he can tangle with Bradley Martin, and Bradley Martin is going to kill him, thats for sure. CK: Will your other characters reappear? Dr. Benway? WB: Hed be the local doctor. Thats what Id like to do, you see, use all these characters in a straight western story.There would be Mr. Bradley Mr. Martin, whose name is Bradley Martin; there would be Dr. Benway; and wed have the various traveling carny and medicine shows that come through with the Subliminal Kid and all of the con-men.That was the heyday for those old joes. CK: Do you think of the artist at all as being a con-man? WB: In a sense.You see, a real con-man is a creator. He creates a set. No, a con-man is more a movie director than a writer. The Yellow Kid created a whole set, a whole cast of characters, a whole brokerage house, a whole bank. It was just like a movie studio. CK: What about addicts? WB: Well, there will be a lot of morphine addiction. Remember that there were a great many addicts at that time. Jesse James was an
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addict. He started using morphine for a wound in his lung, and I dont know whether he was permanently addicted, but he tried to kill himself. He took 16 grains of morphine and it didnt kill him, which indicates a terrific tolerance. So he must have been fairly heavily addicted. A dumb, brutal hick; thats what he was, like Dillinger. And there were so many genteel ladies who didnt feel right unless they had their Dr. Jones mixture every day. CK: What about Green Boy, Izzy the Push, Green Tony, Sammy the Butcher, and Willie the Fink? WB: See, all of them could be western characters except Izzy the Push. The buildings werent high enough in those days. Defenestration, incidentally, is a very interesting phenomenon. Some people who are prone to it will not live in high buildings. They get near a window, someone in the next room hears a cry, and theyre gone. Fell or jumped is the phrase. I would add, or was pushed. CK: What other character types interest you? WB: Not the people in advertising or television, nor the American postman or middle class housewife; not the young man setting forth.The whole world of high finance interests me, the men such as Rockefeller who were specialized types of organisms that could exist in a certain environment. He was really a money-making machine, but I doubt he could have made a dime today because he required the old laissez-faire capitalism. He was a specialized monopolistic organism. My uncle Ivy created images for him. I fail to understand why people like J. Paul Getty have come on with such a stuffy, uninteresting image. He decides to write his life history. Ive never read anything so dull, so absolutely devoid of any spark.Well, after all, he was quite a playboy in his youth.There must have been something going on. None of its in the book. Here he
is, the only man of enormous wealth who operates alone, but theres nobody to present the image. Well, yes, I wouldnt mind doing that sort of job myself. Id like to take somebody like Getty and try to find an image for him that would be of some intere s t .I f Getty wants to build an image, why doesnt he hire a first-class writer to write his story? For that matter, advertising has a long way to go. Id like to see a story by Norman Mailer or John OHara which just makes some mention of a product, say, Southern Comfort. I can see the OHara story. It would be about someone who went into a bar and asked for Southern Comfort; they didnt have it and he gets into a long, stupid argument with the bartender. It shouldnt be obtrusive; the story must be interesting in itself so that people read this just as they read any story in Playboy, and Southern Comfort would be guaranteed that people will look at that advertisement for a certain number of minutes.You see what I mean? Theyll read the story. Now, there are many other ideas; you could have serialized comic stri p s ,s e rial stories.Well, all we have to do is have James Bond smoking a certain brand of cigarettes. CK: Didnt you once work for an advertising agency? WB: Yes, after I got out of Harvard in 1936. I had done some graduate work in anthropology. I got a glimpse of academic life and I didnt like it at all. It looked like there was too much faculty intrigue, faculty teas, cultivating the head of the department, so on and so forth.Then I spent a year as a copywriter in this small advertising agency, since defunct, in New York. We had a lot of rather weird accounts.There was some device called the Cascade for giving high colonics, and something called Endocreme. It was supposed to make women look younger because it contained some female sex hormones. The Interstate Commerce Commission was never far behind. As you can see, Ive recently thought a great deal about advertising. After all, theyre doing the same sort of thing. They are concerned with the precise manipulation of word and
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image. Anyway, after the ad game I was in the army for a bit. Honorably discharged and then the usual strange wartime jobs bartender, exterminator, reporter, and factory and office jobs.Then Mexico, a sinister place. CK: Why sinister? WB: I was there during the Alemn regime. If you walked into a bar, there would be at least 15 people in there who were carrying guns.Everybody was carrying guns.They got drunk and they were a menace to any living creature. I mean, sitting in a cocktail lounge, you always had to be ready to hit the deck. I had a friend who was shot, killed. But he asked for it. He was waving his little .25 automatic around in a bar and some Mexican blasted him with a .45. They listed the death as natural causes because the killer was a political big shot.There was no scandal, but it was really as much as your life was worth to go into a cocktail lounge.And I had that terrible accident with Joan Vollmer, my wife. I had a revolver that I was planning to sell to a friend. I was checking it over and it went off killed her. A rumor started that I was trying to shoot a glass of champagne from her head William Tell style.Absurd and false.Then they had a big depistolization. Mexico City had one of the highest per-capita homicide rates in the world. Another thing, every time you turned around there was some Mexican cop with his hand out, finding some fault with your papers, or something, just anything he could latch onto.Papers very bad, seor. It really was a bit much, the Alemn regime. CK: From Mexico? WB: I went to Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, just looking around. I was particularly interested in the Amazon region of Pe ru ,w h e re I took a drug called yag, Bannisteria caapi, an hallucinogen as powerful as mescaline, I believe. The whole trip gave me an awful lot of
copy.A lot of these experiences went into The Ticket That Exploded, which is sort of midway between Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine. Its not a book Im satisfied with in its present form. If its published in the United States, I would have to rewrite it. The Soft Machine, which will come out here in due time, is an expansion of my South American experiences with surreal extensions. When I rewrote it recently, I included about 65 pages of straight narrative concerning Dr. Benway, the Sailor, and various characters from Naked Lunch.These people pop up everywhere. CK: Then from South America you went to Europe. Is the geographic switch as important as it once was to American writing? WB: Well, if I hadnt covered a lot of ground, I wouldnt have encountered the extra dimensions of character and extremity that make the difference. But I think the day of the expatriate is definitely over. Its becoming more and more uncomfortable, more and more expensive, and less and less rewarding to live abroad, as far as Im concerned. Now Im particularly concerned with quiet writing conditionsbeing able to concentrateand not so much interested in the place where I am.To me, Paris is one of the most disagreable cities in the world. I just hate it.The food is uneatable. Its either very expensive, or you just cant eat it. In order to get a good sandwich at 3 oclock in the afternoon, I have to get into a taxi and go all the way over to the Right Bank. Here all I have to do is pick up the phone.They send me up a club sandwich and a glass of buttermilk, which is all I want for lunch anyway. The French have gotten so nasty and theyre getting nastier and nastier. The Algerian war and then all those millions of people dumped back into France and all of them thoroughly dissatisfied. I dont know, I think the atmosphere there is unpleasant and not conducive to anything.You cant get an apartment.You cant get a quiet place to work. Best you can do is a dinky hotel room somewhere. If I want to get something like this, it costs me $30 a day. The main
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thing Ive found after 20 years away from St. Louis is that the standard of service is much better than New York.These are Claridges or Ritz accommodations. If I could afford it, keep it, this would be an ideal place for me. Theres not a sound in here. Its been very conducive to wo r k .I ve got a lot of room here to spread out all my papers in all these drawers and shelves. Its quiet. When I want something to eat, I pick up the phone. I can work right straight through. Get up in the morning, pick up the phone at about 2 oclock and have a sandwich, and work through till dinner time. Also, its interesting to turn on the TV set every now and then. CK: What do you find on it? WB: Thats a real cut-up. It flickers, just like the old movies used to. When talkies came in and they perfected the image, the movies became as dull as looking out the window. A bunch of Italians in Rabat have a television station and we could get their signal in Tangier. I just sat there open-mouthed looking at it. What with blurring and contractions and visual static, some of their westerns became very, very odd. Gysin has been experimenting with the flicker principle in a gadget he calls a Dream Machine.There used to be one in the window of The English Bookshop on the Rue de Seine. Helena Rubinstein was so fascinated she bought a couple, and Harold Matson,23 the agent, thinks its a million dollar idea. CK: Describe a typical days work. WB: I get up about 9 oclock and order breakfast; I hate to go out for breakfast. I work usually until about 2 oclock or 2:30, when I like to have a sandwich and a glass of milk, which takes about ten minutes. Ill work through until 6 or 7 oclock.Then if Im seeing people or going out, Ill go out, have a few drinks, come back and maybe do a little reading and go to bed. I go to bed pretty early. I dont make myself work. Its just the thing I
want to do. To be completely alone in a room, to know that therell be no interruptions and Ive got eight hours, its just exactly what I wantyeah, just paradise. CK: Do you compose on the typewriter? WB: I use the typewriter and I use scissors. I can sit down with scissors and old manuscripts and paste in photographs for hours; I have hundreds of photographs, alleys and whatnot.This [pointing] is a ghostly photograph of the house in which I grew up, seen back through 45 years. Heres a photo of an old ash pit. It was great fun for children to get out there in the alley after Christmas and build a fire in the ash pit with all the excelsior and wrappings. Here, these are stories and pictures from the society columns. Ive been doing a cut-up of society coverage. I had a lot of fun piling up these names; you get some improbable names in the society columns. CK: You recently said you would like to settle in the Ozarks.Were you serious? WB: I would like to have a place there. Its a very beautiful area in the fall, and Id like to spend periods of time, say every month or every two months, in complete solitude, just working, which requires an isolated situation. Of course, Id have to buy a car, for one thing, and you run into considerable expense. I just have to think in terms of an apartment. I thought possibly an apartment here, but most likely Ill get one in New York. Im not returning to Tangier. I just dont like it anymore. Its become just a small town.Theres no life there, and I thought, my God, I might as well be in Columbus, Ohio, as here, for all the interest that the town has for me. I was just in my apartment working. I could have a better apartment and better working conditions somewhere else. After 10 oclock at night, theres no one in the streets.The old set-
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tlers like Paul Bowles and people who have been there for years and years are sort of hanging on desperately asking,Where could we go if we left Tangier? I dont know, it just depresses me now. Its not even cheap there. If I travel anywhere, it will be to the Far East, but only for a visit. Ive never been east of Athens. CK: That reminds me, I meant to ask you whats behind your interest in the more exotic systems such as Zen, or Dr. Reichs Orgone theories?24 WB: Well, these non-conventional theories frequently touch on something thats going on that Harvard and M.I.T. cant explain. I dont mean that I endorse them whole-heartedly, but I am interested in any attempt along those lines. Ive used these Orgone Accumulators and Im convinced that something occurs there, I dont know quite what. Of course, Reich himself went around the bend, no question of that. CK: You mentioned Scientology earlier. Do you have a system for getting on, or are you looking for one? WB: Im not very interested in such a crudely three-dimensional manipulative schema as L. Ron Hubbards, although its got its points. Ive studied it and Ive seen how it works. Its a series of manipulative gimmicks. They tell you to look around and see what you would have. The results are much more subtle and more successful than Dale Carnegies. But as far as my living by a system, no. At the same time, I dont think anything happens in this universe except by some poweror individualmaking it happen. Nothing happens of itself. I believe all events are produced by will. CK: Then do you believe in the existence of God?
WB: God? I wouldnt say. I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal god who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events. A Luce writer may be an agent of God knows what power, a force with an insatiable appetite for word and image. What does this force propose to do with such a tremendous mound of image garbage? T h ey ve got a regular casting office.To interview Mary McCarthy,25 theyll send a shy Vassar girl whos just trying to get along.They had several carny people for me. Shucks, Bill, you got a reefer? Reefer, my God! Certainly not, I told them. I dont know what youre talking about. Then they go back and write a nasty article for the files. CK: In some respects, Nova Express seems to be a prescription for social ailments. Do you see the need, for instance, of biologic courts in the future? WB: Certainly. Science eventually will be forced to establish courts of biologic mediation because life forms are going to become more incompatible with the conditions of existence as man penetrates further into space. Mankind will have to undergo biologic alterations ultimately, if we are to survive at all. This will require biologic laws to decide what changes to make. We simply have to use our intelligence to plan mutations, rather than letting them occur at random. Because many such mutations look at the saber-toothed tigerare bound to be very poor engineering designs. The future, decidedly, yes. I think there are innumerable possibilities, literally innumerable. The hope lies in the development of non-body experience and eventually getting away from the body itself, away from three-dimensional coordinates and concomitant animal reactions of fear and flight, which lead inevitably to tribal feuds and dissension.
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CK: Why did you choose an interplanetary war as the conflict in Nova Express, rather than discord between nations? You seem fascinated with the idea that a superterrestrial power is exercising an apparatus of control, such as the death dwarfs WB: Theyre parasitic organisms occupying a human host, rather like a radio transmitter, which direct and control it. The people who work with encephalograms and brain waves point out that technically it will someday be possible to install at birth a radio antenna in the brain which will control thought, feeling, and sensory perceptions, actually not only control thought, but make certain thoughts impossible.The death dwarfs are weapons of the Nova mob, which in turn is calling the shots in the Cold War.The Nova mob is using that conflict in an attempt to blow up the planet, because when you get right down to it, what are America and Russia really arguing about? The Soviet Union and United States will eventually consist of interchangeable social parts and neither nation is morally right.The idea that anyone can run his own factory in America is ridiculous. The government and the unionswhich both amount to the same thing: control systemstell him who he can hire, how much he can pay them, and how he can sell his goods. What difference does it make if the state owns the plant and retains him as manager? Regardless of how its done, the same kind of people will be in charge. Ones ally today is an enemy tomorrow. I have postulated this power the Nova mobwhich forces us to play musical chairs. CK: You see hope for the human race, but at the same time, you are alarmed as the instruments of control become more sophisticated. WB: Well, whereas they become more sophisticated they also become more vulnerable. Time, Life, Fortune applies a more complex, effective control system than the Mayan calendar, but it is also much more vulnerable because it is so vast and so mecha-
nized. Not even Henry Luce understands whats going on in the system now. Well, a machine can be redirected. One technical sergeant can fuck up the whole works. Nobody can control the whole operation. Its too complex. The captain comes in and says, All right, boys, were moving up. Now, who knows what buttons to push? Who knows how to get the cases of Spam up to where theyre going and how to fill out the forms? The sergeant does. The captain doesnt know. As long as therere sergeants around, the machine can be dismantled and we may get out of all this alive yet. CK: Sex seems equated with death frequently in your work. WB: That is an extension of the idea of sex as a biological weapon. I feel that sex, like practically every other human manifestation, has been degraded for control purposes, or really for anti-human purposes. This whole puritanism. How are we ever going to find out anything about sex scientifically when a priori the subject cannot even be investigated? It cant even be thought about or written about. That was one of the interesting things about Reich. He was one of the few people who ever tried to investigate sexsexual phenomena, from a scientific point of view.Theres this prurience and this fear of sex.We know nothing about sex. What is it? Why is it pleasurable? What is pleasure? Relief from tension? Well, possibly. CK: Are you irreconcilably hostile to the 20th century? WB: Not at all, although I can imagine myself as having been born under many different circumstances. For example, I had a dream recently in which I returned to the family home and I found a different father and a different house from any Id ever seen before.Yet in a dream sense, the father and the house were quite familiar.
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CK: Mary McCarthy has characterized you as a soured utopian. Is that accurate? WB: I do definitely mean what I say to be taken literally, yes, to make people aware of the true criminality of our times, to wise up the marks. All of my work is directed against those who are bent, through stupidity or design, on blowing up the planet or rendering it uninhabitable. Like the advertising people we talked about, Im concerned with the precise manipulation of word and image to create an action, not to go out and buy a Coca-Cola, but to create an alteration in the readers consciousness. You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because Im creating an imagi n a ry i t s always imagi n a ry world in which I would like to live.
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After dinner we continued our discussion mellowed by a few drinks.The RAT recorder decided to run so we did another hour of taping.This time the conversation though less analytical was more lively.William Burroughs spoke of his personal conflicts as well as rapping humorously on subjects such as the Queen of England.Bugger the Queen. [JS] JEFF SHERO: Do you see the kind of revolts going on in the Western countries now as reformist in nature, or are they revolutionary?
R E VO LT !
WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Id say revolutionary. JS: You think that in the end the struggles going to be for power? WB: Well, I dont know about that. It seems to me to be the most anti-political revolt that Ive ever seen and perhaps theres ever been in history.That is a revolt more aimed towards getting rid of something than simply substituting something else.When I was in college in the 30s, there were only two alternativeseither you were a Marxist or you were supporting the establishment. But these people are not, by and large, Marxists. JS: Were you a Marxist? WB: I was not, no. Because it seemed to me just substituting something else. Ive never been a Marxist. JS: Youve written a great deal about the futuredo you believe that its possible to make a revolution which has decentralized character, is determined by participatory democracy in an age in which technology tends to centralize coordination,communication WB: Yes, because by the very fact that we have this communications system, it can be decentralized to any point. The first thing
New York, 1968
William Burroughs has lived in London for the last years. He took part in the Chicago demonstration while covering it for Esquire. He was in the lines and was tear-gassed in Grant Park. He observed that many people seemed to get contact highs and that tear gas didnt seem to be an effective weapon against determined people.This interview took place in Terry Southerns28 apartment in New York City during the RATs eight hour visit.Burroughs wore a crisp brown suit which he referred to as his costume. Taping was delayed by the obstinate RAT tape recorder so we walked to a nearby store and bought a tape for Burroughsmachine. Burroughs has decided to move his apartment from London to New York so he can directly involve himself in the movement. After several hours we went for dinner where Burroughs talked about his forthcoming book, 7 Hertz, based on his recent investigation of scientific research.A discussion on the importance of publication of secret research and a summary of 7 Hertz will appear in the next issue of RAT; containing the second half of the interview.
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for any revolutionary party to do would be to seize the communications.Who owns communications now, controls the country. Much more than its ever been true in history. Of course, thats always been a revolutionary maxim. JS: More important than the army. WB: Much more important than the army. JS: If the French students had controlled the TV and the radio, do you think they would have been more successful or won? WB: Possibly, if they had known exactly what to do with them. JS: And what kind of things should they do with them? WB: Well, there are highly developed techniques that are already in use. Ive endeavored to describe some of them in this book Im writing now.The techniques exist for manipulating the mass mind. JS: More sophisticated than TV commercials. WB: Yes. Much more. But you dont really know whats going on on TV on a subliminal level. Of course, they arent allowed to use subliminal techniques any more. But simply as a matter of juxtaposition. JS: Well, in our country, you view the kind of development at Chicago where the press essentially supported the demonstrations. WB: Precisely. There was an example of the studentsthe revolutionarieswinning an engagement by very definite steps to get the support of the press. Everything really played right into their hands from the very first day when the newsmen were beaten up by police.
JS: In Chicago, was the deciding factor that the press got beat up? WB: Certainly. JS: That doesnt give us much of a basis for coverage in the future. WB: No, but of course, in Chicago we have this Mayor Daley whos left over from the 19th century, an old political boss with the sort of pig idea of authority at the end of a nightstick. He was already, I understand, prejudiced against reporters for some reason or other, was he not? Hasnt he previously had some bad publicity? JS: Im sure of it. WB: So there was a set-up that I dont think exists here. JS: What does it say about powerhow its exercised in the United Statesif the people who run the Party in power, run this country, run the war, make such bad decisions about choosing the location for their convention, and choosing a strategy to contain demonstrations.Shows theyre incapable, it seems to me. WB: Well, theres no question of that, no question of their inefficiency. JS: It seems to me that there are a lot of parallels between Chicago and Vietnam.They applied the same strategy of massive pinpointing of force at every point in hopes to eliminate the insurgency before it could grow.And they achieved exactly the opposite effect in both Chicago and Vietnam.Were you surprised at the attitudes of most of the demonstrators? WB: No. The only thing that surprised me at all was that they seemed to be much more organized and much more determined
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than I had anticipated, coming as I had from England. Ive been away for three years now. I would say that the whole picture has changed immeasurably. JS:That was functional organization. It was organized not on a static bureaucratic level, where people gave orders down from the top. WB: Yes.There again was something I found quite impressive.And something that I had not seen before. Possibly something that had not existed before. JS: It seemed to me in Chicago there were a lot of people of liberal ideology.There were these kind of McCarthy kids who constantly said, Well, lets not be provocative towards the police because theyll attack us, after the police had already attacked on about five different occasions without provocation. It seemed that there was this whole residue of the liberal ethos still maintained in a large part of the crowd. WB:True. That I agree with. But of course, theres a tremendous contrast in my mind between say, the old Communist demonstrations in the 30s which were also definitely organized to create incidents.They wanted the police to fire into the crowd. But there you felt it was all being run on an absolutely bureaucratic basis. This man gave an order. That man gave an order. There was no question of these orders right down the lineright down to the people who were going to be the incident. I didnt feel any sort of bureaucratic, hierarchical control, and yet there was organization. JS: The Movement in the United States is organized in a way that is impossible for the authorities to contend with. Because, at any point, if they arrest a hundred leaders, it really doesnt affect the Movement.
WB:Yes.Well you could see that from the results achieved.Theres only one thing that has occurred to me, and that is that the Yippies are rather too conspicuous. JS: How do you mean? WB: Well, they look like Yippies. Particularly to move from one place to another. Anybody with a beard ,a nybody that looks like a Yippie is being turned back at the border of Mexico.They wouldnt let Allen Ginsberg in until he went to the Consul. JS: How important do you think the symbols of rebellion are? WB: It depends on the state of the rebellion. When it gets to a certain point, the rebellion must go underground. How long does an underground last that has a uniform? Now, if they all put on business suits and went into the city, by the time they were in there they could put on anything they liked. But to get in, they should look like anybody else. Mexico would be quite different from Chicago. Mexican police are apt to use machine guns rather than clubs. If they went there in trailer trucks with signs all over them theyd be stopped at the border. Most countries in Europe are not letting them in now. JS: And you were inside the Convention Hall itself, too. WB: Yes, yes. JS: Did you ever talk to any of the delegates? Do you think they had any sense of the upheaval going on outside? WB: I didnt talk to any of the delegates. We tried to talk to Senator McCarthy and even tried to talk to Governor Maddox, but it was quite hopeless.You couldnt even get a call through to
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the Hilton. All the switchboards were jammed. Oh, I was there it just seemed to me just a terrifically boring scene.You couldnt hear what was being said. And it was bullshit if you could hear it. But all the political reporters said the same thing. The speeches were just incredibly boring. JS: Do you think that people with power in this country have much understanding of the upheaval brewing beneath them, not just among the young people, but among the blacks? Do they have a real leader? WB: I would say on a top level, very much so. I think that power in this country is held by very, very few people.Very few indeed. Presidents,mayors and people like that do not hold power.Theyre only front people. The rich people have always let the politicians hold the ostensible positions of power so long as they did what they were told. And that has not changed a bit.The real orders are coming from an oligarchy of extreme wealth. JS: If Nelson Rockefeller was running for the presidency youd expect all the powers of the Chase Manhattan Bank to be behind it, and yet he ran what could be called a pathetic campaign. WB: What they intend is not apparent at all on the surface. JS: And so the forces of contradiction move forward.What do you think is going to be the overall strategy of the people in power? How do you think theyre going to try to handle it. WB: Its hard to say.Theyve never been as threatened as they are right now from so many quarters. My guess will be theyll start a nuclear war. JS: You expect that.
WB: Yes. JS: With China. WB: Yes. JS: In concert with Russia or with Russia sitting it out? WB: If they can get a nod from Russia, theyll stay out. Because if they took on both Russia and China, we would be pulverized. JS: And the function of such a war would be to maintain their absolute power like they did during the McCarthy era after World War II.To develop complete obedience. WB: Well, of course, as soon as theyd declared war, it would be a police state, one hundred percent. JS: Would you call America a police state now, with trappings liberal trappings? WB: Thats a difficult question. Its becoming more and more a police state. There still are forces in operation in opposition to the power of the police. And if its what you might call a one hundred percent police state, that means that there are no forces of opposition. JS: At least overt opposition. WB: Or effective opposition.There may be an underground, but I mean there are no official forces. Nothing like, say, the civil liberties unions or anything of that sort to oppose this police power. Theres very little that opposes police power in Russia, except their writers union.
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JS: The Movement forces in the country tend to identify with Third World countries, countries like Cuba and Vietnam, as opposed to the Soviet Union and China. Do you think thats applicable at all? WB: Well, I think theres a bit of romanticism in it. After all, Che Guevara and Castros tactics date back to the19th century, effective in areas which are a hundred years back, like Latin America. But I dont think too effective in a highly industrialized country like America. JS: Is the outcome of our struggle based on the number of humans we can mobilize, or is it largely dependent on the new technology? WB: Well, I wouldnt say dependent on the new technologies. And rather not the people you can mobilize, but the number of people you can disconnect. JS: Were you surprised by that uprising in France? WB: I had been in France and I thought the French had the young people really down. I was surprised by it. I was delighted by it, in another sense, because I thought by God theyre really breaking up. JS: You dont think the latent potential is sitting in England. WB: I hope so. I would love to see something like that happen in England. But it must happen after they get rid of the idea of this bloody Queen. That bitch. Sitting there soaking up the energy of forty million people. People say,The Queen isnt important.Shes just a figurehead. A figurehead of subservience. A figurehead of kissing her ass.Worthless wench. She should be sweeping floors.
JS: The Popes that way, too.You think about the Encyclical about birth control. The Pope is even more evil because he influences more people. WB: I wouldnt say necessarily more evil Heres a woman whos fucked up a whole country.Thats what had held England back. JS: Well, the control by America to a great extent, too. Wilson cant come out against the war because America is propping up the pound. WB: Yes, but forget about Wilson. Just think about the Queen for a momentthe subservience on the part of a great majority of the English people to this bitch. JS: What do the young people think about it? WB: The young people. A lot of them, of course, are against the Queen. But theres no hope for them until we have five thousand people out in Trafalgar Square screaming Bugger the Queen. JS: That was a pretty effective chant in Chicago, Fuck you, LBJ. WB: In America we dont hesitate to bugger LBJ. But to get people in England to say Bugger the Queen Oh my God. JS: The royalty of Europe sticks together and WB: If you ask me, at this point in history what could be more ridiculous than a Queen? JS: How about the Rolling Stones, could they lead a movement like that?
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WB: I think it could be done. A lot of people in England think it should be done. JS: Do the Rolling Stones consider themselves to be revolutionary? WB: They really do, baby.Theyre all out to help, and on our side completely. JS: They cant come to this country, can they? WB: No, because they are facing drug charges.Theyre one hundred percent behind us. I know them all I talked with this student tactician. He said the only thing to be done was to put out a pamphlet covering the royal family with vile abuse, just saying the worst. And the reaction from the establishment would tell us where wed have to go. JS: Just like the reaction in Chicago ripped the facade off the Democratic machine. WB: Thats what he meant exactly. JS: People within the system, theyre afraid of risking. WB: Theyre terrified. I dont care at all. I dont care if I die tomorrow. Its not important to me I find it increasingly difficult to write. Ive written.Ive written.Ive written.Ive written.Tired of writing. JS: Is it even hard for you to write non-fiction? WB: Hard for me to write anything. I can write on order, that is to say, if Esquire says can you write this piece, I can write it. For years, for years, for years, I wrote all the time, all the time, all the time. But now, I just dont feel like writing.
JS: You mean youd wake up in the morning and write most of the day? WB: Yeah. I just dont feel like writing. Im bored with it. I mean Im finished. I dont want to write anymore. JS: And now maybe youre beginning your activist career. WB: I want action. I want to get out and do something. Im tired of sitting on my ass. I want to get out and stir up some trouble. I want to make trouble for everybody! JS: Not for everybody. WB: For all the people in power JS: Writing has its force, but its not as great as people think. WB: Its much greater than people think. JS: You think so? WB: Yeah.And I will continue to do that when its necessary.You know, I think that writers write what happens. Lets face it, things dont happen unless somebody writes it. JS: Well, you can get too far extended. The Yippies had a split. Abbie Hoffman believed that anything that became reported was reality, and began just creating things that never happened. But then your credibility is WB: Now I remember. Graham Greene wrote The Quiet American, a great book. I hadnt read it before, but I got to the point of the milk bar
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JS: The what bar? WB: The milk bar.You know the explosion in the milk bar. Hes looking around in this milk bar, and I said wait a minute, time to hit the floor. I knew when the explosion was going to take place. I hadnt read it yet. And that was about two years before the same explosion happened in the milk bar in Algiers. I had been in Algiers eating in this milk bar.Two months after I had left there, about two years after Graham Greene had written this scene with people, their legs all splattered with Maraschino cherries and ice cream and blood and brains, passion fruit, pieces of mirrorsin this very milk bar where I would eata friend of mine got to the milk bar just at this time and saw this scene.Wow! Graham Greene had written that. Writers dont want to take responsibility for these things; they have to. A long time ago I said, The Soccer scores come in from the capital.You remember the Soccer riot in Peru300 people. Thats what it referred to. JS: Why do you think Genet is the only one who has taken responsibility for his characters? What about Kesey?29 You know Keseys book, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest? WB: Sure. It was simply that Genet was one of the first ones to state this. JS: So more than that, it was Genet who recognized it? WB: Genet recognized it, yes,possibly before I did. But if the soccer scores are coming into the capital one must pretend an interest.That was 10 years before this soccer riot happened. I realized what writers write happens.Therefore writers have responsibility to be there and to do something about it. In Chicago Genet said to me,writers now must support the youth movement, not only with their words, but with their presence. I agree with that one hundred percent.
JS: Do you think its going to press other writers in the country to make a commitment? Maybe even women like Mary McCarthy. WB: Yes. I feel this very definitely.Whenever anything is going on Im willing to support it with my presence. JS: Theres this whole detached liberal literary scene here.They all go to cocktail parties and intellectual events and talk to each other and express sympathy, but never do anything. WB: Well, I feel its time for every writer whos worth his salt to put his ass where his mouth is. If he is standing for freedom, get out there and stand for it. Im willing to do this. JS: Youve always been willing to live your life along the ideas youve developed.Was this true at Harvard? WB: At Harvard I was just a completely beat down person with no idea of who he was or what he was. And Id rather not think about it ever since then. Its too disgusting to think about. JS: Have you ever been back there? WB: Ive never been back there. My whole past is something I have nothing to do with. I am now a completely different person. JS: A lot of writers never did break with the past. Look at Fitzgerald, he kind of fell apart. Hemingway had more and more trouble writing. WB: Well, excuse me, Fitzgerald was a great writer, but he was completely tied up in the 1920s. Im not associated with any period. But Fitzgerald was the 1920s.What a writer he was.
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II JS: You represent something of an anachronism, because the revolt in America is very much the revolt of a generation. And yet you have more radical idea than many of the people in the move m e n t .H ow did that come about? What was the kindling of your ideas? WB: It was a long process. It certainly began with my middleclass upbringing which I always found extremely stultifying and confining. I felt out of place, that I wasnt being offered anything of any value by my environment. And then when I began to write the satisfaction crystallized into very definite criticisms. And I always went much further than so-called radicals. I felt it wasnt a question of substituting one establishment for another. For example the whole idea of a nation is an anachronism.That i s ,t h ey take a piece of real estate, draw a line around it, and thats a nation. Immediately they have trouble with the people on the other side of the line, and they have to spend all their money on armies and the police and so on. Now, this concept of nation has outlived its usefulness by about 300 years. It had a certain use in breaking up the feudal system. But now its an absolute anachronism. And a league of nations, a world government, isnt the answer at all. Thats merely perpetuating the error. JS: We must destroy nationalism? WB: Well, the basic formula of authority is a nation What is their authority based on? Their authority is based on the fact that they are the Officials in one of these hunks of real estate called a nation, large or small.That is the authority formula; and this is the formula that must be broken. You have families, clans, countries, nations.The order is quite clear. Of course in the old stone age tribes, they had bad folks on the
other side of the river and theyd bash each others heads in every now and then and it was comparatively harmless. But its not harmless now. Like all basic formula, it is very difficult to break down. Its hard for people even to think in other terms. JS: How would you start out? WB: The line that is going to break it down more than anything else, I think, is the possibility of people withdrawing from the country, setting up as if it were states within states. Say, if the Black Muslims were to form a separate state in this country, with international affiliations, and if a large number of people defy the whole question of boundaries, thousands of people walking across borders without passports, that sort of thing seems to me a useful form of demonstration. JS: The nation-state is the ideological basis for authority of the people in power and were living in a society in which the basic family unit from which it is copied is breaking down, families are breaking down, marriage is becoming an obsolete institution. Do you think that it erodes away the ideological basis? WB: To some extent, but it can survive that because once the thing is set up, they have the power, they have the police, the communications, and so on. JS: In Chicago we made a big difference between the police and the National Guard. Many of them didnt want to go to Vietnam. Our belief is that if the system breaks down, the army or the National Guard will become disfunctional or disaffect to our side. WB: Well, that has always been true in all liberal revolutions.The army is much more liable to go to the people than the police. Now, for example, in ColumbiaI was there during the Civil
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War.The reactionary government considered their army so unreliable that they built a second army of the Polizia Nacional. They were not the police, properly speaking, but a special army. In Latin American countries the police are sort of the palace guard of the establishment, and the army has always been potentially unreliable. JS: Do you think the war in Vietnam was necessary, or was it a mistake?
WB: Not to the same extent, no. JS: A great deal of what you write has to do with the microcosm, with the individual and how it functions. It seems to me youre saying that a revolutionary has got to understand the totality, how technology can be used against him, manipulate the individual. WB: Oh,certainly.And how technology can also be used to disrupt.
WB: Its ridiculous. The French were in there for God knows many years. Finally they had to pull out and then repeated the same mistake in Algeria. And we step in when we could see right in the face of it from Algeria and the French occupation of Indochina its a war that cant possibly be won. It shouldnt have been fought in the first place, but just from that point of view we cant even win it. JS: It speeded up the breakdown in this country. WB: Of course. JS: We keep returning to the question of the elite.The people who manage society arent doing a good job of it. WB: Well, I dont think theyre trying to do a job that is good for you, or for anyone, but their own very specialized interests. And they think in rather long range term s .N ow, its pretty necessary for the establishment to keep a war going somewhere. Since the end of WWII, there has always been a war going on somewhere. Society must have wars, economically for one thing. One of the reasons they were so reluctant to stop the war in Algeria is that they were afraid of what would happen if they did. JS: Do you think socialist countries like the Soviet Union have the same needs?
JS: If you were going to give some pointers and were to say: here are the ten most critical things WB: I go into this very thoroughly in this book which I hope will be out quite soon. I havent given it a title yet[The Job]. It will be published in France by Pierre Belfond.They sent someone over to see me and I put the book together with the help of this man [Daniel Odier] who is translating it into French.Then well get the English version here and in England. JS: It seems to me that the establishment would be wary of publishing the book, since in the short run it might make them some money, but in the long run it will be very damaging. WB: Well, but the people who are publishing it are not the establishment at all.They are always publishing things that are contrary to the wishes and interest of the establishment and getting into trouble for it. In fact, I would say, by and large, that publishers have done more against it than many other gro u p s .T h ey completely broke down censorship here. JS: Would you say the same for universitiesare they a positive or a negative force? WB: Mostly negative, because they are getting all their money
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from the establishment.You see, publishers are not.Theyre getting their money from the reading public. But universities being endowed, the board of trustees and all that have always been supporters of the establishment.They have to be. JS: The whole schooling process inculcates the old values. Do you think we should attempt setting up our own schools or do you think this would not succeed on that scale? WB: I think that would be a very, very important step. If you could set up schools where they really taught people something. The only education we have that is functioning is technical education, which has a definite criteria, whether it is a success or failure. An engineer can either install an electrical system or build a bridge, or he cant. But theres no such test as regards the social sciences,sociology, anthropology, psychology, general education. JS: In the future as the struggle continues it will be characterized as the anti-authoritarians against the authoritarians. WB: I would agree with that. I think this is a liberal revolution comparable to the revolution of 1848, and will probably precipitate as widespread a reaction, reactionary movements. JS: As the struggle goes on, people in power will use science to possess the minds of the kids, use the latest techniques of psychology or electronics WB: Electronics particularly. They are doing it already and have been doing it for some time. All important discoveries in electronics and in advanced psychology are top secrets. JS: And chemicals make it easier to induce in people certain ideas.
WB: Of course.The cold war is being used as a pretext to monopolize all sorts of fields of knowledge and new discoveries, particularly along the lines of controlling thought.This knowledge should be made available to everyone. For example, no one has heard of infra-sound.Its low sound, not high sound.An infra-sound installation turned up full blast can kill everyone within five miles. And destroy all buildings. I dont know if it would knock down reinforced concrete, but certainly red brick buildings. This is a very easy thing to make. On the other hand, what can be done with low concentration is something that hasnt been fully investigated yet.The man who has done this is Prof. Gavereau of France. JS: They now have a technique developed for the anti-riot tanks to use sound to immobilize demonstrators. It hasnt been put into effect yet. WB: Ultra-sound, high sound, goes right through an object, through a person, but this you cant hear.There are ways in which the operator can be protected from the effects. On the other hand it can be turned on from a distance. He wouldnt even have to be there. JS: As they begin to use clubs and mace, the demonstrator becomes more like a knight in armor. WB: He looks more and more like the police. The coming uniform is unquestionably blue crash-helmet, shoulder pads and aluminum jock straps. Of course, these are primitive weaponsmace, tear gas and clubs, very primitive weapons indeed. JS: But built into the establishment, in the rigid patterns of the past. If you look at Chicago, it is much the same technique of suppression of demonstrators as anywhere in the world.
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WB: Certainly. JS: So do you really believe that they are going to institute these techniques they have developed? WB: Undoubtedly, undoubtedly.They will use it if the opposition finds out about them and start using them too. The thing about infra-sound is that there is nothing complicated about it. It is simply a large whistle connected to an air hose. Anybody can do it. JS: What sort of cost? WB: Oh, what you can get in a junkyard. JS: Is this Professor Gavereau a radical? WB: Well, nobody knows. I saw an article about it in the Sunday Times. I am sure all governments will be experimenting with it if it works.Normally it would be top secret,classified,surrounded by barb wire, security checks. So how it happened to leak out I dont know, but it did. JS: Do you think that middle-class people are likely to give up the comforts they have been trained to desire all their lives in any large scale? WB: I dont know how many millions have already done so.After all, all those Yippies and hippies come from middle-class backgrounds for the most part. I mean, they could be living quite comfortable if they wanted to; have good jobs and the suburban house. I think there are lots of people in this society who realize that this so-called comfortable life is absolutely dull and so stultifying, they simply dont want it.
JS: The schooling process is critical to the shaping of peoples desires, much like advertising shapes your desires, and if thats breaking down, say, at the age of 18, when a person is reached by the movement, then were tremendously powerful. WB: Well, its breaking down almost unbelievably, and not only in America but throughout the world. Twenty years ago, for a young man in France, there was just no question as to what he was going to do. He was going to pass those exams, then he was going to become a lawyer or a doctor or a professor, and that was it. And the young people were completely sold on it. This was the only alternative, the only thing for them to do. There was a lot of that too when I was in Harvard.The way in which that is broken down all over the world is truly amazing. I dont think it has any parallel in history. Of course, people say, Oh well, these people will all be advertising executives in ten years. I dont believe it for a minute. If theyd wanted to be advertising executives, they would have made those steps as soon as they graduated from college or high school. JS: We have often judged that a good bit of our power doesnt come just from the ideas, but from the whole kind of sexual vitality of the movement and this basic sexuality is lacking in America. Do you see that? WB: I wouldnt necessarily use the word sexual, but certainly you feel the vitality. I remember in the anti-birthday party you felt a tremendous vitality that is lacking completely in most American audiencesin most Americans for that matter. JS: How about this thing like the pig. Say theyre all pigs.Vote pig for president Do you think jokes are important politically? WB: They can be very important. Im working on a purple-assed baboon for president.
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JS: The movement is developing a different definition of news. If we controlled a television station WB: If we controlled television, then we would control America. JS: You think the war is going to be fought out among the middle class and not among the poor? WB: Yes. Of course, Im all for eliminating the whole stupid middle-class. JS: Do you think as human beings they are even alive? WB: They are not alive.Theyre walking tape-recorders. Its not a question of eliminating human beings, its a question of eliminating walking tape-recorders. JS: Their children are realizing that too.Thats why long hair scares them so.Their own children are throwing it up, saying,Your lives are nothing.Your lives are dead plastic existence. WB: Yes. It is not a question of eliminating human beings, it is a question of turning off the tape-recorders. JS: Do you think the poor are less tape-recorders?
JS: Do you see Johnson or Mayor Daley as more evil? WB: Its hard to say. Daley is right out in the open, 100% establishment. A completely evil Irish toad. JS: Do you think there is a real differenceKennedy, both Kennedysthey seemed alive. Do you think thats true? WB: They did. Thats why they killed them. The had something the others wanted. JS: Do you think that Sirhan acted as an individual in killing Robert Kennedy? WB: Oh, what bullshit. Now look. They say he killed Kennedy because Kennedy said he supported Israel. Well, both Nixon and Humphrey have come out supporting Israel. Its bullshit. JS: Who do you think was behind itthe CIA? WB: No idea, no idea at all. JS: Nobody believes that Jack was shot by Oswald, or that Oswald acted alone anyway. WB: Theres no question of that, Oswald acted alone.
WB: Much less.Theyve been up against something.They have to be alive or survive. JS: And the middle-class person has to be dead to survive. If hes alive, he gets kicked out. WB: Those alive in the system are the people at the bottom.
JS: They cant force too many lies on people though.Theres a certain point when people begin to realize that it is not true, that the whole thing is a fucking lie. WB: What is that point? JS: Its coming soon Sixty percent didnt believe the official ver-
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sion which was in all the newspapers of Kennedys death. Thats the majority.Thats a lot of them. WB: That thing reeked to high heaven. It was so raw. It just reeked to high heaven. III Suppressed Discoveries 7 Hertz The student rebellion is now a worldwide movement. Never before in recorded history has established authority been so basically challenged. However, the incidents that trigger student uprisings are often insignificant: the dismissal of a liberal professor, a refusal to change the examination system or to meet other demands for minor changes. A crucial reason for students to rebel is in most cases overlooked: much of the research carried on in universities or under the direction of university professors is top secret classified, and is designed to suppress people throughout the world. Top secret classified research is not secret because the Russians might find out about it. The Russians already know and in most cases are well ahead of the West.This research is secret because they dont want insurgents to find out about it. Student rebels must insist on this: All knowledge, all discoveries belong to everybody. Top secret classified research means research opposed to the interest of youth,knowledge withheld from youth,discoveries used against youth.Lets take a look at some of these top secret projects which are not all that secret (somebody always lets a rat out of the bag somewhere).Along the line I was talking to somebody who has a brother working on a secret Navy project with lasers and he told me:They can actually send a thought. Or an image more likely. So sending images should be a monopoly of the U.S. Navy?
INCIDENTS: A recent article in Esquire Magazine written by a former CIA agent contains this anecdote. A man with photos of the Bay of Pigs was on his way to a newspaper office when the agent who was tailing him called a special number in Washington. On the way to the newspaper he was run over by a laundry truck. Not so easy to be sure of nailing some one in a walk across town, after all people do look before crossing streets. I would venture the guess that he was pushed in front of the truck by a laser. Lasers can move satellites in and out of orbit. They could push someone in front of a truck. Is this knowledge in the best hands? Then years ago in Amsterdam I was talking to a Dutch chemist. He told me that a hallucigenic [sic] drug has been discovered that makes LSD look like New Jersey grass. He could not take the responsibility of administering this drug to human subjects. I subsequently found out the drug in question has been released to the American Military. Experiments in Norway ten years ago demonstrated that within the range of an electromagnetic field recorded messages can be transmitted directly into the brain. Hearing Voices? Consider the black box.This device liberates ions so that a person in close vicinityplane cockpit, car, officecan function at top efficiency without sleep and without subsequent let down for periods up to 36 hours. For ten years the black box was used by the airforces of the U.S. Army and kept secret. It has now been released for civilian use and Philips is scheduled to put it out. When? How many of you have ever heard of the black box? Infra Sound Some discoveries are given out by independent scientists. Professor Gavereau of France has published the results of his experiments with infra sound. Infra sound is sound waves below the level of human hearing that is below 30 vibrations per second. (The number of vibrations per second of sound waves is termed a
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hertz). To be seriously considered such infra sound is below 16 hertz. This first experiment consisted of a whistle five feet across attached to an air hose I wrote from professor Gavereau:This first experiment nearly cost us all our lives. Fortunately we were able to switch off the whistle in time.We were all sick for hours. Infra sound sets up a vibration or resonance within bodies or objects. It can knock down buildings, break windows, set off burglar alarms. The professor is now working on a police whistle 18 feet across mounted on a truck and powered by a small airplane motor.This whistle turned on full blast could kill everything within the range of five miles.The only hitch it would also kill anyone behind it. The professor is working on a shield for the operator. Meanwhile the operator could turn on infra sound installations electronically from a safe distance. 7 Hertz was found to be the vibration most lethal to human life. Turned on very low it produces depression, anxiety, restlessness.The uneasiness produced by sub-lethal infra sound can easily be directed towards any target. Wilhelm Reich Another scientist who freely published his discoveries was Wilhem Reich. He died in federal prison. Most of you know something of Reichs experiments, discoveries and theories. I will not attempt a detailed run down here. You can still buy Reichs books despite the book burning carried out by the Pure Food and Drug pigs in emulation of their Nazi prototypes. I would like to draw attention to Reichs experiments with DORDeadly Orgone Radiation. DOR is produced by putting any radioactive material into an Orgone Accumulator. In Reichs experiments very small quantities of radioactive material were used. Nonetheless the effect is described as being hit on the head with a sledge hammer. One experimentor nearly died as a result of exposure.Very small quantities of radioactive material produce depression, anxiety and restlessness.Like infra sound DOR has a range from the almost imper-
ceptible to the lethal. The experiments with DOR are fully described in The Selected Writings of Wilhelm Reich under Orgone Physics.Anyone with a radium watch can duplicate these experiments. It seems that immunity to DOR is conveyed by gradient exposure. In fact the purpose of the DOR experiments was to find a means of conveying mass immunization to radiation sickness. As you know, Reichs books were burned, his experiments outlawed and he himself imprisoned. It is to say the least probable that top secret experiments with DOR are being carried out by official agencies. Mr. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Dianetics and Scientology, has also been persecuted by the Pure Food and Drug agents. To date Mr. Hubbard has refused to make public his advanced discoveries.There is every indication that the techniques and discoveries of Scientology are being used by the CIA and other official agencies.With these discoveries already in the worst possible hands, it is to be hoped that Mr. Hubbard will reverse his present policy and release his discoveries for all to use. The abuse of discoveries by a self-styled elite poses much more of a threat than their possible misuse by individuals. In the case of Reich and Hubbard, discoveries have been suppressed by official agencies, in all probability to mask secret experiments along the same lines. Pain Drug Hypnosis To Mr. L. Ron Hubbard belongs the credit for making public a secret weapon used extensively by the Americans and the Russians in their dreary cold war farce.This weapon is pain-drug hypnosis.
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WB: Chicago was a brilliant success for the demonstrators .T h e police played right into their hands and they got their scene in front of the Hilton. FS: The whole thing in the States is moving to open confrontation and violence. Those tactics didnt seem to work here in the October revolution. WB: Yes, the demonstrators there put themselves in the wrong. One could hardly sympathize with their tactics.
TA C T I C S O F D E C O N D I T I O N I N G
FS: So you dont think tactics of open confrontation with the police are applicable here? WB: No.They were successful in the States. It worked once, but you dont use the same thing again and again. I feel that many of their tactics in America are really 19th century tactics which wont work in an industrialized context. FS: And tactics in England? WB: Its a totally different problem. England has always been very successful in absorbing its dissidents, giving them a place in the establishment, and thats a tactic you cant attack directly. But the situations changing here, too. FS: Theres a general feeling going around that theres not much time, and this tends to push people into violent tactics. WB: As I see it, the trouble is very basicits the whole idea of a nation in the first place.You draw a line and theres trouble with people on the other side of the line, no matter how arbitrary your line may be.You see that in South A m e ri c a ,w h e re the lines of the frontiers do not in fact correspond to any difference in language.
London, 1969 FELIX SCORPIO: Why do you live in London? WILIAM BURROUGHS: Because my flat is here, I cant afford to move. All my books and papers are here. I dont want to live in the States. FS: Why not? WB: I dont like the feel of it.Theres a lot happening there and most of its unpleasant.A writer cant afford to get involved in too many extracurricular activities. Genet said we should support the young people not only with our writing but with our presence. Now I was present in Chicago, but I cant do it all the time. Im not running for office and Im not a professional revolutionary. FS: What do you think of the tactics they are using in America, especially in Chicago?
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Theyre purely arbitrary lines.The Ecuadorians, the Peruvians and the Colombians are basically the same people culturally, and have exactly the same economic problems. These lines give the politicians an excuse to maintain themselves and keep large police forces, which are in fact armies.Those lines date from the liberator Bolivar. He died a disillusioned man. FS: If you dissolve the national boundaries you are moving closer to the possibility of centralized control. WB: No, I wasnt thinking in terms of world government. FS: A lot of the student movement is concerned with anarchist ideas of regionalism, splitting up into smaller communities. WB: Yes, that seems to be a more promising lead. Black militants are moving in that direction.They want to withdraw into their own communities. But that they will not be allowed to do.Withdrawal is the most subversive move to any establishment.They must maintain the right to impose their laws on everyone within their boundaries. Its a vast concentration camp, really. And if they lose that right and people go into their own communities and set up their own systems, the concept of a nation will fall apart. And that is certainly the most promising lead.The difference between such a community and a nation is that, presumably, its a matter of preference. Perhaps not altogether so: in the black communities, as you know, black militants exert considerable pressure on their fellow blacks. But theoretically and ideally those people would be there because they wanted to, rather than being coerced. FS: The basic bourgeois fear about communities would seem to be that technology would collapse. WB: Certainly, the whole economic system is based on mass
consumption and production of goods. If people start setting up their own communities, that would break down. FS: Being involved in the underground media, Im wondering often whether were not moving towards the same kind of control as the official media have, only with different people behind it. WB: No, the underground press is definitely a very effective counter-move to the power of the press.Theyre the real rulers, the people who control the mass media now. The press is what manipulates majority opinion, and therefore, in effect, decides what the government will do. The underground press has now reached a point where they pose quite an effective counterweight and challenge because theyre getting a very large circulation. Insofar as the underground press is dedicated to decontrol and deconditioning, this is a counter-move. FS: And we could move towards a two-way TV system of the kind Buckminster Fuller has suggested. WB: Right, certainly. Excuse me, Ill pour the tea. FS: Could you tell me what youre working on now? WB: Im working on a film script. FS: Are you still employing the cut-up techniques in your writing? WB: To some extent. Of course, cut-up techniques have been used in film for some time. Most of the work is done in the cutting room. For example, the film Im working on now is The Life of Dutch Schultz , the numbers racketeer. We use a lot of stock footage and its where you cut that matters.You take a lot of 1920
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gangster footage and produce a certain effect with it. Any cut-up technique presupposes a great deal of experimentation, that is, I run a stock footage in a number of arbitrary sequences and say, All right, right there, theres something we want! Out of an hours footage you might get 5 or 10 minutes that you want. FS: One of the things Ive found with cut-up techniques is the emotive quality of certain words come out; some of the words are loaded.This would also be true with images. WB: Yes, this is nothing new in films, its nothing new in painting, and certainly not in music. John Cage and Earl Brown30 have carried it further in music than its ever been carried in writing. FS: This idea of emotional load in certain words we use in speaking I found in reading on Scientology. I wanted to ask you about your tie-up with Scientology, and your feelings about it as a method for clearing yourself. WB: The E-Meter seems to me a useful device for deconditioning. I have some reservations about some of the Scientology technology, and grave reservations about their policy of organization. I feel theres an absolute incompatibility between organizational policy and the advancement of knowledge, as we see in the Communist party where people are forbidden to write certain things or even to discover certain things because it doesnt fit with preconceived policy. I feel that Scientologists are tending to get into that impasse of having a dogmatic policy. FS: Its a danger thats not so apparent with some of the psychiatrists working in London, like Laing and Cooper. WB: Theyre not an organization. But Scientology is an organization and it does have an organizational policy.
FS: But some of the techniques you definitely find very useful? WB: Oh yes.They have a great deal of very precise data on words and the effects produced by wordsa real science of communic a t i o n . But I feel that their presentation has often been deplorable, and that as a science, a body of knowledge, it is definitely being vitiated by a dogmatic policy. FS: A lot of people shy away from the beginning. WB: Yes, it is represented in the press as being a ludicrous fraud with no content. This is not true. There are very useful and very effective techniques. FS: I also wanted to ask you about the treatment of drug addiction, especially junkies. How do you think Britain is coping with this at the moment? WB: Im afraid theyre simply following the bad example of America.America has the worst addiction statistics of any Western country, which I think is entirely due to their attempt to control it by police action rather than to treat it as a medical problem. They dont seem to have decided here whether theyre going to give maintenance doses to addicts or not. They seem to be in a state of confusion.They are now coming around to it, particularly in New York City. It was such a problem there with burglaries committed by addicts to get their junk that people finally said, Well, for Gods sake, give them a maintenance dose. FS: What about the whole LSD thingthe social effects of it, the whole Leary thing, the mystical thing? WB: I really dont go along with that at all. It seems to me an illusion that the use of any drug, or at least any that weve seen so
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far, is going to lead to any widespread social alteration. People ask what would happen if cannabis was legalizednot much. Take countries where it is legal, or quasi-legal, as in Morocco. There hasnt been any expansion or breakthrough of consciousness there, not at all. The Communists prohibit the use of cannabis because it makes a country more difficult to industri a l i z e. Cannabis use is more and more something the older generation does in Morocco. FS: Well, here its more and more of the younger people and it doesnt look as if legal obstacles are going to stop it. WB: Legal tactics have never been successful in regulating private behavior. Look at prohibition, for example. FS: What sort of legal restriction do you think should be placed on these drugs? WB: Very difficult problem. As you know, LSD is relatively easy to manufactureI dont see how they can control it. I would say that if people are going to take these drugs they should stick to the natural products, the less toxic. Id say mescaline is, by and large, safer than LSD. One of the safest apparently is kava-kava, which they use in the South Seas, and theres been talk of making a soft drink out of it. I t s apparently milder than cannabis. Cannabis is the safest of the hallucinogenic drugs in common use, far and awaybut not altogether without danger in an industrialized context. It throws your timing offremember Morocco is largely an agricultural countryit certainly makes people unfit to drive or to operate any precision machinery. Of course, the same is true of alcohol. It seems to me that people in the West have been spiritually so underprivileged that they overestimate the importance of LSD. There are other ways in which these things can be accomplished,
non-chemical ways which are becoming more and more precise. There was an article in Newsweek about someone called Dr. Miller who found he could teach rats to alter their brain waves, lower blood pressure, lower heartbeat rate, control digestion by simple punishment and reward: when their heartbeat rate started to go down, theyd be rewarded by a charge through the pleasure center of the brain, and get a shock when the rate accelerated. Now this is quite contrary to the old Pavlovian concept. Its been known for a long time that any animal can be taught to accelerate their heartbeat.That is, for example, if you ring a bell and give the animal a shock, then all you have to do is ring a bell and the heartbeat acceleratesbut theyve never been able to lower it that way. This establishes that all learning is primarily the same thing. Rats will learn in one hour what yogis take 20 years to learn .A n d theyve done it with people, too. FS: But the whole behavioral tripI was talking to a psychiatrist, and he told me a bit about Eysencks work with aversion therapy,31 which sounds frighteningly stupid. WB: No, thats not at all the same thing.What can be taught by Millers system is how to alter consciousness. If you can produce alpha brain waves, which are associated with a very re l a xe d dreamy state, very soon you can produce any of the effects of LSD without taking it. Itll give you control of consciousness. Thats the importance of this treatmentit is not aversion therapy, which has never really been successful. If you can teach someone to produce alpha brain waves, relax their mu s c l e s ,l ower their blood pressure, then they can be in a very comfortable state at will. Dr. Miller can do this. Of course, on people they dont use shocks. FS: No, I was wondering what kind of techniques they do use.
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WB: One technique is to say,Hold that when they get an alpha brainwave. And the people can do it. But its got to be spotted first. Now I think Miller used somewhat the same systemwhen the heart rate starts to go down, he says,There, hold that! Now theres something on the E-Meter known as the floating needle; when a release point is reached, the needle floatsit is a very relaxed, pleasant, very high feeling, similar to the effect of hallucinogenic drugs.You hold that point, and with practice you can do it at will. Having taught someone to lower his rate of heartbeat, then he can do it whenever he wants tounless the stress is too great. Alteration of consciousness is now quite possible with non-chemical means. FS: The big difference with the yogic methods is that here you can actually get some indication of what is going on in the other person WB: Yes thats the point. You can pinpoint it with encephalographic equipmentand you know whats going on, you know where his heartbeat is, his blood pressure, you know where his brainwaves are. You can pinpoint it, otherwise youre just proceeding on a very vague and imprecise basis. It would seem to me, if you could get some of the effects of LSD without the actual chemical, that would be more to the point. FS: These techniques are capable of enormous manipulation. WB: Certainly. FS: So if you were in politicswhich, my God, who would like to bewhere would you begin? WB: My basic idea would be to institute a program of mass deconditioningnot only the past of the individual, but his
whole cultural past, which, of course, is the very antithesis of politics. Politics always tries to influence automatic obedienceoldfashioned conditioningthat is, not deconditioning. But the means are at hand. It is actually possible now, which it hasnt been up to now. It wasnt much publicized, this discovery of Dr. Millers, but its one of the most revolutionary discoveries of the past 50 years. And the only applications he suggested were for people with high blood pressure, high heart rate and so on, but its obvious that the possibilities of altering consciousness by these means are unlimited. You see, I think LSD and all these hallucinogenic drugs simply enable you to do something you could do anyway if you hadnt been conditioned not to. FS: So one of the most important revolutionary procedures is to search for new and better deconditioning techniques? WB: Undoubtedly, no question of that. And this is certainly one of the most promising leads so far. FS: A thing that worries me a lot about the New Leftist tactics is that they employ conditioning tactics themselves, putting up the other propaganda wall. WB: Ye s ,t h a t s certainly true of any purely political movement.As you know, the Communists have done as much along these lines as anyone. They are violently opposed to cannabis or any hallucinogenic drugs. FS: People are often accused of withdrawing from the battleground, the real arena. WB: This is the battleground, and what are they fighting for if its not the way they want to live. And they would soon find they were on the frontline if they tried to do that.
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FS: So the drop-out philosophy is not necessarily a negative one, to remove yourself where you want to go? WB: Yes, but unfortunately, when they get there most of them dont seem to do anything useful in the way of deconditioning.The story of Dr. Millers discoveries was very much played down in the press. I think the New York Herald Tribune was the only paper which carried it. It was also the only paper to point out that the so-called nonlethal gas used in Vietnam by the Americans was in fact a form of LSD. There was another extremely disquieting piece of news in the Herald Tribune todayno, it was in the Telegraph, here we are,Do-it-yourself-A-Bomb material for $25,000. The Japanese will probably be putting out kits for $10,000. [Doomy laughter] You see, its getting like LSD now.Anybody can make one of these things:Making an atomic bomb is a thing you can readily do in a basement workshop with materials you can buy anywhere these daysthe information it takes to create the explosion is now in the possession of any schoolboy interested in science. In other words,anybody with about that much money could make an atomic bomb. Not a big one, for sure, but big enough say to wreck mid-town Manhattan. FS: It doesnt look as if this knowledge is going to go unused. WB: Undoubtedly, it wont. Its always been my feeling that all knowledge should be publicized.There shouldnt be any of this top secret, but if theres one body of knowledge that might to great advantage have been suppressed or kept secret for 100 years, its nuclear fission. How can they talk about non proliferation? FS: Anything else youd like to talk about? WB: It would seem to me the most urgent thing to be undertaken is in fact a program of deconditioning, and since these are not apt to be undertaken by public agencies, they should be undertak-
en by private agencies.Theres a lot of value there in Scientology.A person may have conflicting goals, a goal to win and a goal to lose. If hes got a goal to lose hes always going to lose, no matter how brilliantly he plays or seems to play because this goal is stationary. Now, you get rid of this goal by pinpointing it, and when that goal blows, as the Scientologists say, then you can win. FS: Id like to ask youabout pinpointing. In Freudian psychology, it was originally the hope that once youd localized the cause of a neurosis, the consciousness of it would make it disappear. WB: But youll never locate it by Freudian methods. Using the E-Meter, if you locate your goal to lose in context, it will read. And by going over and over so it finally wont read, the goal is being erased. A goal like that will manifest itself through complex associational networks; it can take months of pinpointing it in various contexts before you can completely erase it.You need an instrument that tells you when you have pinpointed it and when this pinpointing has affected an erasure. Lots of people know they have self-defeating goals, this is a commonplace of modern psychology, but they dont have the means of pinpointing precisely enough to know when they have affected an erasure. Now, this can be done with the E-Meter. FS: And you can pin point where neurosis is? WB: You could find out precisely what brain waves were associated with this self-destructive goal. Any neurosis has physical symptoms.You cannot be in a state of anxiety with relaxed muscles, low blood pressure, low heartbeat and alpha brain waves. FS: What Ive read of Reichs work suggests that it is just as important to attack the muscular structure or treat the patient physically by manipulation or localized areas of muscular strain.
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WB: Yes, if you can get rid of all physical symptoms of a neurosis, the neurosis itself disappears. But you cant do it just by attacking the muscles, because its in the blood pressure, brain wave s ,t h e sensation of digestion, multiple tensions. Muscular tensions could also be pinpointed. FS: Has Scientology got the techniques that would enable them to work on these things that are pinpointed? WB: Oh, yes.Their techniques are quite differentI think much simpler and much sounder. They say any neurosis is due to conflicting goalsyou have a goal to win and a goal to lose. They both have equal weightyouve got a deadlock there that is crippling and the way to attack this is to pinpoint the negative goal. And they have at least one piece of very effective equipment for doing this, that is, the E-Meter. But I think to have a fully effective deconditioning unit, youd need other equipment as well equipment for measuring muscular tension. Of course, you do not know how long deconditioning might take. Just because you have gotten a person into a calm state where they dont have any physical manifestations of neurosis, does not mean that you have effected a permanent cure. In order to eliminate the neurosis, you have to pinpoint it in many contexts. FS: Part of it seems to be that within any particular organizational system like Scientology or within a certain relationship with a particular psychiatrist, you can be apparently cured within that framework but come out to face other situations which havent been dealt with. WB: Precisely.A great deal of Scientology processing you can do yourself on the E-Meter when you reach a certain stage. All the other more advanced stages are done by yourself on the E-Meter. In fact, no one else can do it. It may mean running the same
word, phrase or picture over and over for many hours. Say something bothers you, you can call it 500 times on the E-Meter and it still reads.This usually means that it has other associations that must be traced down, but over a period of time you can erase it, no doubt of that.You can also say that all neurosis comes down to discrepancies between the conscious intellect and the automatic nervous systemsomeone may consciously despise a policeman and yet still be nervous in his presence. They cant control this automatic reaction to an authority figure, but it can be erased by these techniques. Its a question of pinpointing it into consciousness and finally erasing it. FS: A lot of people would prefer to erase the policeman. WB: You erase one, there are others, an inexhaustible supply. But when you erase your involuntary subservience to authority, the extreme manifestations of authority lose their power to affect you.
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standing at integrating dissent.The establishment runs a tight ship. The London underground doesnt have an injection into it such as Black militants represent in the United States. JFB: Whats your feeling in general about the movement, the hippies and Communes? WB: I partake of their dissatisfaction. Im waiting for a deployable strategy for political action. My response to liberation movements is cautious, although Im, of course, in favor of the homosexual liberation movement. Each group acts as if it could take power. Id like to know what theyd do if they succeeded.Take for example: the resupply of markets, restaurant and food stores amounts to a use of technology involving the lives of millions of people.What would happen if this enormous mass were to abandon the society organized to prevent that from happening? Theyd die of hunger in a week. Are the militants prepared to take into account this kind of problem? JFB: Youre in disagreement then with those who, like Timothy Leary, advise young people to live on the margins of society and wait until the system collapses by itself. WB: Id prefer solid proposals. Both Lenin and the German socialdemocracy of Kautsky had a program, specific ideas on the society to be built. Todays revolutionaries are silent on these subjects. Theyre fighting a limited war with limited means. Resistance fighters on the margins, equipped with revolvers and explosive s ,d o not have any real hold on power in an industrial society. JFB: Are you really interested in politics? WB: Ive never thought politics could resolve anything at all. Let business get discussed on the level of politics and its a funeral.The
E S TA B L I S H M E N T G A R B A G E
Pa ri s , 1970 JEAN-FANOIS BIZOT: The underground claims you as a member. Does the work of William Burroughs belong to underground culture? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Underground culture as a label can be placed on a great many things. A large number of groups and individuals make a dubious claim to it.There isnt what could be called a movement, existing with power and direction, like the resistance against the Nazis. JFB: Whats the underground like in London? WB: I dont have that much contact with it. In my opinion, England is working on catching up. Its way behind the United States. Everything there is scatteredits hard to imagine how it could be otherwise.The English have a special talent, theyre out-
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opposing political systems resemble each other. I find it difficult to see what distinguishes the Tsarist police from the Soviet police. All the problems are, nevertheless, political, sexual most of all. A real revolution would have to involve a total change in consciousness, using television and the other media that have been responsible for most of the evolution in the last ten years. JFB: Do you conceive of a revolution of the brain? WB: Scientists are overwhelmed by the possibilities offered to them from developments in their fields. Recently, electrodes were attached from a computer to the brain of a chimpanzee. The brains impulses were transmitted to the machine which processed them and then sent a response. It appears that its possible to program people, treat neurotics, stimulate the memory JFB: Do you believe that the United States has entered into a stage of sexual revolution? WB: I dont know. Im not very impressed by what Ive seen so far. JFB: And womens liberation? WB: American women no longer want to be treated like females, but like anyone else.This sentiment is very close to one expressed in communist China. Over there, women wear the same clothes, do the same work and enjoy no special privileges. JFB: Do you have the feeling that the monogamous family of a Christian type is on its way out in the United States? WB: Absolutely, its coming apart more clearly than anywhere else. Keep in mind that the sense of the family has always been
we a ker in the United States than in the Latin countri e s . Europeans often visit their cousins, and sometimes their most distant relations.Thats never been the case with Americans. JFB: You were raised in the Christian religion WB: Not really. My grandfather was a Methodist preacher, but my parents were hardly believers. JFB: Which among the old myths seems to you the most dangerous? WB: I dont know.All the establishment garbage has to be thrown out: Christianity, which has been rotting the system for centuries, concepts that lead to hatred and competition, nations, family, the whole heap of garbage. If you were to destroy the ideas that repress people, that lead them into automatically reproducing reactions, then perhaps liberated man would find another way.At least I hope so. Its impossible to know. For example, I think that nothing can be expected of England until ten thousand people are seen marching on London shouting,Down with the Queen. JFB: Or the King WB: No, the Queen. Even when theres a King in England, its a lways a Queen dominating the country. Queen V i c t o ri a Queen Elizabeth The Kings are only there to reproduce in this country of insects. The English will take their first step the day they get rid of this insane family. JFB: You dont like women. In The Soft Machine, your woman character eats a mans sex after shes finished hanging him. WB: According to Conrad in Victory , women are a curse, a kind of fundamental error.The anti-sexual orientation of our societies
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serves women. It guarantees them control of their man. The traditional female blocks all progress. Women raise children. The children are forced to inherit the stupidities of the system and the neuroses of their parents. The nation is no more than an appendix, an extension of the biological family. Education of children ought to be in the hands of the state. This is partially the case in China. After some short-lived experiments, Russia allowed the bourgeois family to continue. JFB: By what is the family to be replaced? WB: By nothing.The less contact between the two sexes, the better. JFB: And love? WB: Its a virus, a hoax perpetrated by women. JFB: Who are the writers who have influenced you? WB: Jean Genet. It is astounding that he has been able to write Notre-Dame des Fleurs on the pages of a magazine. What a manuscript. I also have been influenced by a number of writers that Ive read to one degree or another: Joseph Conrad, Joyce, Cline, Cocteau, Beckett, Malcom Low ry JFB: What about your contacts with the Beat Generation? W B : I ve never met Fe r l i n g h e t t i , but Ive met Michael McClure,33 Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac. JFB: You were on the same road? WB: Not exactly. I passed some time with them, but we werent really doing the same thing. I dont believe in nonviolence.The peo-
ple in power are not going to throw themselves out.You dont give flowers to the police, except in a flowerpot and out of a window. JFB: In your life as an addict youve been involved in violence WB: Not really, except one week in New York when I was broke. I robbed people at gunpoint in the subway with an accomplice. Nothing very big. We emptied the pockets of some drunks. One evening, one of them started to move. It soon became necessary to knock him out. It made me sick. I stopped. JFB: But theres sadism in your books. WB: Not in my opinion. JFB: Your goal has consistently been to reinvent writing, to, disrupt literary techniques WB: Ive always been intrigued by literary invention. I cant see what the interest would be in doing again whats already been done, even if you did it well.What would be the purpose now of turning out a good Victorian novel? Were in the era of television and abstract painting. Genet himself has never broken out of a certain classicism, even if, through words, he escapes the prison of language. J F B : A re you interested in the automatic writing of the Surrealists? WB: Yes, but how much of automatic writing is really automatic? The Surrealists started things off, but only Artaud stayed with i t .B reton became a pope, hanging out in the salons and spending his time writing letters of excommunication. Tzara was a true innovator. It was his idea to write a poem by drawing words out
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of a hat. Why not introduce chance into writing following the game-theory of Neumann and Morgenstern, as its done in military strategy or economics? The American air force prepares a plan of attack using five different hypotheses. One is chosen by chance at the last moment. The enemy has no rational means to guess the intentions of the opposing side.This is the same sense in which our experiments with the writing techniques of cut-ups and folding have been conducted. JFB: Do you have other methods that you use? WB: At the moment Im working on a script for a film by Harrison Starr, who is both the producer and the director. Its very new for me. Its not possible to name impressions as in a book, to simply say, Its a day in the summer of 1921. Its necessary to describe exactly whats going on. Up to now, directors have only scratched the surface of cinema. I propose to introduce effects of dja vu. JFB: Its the idea of messages that appear on a television screen for a hundredth of a second. The viewers dont see them but their brain has time to register them. WB: Exactly. Its possible to produce effects of speeding up or slowing down time. JFB: Do you like science fiction? WB: It depends on what is meant by science fiction. Nothing is harder for a writer than to express in a convincing manner an alien experience or consciousness. Many are called, few are chosen. Most have good ideas, but cant manage to realize them. One of the best books of science fiction that Ive read is Free to Conquer by Frank Russel. Astronauts land on Venus and are contaminated
by a virus which absorbs their personality and existence. JFB: Do you think that drugs can expand consciousness? WB: Drugs in themselves arent of much importance.They have their place.Theyre a short cut when other means arent available. It would be optimistic to think that drugs alone could transform consciousness in a radical way. Look at Morocco. Its been legal to smoke there for centuries and nothing particularly worth remarking on has resulted. The most interesting of all substances that Ive tried is ya g .I t s an incredible hallucinogen to be taken at night. The color blue dominates vision. Unfortunately, yag causes a slight nausea, is highly toxic and has only a small margin of safety. Cannabis, on the other hand, has none of these drawbacks, on the contrary. JFB: What about Psilicybin? WB: I dont like it at all. Its synthetic. I prefer natural drugs to chemical ones. Personally, Im allergic to LSD. In large doses it softens the brain. With acid my face bloats and my hand is unsteady. With cannabis, Im in control and feel sure of myself. I use it to work. It accelerates the train of associations. Im able to obtain three or four ideas on the same theme at once. JFB: What do you mean by enlarging consciousness? WB: Its not easy to explain. Hallucinogens enhance your perception.Thats also possible without drugs, but its difficult. JFB: How did you start taking heroin? WB: Out of curiosity. I quickly became addicted. Ive taken heroin for 15 years, with some pauses. Ive quit, started again and quit again. If I were to start again today, Id be hooked in two
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days. I have to watch myself closely. Suppose I catch a cold and take pills containing codeine, Neocodion, as I once did in France. In appearance, its harmless, but for me, it can start everything going again. JFB: After such a string of drugsDelauded,Encodal, Pantoton, opium, Dolosol, Methadone Pulplum, morphine, heroinhow were you able to stop? WB: I had come to the end of the line when I heard word of this vaccine. I was living in a slum belonging to the indigenous part of Tangier. It had been more than a year since Id taken a bath or changed my clothes. I no longer bothered to undress, except in order to inject myself every hour with a hypodermic needle in my skin, grey and fibrous, the final stage of the drug. I had never swept or cleaned my room. Boxes of empty phials and other detritus were piled to the ceiling. The water and electricity had long ago been cut off. I was doing absolutely nothing. I could stay immobile for eight hours just staring at the bottom of my shoes. I didnt do anything until my time had almost run out. When a friend came to visit me (but rarely did someone visit me, what was left of me to address), I remained prostrate. I was indifferent, in the shadow which had found its way into my visionthis grayish screen, each day more empty, more unfocusedpaying attention to neither his presence nor his departure. If this friend had been knocked down, I wouldnt have moved, just stared at my boots, waiting for him to die so I could pick his pockets. JFB: Was heroin an interesting experience? WB: No. JFB: You would have been able to write the same books without being an addict?
WB: I never wrote any book while taking heroin. Its strictly impossible. Heroin reduces not only perception of the surroundings, but also of the mind and body. Unlike for an artist who has to be in control of his senses and his conscience, for a writer, every experience is profitable, even a destructive one. JFB: What were you living on at that time? WB: I was receiving a small amount of money from my parents. JFB: Did they know? WB: Most certainly did, yes. JFB: A lot of people think that people who take heroin do so because they have psychological problems. WB: Thats ridiculous. The majority of those who are intoxicated are that way because they ve had a taste of it. In South America, the Indians numb themselves with coca.They could just as well be alcoholics if they had the opportunity.They take what they can find in order to forget the misery of their lives. Its the same with peasants in India who have access to opium. JFB: How did you prepare yourself to write Naked Lunch? WB: I quit heroin. But I kept my notes, unfinished manuscripts and my memories. I worked on the book using cannabis in 1957 and 1959. So when Maurice Girodias became interested and proposed publishing it, I assembled my notes. A part of these writings were also part of the The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded. JFB: You write every day?
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WB: Yes, except when Im on vacation. JFB: Cannabis is the only drug youd like to see legalized? WB: With either drugs or alcohol, the law is never a solution. Dont forget the fiasco that prohibition was in the United States. The solution could lie in an intelligent approach to regulation. Certain drugs are more destructive than others. Young addicts should be encouraged to quit by providing them with that possibility. If they dont succeed, thats that. But its impossible to encourage the free circulation of hero i n ,m o rphine or opium. In any case, any legislation that tries to dictate individual behavior is ridiculous. Can someone prevent me from gambling? The same thing is true for drugs. The matter shouldnt be dealt with by the law but by medicine. Its a drug problem. JFB: Have you ever been the victim of laws that regulate sex? WB: Homosexuality has been suppressed for a long time. Thats h a rdly the case today, except for certain practices that are provocative. Since Ive never been among those that frequent public toilets, Ive never been bothered. But I want to repeat, all laws concerning sex, drugs and so on, serve absolutely no purpose. It is an aberration to every day pass laws that will necessarily be regularly broken by a large number of individuals. Translated by Richard C. Ledes
I N S P E C T O R J . L E E O F T H E N O VA P O L I C E
London, 1970 AM/PA: How does it feel being an American in London? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: There is a job waiting here for some dynamic tycoon to bring England into the 20th century Supermarkets with a sign, No checks cashed. It isnt that we dont trust you, we dont have the time And a weather map for that day Dont talk to the clerk about the weather. Look at the map AM/PA: What do you think of Ronnie Laing? WB: I admire his work and the work he is doing in his psychiatric practice and have recommended a number of patients to him.We need more psychiatrists like Ronnie Laing AM/PA: Psycholinguistics, what does that mean?
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WB: No idea. Perhaps the relation of thought patterns to language which has received inadequate attention. The equanimity and quiet self-possession of the Chinese in the dreariest surroundings I attribute to their linguistic structure which immigrant Chinese carefully preserve. Second generation Italians do not speak Italian but four-generation Chinese in any country will speak and write Chinese. As Korzybski points out in Science and Sanity, there are falsifications built into Western languages that impose aberrative thinking. One of these is the is of identity Korzybski points to chair and says,Whatever that may be, it is not a chairThat is, it is not the verbal label chair.The is of identity which equates the word with the object or process to which the word refers is a source of confusion ranging from muddled thinking and purely verbal arguments to outright insanity. A follower of Korzybski has proposed to delete the verb to be from the English language Another falsification in inherent in the concept either/or, true or false, right or wrong, mental or physical, hereditary or environment Either/or doesnt correspond to the multi-leveled structure of the physical universe, what we know of it and still less to the structure of the nervous system. The definite article the is also misleading with its implications of one and only: The way, The God, The Universe. A language in which such concepts could not be formulated would eliminate much confusion from Western thought. Pending such a language, as the first step, everybodys kids can learn Chinese. AM/PA: What do you think about "the kids" today?
WB: I am not very musical. I like his singing when I hear it. AM/PA: Do you think that subversion should resort to invisibility? WB: Subversion invisibility,Yes or No? The either/or error. Both and. In The Invisible Generation, first published at the IT, I examine the advantages of invisibility. This article is reprinted in my forthcoming book, The Job, to be published by Jonathan Cape in April. At some point any underground must really go underground in order to survive.This point has not been reached as yet, but may be close. Meanwhile the Hippie dress serves as a demonstration and a symbol of protest and solidarity. No reason for either/or. The invisible and the visible protest can exist at the same time. AM/PA: Yo u re writing a script about the gangster Dutch Schultz Why are you interested in the Mob? WB: I set out to write a far out script about quite ordinary people, and gangsters are as ordinary as stock-brokers, policemen, reporters, judges, district attorneys, all part of an old film set. Dutch, however, was far from the Hollywood gangster. He never paid more than two dollars for a shirt and he held silk shirts in horror.Such display is vulgar, he said. He was also one of the last big time operators. AM/PA: Do you know about who reads you? WB: Yes
WB: When the present generation of reactionaries die out, who will take their place? AM/PA: Are you a fan of Bob Dylan?
AM/PA: Are you the yardstick for the drug experience? WB: There is no such yardstick. Everyone has a different metabolism. Cats for example are allergic to morphine. Rabbits thrive on it.
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AM/PA: Youve been involved with Scientology. Do you consider it useful to your work? W B : Some useful techniques and a clear statement of ve ry important question: Can man exist without a physical body? Can he detach himself from body without physical death? AM/PA: What does deconditioning mean? WB: This means the removal of all automatic reactions deriving from past conditioning, all automatic reactions to Queen, Country, Pope, President, Generalissimo, Allah, Christ, Fidel Castro, The Communist Party, the CIA When automatic reactions are no longer operative you are in a condition to make up your mind. Only the deconditioned would be allowed to vote in any thinking society and no hostess can ask her guests to put up with the man who has not been deconditionedthere he is on about student anarchy and permissiveness.Very promising techniques now exist suitable for mass deconditioning, and well all be less of a bore. In my forthcoming book, The Job, I describe the experiments of doctor Neal E. Miller who has taught rats to lower blood pressure, reduce breathing and brain waves. He has taught rats in one hour to do what yogis take 20 years to learn .A nything rats can do you can do better as subsequent experiments with human beings have demonstrated. Quote from Time, July 18, 1969, page 50: Through the cerebrospinal nervous system, the mind is able to dominate much of the body, how a man wa l k s ,t a l k s ,e t c. But the bodys glandular and visceral processes, run by what the scientists call the autonomic nervous system, have long been considered beyond the reach of conscious contro l .N ow, t h o u g h ,e x p e rimental psychologists have proved that the bodys autonomic nervous system can be taught. The results of such experiments tend to support the theory of mind over matter so long ridiculed by modern science. People
are reexamining old concepts like mind body dualism, says Dr. B e rn a rd Engel of the National Institute of Child Health in Baltimore. Engels work in autonomic shaping has enabled him to alter heart rates, and rhythms to alleviate irregular heart beats and high blood pressure. Other researchers have proved that man can learn to control even such functions as sweating, blood pressure, intestinal contractions. The vistas are staggeri n g .D r. Joe Kamiya of the Langley Porter Neurological Institute in San Francisco, who has experimented with conscious regulation of brain wave, looks forward to the day when men will have an internal vocabulary, a language he can use to explain more effectively and completely how he feels inside. In time we should be able to talk fluently about feelings such as brain wave production, blood pressure and so on. In one test eight of ten subjects were able to control the tone, emitting or suppressing brain waves as requested. Dr. Peter Lang has applied autonomic learning to control the human heart rate. The subject becomes able, as Lang puts it,to drive his own heart. Man may be able to control his internal processes, to relieve insomnia, regulate digestion and improve sexual response. Unimaginable extensions of awareness are now possible in terms of existing techniques. Lets set up a center where all these techniques are pooled and interchanged. Lets explore and chart inner space.Your inner space belongs to you. It is time to demand what is yours and to challenge anyone who claims to have knowledge of inner space to come out and show what he has. Alpha waves are the waves of sleep and dream a relaxed calm state of mind. So we hold Alpha Festivals where 400,000 brains get together and emit alpha wave s .M a ny other brain waves can be isolated and subjects trained to emit them. Any kind of wave you want. Find a wave you like and emit it. Epileptic fit waves if your think is fits.And the ever poplar sex waves. Emit pot waves and put the narcs out of business. The Woodstock Festival portends a new mass consciousness. This consciousness with the mass emission of
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brain waves can produce far reaching effects. Everywhere people pool their funds and buy an encelaphotographic unit. Tinkerers make their own.Whole cities are dreamy and somnolent with alpha waves. Sex wave orgies sweep the world.You can feel the aura of an epilepsy fit for miles, horses paw the ground and dogs howl.There are pop festivals to rock and roll brain waves. Peace love and beauty waves engulf the cops.They are throwing away their guns.A blizzard of sugary benevolence about to blow.The President calls for a nationwide alpha day. The ESP waves have been isolated. Mass telepathy breaks out. Any waves you like. AM/PA: Do you think that paranoia is a sickness? Do you have any hope for the future? WB: A paranoid might be defined as someone who has some idea as to what is actually going on. Hope for the future? Only a miracle can save the planet from disaster. Even if all nations could get around a table with actual good intentions and try to solve the problem of overpopulation, air, water and soil pollution, worldwide inflation, disposal of atomic waste, it is doubtful if they could solve these problems. A problem once posed becomes insolvable. AM/PA: What are the possibilities and probabilities? WB: As it is, we see no inkling of good intentions or sanity. We see these problems getting steadily worse as the bungling politicians refuse to admit that such problems exist. If present trends continue, there is no hope for the future. AM/PA: Is there anything real any more, Mr. Burroughs? WB: Nothing ever was. Nothing has ever had any reality, except the reality assigned to it by the observer.
AM/PA: Does it matter? WB: To who? AM/PA: William Burroughs, where are you? Would tell us if we asked?
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R O L L I N G S T O N E I N T E RV I E W
London, 1972 The interview took place in Brion Gysins flat, which he recently occupied after an extended residence in Tangier.William Burrough lives downstairs. Brions surroundings include Moroccan rugs, a few of Brions paintings of Marrakesh and the desert, a stereo, two Ushers, and an extensive library of sounds recorded in Morocco. Tapes of trance music,50s rock and roll, Sun Ra and Coltrane played in the background and various young people, many of whom Burroughs met while teaching at the University of the New World in Switzerland, were in and out. [RP] ROBERT PALMER: Youve mentioned the possibility of using this infrasound in music. Could you expand on that? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: The point is that here it has been developed as a we a p o n .N ow there are possibilities, say at the borderline of infrasound, experimenting with very slow sounds, that
could produce rhythmic vibrations that would not necessarily be fatal or unpleasant; they might be quite the contrary. In other words, it would be another step toward producingas all music, all writing, all art is really attempting to dovery definite psycho-physiological effects in the audience, reader, viewer, as the case may be. Of course, theyve never been completely successful in that. If they had they would have taken over years ago. But if they were successful, presumably you could kill a whole Shea Stadium full of people in their seats. There has been a great deal of work done recently in autonomic shaping and brain wavespeople now being able to reproduce brain waves and to learn to control heartbeats, etc. That is, people can now learn in 10 hours what it takes a yogi 20 years to learn, if they want to.They have a battery now that they can plug people into, which records brain waves, blood pressure, heart beat, resistance, t e n s i o n ,e t c.As far as I know, no experiments have been done along these lines while listening to certain music to see what the actual physiological and psychological correlates of that music are and what happens when someone listens to it. So I wanted to suggest the possibility of very precise musical experiments. RP: How would that relate to Moroccan music? How precise do you think Moroccan trance music is at producing definite states? WB: Certainly Brion knows a good deal more about this than I do, but I would suggest the same experiments be carried out. If you knew what a state of trance was, what the brain waves, blood pressure, heart beat and so forth were, then youd have some idea as to how to go about producing it, and also youd know when you are producing it and when youre getting close. RP: What about your experiments with projections?
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WB: Ive said quite a lot about that in The Job. Antony Balch 36 and I did an experiment with his face projected onto mine and mine onto his. Now if your face is projected onto someone elses in color, it looks like the other person.You cant tell the differe n c e ;i t s a real mask of light. Brion was the first to do this at Rue du Dragon in Paris, and no one would believe how it was done. They thought it was all a film. Jan Herman37 was here with his little video camera outfit and we did quite a precise experiment, which was:Antony brought up the Bill and Tony film, I sat there, and he projected it onto my face, which was re-photographed on the video camera, but that faded in and out so that it would be that face, then fade back to the now face, so that you got a real time section. We wanted to project it onto the television screen from the camera, but we c o u l d n t because the cycles we re differe n t ; A n t o ny and Ja n Herman were fooling around and they managed to suck up the television. But even seeing it on a little view screen, it was something quite extraordinary. Another experiment that Antony and I did was to take the two faces and alternate them 24 frames per second, but its such a hassle to cut those and re-splice them, even to put one minute of alterations of 24 frames per second on a screen, but it was quite extraordinary.An experiment I always wanted to make was to record and photograph, very friendly and very unfriendly faces and words and then alternate them 24 frames per second.That should have a quite upsetting effect, I think; you dont know until you actually do it. RP: What about your story in The Job about the Buful Peoples projecting baby faces on their audiences and making them run out and shit in the streets? Is that you idea of what the effects of such an experiment might be? WB: That could be. Its a question of getting a sufficient degree of precision. If I really knew how to write, I could write some-
thing that someone would read and it would kill them.The same way with music, or any effect you want could be produced if you were precise enough in your knowledge or technique. RP: How would that work with writing? WB: Exactly the same way.What is the writer trying to do? Hes trying to reproduce in the readers mind a certain experience, and if he were completely successful in that, the reproduction of the experience would be complete. Perhaps fortunately, theyre not that successful. RP: Can words actually be that successful? WB: I think so. I think words possibly above all. RP: Back to music: do you feel that a pop groups dependence on costly equipment and established media makes it difficult for these groups to disseminate an anti-establishment, anti-control message? WB: I think the dividing line between establishment and nonestablishment is breaking down. People tend to say that if an underground paper succeeds and makes money, it is now part of the establishment, or if pop singers make a lot of money and their records make a great deal of money for big companies they are now part of the establishment, but the underground or any movement is not going to succeed by not succeeding. If you publish an underground paper that nobody reads or produce music that nobody listens to, theres no point. And if people do read your paper or listen to your music then you are subject to make money. RP: Do you think the force and amplitude of rock can make it a force for liberation, regardless of the lyric content?
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WB: I would say so, very definitely.And potentially a tremendous force, in view of the experiments that I have suggested. RP: Its hard to say how much it has to do with the words and the lyrics. WB: Very difficult to say. I usually cant hear the words. RP: Well, some groups, like the Rolling Stones, purposely mix the words down in the track. WB: Alfred Korzybski pointed out that one of the basic errors of Western thought is the either/or proposition, which is implicit in our language. Are they broadcasting an anti-establishment message or are they Well, they might be doing both at the same time quite well. Or all sorts of va ri a t i o n s . Really its not an either/or proposition. RP: And it might effect each listener differently. WB: Right. But the mere fact of the number of people reached and that these people are young, and therefore the most subject to revolutionary ideas, makes them a terrific force. RP: Do you think a group thats operating its own record company has a freer hand, than a group that must operate through a conglomeration? WB: I do not know enough about the music business to answers that question, but a similar question: Do you think that writers would have more effect if they published their own wo r k ? Definitely no. Because the publisher is set up to distribute just as the record company is to sell records. If youre going to try to do all that yourselffor one thing its going to take up all your time,
and youre not going to do it as we l l .N ow that doesnt mean that record companies and publishing companies may not have all sorts of establishment preconceptions about what they distribute, and how hard they push it, but the question of taking over their f u n c t i o n ,f o r, say, pop stars to do all that themselves, they wouldnt have time. Anymore than writers should take over publishing, although theyve talked about it, but nothing has ever come of it. The media are really accessible to everyone. People talk about establishment media, but the establishment itself would like to suppress the media altogether.There was a program on television the other night where they came right out and said that showing wars and riots on television can produce wars and ri o t s .T h e re s never been a comparable situation, where whatever is happening anywhere people can switch on their televisions and see it. I recall in Chicago, the riot pictures we re shown in the Convention Hall live as they were happening, and then all sorts of similar incidents broke out. Cops blackjacked delegates. RP: Youd say, then, that pop music is not part of what youve called the control machine? WB: No; it might overlap with it, but its not a part of it. RP: Bob Dylan has mentioned his interest in and indebtedness to your work, and several of your phrases have popped up in Rolling Stones songslike in Memo From Turnerfrom Performance. Have they been into your work from reading, or from talking with you? WB: I have only met Bob Dylan on one occasion, and Mick Jagger about four or five times and there were other people around.There was no discussion of the books. So it must be from reading. RP: Do you have anything to say about the music of Soft Machine and the Insect Trust, groups which took their names from your work?
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WB: Not really. Ive listened to the music. Its intere s t i n g .I t s certainly very fancy music, very sophisticated music. RP: Do you think their music relates to your work in any way? WB: None whatever, and I can say that with a clear conscience because they have never underlined the connection. I mean many people dont know that The Soft Machine is actually one of my titles, and they havent mentioned it in their interviews. RP: What about the many references to popular songs in your books, especially some of the sequences in The Soft Machine which are made up of song titles and lines? WB: In writing, I see it as a whole set. Its got a scri p t ,i t s got pictures, and it has a soundtrack. And very often the soundtrack is mu s i c a l .I ve used quite a bit of these techniques actuallythat is, a sentence to be sung to a certain tune. RP: Do remembered tunes call up stronger and more specific associations than images that arent related to tunes? WB: Very definitely, ye s .T h a t s what tunes are all about. I think its pretty well established pragmatically that music is more precise in evoking a scene, particularly a past scene, than, shall we say, a neutral soundtrack of words. But I notice that they are tending, at least in the Joujouka record [Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, Rolling Stones Records] ,t oward deliberately using some of the background noise: shouts, dogs barking in Jo u j o u k a , the chauffeur snoring in another re f e re n c e. T h a t s something I think that has to be done with a very precise hand. In practice, the music is played on a location so there will be background noise as well.
RP: Would you like eventually to put out books with accompanying records, having the musical and sound references along with the writing? WB: I think that is a very brilliant idea because people have not put out books with a record. I even did that, but the record simply consisted of a spoken tape of the book, which in this case was a short book. But to me, spoken tapes, you can just take so much. Its a different operation than reading. The idea of spoken books is completely unworkable. But I hadnt thought of a soundtrack, which could actually be quite carefully pre p a re d ,h ave some of the dialogue, etc., but be principally musical. Or some of the sound effects that people havent heard, for example, like the noise that howler monkeys make. Its like wind in the trees, but not quite, because theres nothing quite like it. And listening to it for a few seconds is much more precise than talking about it. RP: You wrote in The Job: It is now possible to decondition man from the whole punishment-reward cycle. WB: I simply mean that if we had sufficient knowledge we couldany neurosis, any hang-up resulting from the past conditioning must express itself in actual physiological reaction patterns. Now recent experiments have indicated the possibility of simply reprogramming reaction patterns as you would reprogram a computer. Scientists have attached an apes brain to a computer, so the electrical impulses from the apes brain were giving orders to the computerthat is, setting programs which could then be fed back the other way. Now undoubtedly they could get to the point of simply reprogramming, and they might be able to do that in a matter of hours.We dont know, because it has never occurred in history, what a completely deconditioned human being would look like, or act like.
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RP: Or whether he would exist at all. WB: Right. But as Korzybski always used to say, I dont know, lets see. RP: What about the giant black centipede the de-anxietized man turned into in Naked Lunch? WB: I have no reason to think that the result would be of that nature. [Laughter] And if it is, what the hell, I mean; were all black centipedes at heart, so why worry about it. RP: Isnt it going to be very dangerous if, as it seems likely, the people who control these techniques are the ones most opposed to deconditioning? WB: That argument is always raised with any new discovery or any piece of equipment, but this equipment is not all that expensive, or difficult. Anybody can do it. It is directing a very small electrical charge in a certain brain area. Now Scientology processing on the E-Meterthe E-Meter passes about a half a volt through the brain and bodyis really sort of a sloppy form of electrical brain stimulation, because it consists of repetitive questions like, What are you willing to talk about with me? What would you like to tell me about that? Repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. So the current is going through there. It seems to me that the best insurance that the discovery is not used for control purposes is people knowing about it.The more people that know about it, the less chance there is to monopolize it, particularly such very simple techniques as these, which anyone can learn. Now the E-Meter is in fact a lie detector and a mind-reading machine.You can read anyones mind with itbut not the content, only the reactions. If I ask a specific question, say if I ask someone, Did you ever fuck your mother? Did you ever fuck
your mother? Ill get a read.Thats a protest re a d ,m aybe dreams, fantasies. But if after going through all of that, it still reads, by God, he did. I mean theres no beating a lie detector on a direct question like that. RP: How does the machine read the subjects reactions? WB: It is read on a needle. Takes quite a while to know how to work it because you have all sorts of reads. All sorts of things can happen.You can have a stuck needlevery rarewhere the needle doesnt move at allthat usually means you have a mental defective or something wrong with the apparatus. Now there are many actions that you can get on this needle, but the most common is a fall, which indicates a read, which indicates a reaction. A fall is only one reaction, there are others. Theres a rise which means boredom,inattention.Theres also a floating needle, which the scientology processing aims for. The needle floats back and forth, quite free. RP: What kind of effect is achieved on a personal level after youve learned to get a floating needle on very highly-charged questions? WB: Its a very handy thing. If youve got a business associate and you get a strong read on his name, youre much more suspicious of him than you may realize, and usually with good re a s o n .A ny incident that disturbs you, if you run it to a floating needle, it sort of evaporates. I use it sometimes for that, not very much anymore, but it works very well. If some disturbing incident has just happened, you run it on there until you get a floating needle. It may take varying lengths of time, usually not more than 10 or 15 minutes at the most. A floating needle means that its gone for now. It may come back; it may disturb you tomorrow. Now theres every evidence that a floating needle here would correspond to alpha
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waves. Joe Kamiya38 in San Francisco has done an awful lot of work with this autonomic shaping. He found that the way to inhibit alpha waves is to make anything very solid in your mind. All you have to do is to get a very clear picture of something and that knocks out the alpha waves. So this could be cross-checked with those machines. RP: Aside from the value of the E-Meter, are your feelings on Scientology pretty much what they were when you wrote The Job? WB: No. Ive written another little article since then where I c riticize their re a c t i o n a ry policies. And some of the old Scientologists have defected and set up a new organization. RP: Youve talked about hieroglyphic or picture writing. Do you feel that were living out the end of the age of literacy, that people are going to be reading more and more picture books? WB: Well, that is not all that certain because the actual picture magazines are going out of business, Life, Newsweek, all of them. There are ideas that I had, which have not been borne out. Like when I said in the Academy Series, recommend that the daily press be discontinued. Remember that the Academy Series was all predicted as occurring in 1899, and it was my feeling that if certain measures had been taken then, the present mess might have been avoided, 1899 being an arbitrary date when it might have been possible. But this is 1972. I would certainly not recommend it now. RP: Youre working on a comic book? WB: Yes. It is a comic book in that it has whole sequences of actions in pictures. But there are also about 60 pages of text, so its something between a comic book and an illustrated book.
Malcolm McNeil39 is doing the artwork. It is most closely similar to the actual format of the Mayan Codices, which was an early comic book. Therell be pictures in the Codices, and sometimes therell be three pages of text in the writing that we cant read.We can read the dates, a great deal of dates.The story concerns someone who has discovered the control secrets of the Mayan books. RP: The fact that the Mayan books were a system able to control the people very precisely through calendar dates and knowing what stimuli were going to be applied on any one day, is that your main interest in Mayan civilization? WB: Yes. It was a control system that required no police, working on psychological controls. The priests were only about one percent of the population. Priests and artisans would certainly not come out to more than five percent.And how did they keep them working? RP: Any ideas how they might have done it? WB: Oh, very precise ideas, which Ive developed in the books. RP: Have you looked at the Mayan books here in London? WB: Ive seen them all, but there were only three.You see, Bishop Landa40 burned a stack of them as big as that rug. Somebody who was there grabbed three out of the fire.Theyre burned around the edges.Those were the Dresden, the Paris, and the Madrid Codices, named for the places where they now are, in the respective museums. These turned up, I think, in the 17th century, in some old book shop somewhere. There are copies of those available. They have them at the British Museum, and I went over there and looked at the copies with Malcolm, and then we had photostats made. But, of course, those are not colored and the originals are
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colored, so theres no way of knowing what the others consisted of. I mean a whole civilization that went up in flames. Its as if you piled all our physics books, Shakespeare, and everything else and burnt the whole lot.We dont know what is left, you understand. The books that we now have, we assume, but perhaps not with good reason, were of a similar nature to the others. RP: In this new book are you using any of the simplified hieroglyphic script which you gave samples and explanations of in The Job? WB: No. That is something that will have to be worked out because there are all sorts of problems. I started trying to learn how to use Egyptian hieroglyphs, but picture writing at a certain point becomes incredibly cumbersome. The grammar is very complicated.To get around this and get something people could write, the scribes must have started at a very early age, I suppose, like the Chinese and I presume they each had a different style. RP: So you dont feel, as McLuhan does, that print is on the way out? WB: Well, no. What does he think is going to take its place? We know that physics and mathematics have whole non-verbal communication systems. RP: Apparently he thought electronic media, spoken words, and pictures were going to take the place of print. WB: Well, you still have the problem of actual prose. In this book that I am doing with Malcolm, there are lots of sections which go just like film, but the text is really still essential.There are 60 pages of text; were already having problems with translating that into imagesnot that we cant do it, but that it would take 300 pages to do it all. If we took every sentence and translated it into pictures, wed have a huge book which would be way out of our
budget. And there are things really that theres no point in translating into pictures, since they are much clearer in prose. Theres another point where a page of prose cant do what a picture can. RP: Well, when you said, Rub out the word, was that another way of saying, Learn to use words instead of being used by them? WB: Thats one I will have to think about. I dont think when I said that I had any clear idea as to what it would involve, or even what words were. I have been thinking about a whole field theory of words. I have a much clearer idea now as to what would be involved, but its something pretty drastic. Of course, it was Brions suggestion originally. Lets say that you would have to first have some idea of what the word is and how it operates. I predict that the word is an actual virus, a virus that has achieved equilibrium with the host, and therefore is not recognized as a virus. I have a number of technical books on that subject, and there are other viruses that have achieved this.That is, they replicate themselves within the cells but they dont harm the cells. RP: Are you thinking of something like the proliferation of responses to Mailers article about Womens Lib? WB: Not precisely. I mean that a phrase can replicate itself and jump all over the world. It usually is a pretty simple formu l a .A n example: years ago I found out that a cure for the common cold was Vitamin A in massive doses. Ive used it for years, and it definitely does work.Well, someone seems to have a vested interest in the common cold, because Vitamin A was completely ignored and they started this Vitamin C bit. And Vitamin C is absolutely worthless for a cold. Now time and time again Ive told people about Vitamin A and they immediately say, in exactly the same tone, You mean Vitamin C. Its a turn-off on Vitamin A.
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RP: Where do you think that turn-off originated? Has it been implanted by some of these vested interests you spoke of? WB: At the time I made this discovery I was working for an advertising agency in New York, and I said, Well put it on the market as a patent medicine.The company did not want to know because it might wo r k .T h ey said, The AMA is very down on self-medications. For years the doctors have been afraid of any really effective panacea, or effective medicines that anyone could use, which are also harmless, so that they wouldnt have any necessity for a doctors prescription. RP: Is this similar to the fear of apomorphine? WB: Yes, I would say so.Apomorphine and the possibility of synthetic derivations which would have a much stronger action and they could probably eliminate the nausea altogethercould be just such a general panacea against conditions of anxiety and intoxication: a metabolic regulator.Well, a drug with such general application is something that they would regard with considerable misgivings. It is not a dangerous drug actually, and if it were widely used, that would become apparent; there really isnt any necessity for a prescription. RP: Do you have any information on the introduction of weight heroin into Harlem and into the ghettos during the 40s, which seems to have been the beginning of the current problem? WB: I dont.You see, I was there in the late 40s and early 50s, and the agents then were just beginning to bother addicts. Before theyd been more interested in pushers. RP: Why did they start bothering addicts rather than pushers?
WB: In order to spread it. They kept the pushers continually looking for new markets. RP: Do you see that as a very conscious attempt to spread it for certain, say political ends, or as a tendency of bureaucracies to perpetuate themselves? WB: Both.The tendency of bureaucracies is to increase personnel, of course. If youve got one person who isnt doing anything, then he gets five or six subordinates in, and so it goes.They tend to make themselves necessary. RP: Well, theyre really cracking down on grass and psychedelics now, and causing lots of kids to turn to dow n e rs .T h ey called last year the year of the downers, and none of my friends who used to take acid, say, once or twice a week, have had any in the last year and a half. BRION GYS I N : Did you get uncomfort a ble physical side effects from acid? RP: No, some uncomfortable psychological effects occasionally, but never a bad trip or anything like that. WB: I think its horrible stuff. RP: Why do you think its horrible stuff? WB: So far as Im concerned, it has absolutely nightmare reactionssymptoms of an extreme and depressing nature. I felt as if I was on fire. Maybe someone didnt get all the ergot out of it. But I just dont want to know about acid. RP: Do you think it can have value for some people?
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WB: It seems to, but then its very dubious. Lots of people that take it all the time think theyre benefiting, but I dont as an observer. BG: Oh, but I think everybody should have taken it at least once. I dont think anybody has to take it more, in fact. Essentially very square people have taken it just once, and its made an astounding difference in their lives and their outlook. WB: But couldnt they have done the same with majoun [a preparation of hashish]? BG: I dont think so. It doesnt take you quite as far out. WB: Not quite as far, but at least there Im in an area that I can control. BG: No, but the experience is to get into an area that you cant control and realize that you can go there and come back again. WB: I find both mescaline and yag, which has never been circulated, though it could beits just a question of chemical analysismuch more interesting. Peyote made me terribly sick, so sick I couldnt get any enjoyment out of it. RP: Do you have any ideas why many of the popular rock groups today are those that put out a wall of noise for people who come in with wine and seconal head? WB: I dont know. Im not really in touch with the situation in the States at all. I was there two years ago for six weeks, and before that I left in 1965. So since 65 I have only been back for the Chicago Convention and a brief stay in New York it seems that alcohol is on the increase as opposed to pot. I hear that from a number of sources.
RP: Ripple and reds WB: Oh my God, that is absolutely terrible.You really get some terrible effects from that. Ive always hated barbiturates. I hate the sensation, and the most unpleasant hangover in the world is the barbiturate hangover.Worse than alcohol, and of course, in combination Also its very dangerous. You know, alcohol ups the toxicity by about 30 percent. RP: Of the drugs people take to get highsay, barbiturates, speed, cannabis, psychedelicswhich ones do you think have some value? WB: Cannabis, I think, has the most value. Amphetamines, absolutely none. Barbiturates, absolutely none. I just cant see anything that could possibly result from either barbiturates or amphetamines that could be considered desirable from any point of view. RP: How about for going to sleep? WB: The worst thing possible because all youre doing is further interfering with the cycle of sleep and waking. OK, you take one nembutal and you go to sleep. Before a week is out, youre not going to sleep without them. But youll sleep when you are ready to sleep. I think barbiturates are really the last indication, except in certain extreme cases. But apomorphine is very good for insomnia. Its frequently prescribed in France. No addictive properties at all, and you never have to increase the dosage or depend on it. RP: Do you think cannabis has any effect on sleep or keeping you awake? WB: No.The only result that I have noticed from cannabis is that if you smoke a lot of cannabis, you wont dream as much while
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youre asleep. Its quite obvious that youre doing your dreaming while youre awake. Now if Ive been smoking a lot of cannabis and not dreaming, and then I suddenly dont have any cannabis, Ill have very vivid dreams every night. RP: Do you foresee a situation of cannabis being legalized in the West any time in the near future? WB: I dont know. It would seem to me to be a concession that they could not afford to make. Grant too many concessions and theyll ask for more and more and more. It seems doubtful that they could risk making that concession. RP: Many state laws have been amended to make simple possession a misdemeanor, and theres talk of decriminalizing it entirely. WB: O h ,t h e re s no doubt about it. Lots of politicians have been talking about it. I dont know if it might happen. If America legalized it, everyone would because all the pressures coming from A m e ri c a . RP: Lets delve into the past a little. Where and what was the Beat Hotel? BG: The Beat Hotel was in Paris at 9, rue Gt-le-Coeur, just off the Place Saint-Michel in the Latin Quarter. For a lot of young people in Paris it was more than a home. Thats where the Beat scene in Paris was born. A Dutch painter turned Allen Ginsberg onto it in 1956, I am told. I didnt get there myself until 1958 when I ran into Burroughs on the street, and he told me he lived in Room 15. The hotel was run by a wonderful French woman named Madame Rachou, who might have made herself rich and famous if she had laid away just a few of the manuscripts of what was
written under her roof, or collected some of the pictures painted in her hotel. She was a funny mixture of peasant shrewdness and hardness along with the most disinterested generosity. She would do anything to help anyone just coming out of jail, no matter who they were or what they had been in for. She had her own ideas about who she wanted in her so-called hotel and some people waited forever, buying drinks at her little zinc-covered bar. I remember her telling an American that there would be a room ready in 10 minutes. From behind her bar, she could see the municipal undertakers going up the stairs to take out a poor old French pauper whod died in his rent controlled ro o m . Americans pay more, even beatniks. On the other hand, the better-off anyone looked, the more likely she was to turn them away, and she certainly preferred young peopleeven troublesome young peopleto old. RP: Were you working on the Naked Lunch materials at that time? WB: I wasnt doing all that much at that time, actually, Girodias of Olympia Press, the eventual publishers, had turned the manuscript down the first time, around two years before that, and I just wasnt doing much work. RP: Had you written Naked Lunch in Tangier, then? WB: Right. BG: In a hotel we called the Villa Delirium, which was another great spot near the beach in Tangier. It had a garden and WB: Another memorable Madame BG: The lady from Saigon. The number of people who revolved through those two hotels is really remarkable. All the Beats
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WB: and so many people who have really gone places since then.That young filmmaker, for example BG: Oh, Mel Van Peebles.41 WB: Terry Southern, Mason Hoffenberg42 BG: The list is really endless. An enormous number of musicians. The place was always bubbling with music, whether being produced on instruments or being played on tapes or re c o rd s . Mezzrows son lived there Mezz Mezzrow!43 My God, he was a fantastic cat. He was around the hotel quite a lot. I remembered one day in winter. It was very, very cold, and I opened the door, and here was this big, fat, black woman complaining about something. She really put on such a scene that I just told her, I dont know, I dont know, and I slammed the door, and she went banging on the next door, which was Gregory Corsos across the hall. And I think it was Gregory who cracked up and said,But Mezz, what are you doing?The old man had got himself into drag, put some kind of makeup on his face and he went through the entire hotel until somebody just said, What is that youre doing? RP: Was it during this time that you discovered the cut-up technique? BG: I had a big table on which I worked very often with a Stanley blade, and I had cut up a number of newspapers accidentally.They had been underneath something else that I was cutting. The pieces sort of fell together, and I started matching them up, and I thought Wo-o-o-o-ow, its really very funny. And I took some of them and arranged them in a pattern which was visually pleasing to me and then typed up the results; and I have never laughed so heartily in my entire life. The first time around, doing your own cut-ups and seeing the results, theres a sort of feeling of hilarity But it doesnt happen
again. Its a oner, a single sensation that happens just that one first time, it seems to me. But I was really socked by that. And it had exactly the same effect on him. But I must say that I had though of it as a rather superior amusement, and was very impressed by Williams immediate recognition that here was something extremely important to him, that he could put to use right away, and did. With great excitement we put together a book, and the title was really pulled right out of the air. It seems to me we were standing in the doorway to my Room 25 when someone said, Hurry, hurry, theres only minutes to go! and I said wow, thats the title obviously. RP: What was it you saw in the cut-ups initially, after you stopped laughing? WB: Well, I saw the possibility of permutations, particularly of images, which is the area in which it has worked best over a period of time. A book of Rimbauds poetry or any extremely visual text will cut up and give you new combinations that are quite va l i d ,n ew images. In other words, you are drawing a whole series of images out of this page of text. RP: Does this technique relate to 20th century painting? BG: A whole lot. Look at it like this: 20th century painting ceased being representational,gave up story-telling and became abstract. Today only squares can stand in front of a work of art whining: But what does it mean? Confronted with a piece of writing, that is the only question that readers still do ask. Perhaps there could be abstract literature, as abstract as is what we call abstract painting.Why not? We wanted to see. We began to find out a whole lot of things about the real nature of words and writing when we began to cut them up. What are words and what are they doing? Where are they going?
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The cut-up method treats words as the painter treats his paint, raw material with rules and reasons of its own. Representational painters fucked over their paint until they made it tell a tale. Abstract painters found that the real hero of the picture is the paint. Painters and writers of the kind I respect want to be heroes, challenging fate in their lives and in their art.What is fate? Fate is written:Mektoub in the Arab wo r l d ,w h e re art has always been nothing but abstract.Mektoub means it is written. So if you want to challenge and change fate cut up the words. Make them make a new world. Within weeks of stumbling on the cut-ups, I came across the Divine Tautology in Huxleys Heaven and Hell. I AM THAT I AM. I took a long look at it and found that the design of the phrase did not please me at all. I decided to make it more symmetrical by displacing the words.The biggest block was THAT, so I decided to leave it in the middle. My first move was to put at each end the word I. It read: I AM THAT AM I. That sounded more like a question.What had been one of the most affirmative statements of all time had become a question, and a poignant one, simply by changing the word-order around. As I began to run through some of the other 120 simple permutations of these five words, I heard the words running away by themselves:THAT I AM, I AM, AM I THAT I AM? etc. They went on asking and answering themselves like the links of a chain, jingling against each other as they fell apart and changed places musically. I heard them. I actually heard the world falling apart. I fell back on my bed in Room 25 hearing this stage distant ringing in my ears like Newton said he heard the music of the spheres when he stumbled on the laws of gravitation. I was as high as that.All that period in the Beat Hotel was one enormous intellectual high, wasnt it,William? I have a whole book of permutated poems Ive never been able to get published. Ian Sommerville put them through the computer for me. In 1960, I gave a program of them on the BBC, and they have come out on records issued by Henry Chopin for his review, Ou.
RP: William, would you encourage people to read Minutes to Go before reading you subsequent books? It is important for people who want to understand what youre doing? WB: I think its quite an important book, and it does give a much clearer indication as to what Im doing and the whole theory and development of cut-ups. RP: Where do you feel youve used cut-ups to greatest advantage? WB: I would say in sections of The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and in Nova Express as well. In certain sections it has worked. I feel that in all those books there was too much rather undifferentiated cut-up material, which I eliminated in The Wild Boys.The cut-up technique has very specific uses. RP: Brion, what about your Dream Machine? Youve both used it? BG: Ye s ,i t s a stroboscope, in one word. But regulated to produce interruptions of light at between eight and 13 flashes a second, complementing the alpha rhythms in the brain, or eventually bringing the two into phase, and at the moment, immediately, one begins with sensations of extraordinary, bright color and infinite pattern which is quickly elaborating itself into fields that appear at 180 degrees to begin with, and eventually seem to be occurring around 360 degrees.There are several different areas of color, of intensity and changes of pattern, which follow each other in apparent random order, and then give way, at a certain point, to things recognized as dream images, imaginary events occurring at a certain speed, much like a speeded-up movie. But depending on ones own state or the length of time one watches, they become like the most elaborate highly structured sort of dreams. Ive had science fiction dreams. Ive imagined that I was swimming over what seemed to be an ocean bottom and that big
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mollusks at the bottom opened up and through them appeared swimmers in Leonardo da Vinci-type helmets, and a lot of dreams about fights between them, or flights of them. There seems to be no end to it. Ive watched for literally hundreds of hours, and things never repeat themselves. Patterns do. Apparently they can eventually be learned and re c og n i z e d .S o m e of the people whove investigated them, including a group in G e rm a ny, have identified a great many of the elements of design all over the world found in weaving or in pottery or in archaeological objects. All of them have been related to the sort of visions that one has with the Dream Machine. But there just havent been many of these machines aro u n d ;i t s never been possible to have them made. We struggled along for years and years to try to get someone to manufacture them, and nothing has ever come of it. RP: Did you say something, about someone, doing some of the first light shows during this Beat Hotel period? BG: Yes, they were invented by us in the Beat Hotel, by Ian Sommerville and me. And with the very small amount of electricity we were allowed by Madame Rachou, who like all French hotel keepers rationed it out with a fuse box down in her bistro. If you started using too many watts, youd blow out a fuse, so we used to sometimes have to hook up two or three rooms together to get things going. We put on shows that most of the people who later went into the thing as a business were turned on by those shows we did in Paris with projections and tapes and sound poetry. RP: Are the technologically equipped homosexual warrior packs of The Wild Boys projections of yours, or a prediction? And are there things about the developments in The Wild Boys scenario that you would consider desirable?
WB: Is the book a projection? Yes. Its all simply a personal projection. A prediction? I hope so. Would I consider events similar to The Wild Boys scenario desirable? Yes, desirable to me. RP: Do you think things might get to the point of there being guerrilla armies of young people throughout the world,marching on the citadels of authority? WB: There is a presupposition in The Wild Boys book of some disaster or plague which has reduced the population of the world by about three-quarters.All these empty stre e t s ,e t c. So they are in a set that is already quite depopulated. Of course, under the present circumstances,any such thing is impossible, there simply isnt room, theres no place to go.Well, South America. RP: Youre assuming that this plague wouldve killed off mostly older peoplethat the younger people, being stronger, would have survived. WB: Yes, definitely. Bore down kind of heavy on the whites, too. I think it was 99 percent fatal in South Africa and the Bible Belt. RP: Brion has talked about a decay of servicescanceled mail deliveries, unsafe streetsbefore the fall of the Roman Empire. In The Wild Boys civilization is reduced to holding enclaves. Were you thinking of historical parallels? WB: Well, that is the set that I presupposed in The Wild Boys as already existing, which means that communications have broken down, theres very little gasoline, people are going back to signal drums or other primitive communications systems. RP: Why arent women involved in these bands of wild boy guerrillas?
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WB: I have a number of things to say on that subject Because women are trouble. It is another organism with interests perhaps basically irre c o n c i l a ble with the male interestwhich has installed itself as indispensable.Well, they may be indispensable to some people, but theyre not necessarily indispensable to me. So I was merely proposing this as one experimental line that I would be most interested to follow, in the direction of mutations from the present humanoid form.That is, boys who had never had contact with women would be quite a different animal. We cant imagine what they would be like. I certainly have no objections if lesbians would like to do the same RP: Women who had never had contact with men would be a pretty different animal, too. WB: Indeed they wo u l d .T h ey could be given female babies to raise from birth. RP: Have you got any ideas on what that might lead to? WB: I dont know. They could mutate into birds, perhaps, but what I was proposing on an overall scale is that the present human product seems to have gotten itself into a real bind. And what we need is variety, in other words, mutations. Now, at one time there may have been many humanoids, but only one strain survived. Have you read African Genesis? Well, there was the aggressive southern ape who survived because he was a killer, and has really in a sense forced his way of life on the whole species. There is only one game and that game is war. RP: Do you feel that that game is genetically built into the species as it exists now? WB: Yes.
RP: Have you seen any signs of mutations such as youre looking for beginning to occur? WB: Well, occasionally you do see really quite extraordinary people that look like they might be mutating; Ive seen rather more lately. RP: What kind of characteristic do they have that are different? WB: Well, I dont know whether a genetic mutation would be necessary for this, but if people were actually in control over their bodies, they would appear superhuman, that is, if they never dropped anything, fumbled anything. Which, obviously, theyre quite capable of doing. The only problem is that after thousands of years theyve never learned to operate their own machine. Its a quite complicated machine, but still, they should learn over a period of time.They go on trying to do the same things that just dont work.And thats what no politician can ever admit.You cant get up there and say, Boys the whole thing just wont work. RP: Does the writing technique in The Wild Boys differ from that of the previous four novels? WB: Yes, I think that in The Wild Boys I was really quite deliberately returning to older styles of writing. Quite a bit of it is really 19th century. Its a different style of writing. RP: Did you use cut-ups in The Wild Boys? WB: Yes, but sparingly, and very carefully selecting the phrases from the cut-ups, sifting through them many, many times. I didnt use it to the extent it was used in The Ticket That Exploded and The Soft Machine and Nova Express, nowhere near.
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RP: Has there been a progression in your writing to use them more sparingly and with more precision and control? WB: Yes. And also there are literary situations in which they are useful, and others in which they are not. Now in recreating a d e l i ri u m ,t h ey re good, because that is what is happening. In high fevers the images cut in quite arbitrarily. So I used that in the dream section where the Boy is dying in the jungle. RP: Is The Wild Boys closely connected to your previous novels, or does it stand by itself? WB: I think it stands by itself.Theres no carry-over of characters as there are in the other books. Naked Lunch,The Soft Machine, and to some extent The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express even, were all part of about a thousand pages of manuscript.And then I had to get together one book for Girodias in two weeks. And I did. That is how it happened. I thought, which chapter goes where is going to be very complicated, but it came back from the printers, and Sinclair Beiles44 took one look and said, Why dont you leave it like this? And we did. Thats just sure chance, as the chapters were going in as we typed them out. That was Naked Lunch. Then I had lots of material left over and I started writing The Soft Machine from that but there were no cut-ups as such used in Naked Lunch at all. RP: How far does that material go back? WB: The actual notes for Naked Lunch started, I think, around 1955 or 54. They piled up over a period of years, and I sent one version to Maurice Girodias, who didnt want it at that time. A few years later I was back to Pa ri s , and he sent Sinclair Beiles over to say that he wanted to publish it within two weeks. And a month later it was out on the bookstands.
RP: Eric Mottram calls your first four novels The Tetralogy. Is a similar grouping emerging from your new work? WB: Yes, everything Im doing now is connected with The Wild Boys.The comic strip is using one of the same characters, as well as the other book RP: What does this other book have to do with? WB: It concerns an incestuous family of father, mother, two brothers and two sisterscompletely interc h a n g e a ble sexual combinations.And they succeed because they are incestuous, liberated from all their inhibitions. RP: Succeed at what? WB: Well, by selling short during the Depression theyre able to fill a swimming pool with gold dollars. RP: Is that the last or the next Depression? WB: The last one; its set back.What they do, in a sense, is make capitalism work.That is, they buy up the dust bowl, so they keep people there on the land and turn them all into incestuous family groups. Not only are they happier, but theyre much more efficient, and nobody could compete with these families. RP: So this is a very different scenario sexually from The Wild Boys, but its approached in the same way? WB: Yes. I thought it might have more popular appeal And that of course brings them into conflict with the sinister forces of Big Money; theyre subverting the whole meaning of money.
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RP: We havent talked about your teaching gig in Switzerland.Were you applying the deconditioning process we talked about early? WB: Hardly. My impression of the University of the New World was that while the general idea was good, there was not a clear enough concept as to what the education process was supposed to bring about.You must have some idea as to the product you wish to turn out, in this case of what they were going to teach people to do, before you can go about taking the necessary measures. I was vaguely teaching Creative Writing.Theres a question in my mind as to whether writing can be taught. There are techniques of writing, but I dont think any writer has ever lived long enough to really discover these or codify them. I gave two talks, and I had 20 to 30 students in each talk. I dont see how you could bring about any deconditioning in two talks. If I was running such a university, I would teach people very definite things, like how to make change, even in a street crap game; how to get service, and so on. How to do things. I would set up a number of dummy situations, and I think that would teach them to transport themselves efficiently, or as efficiently as possible. Of course, I went into those ideas in The Job and in the Academic Series. All of those things mentioned could be taught and would be extremely beneficial. Now by product I mean, for example, the English public schools were set up to turn out these old school ties, English gentlemen who ran the Empire when they had one. Theres not much point in that now, but at least they knew what they were trying to do, so therefore they knew how to go about doing it. Now, the general proposition of all these free universities is there to teach people to think for themselve s ,w h a t ever that may mean. But it all has to be quite precise when it comes to actually giving courses. And I think thats where that university, and many others that were formulated on a similar basis, have broken down.
RP: If you were running such a university, would you offer the synthesis of Eastern/mystical and Western/technological disciplines you proposed in the Academy Series? WB: Well, personally Ive always drawn very much of a blank on yoga, and I feel that in view of electric brain stimulation and autonomic shaping, I would not be inclined to spend much time on slower methods for accomplishing the same thing. Its questionable in my mind whether these Eastern disciplines do have very much to offer. I mean, after all these thousands of years, where is India? If were thinking now in terms of possible new mutations into more efficient forms, certainly nothing of the sort is taking place in the East. In other words, their statistics are not all that good. If they were able, through yogic disciplines, to achieve the level of awareness that they claim theyre able to achieve, it would seem odd that their area is in such a complete mess.They havent come up with solutions to the overpopulation, soil exhaustion, etc. RP: You said at the end of The Job with particular reference to young people,If you want the world you could have in terms of discoveries and resources now in existence, be prepared to fight for that world. To fight for that world in the streets. Would you still say that today? WB: My ideas have undergone a number of changes since The Job. But certainly the most important factor is the young, and who will be controlling in 25 or 30 ye a rs . Its questionable whether they can go on breeding their old forms, stockbrokers and lawyers and whatever, in sufficient quantity. What I mean is, suppose the young people are in power simply because theyre the only people left in 30 years, when the old reactionaries and that whole stratum has died out. Theyre running things now, completely. And what are they going to do?
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RP: Youve often pointed out attitudes and styles shared by young people all over the wordthey dress similarly, use cannabis and other consciousness expanding drugs, hear the same music.Are these generation ties more binding than national, cultural, family ties? WB: Yes, very definitely. And one reason that they are is, of course, the media. RP: Do you foresee these ties eventually unifying the worlds youth to the point where they can destroy the control machine being perpetuated by their elders? WB: Certainly. They will become their elders, and therefore make the changes. Now in 20 or 30 years all the Wallace folks, etc., will have died. We l l , w h o s going to take their place? Occupying all the positions that are now occupied by their elders, either occupying all those positions or nullifying them, youre bound to have a whole different picture. I mean, if theyve got some cool pot-smoking cat as President, hes not going to make the same kind of decisions or impose the same policies .N ow the question of whether the control machine, as you said earlier, would impose certain necessities on anybody that used itthats another consideration, and to some extent it would. But they certainly would be more willing to listen to the idea of basic alterations, and perhaps change it. The control machine is simply the machinerypolice, education, etc.used by a group in power to keep itself in power and extend its power. For example, in a hunting society, which can only number about 30, theres nothing that could be called a control machine in operation. They must function effectively as a hunting party in order to survive, so leadership is casual and you have no control machine. Now as soon as you get an agricultural society, particularly in rich land, the advantage of slave labor then becomes apparent and you will tend to get inequality. You may
have, as with the Mayans and Egyptians, workers and priestsin other words, stratification, repression, a control machine. The ancient Mayans had almost a modern control machine through which about one or two percent of the population controlled the others, without police, without heavy weapons. The workers all had such weapons as were available, stone axes, spears, etc. So it was pure psychological control. RP: Is the modern control machines dependence on heavy weapons a sign that psychological control is breaking down? WB: Yes. Of course, the whole concept of revolution has undergone a basic change with the introduction of heavy weapons. Anybody can make a sword or a spear, and some approximation of small arms, but they cant make automatic weapons, tanks, machine guns, planes, and so on. So with heavy weapons five percent can keep down 95 percent by just sheer force, if they have to. Of course, no government has ever survived for any length of time anywhere by sheer force because of the personnel that they would have to have. They would have to have constant surveillance unless they used some form of psychological control, like electric brain stimulation. But the problem that you see in all guerrilla warfare of occupying a territory where the governed are hostile, or even a good percentage of them, of course, is terrific and ultimately insoluble. The French had to get out of Algeria; theyll all have to get out of Vietnam. Now, as to the effectiveness of street fighting in a revolutionary context, you must remember that America is not in a state of revolution. It is not even in a state of pre-revolution, and any guerrilla movement, in order to survive, must have supplies from outside. The liberals in the Colombian civil war had seized an area that bordered on Venezuela, so they were getting their arms in through Venezuela. In Vietnam theyre getting their arms from the N o rt h . Without something comparable to that, no guerri l l a
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movement is ever going to be able to survive. They may talk about guerrilla movements in the large cities, but theyre just not talking in realistic terms. In Algeria the rebels occupied the mountains, and therefore they could supply their guerrillas in the cities.And also an underground army must have popular support. They dont have the potential for much support in America. So that would not seem to be a viable tactic at present. I dont take back what I said in The Job, that there should be more riots and more violence, because at that timeMay, 1968they were indicated.They accomplished something, theres no doubt about it. If there had been no riots, no violence, they would not pay nearly as much attention to militants or their demands as they are paying now. RP: You also wrote in The Job once a problem has reached the political-military stage, it is already insoluble. WB: Yes, because its not meant to be solved.This is a game universe. Basically theres only one game and that game is war, and we just have to keep it going if were to have political/military units at all. But a new generation just might not be interested in such things. Theyve got all those countries on the West coast of South A m e ri c a , countries like Colombia and Pe ru t h ey all have armies and they all consider that Peruvians are bad people, or Ecuadorians are bad people. And that, of course, is kept going by the military and by the very wealthy people. Otherwise, thered be no reason for their existence. Now if a generation took over that just wasnt interested in maintaining these states, thered be no reason for these countries to have any boundaries or armies at all. RP: What would you say to young people who want to change things through street fighting?
WB: The only context in which street fighting would become important would be in the wake of some catastrophe, possibly an atomic war. In the chaos following an atomic attack on America, street fighting is a very important factor. I dont think street fighting is at all a viable tactic or a revolutionary tactic in the States. It is not once a country reaches a certain technological stage. There are, of course, weapons that anyone can make in their basement, if they know how, and those are biological and chemical weapons. I have a reference from the science representative of one of Americas major embassies commenting on the discovery of the synthetic gene,This is the beginning of the end. Any small country with good biochemists can now make the virus for which there is no cure. Someone will do it. That means, of course, any small country or any private group with a good biochemist and a small laboratory. It could be done in a place as small as this room. If they can make life particles, they can make death particles. They can make a virus to order, a virus that will do what you want it to do. RP: But how do you protect yourself from it if theres no cure? WB: No cure for the attack. Usually they develop antitoxins at the same time. It could be quite possible, for example, to develop a plague that would attack only whites. And incidentally, any college physics major, with that much technical knowledge and about $300,000, can turn out a low-yield nuclear device and take out New York from Times Square to Central Park. Nothing big, you understand. The thing about virus weapons is that they need not be recognized as such. It could just come on as a paralyzing depression. Everyone just feels a little worse and a little worse until they cant get out of bed and the whole thing founders. RP: Do you think any particular dissatisfied group in the society might be most inclined to use this kind of weapon? Say, the right wing?
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WB: I think the right wing more than the left. The left is still back there with Che Guevara and barricades and bullets. But to hesitate to use them, I think, would definitely be foolish. RP: You and Brion have described your collaborations over the years as the products of a third mind. Whats the source of this concept? WB: A book called Think and Grow Rich. BG: It says that when you put two minds together WB: there is always a third mind BG: A third and superior mind WB: As an unseen collaborator. BG: That is where we picked up the title. Our book The Third Mind is about all the cut-up materi a l s .I t s probably one of the saddest stories in publ i s h i n g .I t s taken so long to get nowhere. Since 1965 WB: So much work has gone into the project BG: not only ours but WB: the designers at Grove Press. RP: Any ideas why it hasnt been published? BG: Well, I think its partly connected with Groves troubles in general. And it has something to do with publishing itself. Obviously the whole problem of how to get text and image together is
beyond them except at really outrageous prices, apparently outrageous to them. And I suppose as Groves troubles grew, they kept putting this thing off.They said they spent a great deal of time and money on it.They presumably did, but thats neither here nor there when their legal position was that they had to either do it or hand us back the stuff, and they finally have handed it back, after years of yathering and great insistence on our part. Were very sure that well have to sit down and look at it, maybe cut it differently. From the beginning it needed a stylist, something that they werent willing to admit, somebody who could take the whole thing together and see it as a whole, like Robert Brownjohn did, and presumably Bob Cato does. Tim Learys Jail Notes has a credit at the beginning saying it was designed by Bob Cato, and its a very handsome book typographically.There are several different typefaces used, blending one into the other, contrasting. And thats the kind of thing we were after, and never got. RP: The book is statement, in words and pictures, of what the two of you have achieved through your collaboration? WB: Yes, exactly that, from the very first cut-ups through elaboration into scrapbook layouts, cut texts and images. RP: B ri o n , what did you mean when you said Rub out the word? BG: Rub out the word has essentially to do with the fact that all the religions of the people of the book, that is, the Jews, the Christians and the Moslems, all these three religions are based on the idea that in the beginning was the wo rd .E ve rything seems to be wrong with what was produced from those beginnings, and so lets rub out the word and start afresh and see what really is going o n . The methods we re first of all a disruption of the time
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sequence, as William said a few minutes ago, produced by the cutups, and one had the idea of rubbing out the word itself, not simply disrupting its sequential order and finding out some other way. There are other ways of communication, so an attempt at finding them would begin by rubbing out the word. If the whole thing began with the word, well then if we dont like what was produced, and we dont, lets get right to the root of the matter and radically alter it. WB: Rubbing out the word would probably entail considerable physiological alterations in the whole structure. The reason apes cant talk is because their inner throat structure is not set up to do so.We can imagine that the word could have occasioned the alterations in the inner throat structure that made the words possible, and that his alteration was then genetically conveyed. Now, rubbing out the word could make objective alterations in the actual physio-psychological structure. What these alterations would be we have no way of knowing. RP: What precisely is the desirability of not verbalizing? WB: Well, verbalization has got us precisely where we are: war is a word.The whole war universe is a verbal universe, which means theyve got us in an impasse. And in order to break out of that impasse it would seem desirable to explore alternative methods of communication. RP: How would you compare exploring these avenues to exploring more and more precise manipulation of words? WB: Well, it would certainly be a step in the same direction.The more precise your manipulation or use of words is, the more you know what youre actually dealing with, what the word actually is. And by knowing what it actually is, you can supersede it. Or
use it when you want to use it. Most people never stop talking talking to themselves as they call it. But who are they actually talking to, and why? Why cant they simply lapse into silence? RP: In my case, because I have just a couple more questions. Ive seen the Naked Lunch filmscript which Brion adapted from the book.What is the current state of your movie making project? BG: The shooting script is finalized and budgeted. All we need is half a million dollars to finance it. Have you got any ideas? RP: Ummm Just one more question: William, what are you thoughts on the future of writing? WB: The future of writing is to see how close you can come to making it happen.
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T H E W H I T E T H R E AT
has been a terrific cultural revolution, as witness the breakdown on censorship and the phenomenon of Watergate. I think Nixon will go down to history as one of the great folk heroes of America. He has destroyed the whole diseased concept of the revered image of the Presidency. I dont think it will ever make a come back. It will never enjoy the prestige that it had, say, in my childhood. Thats gone. Now as for the global depression, the most powerful instrument in the hands of the rich, of course, is economic contro l t h ey control pri c e s . T h ey can pro d u c e depression, they can collapse currencies at will. But they cant go too far without cutting the ground under their feet. AL: For me the genius of your work is the successful manipulation of word and image towards achieving an altered state of consciousness in the reader. Could you tell us just what are wo rd s ,a n d what are their relationship to language and to communication? WB: Nobody seems to have any clear idea and perhaps it is wrong to say, What are the words? as though there was something that words implicitly are. That is the essence that has permeated Western philosophythere is something that isnt there by the use of the symbol. In this sense, theres very little difference between a written word and a spoken word.We, in the We s t ,h ave lost sight of the fact that the written symbol, as can be seen very clearly in a pictorial or character language, like ancien Egyptian, or Chinese, that the word is, in fact, an image. If you know a hieroglyphic language, you can immediately communicate with anyone in writing because the symbol remains the same. So a written word is something that refers to a written word. Because of this I suggest that writing may have come before talking. AL: In your latest book, Exterminator!, you postulate that the white race results from a nuclear explosion in the Gobi desert some 30,000 years ago which wiped out the civilization and tech-
Boulder, 1975 In May 1975,William Burroughs was invited to lecture at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, which merged Tibetan Buddhism and counter-culture. Burroughs will often spend his summers teaching at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics founded by Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg. [Ed.] ANGELO LEWIS: In 1969 you postulated a future of guerrilla armies marching on the police machine throughout the world. Now were in 1975 and the world seems on the verge of global depression.What are the principle means at our disposal for transforming the planet? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: The situation has changed immeasurably since the late 60s.The political hopes that many of us held proved to be unfounded.We have to face the fact that a leftist revolution is out of question in this country. On the other hand there
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niques that made the explosion possible.The only survivors were ignorant slaves who became albinos as a result of radiation and scattered in different directions, Eastward towards Persia and India, or settling Westward into caves. It is in these caves that the white settlers contracted a virus that made them what they are today, a hideous threat to life on this planet. Freud called this ancient parasite the unconscious. Anyone who have not had the cave experience is basically different Who, in your opinion, are the white race? WB: This cave experience, which was only undergone by certain whites, was very decisive. The whites who went to India and Turkey didnt have the cave experience. The Arabs are white and they didnt have it. I talked to a psychoanalyst who is treating Moroccans and he said that they simply did not have an unconscious Their whole inner structure is different. AL: So it is this unconscious feature of the white that, in your opinion, is a disease? WB: It would seem to me to be so. I extended that into a whole theory of evolution by postulating a virus which occasioned biological changes which were then genetically conveyed In other words, the yellow race may have resulted from an attack of a virus like jaundice which turned their skins yellow, the difference being that this virus was due perhaps to some radiation which is no longer in effect. And this radiation may not be the same kind as we are accustomed to think of, like a nuclear blast. Similarly you could imagine a radiation or an illness which caused people to turn white and then this white color was genetically conveyed. Now, no virus that exists at the present time acts this way. I think that the importance of Reich cannot be overestimated. Not so much for his experiments with sex. I was thinking rather of Orgone Accumulators as possible cancer cure. And Im con-
vinced that experimentation could lead to something. But the medical establishment wont even listen or try to do any t h i n g .I t s harmless, why not try it? AL: Because they have a vested interest in the cancer patient? WB: Its a big business. Its also becoming pandemicone in five will die of cancer. Also remember that cancer is a new disease. If you go back 200 to 300 years, youll find no references to cancer. Of course, medical diagnosis was very imprecise, but if there had been as many cancer cases as there are now, you would have found it described It seems that cancer came in with the industrial revolution and that any lead is worth following AL: In your work, you frequently suggest a relationship between drug-addiction and control-addiction. For example the image of the president as a contact junkie in Nova Express W B : I would be inclined to modify this statement. It does become a bit confusing to speak of control addicts or reading addicts, etc. What you are speaking of in actual addictions is a metabolic dependence on that particular drug.We know, however, that people who lose power can have quite severe symptoms. There is some similarity in that the buffer between them and the world suddenly has been removed AL: What advice do you have for any of us in the 20th century who are interested in transforming the planet into a garden of Eden? WB: [Laughs] Get rid of about half of the people.
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and American lecturers. Publicly accused of being a CIA agent (like Laing), Foucault, deeply upset, declared that this was the last countercultural event of the '60s.Actually it announced the '90s. Just returned to the United States the year before from his long European exile, William Burroughs had temporarily settled in Denver, Colorado.This was one of his first US performances, and he delivered an important paper called: The Limits of Control, subsequently published in the Schizo-Culture issue of Semiotext(e) in 1978, at the time of the Nova Convention. In this paper, Burroughs outlined the limits encountered by the new techniques of control used in the United States. Complete control of the mind was a practical possibility, but without will or motivation, life would become unconceivable. When there is no more opposition, control becomes a meaningless proposition. There would be nothing there.Twenty-five years later, Deleuze referred to this lecture in his Postscript on Control Societies. [Ed.] QUESTION: What is a schizo-culture according to you? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: I think Schizo-culture is being used here in a special sense, not referring so much to clinical schizophrenia but to the fact that the culture is divided up into all sorts of classes and gro u p s ,e t c. Some of the old lines are breaking down, and this is a healthy sign. Q: Do you think too much concentration is being placed in our society on identifying and describing what exactly our culture, or counter-culture is? WB: Well, yes.This defining is a luxury which our affluent society permits itself. Poor people in Morocco and Spain are too busy keeping alive to think about what they are, who they are. Q: Do you think there is a chance the United States will go fascist?
New York, 1975 In November 1975, a new cultural magazine, Semiotext(e), originating in the French Department at Columbia University, organized an international conference on Prison and Madness. The idea was to put together a group of post-Structuralist philosophers coming from France, yet unknown in this country (except for Michel Foucault) and American artists and intellectuals whose views on politics and aesthetics were in close resonance to their own. It is during this two-day convention that William Burroughs and John Cage for the first time met their neo-anarchist counterparts, Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Franois Lyotard, psychiatrists Felix Guattari, but also Ronald D. Laing, Joel Kove l ,f e m i n i s t theorist Ti-Grace Atkinson and Arthur Danto, in front of a rowdy audience of 2,000 mixing late '60s radicals, feminists, young activists, artists, ex-cons, ex-mental patients, and Marxist academics. This cocktail of minds proved to be explosive. Alerted by the media, the conference halls were mobbed, fights erupted, planted provocateurs sprang to their feet, feminists booed male speakers, the audience split between French theorists
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WB: Every time theyve done it theyve regretted it. I dont say that they wont; I say theyll regret if they do. Some of these people have read history after all. They know what happened in the Roman Republic, they know what happened in Germany, and to a lesser extent what happened in Spain, all those places. Q: Your analysis is quite good, but it might only be valid for enlightened self-interest among leaders .A re we not, after all, fooling ourselves with all these cultural revolutions? WB: Are we fooling ourselves? Very serious concessions have been made. Remember that all censorship is political.When they start revoking a censorship, they have made a concession, and thats important. Dont expect to get everything at once, because you wont. Q: You said that you are optimistic that change would continue in the present dire c t i o n .A re we then to assume that this is going to terminate in complete lack of control at some point in the future? Or rather, more pragmatically, that there is going to be a trade-off point? WB: Trade-off point. I think there will be continued modification of contro l .A g a i n , they cant very well take everything back at this point. Q: What do you mean by a continued modification? WB: What we have seen in the last 20 ye a rs .E ven 10 or 20 years ago, there was no right to protest. The right to protest is a very i m p o rtant concession. A minority group 30 ye a rs ago had absolutely no recourse against police brutality, or anything else. Now at least they can protest, and that undoubtedly has had an effect.
Q: Are we to assume that there will be a culmination of this process? WB: I am not a prophet. I wouldnt speculate about the future. I am talking about whats happened up to now. Q: We seem to be going through a continual diffusion of power which,theoretically at least, should come down to an area of total noncontrol. But it seems clear also that societies reconstitute themselves at high levels of control. What are, according to you, the specific techniques that will have to be established, or reestablished when the level of control is low? WB: It depends on what you mean by a low level of control. If you have complete anarchy, such as you might have if we got into a war with China and this country were subject to atom bombing, then control reverts almost to a medieval warlord state where anybody with a small army is in a pretty good position. Is that what you mean by control reaching a point at which it doesnt exist? Q: But we are not in the Middle Ages anymore.We may be able to explain how power would be reconstituted in the Middle Ages, but how would you see that happening now? WB: It doesnt happen. It isnt happening now. We are not anywhere near that.We are not in a state of anarchy. Q: You dont see that point coming? WB: I could see it coming under certain circumstances, if we got a war or with a complete economic collapse. But none of these things are right here now, or even around the corner.
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Q: Can you envision a complex social organization where control doesnt exist? WB: No, not with regard to a heterogeneous city population. A certain amount of control is absolutely necessary.Where is all the food coming fromit is brought in, right? The whole unseen bureaucracy is bringing that food and putting it in shops, providing power, etc. If those people didnt work, millions would be starving overnight. So any system must find a way to keep those people on their jobs.
A LM O ST M I SS A M ER I CA
WILLIAM BURROUGHS: I was speaking about the so-called gay community, which is not actually a community since there are people in it with disparate interests. Its very important that they get out of the whole defensive protest position which theyre still in, and no wonder after weve had such phenomena as Anita Bryant, the Miss America down in Florida, doing the crusade against homosexuality. So really they re continuing a circ l e because they realize that suddenly they may be the big scapegoat. Theyre scared as hell that suddenly well have a fascist state and all gays will be thrown in concentration camps. They have the same sort of hysterical reactive attitude which you find in any kind of persecuted group. Like the Jews, a persecuted minority. Its all very well to say that they should get out of their position of defense, but its going to be difficult because, as we have seen in actual practice, these things can happen. JOHN GIORNO: I agree with yo u . That state of pro t e s t becomes a state of aggression thats totally binding.
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WB: It also brings down the very thing that they fear. Like the Jewish Defense League trying to ally themselves with the most reactionary elements. The panic reaction is always met by a larger reaction. JG: There must a non-aggressive, non-hysterical way of dealing with the anti-gay backlash occurring in the world. WB: And the defensive doctrinaire attitude that gays are more sensitive and better than other people, that gay writers are more profound, I think this is shallow and inadequate. JG: Do you think of yourself as a gay writer? WB: No. I dont know what that means. Im obviously a homosexual writer with hardly a woman in his books. JG: Do you consciously have that sexual division? Because the way I work and feel, what makes me a gay or homosexual writer is working with images of desire. I do not for one minute think that homosexuality is any different from any other kind of sexuality or desire. WB: Im inclined to think it is. JG: How so? WB: Well, its a different object. Someone whos attracted to a candlestick may not be attracted to a boot or an old tin canits a different object. JG: Thats the point. Its a different object, but in totally accomplished sexuality there is no man or woman in the space of their sexuality, just as there should not be two men.Theres some kind of other dance, and if its done properly theres some kind of energy.
WB: I have no quarrel with that. Its energy. The question arises as to who is really down on homosexual practices and precisely why. We know that a lot has come from the Christian religion. Not from Christ himselfhe was probably a faggotbut from St. Paul. Talking about man and man lying with each other and doing that which is inconvenient. And as Anita Bryant is saying down there, Its an abomination. An abomination from the Bible. Quoting the Bible or any long book out of context you can prove absolutely anything. Like snake handlers, Pick ye up serpents, and actually rattlers from Florida wiped out a whole nest of snake handlers.Well, the moral is the abysmal ignorance of this fucking lower-church Protestant thing. Theyre lunatics, absolute lunatics, dangerous lunatics. Kill a queer for Christ. Can Kill a Jew for Jesus be far behind? And shes got 5,000 signature s .N ow, since weve been forced into the same position as the Jews, perhaps we should enact the same strategy.We should try to get our own state like Israel. JG: But dont you think theres some other space? The reason why everything now for gays in the Western world is so good is because of you and Allen, years ago, doing this thing which expanded and expanded. I agree with you about the aggression that comes with being a politically active gay, but theres another non-aggressive way of doing it in a very active fashion, you know what I mean? WB: Of course, my dear, and this has been going on for thousands of years. Gays have been living in relative security. JG: Theres never been a battlethats totally correct! Theres never been a battle in the world except in our minds. WB: Well, I wouldnt say that either.
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JG: Its the mind projecting it in space. WB: Not at all. Of course, it could be managed that way. But the more extreme it gets on any side, the thing escalates. From mild anti-Semitism to death camps. JG: William, what do you think of communities like the West Village where ninety percent of it is gay? WB: Well, I believe that gays should be allowed to live in an allgay community.This would be a very healthy thinga gay laundry and a gay restaurant, a gay everything. If this could extend through our society.Were a person associated with only the people he wanted to associate with, this would be a great source of harmony. There may be blacks who, with good reason, may not ever want to see another white person as long as they live. Well, thats fine. Theres no reason why they shouldnt arrange it, have an all-black community.This is a very important idea, the right of a person to live in a community of people he relates to and who relate to him. He doesnt always have to be faced by some hostility from someone who has a different idea. JG: So in other words, a ghetto is really a sublime place. WB: In a sense, yes.Theres also the question: if youre happy and secure in a ghetto situation, you may not be aware in time of dangers brewing from the outside. JG: Unless you have a good secret service and a very powerful state. Gay State! WB: Well have the best secret service in the world. JG: Would you model it after the CIA? British Foreign Service?
WB: If I modeled it after anything it would be the CIA. I really think they are the best secret service in the world. For all its mistakes the British never get caught with their pants down, but they dont attempt as much, they dont go as far. The CIA is more in touch with present times. JG: Do you think the CIA has been affected by all the bad publicity? Do you think it has affected its operability? WB: Not seriously. JG: Is the Gay State a real geographic place too? WB: It would have to be. JG: What would be the policy regarding heterosexuals? WB: Well, there wouldnt be any policy. Heterosexuals would be welcome in the Gay State so long as they dont engage in any subversive political activity. JG: And that is what the secret service is for. WB: And also to protect us against our enemies outside of our state. Now you can see were getting into a very interesting philosophical area, whereby we are saying that as long as one enemy to our sacred community draws breath, we are not safe. Because god knows he might organize an anti-queer crusade. But queers are taking over our kids with dope.They are. JG: Do you believe every gay should have a gun? WB: No.Thats not what Im saying at all.What Im saying is the lunacy on which weve all been brought up.The fact that theres
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terrible people out there, across the river, in this country or that country. And there aint no compromise. Weve got to kill them all. And this has been going on for thousands of years.This stems from a very ancient reputable philosophical concept, known as D u a l i s m , and this is the Manichaean philosophythe fight between Good and Evil. In Christian terms, good is sure to win. But in the Manichaean terms it was a fight that was up for grabs. The forces of Good and Bad are absolutely equal, which leads to a stalemate or an anti-matter explosion. In the hope of averting such a confrontation, the Christians always assumed that they were right and were going to win. They couldnt believe they could possibly lose. With the illusion that they are going to win, the Christians are at a great disadvantage in the struggle, being rooted in stupidity. In the spirit of our society, evil is anything that fucks me up, good is anything that helps me and improves me. Simple as that. So this whole irreconcilable conflict of interests is obviously the terminal insanity of the Dualistic universe. Good or Bad, white or black, gives rise to the stupidest terms like, There aint room for both of us in this town. There aint room for me and Anita Bryant in the same town. Suck your orange. Obviously this is the most primitive kind of thinking that dates back to the origin of the species, territorial rights. But it goes through the whole society. If anybodys got something they took it from somebody else, like we took America from the Indians. JG: But isnt that the basic nature of the world of desire? It doesnt have to be Jews or gays, it could be anybody. WB: Its the nature of rivalry and time. Out of thousands of street-corner punks maybe ten or fifteen get in the Mafia, get to be a hit man.The most sought-after job in a slum environment is being a hit man for the Mafia.Talk about a travesty of civilization. People falling all over themselves to be an abject hit man.
JG: Its like going to Hollywood and being a star. WB: And the Mafia only has room for about 15 hit men a year. We dont need many of these fuckers. We have all we need now, people are being encouraged to leave the industry. JG: But dont you think,William, that the dynamics of the situation you describe are based on illusion? WB: Remember everything is illusion. But illusions try to make themselves as real as possible, naturally, in order to gain currency. JG: How do you say we deal with these illusions? WB: I dont have any panacea. If you really accept the doers of Good and Evil, you come to realize that the actual power of each of them must be the same. Because every time Evil gets a big push, it gives an equal push to the other side. JG: Its just like fucking, isnt it? WB: And the Christians say, Were going to win because were right. Obviously they have no objective orientation at all.Theres a possibility that what we call Good and Evil is really matter and anti-matter and when they get together for a final confrontation, the whole shit-house will go up.Well have a black hole. JG: A black hole, I would think, is just part of the same dynamics. WB: We poets and artists have to think about our work, and thats the important thing.Ask me a question. Like,Mr. Burroughs, do you think, if it were in your power, would you make heterosexual activities as illegal as homosexual activities are now? Do you think that you would have it in your heart to do this? Mr. Burroughs?
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JG: Thats a great question,William. WB: Aint that a great question? And shove the mike right in your face. JG: Well, what do you say? WB: I go all mealy-mouthed, like any old politician.I believe in more of everything, more life, more happiness, more everything for all people on this great planet earth: men, women, Jew s ,k i ke s , queers, every fucking thing that crawls around on this earth, and that is my sincere feeling. Its unthinkable that I would harm any person at all or do wrong to any man, unless there was some smart son-of-a-bitch starting some trouble, huh? Yeah! So thats the way I feel about this whole thing. Under no circumstances, no matter how much power I had, would I abuse that power to harm any decent fucker, any decent pers o n ,a ny decent WASP. I will tell you that if I had to use that power to prevent certain forces from taking over and corrupting and degrading eve rything that we Americans hold dear, I would not hesitate. I would not hesitate to use that power even if the whole fucking universe blew up! JG: Right on! WB: Right on! Ye a h .L i ke the senator said,I would not hesitate to use the cobalt bomb against Russia. So this is the impasse of a dualistic universe. Everyone says, I would not hesitate, I would not hesitate, I would not hesitate, to use to use to use, the most extreme the most extreme the most extreme BOOM! Maybe its just as well, what the hell John and I were talking about readings and professionalism, and quite a bit about the basis of the American Dream, which is money. And then John says weve got to record something for this interview. And I said to him I havent been thinking about homosexuality for the last past half hour, or conversing on it.
JG: We were conversing about money. Money! Power! WB: Yes, exactly. So I think this follows what I was saying about gays getting out of a defensive prickly position where theyve got to be gay twenty-four hours a day.You can relax and think about other subjects. Because after all, how much time does sex actually take in anybodys life? And once gays can be gay and do what they want, the whole matter shrinks down to a small percentage of time. JG: Do you see any difference between heterosexual and homosexual beside the difference that one likes a woman and one likes a man? WB: You can have a heterosexual man who spends half an hour three times a week, or whatever the hell how much time he spends, and then you can have heterosexual men who are obsessed with sex, and it takes all their time. JG: Theres this thing called desire which is a basic unexplained energy, which is basically great, but is like a poison for most people, heterosexual or homosexual. And its just desire, the grasping of something. WB: Its stupidity to be obsessed with any subject. I remember this phrase from a man, a masochistit was from Krafft-Ebing, And mad with sensuality, I rushed all through Central Europe. So he must have been neglecting his business. After all, sex has to be kept in some sort of limits. JG: Theres no difference between gay and heterosexual men, except style. Like long hair and macho. The idea is that desire totally captures people and locks them into a grid, a stranglehold. It doesnt matter what the object is: its desire.
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WB: Historically, a Victorian out of the 19th century could be flagrantly gay, like this don at Oxford who had six or seven boys living with him. But no one said anything about it because you could do anything so long as you didnt say anything. And I remember one English gentleman telling me about his greatuncle or somebody, this magnificent old type who was totally obvious in his behavior, but never once did he admit to anyone that he was gay. For 60 years he kept this facade while living with six or seven English boys. Extraordinary state of mind. JG: Do you think young people are consumed sexually, not in a maniacal way, but with a constant mental preoccupation, particularly gays? WB: Well, I couldnt take any sort of census. Obviously a lot of people are racing around in a public search.Theres the whole bar scene; theres the whole one-night-stand scene; theres the guys who run antique stores or sell art, making it together. And the respectable people that they circulate among actually know this, of course. Straight people are not as dumb as all that. Oh really nobody knows anything about me! My dear, everybody knows about you! So there isnt really one gay community, theres many different patterns and so forth. JG: There is something I think is totally great thats happened in a few cities in America, like New York and San Francisco, and very few others in the world outside the United States. That is, cities where there are giant areas with, say, 200,000 gay people living,and incredible promiscuity. Every kind of thing thats fantasized about. Its totally horrible and painful for each one of the people; they are like any ordinary person, just totally fucked up and out of their fucking neurotic mind. But externally its just like a fantasy. Gay supermarkets, gay apartments, endless areas, so thats rather terrific. Its an achievement over what existed in Europe. Like London in
the early part of the century, or going back, where there was 100 percent hypocrisy, which you were describing. WB: I think hypocrisy has its advantages. Im sure those old characters got some very good sex from their six or seven resident Arab boys.Yes, perhaps things were better. JG: In the good old days? WB: There was certainly a better situation in those days for people getting on in years. It was on a money basis. Now every fucking punks got money.You got no leverage anymore. Now you got to get em in the movies or something. [Laughter] JG: But William, dont you think its totally amazing that once one was young and beautifulthe whole visual trip. And then one is exactly in the weird space of being totally old and ugly? WB: Time hits the hardest blows. JG: And then you get rich and famous and it all works itself out because you get exactly what you want to get only in a different vein. WB: My dear, when you were rich in the 1890s there was no limit to the boys you could have, and you didnt have to be all that rich. Two shillings and you had them coming. Now they want more more more, you have to make the boy a movie star, an assistant professor or a cardinal. Of course, its a great time for young people who are pretty and on the same level as the people they are approaching. Still, some of these young people complain that they havent got enough. JG: Thats the same syndrome, the same desire syndrome. When youre young youre always broke, no matter how much money
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you have.Youre fucked over, and thats exactly where everyone is. I mean, to hear them talking, everyone is totally broke. Unless theyre very lucky somehow, but most people arent. WB:Not right at all.These young punks in America never had it so good in history.They can do anything they want sexually.They can get $250 a month, complete disability insurance for being absolutely good for nothing. Look through history for any young people whove had it easier than the young people in America today and you will not find one instance. JG: Youre right. WB: And they beef and they beef and they beef. Well, the more you give people the more they beef, theres no doubt about it. So the young American gay today is really very spoiled. He doesnt realize how easy hes got it.When I was 20 years old Id never tell anyone I was gay.Your friends, your uncle, your father would turn on you. It was the most horrible thing. But at the center of the total hypocrisy, if you never said it, everybody knew it and didnt give a shit. It was a real double standard.You can do it, but you cant say it. Now this is the whole dichotomy of private and public behavior.And actually the Victorian attitude is endemic among the Arabs and the Spanish, where what you do privately is one thing and what you do publicly is another. JG: Where did the Victorian attitude come from? Did it come from England, or the Arabs, or somewhere else? WB: I dont know, but its a very widespread thing.For example, in Tangier the Arabs have this word called hushima, shame. Well, for an Arab boy to be making money by sleeping with a British or American tourist or resident, thats not shameful. JG: Its work.
WB: Yes, everybody knows this. But to admit this is totally shameful. So the acknowledgment is shameful, but the behavior is not. This is, of course, the reverse of the whole Calvinist ethic. JG: But thats no different from anything that exists in this world. It doesnt matter if youre from some grand New England family, if youre living off the opium trade in the 19th century. If youre a Rockefeller, this unpleasantness is not disclosed. WB: I wonder about that. JG: The source of all money is shameful. Can you think of any of the great fortunes in America? If its Frick,80 its the coal miners; if its somebody else, its the steel workers; if its not the garment wo r ke rs ,i t s ten-year-olds slaving away; or its some trip in Africa, in Asia.The source of all great wealth is abhorrent. WB: Youre suggesting that about the source of all wealth large or small. The money a good looking boy brings in is keeping the family going. Still, for the mother to meet the tourist would be extremely shameful. JG: Has that ever happened to you? WB: Well yes, I was living with a young boy, and if I suggested that he should introduce me to his mother, he was scandalized beyond belief. JG: Youve lived in Tangier? WB: I have, yes. JG: Then theres the whole American trip which I know you do not frequent.
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WB: Oh, Im an old-fashioned man. JG: And very proper. WB: Yes, Im influenced by my European training.
WB: I like expensive hotels, the more expensive the better, but certainly not to live for any length of time. Mr. G i o rn o, while Im sticking the mike in your face, how do you feel about being a West Coast Gay? JG: I think its sweet.
J G : Do you think of any preferability between Tangier and America in terms of sexual openness? WB: Of course, the Tangier that I knew is gone with the winds of change. And, of course, the situation in America now is very encouraging and offers a lot to young gay people who are just popping out of the waterclosets. [Laughter] Myself, I was brought up in another tradition. J G : I t s totally great in A m e ri c a , l i ke being the Gay State. Everything is so impermanent.There may be some kind of giant backlash about to knock everyone on their asses. But for the last 20 years its been amazing. WB: As for a total backlash, such a phenomenon could hardly occur without a complete disintegration of what we call society now.When the Middle Ages came in, the Greco-Roman culture crumbled away to nothing. It hasnt happened here yet. JG: At least not for 50 or a 100 years or so. WB: Well, we dont know, certainly not in the next few years.The Hiltons and the jets are still wo r k i n g ;a l l s right with the wo r l d .I d like to retire to a simple old-fashioned community where money still meant something, if I had some. [Laughter] JG: I know that sounds good. Dont you like expensive hotels?
WB: Got anything else to say? JG: Not much. WB: Well, Im getting a jump on this. How do you feel about being a lousy son-of-a-bitch and then you say, Well, Ive come to deal with it.Then you rush down to the South and say,How do you feel about being a WASP.Well, I feel like it was sorta my upbringing. Or whatever. In fact this could be a television program known as How Do You Feel about What You Are. [Laughter] Your roving reporter could jump out at all sorts of people and shove the mike right in their face:How do you feel about being a potato-eating Irish? Or How do you feel about being a wop? The first thing off their head. He jumps out of the car and says, How do you feel about being a redneck? And then asking a redneck what he thinks about gays, and asking gays what they think about rednecks, who would kill who first, and so on. Now youre a queer faced with Anita Bryant, what would you say to Anita Bryant? Hed bring it up that all of his kids are gay too.And so what do you say about this, Anita Bryant? What would you say to this man if you were confronted with him? And what would you say to this woman? JG: On television they had this gay guy in the studio and they telephoned Anita Bryant down in Florida. Then they had this conversation which was totally innocuous because they didnt get to Anita, they got to her husband, and they had some conversa-
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tion about grammar: how do you spell gay or something. They talked for five minutes without saying anything. WB: The name of this program would be Confront. JG: Thats a great title. WB: And watch Anita Bryant confront the champion of the gays. JG: What would you say? WB: Oh Id say, I understand, Anita Bryant, you were one time almost Miss America, but you didnt quite make the grade, did you? Well, you got some questions to ask me maybe?Thats the way. JG: What do you think of equal rights for gays, the things that were being passed? About hiring? WB: Oh, policemen and firemen. I dont see any reason why they shouldnt be passed if they want to. JG: Do you think thats a worthy thing to pursue? WB: Its entirely a matter of choice. Gay people are now trying to get on the cops here with the understanding that theyre gay. One of the archetypical figures of evil has been the gay Gestapo agent. JG: Which is a gay fantasy in a lot of physical sex scenes.
[Pause to make drinks and roll a joint.] WB: We were discussing the fact that, in my experience, many sophisticated heterosexuals are not repressed homosexuals at all. Ive had them say to me that most of their emotional feelings go towards men but that they simply cant sexually make it with men. And I dont think they are any more repressed homosexuals than all gays are repressed heterosexuals. JG: Its a very common phenomenon, the man who hates women but can only make it with them. All his emotional relationships are with men. Hes just stuck at a certain point, and its very hard to alter those points. Its a very mysterious thing.These points, to everyones chagrin, are just karmic habits.You form these habits and then you get more attached to them because they feel so good. You know the whole syndrome: sucking and fucking and fist-fucking, any kind of sexuality and everyone has his preference. One is totally at the mercy of them.As far as Im concerned theres two advantages in being gay. One is that its absolutely sweet and blissful and everything one would ever want. And second, if used properly, its like an instrument for cutting through conception. WB: In the Western world all the objections to homosexuality are culled from the Bible.We still have the Bible Belt with us.This absolute menace, this sociological time-bomb that could blow up the whole fucking planet. If people with that mentality ever got a super atom bomb JG: But dont they have it? Arent those people in the Pentagon?
WB: The archetypical Gestapo questioner was represented in the 1930s as being gay, and this was largely Communist propaganda. Now we know the whole gay thing was officially eliminated in 1934 with Roehm and the SA.
WB: No, youre oversimplifying.The people in the Pentagon are not Bible at all. God knows who they are. But theyre very far removed from that mentality. Not that they dont understand and
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use it, but theyre not of it. Its a much more sophisticated phenomenon.The Bible Belt is the people who take orders. But as to what is actually going on on this planet, I dont think anyone has a clue. Theres so many conspiracies and counter-conspiracies, I dont think anyone knows at all whats going on. The important thing for an artist is just to do his work and not be concerned with all kinds of conspiracies.What is the greatest prize that anyone can get in Western culture? JG: What is the prize? WB: Very simple. Freedom from fear. You get strong enough so that youre not scared of anybody. JG: So theres two ways. One is to become a Rockefeller, and the other is to become a junkie. Because heroin temporarily gets you away from the fear. WB: Oh, just a moment.Theres nobody more riddled with fear than a heroin addict because hes afraid of having his junk cut off. JG: Do you think all those millionaires like Getty, Rockefeller, or the Du Ponts are any more or less riddled with fear? WB: Well, if theyve got any sense. But on the objective level, theyve got much less to fear. Fear is people afraid of something, it isnt fear floating around in a va c u u m .N ow if Ive got a billion dollars I dont have to be scared of nothing. JG: A moment of being totally high is no different from being rich. Gettys been dead, how long, a year, two years. If he isnt reborn, hes more scared now than any junkie in the street has ever been.
WB: I think you got a point there. Anyone whos looking for immediate safety is very much frightened, and anyone whos frightened is thinking in very short terms. JG: Do you feel in your personal life that your activities are more involved with heterosexuals? People who are on the road, or who invited you to this dinner and arranged meetings or business? WB: I seem to meet a fair portion of both when Im on the road. So, no, I dont feel that one necessarily preponderates.The whole idea of t h e g ay community is extremely misleading indeed, because I dont think that theres any reality that corresponds to that. Nor is there any gay community in the sense of any sort of organized mutual aid.Anything corresponding to the, say, Chinese tong system. It wouldnt be a bad idea to have gay tongs.You join a certain gay tong and JG: Dues like 15 dollars a month? WB: Yes, and that means if youre ever in trouble you get bailed out. If you lose your job the tong will support you.You have the support of the tong at all times. JG: Do you think we should start a gay tong? WB: I think that the whole tong principle is a very workable system. Of course, a lot of gays will say, What do I need a tong for? High teacup queens. Well, you know, even in a penthouse like this JG: In your fortress on the Bowe ry WB: Disagreeable things could happen.You pick up the wrong kind of person. Its getting rapidly to look like some kind of a
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shake This is an argument used frequently by anti-gay movements: that gay s ,l i ke the Jew s ,h ave certain inherently disagreeable characteristics. When Hitler issued a formal order, the whole Gestapo went into action against homosexuals.The directive was that they were kriecherisch und herrsuchtig. These are two almost untranslatable worlds with the general meaning of creeping, cringing or skulking; at the same time, in a slimy way trying to dominate people. So you have these terrible characteristics of being cringing and whimpering and at the same time trying to get power over other people. And Anita Bryant with her youth recruitment comes down to the same proposition: that homosexuals are bad by nature like devils. JG: Are Nixon and Kissinger and Ford just the same way because theyre power junkies? WB: No.The specific unpleasant picture of homosexuals was that they were at once servile and cringing, and at the same time, ready to leap on any advantage. JG: The corrupting influence being that youre taking our sons and corrupting them? WB: Yes, the presumption that homosexuals were a sort of race with certain despicable qualities inherent in their condition, just exactly like the evil Jews. JG: As if faggotsswish were like Yiddish Jewish or something?
WB: In 1936 for a year. I read the Volkischer Beobachter and saw the emergence and manipulation of these fiendish archetypes. A Jew head with a spider body. Picture of a Jew accused of some c ri m e : F rom his horrible Jew eyes speaks the crime world of the Talmud. And this image was then grafted onto the homosexual. The concept of the homosexual as a fiendish plotter is indoctrinated into the L.A. policeYou know what these fruits want. They want a fruit world. JG: Is this true? WB: The concept of unlimited license has a certain appeal to a nybody homoor hetero s e x u a l . A ny group using phy s i c a l power to foster the interest of that particular group without any limitations on them can become intolerable. On this planet we have groups with disparate interests, and in many cases, the separation has been forced on them. If people are persecuted as homosexuals, Jews, blacks they will, if given the opportunity, organize to defend their interests, and there is no viable defense of ones interests that does not involve certain political and ultimately certain military objectives. And while allegedly simply protecting their interests, they often tend to extend the area of that influence. Someone said that the world consisted of Hitler and lebensraumlife room.This is the pretext of the Cold War, or any war, We are just trying to protect our intere s t s .T h a t s all. And there is no end to Russia and America protecting their interests. JG: Dont you think this is a basic characteristic of human nature?
WB: Yes. It was very similar. I was studying medicine in Vienna at the time when all this was getting started. JG: When did you study medicine in Vienna?
WB: It is a very basic problem. JG: So how does one cut through that?
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WB: Perhaps one doesnt. Except to say that there are people who do want to mind their own business and be left alone, and there are people of another category. And there is the question as to what degree of force is necessary to protect your interests and where to stop. In self-defense, you may have to take measures against someone who doesnt yet know hes going to have to take measures against you. In the words of the immortal bard , O n l y fools do those villains pity who are punished ere they have done their mischief. Before Anita Bryant opened her big orange-sucking mouth the position of gays in America was steadily improving. It was almost possible to take the whole issue casually and get on with ones business To my way of thinking the basic difference between a shit and a decent person is very simple. A decent person wants to be left alone to mind his own business and he is willing to let others do the same.A shit has no business of his or her own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus. How can Anita Bryant be contained? Hit her sponsors where they livein their $$. Total boycott on Florida oranges in any form.
TERRORISM, UTOPIA AND FICTION
Paris, 1978 GRARD-GEORGES LEMAIRE: Against the ultra-sophisticated technology of power youve come up with an equally sophisticated technology of writing. But at present you appear to be going back to more traditional and simpler forms of narrative.Whys this? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: If your objective is to have people read your books, then there has to be at least a line of narrative they can follow.Take the case of Joyce who spent 20 or 30 years writing FinnegansWake, a book no one can really read. I cant let that happen. For one thing, I have to make a living. Cities of the Red Night is a carefully executed nove l ,c o n s t ructed a little bit like a roman clefs: a beginning, a middle and an end, some connections, and a clear story. If the books too experimental, like The Third Mind, hes not going to read it. The cut-up technique gets used a bit in the new novel, but for precise enough reasons, in order to describe a state of mental dissociation or delirium.
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GGL: While reading you I have the impression you try to defy any form of definition, posing a challenge to interpretation, be it positivist or literary in nature. How do you go about escaping the categorical imperatives of reason? WB: Actually, I place myself squarely in the picaresque tradition, traced by The Unfortunate Traveller, one of the first picaro novels, written by Thomas Nashe in 1594, Satyricon by Petronius, and of course, Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Cline. In the picaresque tradition, its simply a question of one or more protagonists that keep moving on, for the sake of a real or imagined voyage, during which they meet up with a certain number of adventures or misadventuresmore often the latter.This happens without what we could call the very arbitrary structure that the novel developed in the 19th century. The basic idea is a beginning, a middle and an end, an all-knowing author whos aware what his characters think and whats going to happen, and then building by chapters.With this kind of construction, each chapter has to plunge you into anticipation, create suspense.Youre forced to keep going through the next chapter before you can return in the third chapter to what was going on in the first. Obviously, thats not how things happen in reality. Its a totally artificial form. Brion Gysin has had a lot to say about the relation set up between painting and writing. He explains how painting makes extremely clear a certain amount of the typical data of human p e rc e p t i o n . B riefly put, it shows people something they re acquainted with, but theyre not aware of it.When Czanne displayed his early paintings for the first time, no one could tell it was simply an apple, orange or a fish seen from a certain angle. Im the owner of a painting by Brion Gysin in which he shows a number of vehicles arranged according to different thicknesses. Simple matter of slicing time. If you go out on a street, particularly a street that youre familiar with, you dont only see the cars that are there, you also see the cars that were there yesterday
and those that we re there ten ye a rs ago. This results fro m mnemonic associations. But if you put this phenomenon on a canvas, people will often askwhats that supposed to be? Its supposed to be what you in fact see: data from human perception.This data is made clear by painting as by writing and other forms, for example, cinema. People are often upset when they find out they dont know what they thought they knew.Youll doubtless recall that in the Middle Ages people practically knew that the earth was round, but they believed, as sure as chickens lay eggs, that the earth was flat. And they got very touchy if somebody took it upon himself to point at the horizon and sayJust look, its simple, the earths round. And thats what artists do, in a sense. And when someone points out the mast coming over the horizon, people can get very touchy, even seriously upset. GGL: A number of years ago you gave a series of college classes, specifically at New York City College. What did you take away from that experience? WB: In fact I taught an entire semester, and what I took away from that experience is that nothing in the world would ever make it worth my while to ever teach again. It was a college where the students had lost interest in what they were studying. They were simply there to take exams. Most of them provided little feedback; they took a lot without giving much in return. I realized at the end of the four months that I hadnt been able to write a single line the entire time. Every day by the end I was completely empty. It occurred to me the same thing was true for those with whom I was trying to have a dialogue, most especially when I was filled with the notion that I would teach Writing from Imagination. In any case, Im not certain what I could have taught, nor if what I have to teach can be in fact taught.Thats, to say the least, a sober-
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ing conclusion. Dry material like mathematics or similar material its rewarding to just make it accessible. Thats not as difficult. On the other hand, I will be teaching a series of courses of a shortened duration at the Naropa Institute in Boulder. Ill be satisfied this summer if I can give three consecutive courses, without ever mentioning writing, on what I call creative reading. Ill take certain writers, forgotten writers for the most part, and ask the students to read in a creative way. I will ask them a series of questions. What did the writer want to accomplish? In what measure has he succeeded? Stop after a specific number of pages and ask yourself how you would end the novel. Think of five or six possible endings. This kind of thing Among the forgotten or neglected authors Ive selected is Denton Welch,86 an English novelist who died in 1948 and about whom no ones ever heard. Many of these writers have fallen into obscurity because they didnt show up at the right moment. If Kerouac had written his books 20 years earlier, its possible hed no longer be in circulation. GGL: In your opinion, what role does the writer have to play in the modern world? WB: An important one and I think also an influential one. Kerouac comes to mind, his influence on the way of living of millions of young people.Then theres Scott Fitzgerald, his influence on the generations between the two World Wars.The influence of a writer may not be as direct as that of a journalist, but it may possibly go farther. No one thinks of writers as actually making events happen in the way that journalists do. When journalists start to talk about airline hijackings, theres suddenly an epidemic of them. Censorship logically first has to deal with journalism, because on a regular basis its clear that someone got the idea for his crime from reading the newspapers. One guy kills eight nurses; word gets around; next thing, a kid in Arizona says to himself, Eureka! Thats the ticket. Goes directly out and kills six women.
It happens all the time. But its very rare indeed that someone gets the idea for a crime from reading fiction. No one goes out on the street and cuts peoples throats because he read Treasure Island by Steve n s o n .A nybody but anybody knows its not real. GGL: The United States appears to have fallen back into a kind of ideological sluggishness; the Black Panthers, Weathermen and other radical movements are no longer anything more than a dim memory. Europe, an the other hand, has meanwhile taken up the flag of terrorism. Do you keep up with the events in Italy and Germany, and whats your opinion of them? WB: I dont follow them closely. I know, of course, what they say in the papers. Ive always been of the opinion that a revolution starting from the bottom does not have a prayer of succeeding in an industrialized society. For any guerrilla movement to be successful, two conditions have to be met: a source of supplies from a friendly nation, and the support of a considerable part of the population in the country itself. Ireland is the classic example, given that the IRA benefits at the same time from a common border with Southern Ireland and the support of the Northern Catholics. I dont think its very probable that these new terrorists will profit from either one of these conditions. I have no doubt they possess certain light arms, but what kind of support do they have among the population of either Italy or Germany? In other words, they contribute to the creation of a terrorist state by their actions, and may even bring it into being. They identify themselves with it by their actions. Are they of the left or right? They say theyre the extreme left, but the fact remains that their actions produce a totalitarian situation of the right. So how can we believe that theyre the extreme left when theyre acting as agents of the right? Purely on the level of terro ri s m , if they were really serious about their goals in a big way, theyd, of course, have to use biological or chemical weapons.
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And they may even now be in a position to procure such weapons. Not too long ago, a young man, no degree in physics, some kind of an economist, managed to make public plans for an atomic weapon based on non-classified documents. Of course, it was only your garden-variety hydrogen bomb, but adequate, even so, to take out the center of a city. Due to the fact that this happened in America, the plans were immediately reclassified top secret and the whole thing hushed up. But if this kid could do it, anyone can. Anyone with a degree in physics is in a position to make an atom bomb with just a little radioactive material. And arms being what they are, for terrorists its a small matter to obtain this These possibilities are out there. If they wanted to take things that far, God knows what would happen GGL: In your latest novel, Cities of the Red Night , from what Ive heard, you relate the story of some filibusters who manage, at least for a certain period, to put in place a utopic society. Could you say something about your borrowing from history in order to construct this basically political fiction? WB: Yes, in a certain sense, its utopic because the pirates do manage to take over the American continent and create the world they want. Others are bound, however, to judge its intentions as something other than utopic. Its simple, a gunsmith invents a cartridge rifle and that gives them the chance to take over the continent.You have to realize how incredibly cumbersome flintlocks are to carry around, also the time it takes to reload.A cartridge rifle is worth 30 or 40 flintlocks. This means the firepower of each combatant gets multiplied 50 times. Later on, the gunsmith comes up with an even more efficient weapon. Its not a matter of his going back in time with a knowledge of modern weaponry, but of discovering it as anyone could have in his period. People wouldnt have needed 500 years to realize that the head of a bullet can be made to explode on contact, if they werent so slow. In the case of the cartridge rifle, it
could have been thought of at the time of the pirates, if any of them had had a bit of originality. Somebody takes a look at something and says to himself, Hey look, maybe I can make this or that improvementThe beginning of this story is already mentioned in Port of Saints. All my books make up one book.The characters, the situations, the time periods pass from one to another. No, the saga of The Wild Boys hasnt ended, it continues. As with EdgarRice Burroughs, everything is connected. GGL: Do you believe its currently possible to envisage a utopic society that wouldnt at the same time be totalitarian? WB: Thats one of the hardest questions to answer. In the first place, Id say people will never be capable of doing anything that might possibly resolve all their problems and make them completely happy. It depends though on what you mean by utopia. In modern societies, individuals interests are spread out to the point where what may be Utopic and fortunate for some is very likely to be unfortunate for others. I dont think there exists an ideal utopia. Where does one run into utopic societies, meaning no crime, no unemployment and so on? These problems dont exist in restricted groups, in societies thought of as being primitive, where you have no more than 30 or 40 people. Quite obviously, 90 percent of the worlds population has to be gotten rid of.Too many people.You just cannot imagine an utopic society where the population is so enormous and interests so diverse. GGL: In 1984, George Orwell described some of the underlying tendencies of our societiestendencies towards mass control, dehumanization, repression of the instincts and hostility towards intelligence. With you, we get the impression that 1984 isnt sometime in the near future, or even in the present, its already been inscribed in the past. Is it your feeling that things are going to get worse until theres no turning back?
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WB: Its hard to say. My impression is that Orwells book is superficial in a lot of ways. It gives the impression that whats happening is a kind of invasion by something foreign to human nature. If you recall, at the end of the book, what youre really dealing with is the extermination of the human race. In other words, its not a state of control of which hes speaking, but closer to a state of transition on the way to extermination. Because, you see, no one can survive total control. If someone controls individuals totally, theyre no longer there. The control has to remain partial. For example, you keep a dog under control, you keep a worker under control, but you dont need to keep a tape-recorder under control. And theres a lot of evidence to suggest that the human organism cannot survive this kind of treatment. Its the English principle of never go too far in any one direction, because if you do, you defeat your own purposeif your purpose is practical, such as maintaining your own position, one of privilege. Translated from the French by Richard C. Ledes New York, 1981
A S T R A L E V O LU T I O N
MICHAEL WHITE: I would like to ask you about Cities of the Red Night. Is the information about the pirates colonies based on historical fact? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Oh ye s , c e rt a i n l y, t h e re was a colony on the coast of Madagascar founded by Captain Mission. Yes, that is quite accurate. MW: What happened to them? WB: They were slaughtere d .T h e re were only 300 of them, and the natives just suddenly ganged up on them. MW: How long did the colony last?
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WB: One for seven years.That was not the only one; there were several in the West Indies. There was an island that was held by pirates and ruled by pirates for a long while. It happened in a number of places, but they were small and isolated and couldnt maintain themselves. MW: Were there any pirates like the ones you described in the book? WB: No, they were all different.There were many different types of pirates. A lot of them had respectable positions. One of the most successful pirates was the governor of Jamaica. He took the city of Panama and lived to a ripe old age as a very wealthy man. Then there were the privateers who were supposedly not pirates, they were attached to the navy of England or France or Spain. They raided, but they said that they only raided enemy vessels. Supposedly they were navy, not pirates, but the line was very thin. MW: Would you remark as to your style in Cities of the Red Night and how you wrote it? WB: The beginning of Cities of the Red Night is set in the style of Graham Greene. I often write summaries, start here and go to there, almost like a diagram or schemata. I ask, How does this fit in? First I write a rough draft, look at it, go over it. I discard more than I use. I use scrapbooks to overcome writers block, juxtapositioning pictures from newspapers and magazines and other bits of writing that are relevant to what I am writing. I also keep folders with writings that go with the scrapbooks. MW: Could you give a one sentence description or summary of Cities of the Red Night? WB: Yes, all right: the limitation imposed through biologic structure and the potential for transcending these through biological change.
MW: Could you talk about your ideas concerning evolution and the possibility of the next biologic step in evolution? WB: Yes, Im advancing the theory that were not biologically designed to remain in our present state any more than the caterpillar was designed to remain a caterpillar. The human species is in a state of neoteny.That is a biological word used to describe an organ that is fixated in what would ordinarily be a larval or transitional stage. This is very important; evolution is a one way streetonce you lose your gills you never get them back. By whatever means the change takes place, it is irreversible. Now if you consider these evolutionary steps you get the feeling that the creature is tricked. For instance, as far as the fish is concerned, once he leaves his gills behind he has made an involuntary step. I wouldnt say forward, but it is a steplooking for water he has found air. Perhaps the next step the human makes will be made in the same way; the astronaut is not really looking for space, he is looking for more time to do exactly the same things. The space program is simply an attempt to transport all our insoluble problems and take them somewhere else. However, like the walking fish, looking for more time he may find space instead, and then find out there is no way back. Such an evolutionary step involves changes that are virtually inconceivable from our present point of view.The space program is like a fish in an aquarium, it has everything it needs.While I think it is a tremendous achievement to get off the planet, there are lots of things to consider. One of the most important is weight, the humanoid weighs about 170 pounds. They have to encapsulate the whole environment and transport the environment with the weight.We have a much lighter mode, that is, the astral or dream body.This model gives a clue as to the change. I think dreams do give us an insight into space exploration. Recent research has established that dreams are a biological necessity.You can tell when an animal or person is dreaming by their brain waves. If they wake an animal up every time it
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begins to dream, no matter how much dreamless sleep it has had, it leads to coma and death. They have done similar experiments on people. Dreams are a vital link to our biological and spiritual destiny in space. MW: Id like to find out more about the hanging scenes.The sexual hangings appear right from Naked Lunch through Cities of the Red Night. WB: Yes indeed. [Long pause] MW: What do you think of this sexual practice?
MW: Its a good word combination, I think of machines as hard. WB: By and large your titles should convey a picture. It may not even be a picture in the book, like you hear the Valley of the Dolls, you see something right? I see just a serene valley with a lot of d o l l s .I ve never read the book. MW: Cities of the Red Night has that heavy visual impact. WB: Well, yeah, that derives from a cut-up of Rimbaud.The title of the next one is The Place of Dead Roads. I think thats a good title. MW:You didnt seem to use the cut-up much in Cities of the Red Night.
WB: It is rather self limiting. [He picks up a copy of On the Road which has been lying on the table.] Ive been rereading Kerouac.What a ridiculous completely fallacious picture he draws of me. Well, thats all righthes writing fiction. People dont realize that. They think the people described are the real people. MW: Was it real for him? WB: No, I dont think so at all. He has me in Istanbul. Ive never been to Istanbul in my life, its absolute bullshit. It was a sort of fiction, a novel. But he gave me titles. Naked Lunch was his title. Titles are very import a n t .T h ey had 200 titles before they hit on Jaws for Jaws, some of them were terrible like Leviathan. MW: How do you get your titles? WB: Ive gotten titles from various places, usually I have the title at the start. But I may change titles. The Soft Machine was someone elses title, he didnt intend it for a book title, but he used the phrase and I got a title from it.
W B : The cut-up technique works best with image pro s e. Rimbaud always cuts up good. It works well when images are shifting through your head, when arbitrary images come and go. MW: You got excellent reviews from what I could see. WB: Some good, some bad. I saw reviews in Time and Newsweek. It was very poorly written up in Newsweek. MW: Do you pay much attention to them? WB: No, just in a business way. MW: Does it affect sales? WB: Its very hard to say whether a good review in Newsweek necessarily sells books. I saw somebody whose book was praised to the sky and I checked around and found it wasnt selling at all. To my point of view, a good review in Newsweek would not be so prestigious, not something that would persuade people to buy the book.
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MW: Does it seem the general public has a certain kind of book they want to read? WB: I dont think there is any such thing as the general public.We have a very stratified reading market.The biggest buying market in America is the Book of the Month Club. That market is distinct from the academic, or the Playboy constellation.You have all these stratified and separate markets, and the question is, whether you are in this or that strata. Can you tap any other strata? In many cases, you cant.You are limited to your particular strata. MW: Are you interested in being on the best seller list? WB: Selling books is my business. MW: Have any of your books reached the best seller list? WB: No, not at all. MW: Do you have a daily reading habit? WB: No. I love to read on the airplane, on a train. I look out the window. MW: Where did you get the names for the six cities? WB: The names of the cities is something that Brion Gysin happened onto. Supposedly, if you repeat those names just before going to sleep with a question in mind, you will obtain an answer to your question. Thats part of the mythology. A lot of it relates to the Ismaili doctrines.The Ismailis still exist, by the way, and the Aga Khan claims to be the direct descendant of Hassan I Sabbah, the old man of the mountain. His claims were supported by the English for political reasons.This seems to me to be very dubious
indeed, and he certainly reflects no credit. One of his descendants was associated with the Paris Review. MW: What about the various gods in the Invocation? WB: They are a sort of hodgepodge.A lot of them are Mayan and a lot of them I just invented, although they may well exist. MW: Your style seems different in Cities of the Red Night from your previous works. WB: Different writing styles are often dictated by the different types of material.When I was writing Cities the material seemed to dictate a more or less straightforward technique of writing. MW: The relationship between birth and death is clear, everything born must die, but the relationship between death and birth isnt so clear.Would you speak to this point? WB: Sure thing, everyone knows the greatest cause of death is birth, but not so many know that the reverse is also truethe cause of birth is death. If people keep getting born and dont die, where are you going to put them after a while? But more than that, the whole point of birth is to replace the ranks that have been decimated by death. Its as simple as that. Its part of the same process, you cant have one without the other. MW: Well, if the point of birth is replacement, then how come we got so many extra births? It seems to go way beyond the need to replace the ones who die. WB: It sure does. Its a big problem we face, overpopulation. My god, they should put contraceptives in the water supplies. Its just the people who shouldnt have high birth rates that do. Take
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Mexico City, when I was there in the 50s it was a city of about one million with clean blue skies. Now it is well over 20 million.They have cut down every stick of wood in Mexico Valley for firewood; it is a model of urban blight. I talked to someone who had tried to go around and teach birth control to these underdeveloped countries and he said they think it is some kind of trick to deprive them of their military potential.You cant get them to listen to reason; people never do until its too late. Like the destruction of the rain forest. I dont like to think about it, its too depressing. MW: Let me ask you a broader question: considering writing as an art form, what do you consider the function of art? WB: Writing is a form of self-reproduction, and in a real sense a writer lives on in his works. Writing is the process of making maps, spatial and social maps. It is the role of art and creative thinking to give us orientation in space, like maps of space. MW: Any tips for me? Im starting my first book. WB: Well, it always takes a lot of uninterrupted time and concentration. I cant seem to go and do something else and come back to it. When I was teaching I couldnt write, too much interruption. Even if you have a couple of days off you cant get back into it. MW: What do you see as the biggest traps for a writer? WB: There are several: the first is writers block; then trying to write the book which cant be understood, repeating the same theme or having a distinctive style that you must repeat and even overwriting. Overwriting can lead to block. For writers block I found that the way to get around this is not to force yourself but to do something else, reading, whatever you can enjoy. Then it will take care of itself.
MW: Thats good to hear. WB: I hear you had some trouble in your neck of the woods. MW: Somebody killed a state agent in a pot patch in Kentucky. WB: So somebody went and shot a revenuer, killed him dead too. Thats bad for everybody, as soon as the state agents arrive they know whats going on. They know the sheriff must be paid off, most cops are natural born thieves anyway. There is a very good book, Story of a Cop. Its written by a cop but as told to somebody.The cops had a deal where when it comes on the radio that they have found someone dead, they put on the sirens and rush over there hoping they will find some money.Well, the person had been dead for a week, the money was under the mattress and all these putrefied juices had soaked through onto the money. There was an old cop and a young cop. The old cop gives the money to the rookie and says, All right kid, wash it off. They found 600 dollars, so they report 200 and kick back 100.The cop in the book finally got caught and then he ratted on all the other cops. He went around with a wire on. Well, once this other cop grabs him by the tie, the wire was right there. If they had found that wire they would have killed him. Of course, the real money is in the drugs, they lean on the pusher, they take his money, they take his junk and sell it and whats he got? If he opens his mouth theyll shoot him. MW: I liked what you said about telling the good guys from the bad. WB: Ye a h ,i t s not hard.There are ten percent good and ten percent bad and eighty in between.The bad guys are shits, its obvious. MW: I understand you have studied Mayan culture?
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WB: Yes, little is known about it.The manuscripts were destroyed by a Christian bishop. Paradoxically, the same bishop prepared the only Mayan/Spanish dictionary. MW: Can you read the Mayan hieroglyphics? WB: Nobody can read them all. I used to be able to read some of the dates.Thats the only complete thing we know.We know how their system worked on dates and can read them, but we dont know what the other symbols mean. MW: So the codices are really untranslatable at this time. WB: They dont have enough cross references. They have no Rosetta stone. Of course, had the manuscripts not been destroyed no doubt we could. MW: It seems that you are a writer who has tried to undermine the word as that which comes between perception and what we are. WB: Ye a h ,i t s a long way to go.We havent made any headway in that direction.
E X T E R M I N AT I N G
New York, 1981 William Burroughs distaste for politics and contempt for politicians is well-known. He considered that conflicts only became visible when the disease had already become inoperable.Taking them at face value then was just acting like a bull in the ring, charging the wrong target. Political desp e radoes who were making headlines at the timethe Red A rmy Fraction in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italyhappened to be doing just that, charging the red cloth of Western democracies in the hope of bringing out their fascistic face. It was the last gasp of the class struggle, the self-appointed Marxist avant-garde violently taking politics in their own hands Their ruthless strategy of kidnapping, knee-capping and murder had raised an intense soul-searching among the European Left, but young New York artists I associated with at the time had a tendency to glamorize terrorism from a safe distance, confusing punk anti-aesthetics with spectacular violence The following conversation was published in the German Issue of Semiotext(e), in 1982, side by side with a long interview with a fugi-
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tive from the RAF, Hans-Joachim Klein, then in hiding. His insiders account of the German urban guerilla and its international connections, in 1980, played a crucial role in turning the German alternative movement away from armed struggle. (Klein recently resurfaced in Germany, creating a fierce debate around Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a close friend of Kleins when Fischer himself was a left-wing activist). James Grauerholz obligingly arranged for a meeting at the Bunker. Its blind walls were shutting us off from the world outside, but I had brought at his intention a copy of a speech by Ulrike Meinhof on Armed AntiImperialist Struggle, a strongly-worded political incantation directed at the silent masses: Reality can only be perceived in a materialist way related to struggleclass strugglewar. Revolutionary actionno matter how it is brought aboutwill always be understood by the masses. Words are senseless, outrage is no weapon, it takes action.The Guerilla has no real viewpoint, no basis from which to operate. Everything is constantly in motion, so is the struggle. Struggle comes out of motion, moving on and is moving on. All that matters is the aim. The guerilla perceives class struggle as the basic principle of history and class struggle of history and class struggle as reality, in which proletarian politics will be realized Burroughs quickly leafed through Meinhofs tract and put the it down down impatiently. WILLIAM BURROUGHS: I cant visualize anything when I read this kind of material. I dont see what it corresponds to. Its the same logic used by their enemies, the same fucking abstract language. A joint was passed and Burroughs took a long drag, eyes half-closed, cat-like. An angel passed. I handed him the galleys of Kleins interview Slaughter Politics, and he started going through it with an obvious sense of relief. Klein was no intellectual. Actually he was this rarity among the German terrorists, an authentic prole.While in Frankfurt, he
happened to fall upon a group of anti-authoritarians and fought with the squatters. Eventually he joined the terroristsnot the RAF, whom he found too haughty, but the more popular and spontaneist Revolutionary Cells. He finally renounced armed action after the bloody attack on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna on December 21, 1975, in which he participated by the side of the infamous South American terrorist widely known as Carlos. SYLVRE LOTRINGER: Do you think some form of terrorist action can be justified? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Some of these groups are quite rational. Terrorists like the IRA in Ireland or the Palestinians do make sense.Their motivations are clear, their goals concrete.They can easily visualize what they want to achieve. Then there is another kind of terro ri s m ,i n t e rnational terrorism, which is to me some sort of intellectual sickness.These people dont seem to have a fucking idea of the kind of life theyre fighting for, I mean life as it is lived on a day-to-day basis. Theres nothing direct in their motivation. Is it some kind of religious belief or mysticism? Mystics at least believed in another world, they had something to gain; these terrorists dont. I cant understand why they do it. SL: Ideologies can be very powerful, especially when they fail. The overall analysis of German terrorists is sound.They are, after all, a by-product of the 60s anti-authoritarian movement. Like the alternatives, they are keenly aware that Western affluence is achieved at the expense of the Third-World. But they are deluded in their methods: in a media world, the m a s s e s d o n t respond to any message, only to the violence of the spectacle.Their revolutionary romanticism is a luxury everyone now is paying for in Germany in terms of police control and State repression.The Red Army fraction is violent because it comes too late. It is just a hysterical version of orthodox Marxism.
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WB: I never quite understood why people were taken in by M a r x i s m . F i rst of all, M a r x s predictions went all wro n g . Revolution occured not in the most, but in the least industrialized societies.And then Marxism is just one among many ideologies, it was written by someone sitting at his desk who had no idea what things really were like. If these people were crazy, at least it would make some sense.What can they really hope to gain from their action? Theres no way they can change anything. So why are they doing what they are doing? I just wonder if theres no overall organization, practically a world-wide terrorist network.Today we live in a situation of maximum change, and flexibility is essential. Youve got people that cant be flexible, that have some nonsense about isms and everything, but what the hell does that mean? Those who believe such things, fundamentalists, communists,are just dangerous to other people.They are dangerous to the species. Their whole orientation is biologi c a l l y unsound. SL: Whatever the motivations, do you believe terrorist strategies have any chance to succeed? WB: If they want to be terrorists, they might as well be terrorists. But the obvious thing is nuclear or biological weapons. SL: You mean they should go all the way? WB: If theyre going to, I dont know. Its not my concern. Still, its puzzling to me why they dont go any further. Nowadays anyone can make an atom bomb. Its very easy, all it takes is some college physics and, Im told, $200,000.With what they call a small yield nuclear device, you can take out an area in New York from Times Square up to the end of Central Park. Two people would suffice to plan in detail the extermination of a whole population. No one would know who set it off. Emergency plans are ready to
be activated. I dont believe theyve made all these projections for nothing. Our two men could easily protect themselves from the radiation and wait until people had finished killing each other. Then they would come out of their hiding place. SL: Can you imagine that happening? WB: Anything could happen. SL: How long do you think this planet is going to last? WB: Some scientist was giving it no more than 40 years. I dont mean the planet, but people on it. SL: Forty years? He may be optimistic. WB: Any species runs its course, and thats it.Very often the advantage they had in the first place is their ultimate destruction.The dinosaurs got so big they couldnt get enough to eat.There were a number of half-reptile and half-mammal species at one time, not big, about the size of a wolf, with reptile-like teeth. I dont know why they didnt survive. Some of them were quite practical. SL: We thought we could survive because of our intelligence and technology.Thats probably what were going to be destroyed by. WB: Intelligence, like technology, is only an instrument. In itself, it is completely static unless someone pushes it. Any action goes from body to emotional brain, then it gets an order going out to the front brain. For example a cat wakes up and the cat is angry, thats the back brain.The message is passed on to the front brain and the cat starts looking for food, usually in terms of where food had been found before.Thats the basis of the simplest sort of animal thinking: w h e re food wa s , t h e re food will be. L i ke
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Hollywood, what made money will make money.The front brain does not do anything unless its told, just like a computer. Intelligence doesnt exist in a vacuum. It only exists with regard to a purpose. SL: We seem to be losing our sense of purpose. WB: To me the only purpose would be to get into space, but not in an aqualung the way theyre doing it now. SL: I heard you would be quite willing to go to the moon. WB: I would be willing to go anywhere. If flying saucers want to take me out of the solar system, Id get in right away, without hesitation. SL: Even with the prospect of no return? WB: Of course, particularly so.Who wants to come back? SL: But there doesnt seem to be any other form of life anywhere else. WB: What makes you think so?
WB: Oh, this is ridiculous. A 19th-century type of action, like old bomb-throwing anarchists of the 1910s. At least they were into acting, and what a good role it was. Historionism is a very powerful factor. Everything is a matter of roles, but terro ri s t s refuse to take the stage.They want to remain anonymous. I suspect theyre intellectuals who want to prove that their theory is right. SL: But what if, as you suggested, their bomb-throwing involved atomic weapons, including the H-bomb? WB: Besides A m e ri c a ,t h e re are few places that have any facilities to make an H-bomb. It is so much more complicated than an ABomb. Only 300 people in the world know how to make one. SL: At this point a modest A-Bomb would be enough to throw the world in chaos. WB: Of course, if some people had the idea to use it as a terrorist weapon, that would be the ir intent: to create total chaos, not to substitute one form of government for another. SL: In a sense, what has prevented various terrorist groups from going overboard is their political or ideological beliefs. WB: It is their 19th-century thinking.
SL: So far we havent been very successful at detecting it. WB: Why should we detect it? Particularly if they didnt want us to detect it. Nothing would be easier than to prevent it. Were thinking about life as we know it, which has very definite limitations, temperature, all sorts of things. But that doesnt necessarily apply to any other forms of life. SL: Terrorists have definite limitations in the face of the universe. SL: If they didnt stick to the 19th, we certainly wouldnt make it to the end of the 20th. Although nothing proves that we will. WB: Also there are all sorts of biological weapons, which seem much more viable really than nuclear weapons. I mean, you can make them in this loft, and they are much less detectable anyway. All you need is some laboratory equipment.
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SL: Hans-Joachim Klein, the fugitive from the German underground, maintained that as soon as you have a weapon you've got to use it. It may also be true for all these missiles we keep stockpiling all over the place. WB: Thats not necessarily true. I may carry this gun around for the rest of my life and never use it. SL: Klein talks about the sense of power you derive from carrying a weapon on you. You become somewhat dependent on it. Have you ever felt that yourself? W B : Of cours e. If yo u re accustomed to carry any sort of weapon, you dont feel right without it.You feel, this will be the time Ill have some trouble. One time I went out in Boulder and got bitten by a dog, and I didn't have my cane on me, of course. But to make a blanket statement that because you have a weapon on you have to use it, it is just not true. SL: Once you told me that there is no example in history of a new weapon that hasn't been used. WB: Yes, but they havent invented that much.These we a p o n s ,f o r example, were in existence over many years. People would tend to use them when there was a war.They might even be forced to use any weapon that had at their disposal. SL: Actually bacteriological warfare is in again. The Pentagon recently declared that poison gas could be considered a cheaper substitute for nuclear warfare. It would, they say, do far less damage in limited wars involving conventional forces in distant parts of the world, including the pine forests of Germany. Im sure the Germans appreciated it.
WB: The whole question of selective pestilence is quite within the range of modern technology.They can produce a plague that would only affect white people, or black people, or Mongoloids. Milk is poisonous to some Chinese because they dont have some enzymes that break it dow n .T h a t s where you start when you want to use a selective pestilence.You start with these differences and then you look at all the diseases to which only certain races are subject, like sickle-cell anemia for bl a c k s .T h e re s a number of illnesses that are either confined to or predominantly Jewish. Tay-Sachs, for example, is almost predominantly a Jewish illness. SL: Its a lack in chromosomes. WB: Its an hereditary illness completely crippling and requiring a great deal of care. SL: Selective pestilence is an equivalent to these neutron bombs that destroy people, not buildings.You can select the target. WB: Yes.And the Jewish population is much more subject to diabetes. No doubt, anyone can get diabetes, but statistically its much more a Jewish illness than any other race or groupanother bit of information I got from a book called The Judas Gene. Someone had planned a real final solution to the Jewish question, this plague that only Jewish people contract. SL: In as much as there is such a thing as a pure gene pool, which is highly debatable. WB: Of course, but the more Jewish they were, the more they were subject to it. Someone who only has a small amount of Jewish blood would be less vulnerable.
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SL: The more defined the minority, the easier to exterminate. WB: Absolutely. Im surprised the Nazis didnt do more work on that. SL: That will be for another generation. WB: Since they really wanted to get rid of all the Jews, we l l ,t h a t was the way to do it. A Jewish plague. They could say they have nothing to do with it quite easily.Thats the thing about biological weapons, you cant be sure whos done it.The more you think about the whole thing, the weirder it gets.After the fall of France, Hitler had everything going for him. People here would all have done business with Nazi Germany. They liked the idea that the trains were on time. If Hitler had played his cards right, sensibly, he would have had everything he wanted and the whole of modern history would have been different. Then he embarks on this concentration camp nonsense, and the propagandists say, Jesus, we cant be associated with something like this. SL: He messed it up. WB: He messed it up. But he might have even gotten away with that if he hadnt invaded Russia.Two pieces of lunacy, one on top of the other, that was too much, too much. Invading Russia was just a straight military mistake he should have learned from Napoleon.You cannot invade a country successfully where there is any amount of room for withdrawal. Remember when the Romans tried to invade Pa rt h i a .O K , the Romans marched in, the Parthians shoot some arrows, moving away, further, further in. Meanwhile the Romans are dying of thirst and illnesses, and finally they have the Parthians behind them cutting their supply line. It was a disaster, and a foreseeable disaster. The Germans could have profited by Napoleons example as we could have profited from the French experience in Viet-Nam. It showed that this was
a war that couldnt be won. I would have opposed the Viet-Nam war even on military grounds. And there was no reason for it. It was completely an ideological conflict. We ended up spending God knows how many billions of dollars and we most ingloriously lost the war. There are pictures of people being kicked off the last plane that went out, literally they were stepping on their hands as they tried to get in.These were too much [laughs]. SL: Were relying on the balance of terror to exorcise the nuclear holocaust. Do you think this strategy remains effective? WB: The matter of the situation is now as it has been since the beginning of time. Not since the beginning of warfare, but since the beginning of disagreement. One person picks up a club, and another person picks up a club. So if I hit him, maybe hes going to hit me, and he thinks. In a way, he wouldnt think if I didnt have a club. SL: But clubs now have a way of becoming invisible, and there is just no time left to think. Were reaching the point when instant destruction is making even deterrence obsolete. WB: It is one of the rules of wa r fa re that people will develop such efficient weapons; they get to a point where it would end the whole gameif you call it a game, the war game. Basically theres only one game, and that game is war. All games are hostile by their nature because they involve winners and losers. But if anyone achieves what theyre allegedly trying to do, which is total victory, they end the game. SL: It is what you called the limits of control: Control needs opposition or acquiescence; otherwise it ceases to be control. So ultimately the enemy must be spared, or somehow propped up again, as happened with Germany after the war.
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WB: Yes, you have to. The Germans win one time and then the French come back, whereas if the Germans won completely there would never be another time. SL: Can you imagine any type of society that wouldnt depend on war games? WB: There are societies where war is a minimal factor, but those are small groups of people. As soon as you get to what we have now, a heterogeneous population with terrific divergences of interest within the society itself, youve got a situation which cannot be anything other than hostile. SL: A French political anthropologist, Pierre Clastres, recently argued that war between tribes wasnt an accident, or a natural phenomenon.War was intrinsic to primitive cultures because it was by war only that they managed to prevent the emergence in their midst of a single authority or an overall power structure. Conflict allowed them to remain divided and heterogeneous, immune from the temptation of the State. WB: Why war was there, who put it there, who cooked up this plan, I dont know. There are very practical wars, wars for water, wars for territory, whenever you have a situation where there is only a limited amount of water, or land. In fact a lot of Arab wars are sensible wa rs .T h e re isnt enough water to go around, so one group grabs it. SL: Judging by the increasing number of underdeveloping countries, sensible wars are here to stay. WB: Weve got to realize that we just cant allow the population to increase without any sort of limits.This is just the development of the industrial revolution from the point of view of the manu-
facturer. The more people, the better for his products and for his factories. But we cant take care of new people, even with new technologies.Were exhausting resources faster that they could be replenishedand whats the end of it? If you cut the population in half, that would simplify a lot of the problems. SL: Overpopulation is also a choice on the part of competing powers. WB: Of course, those who are manufacturing consumer goods. But also there are the military necessities. If any country allowed its population to reach a reasonable level, it would become vulnerable, it would immediately put itself out of running as a major power. Theyd say, We are no more in the military game than Holland or Denmark. SL: How would you achieve that goal then: would you impose population control? WB: You distribute a pill so there would be only males born.You wouldnt have to impose it. Most people, particularly in underdeveloped areas, would prefer male children anyway. Its economical. Only in places like America and Western Europe would they want a balanced family. This plan, if implemented, would upset the whole military balance of the world. In 20 or 30 years, the number of males of military age in the underdeveloped countries, where males are at a premium, would be such that they would overrun Africa, which might be a good thing too. Its an interesting idea. Of course, the reduction of population would not be immediate; it would occur over several generations. SL: Is this a fairy tale on a world scale or a concrete proposal? WB: Dr. Postgate is the man who proposed to give this pill that reproduces only male children.When he put forth his theory the
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t e c h n o l ogy wa s n t there, but its here now. T h ey can do it. Needless to say, Postgate received hate letters from the womens community and hes not even a homosexual himself, at least he claims he isnt. SL: You dont think that the confrontation between the two syst e m s , capitalism and socialism, has anything to do with the exhaustion of world resources? WB: These words mean absolutely nothing anymore. Theres no difference between them so far as the basic needs that they have to satisfy. Suppose the communists would take over A m e ri c a tomorrow, or even that the terrorists succeed. Theyd have to do much the same things that are being done now. Im talking about problems like food distribution, fire, police, sanitation, all these services on which city dwellers are absolutely dependent. If those a re cut off, t h e re s going to be millions of people starv i n g overnight. SL: Or theyd have to be shipped out of cities, like in Cambodia. WB: They couldnt ship them anywhere in the USA. The chaos would be such that there wouldnt be any possible way of relocating them. Theyd swarm out into the country like a horde of locusts and strip everything bare, murdering the fa rm e rs , just grabbing what food they could. And in a year or so, they wouldnt know how to manage the fa rm s . I dont say this will happen, but weve seen it happen many times in history where civilizations collapsed and reverted to the city-states like in the Middle Ages.This is what happens in all the disaster novels. SL: So the future is behind us. Clans will form again, warlords assert their power. The world will become a big Beirut slum.
WB: It could happen, but I doubt it very much. Some 30 or 40 people would grab a place, fortify it, put up walls to defend their position. They would have weapons. And they would have to learn how to farm if they wanted to survive.This is a possible scenario, and you could get some approximation of it in a state of chaos, but somehow history doesnt repeat itself word for word. Radicals always assume that the army wants things to be in order. They never think that chaos could come from the institution. But the system itself could induce chaos. You may decide that the political danger comes from the cities. So you switch the generator off. And then you apply a plan of total eradication. A good clean-up.Thats what they did in Argentina. SL: I dont think the German State would ever induce chaos. Even terrorist groups in Germany cant help being organized. WB: Well, I wonder if its all that orderly in Germany.They have a terrific crime problem in the big cities. I was just reading a book about the last days of Berlin. The chaos there was un-be-lie-vable.There was no water, no food, no electricity, people were dying in the street, the SS were going around hanging anyone whose papers werent in order, and the Russians were coming in, shooting anyone in uniform, everybody was trying to get out of there as quickly as possible, and thats Germany. Then, I mean, OK, youve got order, but when that order cracks SL: It already happened once after the 1929 crash and galloping inflation And you got order again under the Nazis. In a sense, whatever their political justifications, terrorists already act as warlords. The right to kill has always been the prerogative of the State. WB: These ideas, many people have them in America who are not terrorists. People are stock-piling automatic weapons, dry
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food and theyve got places, country places that they are prepared to defend.They try to be self-sustaining. So this doesnt necessarily come from the terro ri s t s . These people would be violently anti-terrorists in theory because many of them are right-wing; although, these words dont mean very much. The terrorists would be hard put to compete with them. SL: And these people are perfectly legitimate WB: They are settled, they are armed, and they know how to use their weapons. But then they have no sort of cohesion among them. One group might be religious, another group political fanatics.There's no unity among survivalists, as they are called. SL: I lived at a Tuareg encampment (actually Tamachek) for a while in Southern Sahara. Nomads dont have a territory of their ow n .T h ey re split in small units, a few families at most, but they derive their cohesion from their beliefs.They are more rooted in their culture and traditions than survivalists in their fortresses. WB: Thats fine for a small group living in isolation. But you take your Tuaregs and move them to New York City: see what happens to them. SL: [Straight-faced] They would become Weathermen WB: [Shrugs] Well, I doubt that. It would be fatal to them. City conditions are not conducive to any settled belief. In a heterogeneous society set beliefs are at a disadvantage. SL: Terrorists dont have a territory, but theyre colonizing the m e d i a . T h a t s what the Palestinians did, or the Red A rmy Fraction.The only problem, in their case, is that the m a s s e s d i dnt budge
WB: Look at the number of people involved: its really no more than a handful. SL: Isnt that strange, though, that a handful of terrorists can capture peoples imagination? It is the combination of old attitudes and modern communication systems that somehow proved effective, at least to a point. WB: I read a book about Carlos. I heard that he had been disposed of, like so many of them are by their own, somewhere in the Middle East. There was some disagreement or other, so they knocked him off. SL: Hans-Joachim Klein, and he was closely associated with Carlos for a while, asserts that he was not an ideologist, but a pure technician totally indifferent to the human cost of his actions. WB: He went to Lumumba University in Moscow and was thrown out because he was resistant to discipline.Then he was approached by the Palestinians, which were much more his sort of people anyway, because he always said the only thing that makes any sense is bullets. He didnt find the Russians good at all in this respect. SL: Klein couldnt really tell that much about him. Carlos didnt speak German. WB: Why not? A good terrorist should be a linguist, like an agent. SL: Can you really put underground fighters and secret agents in the same bag? WB: They have to do the same sort of things. They have to get themselves from one country to another, usually with forged
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p a p e rs .T h ey have to have codes and set up tails. It is the same operation in many ways. SL: So what is the difference between them according to you? Is it that some are professionally trained and some are not? WB: But the secret service and the terro ri s t s , if they are Palestinians,are protecting, as they think, the interest of their country.Theres not much of a difference.An important thing about terrorism is that it is exclusive.They are not going to take everybody who wants to be a terrorist. They have to keep their numbers down, and they have to have people they can trust. Just like the CIA is a very select club.There are a lot of people who want to be CIA agents, but one in a thousand is selected.The CIA have the power of the mask; the power to feel different from what they seem to be. No one knows who they really are: this is a very powerful motivation. And they know that, some day, who they are will be known. Remember this Colonel from the KGB, Rudolf Hermann, who lived in Brooklyn for ten years pretending he had a totally different life? He must have got an incredible kick from it. Not everyone can be a double agent. It takes a special kind of person. SL: There is something very seductive about any sort of clandestine action. WB: Oh yes, it gives you something to do, something thats meaningful. Something is meaningful when your survival is at stake. SL: Going to an office and working everyday isnt quite enough. WB: No. [Laughs ] Nietzsche said: Men need play and danger, civilization gives them work and safety.
SL: How did you deal with that yourself? WB: Unfortunately, I never had to deal with danger. I volunteered. I went down and saw Bill Donovan, Chief of the OSS in Washington. An uncle of mine had told him,This boy is a natural; hes traveled a lot and so on. It was the man whod been the head of my House at Harvard. He just didnt like me and I didnt like him.This fucking Baxter, that was his name (he later became the President of Williams College), put the skids under me. We dont want this guy. So that was that. SL: Would you have really liked to be accepted? WB: It would have been interesting, yes. I would have enjoyed it. If Donovan would have accepted me, I would have been into that whole espionage thing. And I might, and probably would, have turned out to be quite good at it because my whole intricate turn of mind would have lent itself very well to this kind of job.Well, this didnt work out.Which may well be all for the good. SL: Would you have missed writing? WB: I dont know. That was considerably later. In anyones life theres a real point at which you could have gone another way, and that was one such point in my life. God knows what would have happened; I could have wound up head of the CIA and I probably wouldnt have written what I wrote. James Angleton had started as an intellectual and a poet and he became head of the CIA. He was the one who really saved Ezra Pound. He hated C o l by, who eventually threw him out. Angleton told A l l e n Ginsberg that he felt his life had been wasted, it was too late for him as a poet and writer. So you see. SL: The CIA isnt a good school for the arts.
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WB: Not really, because you get yourself into a very limited situation. First, you find you are expected to do things that you dont want to do; and you are not expected to think for yourself at all. They do not want any people who are in the CIA.They dont want them in any secret service.They get too many ideas. No, they do not want someone who can see too many sides of a question. SL: Basically, they want good technicians. WB: Well, ye s .T h ey have to be very resourceful, very clever in some ways. SL: But they do not want people who think. WB: People who think? Hell, no. SL: This certainly doesnt apply to most terrorists, at least not the RAF people. Some, like Ulrike Meinhof, were quite brilliant intellectuals. Meinhof had a remarkable career as a journalist, and then quit when she felt that nothing she did was going to make a difference. And she wasn't wrong to think that. WB: They think up to a point, and not beyond that point. SL: And what is that point? WB: The point is seeing a number of sides to any questions, even questioning the whole human endeavor. Where do they think theyre going as a species, knowing where other species went. They dont think about things like that at all. Its not too healthy to think such things. SL: I know very few healthy people then. Many people would deserve to be terrorists on that account. Im sure Carlos didnt
meditate on the future of the species. Although he did his best to expedite a few unhealthy specimens. Would you consider Carlos a good agent? WB: The two French detectives he killed in Paris didn't expect it. I think they were checking on a possible immigration violation. It was no great feat to kill two unarmed people. It was a great feat, though, to get away afterwards.And that feat, of course, requires cooperation with others. SL: Are you suggesting that there should be a code of honor among terrorists? WB: I do not think in those terms. Its not a question of honor, its a question of success.Terrorists dont get anywhere unless they have other people to help them and hide them. This is the most important thing. They even use the same terminology: you have to set up a safe-house.A place where you are safe.Well, all secret services do the same. They also need to be provided with what they need to operateforged papers, food and, in some cases, weapons. SL: Carlos apparently was quite a perfectionist with weapons. WB: He bungled that. I was thereI mean, not on the scene of the crime, but in London. I read the account. He went in the house, he fired one shot which hit the man in the jaw. The man wasnt dead. Now if you're going to kill somebody, you should make sure you put at least two more shots, one of which in his head. He didnt. He just turned around and ran. The man recovered.That's terrible. SL: A technical mistake.
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WB: Exactly. If I had been in charge, they would have shot him for that alone. I would have said, Give him to them, right now, because there is no excuse for bungling it. SL: According to Klein, that's exactly what he did to a friend, Michel Mourkabel, who hadn't resisted their arrest, as he should have. Mourkabel put his hands up, so Carlos shot him dow n .A n d they were good friends. WB: The most interesting element in this interview of Klein is the idea of destroying documents. This is a really far-reaching idea. Terrorists don't usually think in these terms because they want to get hold of the enemy's documents. They don't want them destroyed. When you take over, you should destroy all the documents you can find, all the birth certificates, death certificates, criminal records, all that stuff. SL: Everything that has to do with people's identity? WB: That's a very interesting question: what documents do you destroy and what documents do you leave? Of course, all modern banking is completely a matter of records now. It's all computerized. Suppose you went in and wiped everything off the computers at Citibank? Nobody would know whether they have any money or not. In fact,they wouldn't have any money.That might be something to do. Then the next question is: do you destroy just any historical document? Do you destroy any back issue of newspapers? You see, Time and Life have terrific files on everything. So theyll go out, and the story may be that long [shows between his two hands], but they've got 200 pages of notes on that story and 100 photos.Will that all go into their files? Now how do you classify those documents? They are historical documents in a sense. Let me see what records Klein wants to destroy. [Leafs through the galleys of the interview] .A n d , of course, there are all kinds of technical records.Are those to be destroyed?
SL: What kinds of technical records? WB: Well, practically everything you could think of. There are terrific records in Washington of any type of farming.You can get all sorts of books to tell you how to raise anything. SL: And you would destroy these records? WB: [Still looking through the Klein piece] I dont see what he says No! I dont see any point in destroying those because they are so useful. But where do you draw the line? SL: If you want to protect the identity of a whole bunch of people, then you would destroy all the identity records. WB: I would say that destroying identity records would be a very good idea. Identity records and all the criminal records. All the dossiers of the CIA and the FBI. All that shit. Why keep it? It's only of use to police forces.You can't use them to start a fish fa rm , or build a cabin. All you can use it for is what it for SL: which is police work. WB: [Getting annoyed] I cant find that section about destroying records. [No wonder, it wasnt there.(SL.)] A new ideaI thought of it a number of times, to destroy all this crap, files that are piled up. Records from all the wars. I bet they still have all the records from WWI somewhere. Now that they have microfilms, they can store more of this stuff. More and more of it. I dont see that it serves any purpose at all. SL: The idea that we have to keep records, that everything has to be written down somewhere, this is a fairly recent notion after all.
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WB: Oh completely recent,like newspapers. Eighty years from now you could find out in a newspaper that an elderly woman died in a roaming house fire and the address and her name, her age, although the information is of no conceivable value, except statistically perhaps.Two hundred years ago it would not have existed. SL: You can never know in advance if something is going to be of interest later. WB: Thats true. SL: So you have to accumulate everything.Accumulate data to death. WB: We didn't always have to do this at all, I don't think we have to do it now. SL: Theres something frantic about the way we collect all this information.Theres so much information gathered everyday that we are hardly informed at all anymore.All we have is new s ,w h i c h is more of the same. WB: Theres nothing strange about it.Youve got new s p a p e rs ,a n d its their job to collect the news.Then they keep these files, which are important to you if you write a newspaper, but hardly to people who are reading it.You say,Wait a minute, I remember. Is that the same name? Go and get me this file.And then they say,Now look at this. And they've got a story. As soon as you get professionally engaged in anything, well then these things become necessary. Any object or any technology will make itself necessary as soon as it gets going, like cars for example. We didn't have those for a long time, but as soon as you have them, then the whole economy is built on cars. People live here and work over there, and the nearest shopping center is somewhere elsetheyve got to have a car.
SL: The scenario becomes irreversible. WB: Oh, not irreversible. Imagine the gasoline goes up and they have to find an alternative. The only people to be really hurt if newspapers ceased to exist, would be the people who work on newspapers. It would upset them for a while, but they soon would get used to it.What the hell, they dont have to have news-papers. They dont have to have television. SL: People get very neurotic about these things. A columnist for The New York Times recently went on vacation and said he felt guilty not reading the paper everyday. After all, history might cease to exist overnight... WB: Yes, but it wouldn't bother the rest of us. SL: We discussed earlier the possibility of reverting to warlords and city-states.Well, its happening everywhere. WB: History is reversible in the sense that it has ceased to exist. I think nobody knows it yet.They really are not certain how close they are to exhausting our oil. They are not developing alternatives fast enough.They are working on electric cars, but not very hard.And without power we can be certain that this whole communication system would collapse. SL: Would that be a great loss? WB: Not necessarily.We dont need all this communication. It is a very questionable benefit. S L : C o m munication has a way of making eve rything look identical.
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WB: It does. And the quicker you get to some place, the less point there is in going there.There are only a few pockets like the Tuaregs, the people in New Guinea and in South America that are not affected by this sort of leveling process of the media and communications. SL: Theres a definite relationship between this leveling process, the eradication of all cultural differences, and the fact that everywhere sects and fundamentalism are on the rise.The need for new forms of identificationactually very old onesis getting to be overwhelming. This account for the Moonies, the Jonestown fanatics and, in some respect, the formation of urban guerilla ideologists in Western Europe with the decadence of Marxism. WB: Suppose you belong to a certain tribe, you know exactly what to expect from other people.You have this feeling of support which is very important indeed. People lose that entirely when they live in a large city.They dont have it, and they miss it. SL: Some do. WB: It isnt just a psychological need, it's a physical need. The sort of protection that Tongs used to provide.When you belonged to a Tong, they supported you if you were out of work; they would find you a place to live if you didnt have one. All your needs were taken care of by the To n g .T h a t s a terrifically useful system. Most people would jump at it if they had the chance. But it doesn't exist anymore.The Tong system is breaking dow n .T h e mafiaso still have this thing going, but theyre very selective, like the CIA and the terrorists. Just a few people are allowed in. SL: Have you ever felt this need to belong yourself? Have you ever wanted to become a mafioso?
WB: No. Theyre out of date concepts. I can see their value, but it has to be on a different basis, in present-day language. The mafioso is something dating back to the Middle Ages. SL: Isnt it something we may be going back to? After all, the Mafia was some sort of protection for the poor against the rich and powerful. WB: Time runs out for any species. Theyre just so much time and when it runs out, theyre finished.Were trying to make something work which isnt working anymore. Its like telling the same joke over and over. SL: If the planet were to be destroyed in 40 years, or 40 minutes, would you go on writing? WB: Whether the world is going to last 40 years or 40 million years, it doesnt change work. You have to go on doing what you're doing just as a carpenter does. Until the world does end, you have to live.
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be his only source of support. Of course, he writes for money. He needs money to live and continue his work. He also may write for a whole gamut of other reasons, some of which may not be clear to himself. And certainly, writing does enable the writer to clarify his own thoughts and feelings and act out his own inner dramas in the characters and situations he cre a t e s .A rt fulfills a need like medicine or farming. No justification is called for. I include painting, sculpture, cinema, photography, creative and innovative thinking as well.The need that art fulfills is similar to the need which the dream fulfillsto travel in time and space. I postulate that man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to stagnate in present time anymore than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole. He is in a state of arrested evolution. Dreams serve literally as his lifeline to space. Deprived of that lifeline he will die. It is the function of art to sustain and amplify that. JM: Gary Snyder said a few years ago, We can say that we only moved the world a millionth of an inch, but it was a real millionth of an inch. Do you feel a part of that? WB: I dont know what Snyder is talking about. The arts, for Christsakes, determine the whole style of an epoch, how people will dress and talk and act and think and feel. This is where they get it from, the books they read, the films they see, the ideas they are exposed to. Fitzgerald wrote the jazz age. Kerouac sent millions of young people on the road. The influence of a writer, an artist, is the more far-reaching and pervasive for being indirect. JM: Do you see any success in the consciousness revolution of the last 20, 30 years that your books were such a landmark of? WB: When someone asks me this, my mouth falls open.The past 40 years has seen a worldwide revolution without precedent owing to the mass media which has cursed and blessed us with
Any writer who does not consider writing his only salvation, II trust him little in the commerce of the soul. William S. Burroughs Mail Interviews, 1983 JAY MURPHY: With the final draft of The Place of Dead Roads at the printer, thesecondvolumeofthetrilogycompleted,doyoulook on yo u r wo r k as a personalexorcismofanys o rt ?D oyoufeelthatyouhavea justification forwriting?OrdoyoufeellikeCline,whotoldpeoplethathewrotefor the money? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Does a doctor practice medicine because he is deeply interested in the subject and hopes to make an important contribution? Or does he practice to make money? For both reasons and many others. Writing is a profession like medicine or law in that it takes up all the writers time and may
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immediate worldwide communication. Everything that happens anywhere now happens everywhere on the TV screen. I am old enough to remember when the idea that Gays, Hispanics, and Blacks had any rights at all was simply absurd. A Black was a nigger, a Hispanic was a spic and a Gay was a fucking queer. And that was that.Tremendous progress has been made in leading ordinary people to confront these issues which now crop up in soap operas. Gay and junky are household words. Believe me, they were not household words 40 years ago. JM: Are there any younger writers and artists carrying on what you and Brion Gysin have spawned with the cut-ups? Do you agree with those who see your influence in the work of bands such as Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, now named Psychic TV? WB: Well, the bands themselves seem to acknowledge the influence of my work. Of course, I have known the people connected with Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV for many years. JM: Do you hold out any practical hope for the planet? Many have criticized your work for its remote politics. Do you think that criticism is relevant at all to the new trilogy, or does your vision just escape all those critics? WB: It is not up to me to hold out hope.The answers are there. They are simply not being implemented. Lustron had the answer to cheap housingit was blocked by the real estate lobbies. Endorphin may be the answer to addiction; we can depend on the FDA to keep it off the market as long as possible. Solutions are there. Solutions are blocked by short-sighted vested interests.The answers then, go way beyond politics. No politician could put forward the drastic measures that are called for cutting the population of the planet in half.
JM: Do you see nuclear war as inevitable? Do you see any hope in the growing disarmament movement? In the survivalist movement? WB: Nothing is inevitable until it happens. Possibly the timely use of biologic weapons may undercut the whole nuclear issue. Disarmament movements are rather futile in view of the limited time at our disposal. Survivalist movements are predicated on surviving nuclear disaster. JM: Have you continued any research into mind contro l ,b i o l ogical wa r fa re, or the use of drugs by government agencies? WB: Professor Delgado stopped a charging bull by pressing a button. He has elicited in human subjects fear, joy, rage, sexual excitement by pressing buttons. I dont think mind control can go much further. JM: Are there any major new developments as far as content and writing style in The Place of Dead Roads and its successor? WB: The Place of Dead Roads, which I have just finished, states my orientation somewhat more clearly than any previous book. The book postulates that man is an artifact designed for space trave l .S o we can start by examining the human artifact with biological alterations in mind which will, hopefully, render our human artifact,our H A ,m o re suitable for space travel. HA HA HA, entirely too many HAs and too little time.This is a long range research project and try to get an appropriation for such a purpose. HA HA HA. And at my back I always hear, Hurry up, please, its time. Times winged chariot hurrying near,hurry up, please its time Were closing. Brion Gysin has an all-purpose bedtime story Some trillions of years ago a dirty, sloppy giant flicked grease from his fingers .O n e of the gobs of grease is our universe on its way to the floor. SPLAT.
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WB: I read him in 1948, about the time of his death. I didn't realize the extent to which I'd been inuenced by Denton Welch stylistically until I reread him in 1974 or 75, just about when I was starting Dead Roads. He is certainly the writer who most directly influenced my work. WT: So why two names and two prepositions? WB: Well, Denton Welch is Kim Carsons. [Carsons, it should be noted, is the pen name in this novel of a writer n William Seward Hall, who writes fantasy Westerns.] Let's seeeee.You can't possibly separate language from content or character. Kim is delineated by what he says and by his thought processes. I would say the key to his character (and whoever else he may be) is attitude. WT: What do you mean by that? WB: Attitude like gesture. It's based on the Egyptian concept of the seven souls, and actually everyone in the book is a different aspect of the same pers o n . C a rson exists simultaneously as Carsons, Gatsby, Lord Jim, Comus Bassinton, and others. WT: Do you always know who is talking? WB: I write quite consciously, but not deliberately. It just happens. Ill write it, go back and look at it, and Ill say, Hmmm Thats so-and-so talking. [The long fingers pulled and tore at the straw in his drink, and the liquid blue eyes constantly scanned until he determined to state the case finally, as if having been attacked on this point for far too long.] I've always thought of the past as a meaningless proposition. It's always the present.The past and the future are contained in the present. The idea of a (definite) past is a sort of theoretical experience. I'm not much into theory. [Pause, drag on cigarette, eyes still locked on you, free hand balancing his cane at his side.]
WILLIAM B URR OU GH S , INTE LLEC TUAL GUNMAN
Washington D.C., 1984 William Burroughs recently came in from a February Washington D.C. rain, hours before his 70th birthday, to talk about his new novel, The Place of Dead Roads. Outside the sky was gray ink. In a short time the Washington Project for the Arts would screen the newly-made documentary Burroughs, and its subject would be there in person. Afterward a party would be waiting in the same bar where he sat now looking about curiously. In the meantime, you read in his face a weird mix of animal madness and gentleman affability, as he sips from his drink. WILLIAM TRIPLETT: Vodka and Coke? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Yeah [the voice bent, snarled.] I call it an America Libre. W T: Your book is dedicated to Denton We l c h , for Kim Carsons.Why?
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I'm not much into abstractions, either but I do believe in the Magical Universe, where nothing happens unless one wills it to happen, and what we see is not one god but many gods in power and in conflict. The author pulled at a new straw, his America Libre refreshed. WT: Do you work from an outline? WB: I just sit down and write. If I can't do something else, I just start out and it takes shape. If I can answer Arnold's three questionsWhat is a writer trying to do? How well does he succeed in doing it? Is it worth doing? then I feel I've succeeded. To those three questions for Dead Roads I was able to answer fully, with an unequivocal yesfor the last. WT: Did you feel the same for Cities of the Red Night? WB: In Dead Roads, as well as in Cities of the Red Night, the only advancement was that I was clearer in what I was trying to do. WT: You mean that you had an end in mind when you began Dead Roads? WB: No, I never know what's going to happen myself. In some respect, Dead Roads is a wacky mystery with the evidence stated and the killer implied. WT: But you knew who the killer was. WB: Id really written clearer than I realized. I couldn't tell myself who had done it, but when James [Grauerholz] told me it could have been only one person, and when I looked back over it, he was right. I mean, I'd finished the book, and I didn't quite understand how.
W T: In Dead Roads, you refer to the We s t e rn Lands a s Immortality.What does immortality mean to you? WB: Whatever it may mean, your books will be around after you've gone. If your books are around, then you are too.When the Zen master says,When your arrow hits the target in the dark, I'll be there, he means that quite literally. He achieves immortality through his students. W ri t e rs do the same thing through their readers. WT: And what about critics? WB: [Judging from the look on his face, the word critic is synonymous with intestinal disorder.] Mostly I feel that very few critics understand anything about art criticism.They dont even know Arnolds three questions.They disparage a writer for not trying to do some thing else rather than what he is trying to do. Most of what passes for criticism isn't criticism at all. Its just an airing of the prejudices of the critic. WT: What is your next work like? WB: Its a definite sequel to Dead Roads. Im already about 200250 pages into it, and its concerned with the after-death experience. Im calling it The Western Lands, the land of the dead. Quite a lot of it will take place in ancient Egypt, about 100 B.C. WT: Will there be an overflow of Dead Roads? WB: Every book I write is in effect an overflow. For example, There was a huge overflow from Cities, some of which went into Dead Roads. WT: So will you ever be able to achieve Immortality?
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WB: I have no idea when Ill finish. Remember, I dont know whats going to happen. I never do. Awakened by telephone one afternoon I work late, Allen Ginsberg is wild about Dead Roads. H e s always admired and encoura g e d Burroughs, even when the books fell short.This one, however, seems to be the one Ginsberg knew was coming. ALLEN GINSBERG: Its one of Bills best works.A master work of an old artist who knows all his tricks and skill and his craft. Like all his works, theres a great dependency on chance in this one. Hes taken aleatory form, which is usually applied to music, and applied it to the novel: the use of universal chance. Dead Roads is the quintessence of his writing brought to its most subtle, swift, and delicate accomplishment. I found reading it like listening to Mozart. [Ginsberg continued in that hearty and wide voice of his.] Most art of the century is a kind of experiment with open f o rm , with complete free play of the entire consciousness as opposed to the linear/conceptual part, which is really only a small part. It reminds me of a conversation I once had with Francis Bacon. I asked him where he got his perceptions to realize his paintings, and he said, I wait for the accident of one stroke to complete the image.
PORT OF ENTRY
Paris, 1960 Brion Gysin died of a heart attack on Sunday morning, July 13, 1986. He was the only man I have ever respected. I have admired many others, esteemed and valued others, but respected only him. His presence was regal without a trace of pretension. He was at all times impeccable. Who was Brion Gysin? The only authentic heir to Hassan-I-Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain? Certainly that. Through his painting I caught glimpses of the garden that the Old Man showed to his Assassins. The Garden cannot be faked.And Brion was incapable of fakery. He was Master of the Djoun forces, the Little People, who will never serve a faker or a coward. Brion was suffering from emphysema and lung cancer. He knew he had only a few weeks to live. I was preparing to go to Paris when Brion died. I have this last glimpse through a letter from my friend Rosine Buhler, written in her own English: Brion asked to wear his Chevalier de lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres medallion in a very elegant way and we started dinner with a wonderful Chinese soup. Brion finds the wine slightly rapeux to tease Francois de
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Palaminy, who has spent and concentrated to find a non-altered wine which is not so easy even in Paris.After occurs a dreamlike talk about having a large house by the sea in August, the shadowed room where all is burning hot outside. Brion said he knew he would sleep well and was really happy of that good day. He wanted no help to lift himself up from his green armchair, and went to his room. I was watching his tall, straight way to walk, his secure path only kings and wild people have this way. I dont think I had ever seen painting until I saw the painting of Brion Gysin. Here is a transcript of a tape we recorded while talking in front of some of his pictures during the time we both lived in the old Beat Hotel at 9 rue Gt-le-Coeur in Paris back in 1960, when I discovered I could really get into these paintings. BRION GYSIN: How do you get into these paintings? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Usually I g e ti n by a port o fe n t ry,as I callit.It is often a face through whose eyes the picture opens into a landscape and I go literally right through that eye into that landscape. Sometimes it is rather like an archway Any number of little details or a special spot of color makes the port of entry and then the entire picture will suddenly become a three-dimensional frieze in plaster or jade or some other precious material.This picture in front of me is in four sections.The remarkable thing is the way in which the sections, when hung a few inches apart, seem literally to pull together. The substance of the paintings seems to bridge the gap. Something is going streaming right across the vo i d .S u rely this is the first painting ever to be painted on the void itself.You can literally see the pull of one canvas on the other. Now you suddenly get all sorts of things here. Beautiful jungle landscape. And then always bicycles. The whole bicycle world scooters. All sorts of faces monkey faces typical withered monkey faces.Very archetypical in this world. And you do get whole worlds. Suddenly you get a whole violet world or a whole gray world which flashes all over the picture. The worlds are, as it were, illuminated by each
individual color worlds made of that color.You think of them as the red world and then the blue world. For example, I was taking a color walk around Paris the other day doing something I picked up from your pictures in which the colors shoot out all through the canvas like they do in the street. I was walking down the boulevard when I suddenly felt this cool wind on a warm day and when I looked out I was seeing all the blues in the street in front of me, blue on a foulard blue on a young workmans ass his blue jeans a girls blue sweater blue neon the sky all the blues. When I looked again I saw nothing but all the reds of traffic lights car lights a cafe sign a mans nose.Your paintings make me see the streets of Paris in a different way. And then there are all the deserts and the Mayan masks and the fantastic aerial architecture of your bridges and catwalks and Ferris wheels. BG: You mentioned once that you cant see all of these at the same time. WB: No.This is the first real space-timing painting in which theres a presentation of what is actually going on in front of the painter and the viewer in a space-time sense, both through the forms and through the color because the color makes the shifting form s .A n d then this is related to actual time-sequences presented here.You see things in a sequence which is actually a time-sequence. I know of no other example of the way in which time is represented here. I cant see all of these different levels at once because it is as if they existed independently only, in their time-sequence. Here is space-time painting.You can see way deep into all sorts of landscapes for instance, and then you flash back to what appears on the surface The substance of the painting exists with a double motion in and out.When you see one layer of the picture then you suddenly see it all.The eye which I am using as a port of entry jerks me abruptly into a landscape I never sawbefore.Itisasortoftoyworldandonethatissomehowalarming, populated with mechanical insects attacking each other and men in
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armor from other planets. Or they may be simply modern welders with bridges in the background. BG: Yes, people have objected. WB:Idont seewhytheyshould.Itsasubstance.Why,thatslikejumping up from your microscope and screaming: I wont look at that any more! Theyre squirming around down there just carrying on so nasty! Now I regard you, Brion, as being in my own line of work. Being strictly an experimenter, I say: Science, pure Science! All of us are pure scientists exploring different levels of fact, and if we turn up something nasty, were not to blame. Just because someone finds a real nasty-looking microbe, is he going to stop because some idiot comes and says: Pornographer! I must say that my whole family was nauseated by the sight of your slides! You and your filthy pictures. Now when they see things in your pictures that are obscene from their point of view, they dont dare say so.You painters can be as nasty and dirty as you like and people dont see it as quickly or they simply dont dare say so because it would be too much of a raw reflection on themselves. Im seeing that in there, so theres something dirty and nasty in me. Oh, here are a lot of people on fire streaming with gasoline on fire across the whole picture people running and the upper corner of the picture seems to fold back and over them.Why, its the grasshopper world.Crystals.The Arab world.An Arab market.And theres my aunt encased in her electric motor car covered with veils. Shes caught in a glob of something or under a bowl. A laboratory with instrument panels, and up above, there is what looks like a city a very strange drifting city that is moving through space-time at an incredible speed.There is something that swells up as this is happening. I see all sorts of faces eyes opening into doors and windows hundreds of them in the most amazing juxtapositions.From some you can get into others and from others you cannot get anywhere and so on. Extremely intricate.There are some fish-men swimming down here looking as though they were
made of waste-baskets from the waist down.There are great flaring movements across the whole canvas and then they turn into tubes pulsing tubes. Some sort of energy is conducted through these tubes that run through the whole canvas which has become completely three-dimensional.You could look at all this for months and see something new all the time. Each time I look at this picture I see something I never saw before in the whole world. Sometimes you see familiar landmarks but it is as if whole constellations changed each time like a street corner where you recognize the landmarks but there are always new people to change the whole scene. It is inexplicable. Now there are all sorts of green men here made of that substance, like shit from a cirrhotic liver. There are faces and there are cells in which people live in little pools of the stuff.The whole canvas is suddenly totally clear and accurate a fantastic world of faces that are part house and all of it frozen over in a strange gelatinous pink substance frozen hell there in that substance. The substance is moving all the time shivering moving changing. You can see the canvas become self-sufficient by a switch of the image. Everything can and does become something else. I can hardly remember what that thing there was a minute ago. Oh yes, that was a head but now it has become a house flat on the ground.And this is a pink hill.When you relate to it, you can switch it back on.There is a very distinct little physiological shock when you switch it back to the former image every time you switch it back and forth. Now there is a point at which you can see both images simultaneously. It becomes rather uncomfortable. It gives you this tremendous feeling of vertigo, as though you had to breathe through your cock and you can only get it up to where the air is if you have a hard-on.Precarious position which is somehow related to the fear of falling from a great height. A basic fear of suffocation and a loss of support both being contained therein.That gives this picture a most disconcerting aura, to say the least. Sometimes this seems to be pulsing with light and at other times it is all made out of stone porous stone perhaps an indeterminate
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substance between stone and flesh, like coral. Then you get that strange vegetable substance, as if these people I see in there were plants growing out of these tubes you have running through all the canvas, very strange! Just for a moment there I caught an absolutely clear photographic picture of Gregory Corso. It has gone now but I feel sure it is really in there and will come back again. It is queer how these photographic shocks of yours flash in and out. It is one of the most remarkable phenomena I have ever witnessed in my practice in all my practice.These strangely familiar faces are all growing together bound up by vines and tendrils monkey faces. At one point a very mean ravished 17th century face with a ruff around his neck standing outside some sort of native hut. BG: Doesnt that look like some kind of writing? WB: It does. I can read it. Wings tack quietlyVines crying not crying kiss noisy pissing Tex Gysin not sin was not crying Fix Gysin Brion BG: What I read is different:My dear very yours not crying WB: It looks like letters here too, but theyre harder to make out. I read:Creeps Looking at these paintings of yours is often like focusing an optical instrument. I find that it takes about twenty seconds to focus at all.The viewer has to learn how to flicker back and forth between a telescopic and a microscopic point of view while his attention is centered on some small beautiful scene which may be no bigger than your index fingernail at one moment, and then your attention is suddenly jerked back to a clear long-range view of the picture or its all-over pattern. What you actually see at any given moment becomes only a part of a visual operation which includes an infinite series of images.This leads you along a certain path like a row or series of patterns a series of neural patterns which already exist in the human brain. St. Louis, Missouri, 1989
S PA C E A R T
William Burroughs returned to his howmetown for an exhibition of his paintings. NICHOLAS ZURBRUGG: Would you say that your painting represents a substantially new activity? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Well, yes, but it dates back. Ive been working with montages for many years since the 60s, with the whole concept of image, illustrated image, image to illustrate writing. So its not a new idea. But painting as a separate career from writing is.That is, I had my first show little more than a year ago at the Tony Shafrazi gallery in New York, on December 19, 1987. Yes, the idea of actually painting on paper without photographs, montages or collages is new. N Z : Your earlier scrapbooks have always used graphics and images, photos, typed and handwritten words, and so forth.
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WB: They do, yes.Well,theres some of that in the painting. I have a photographer who takes close-ups of the paintings. Ill say, I want this part and that part.Then Ill use those in other paintings. Or I might blow one up and make it the center of a painting and paint around it. NZ: So youre actually recycling elements? WB: Yes, taking a piece of a painting here and putting it over in another paintingthe cut-up method, the montage method, moving bits and pieces around. I have also done some pictures in collaboration with Philip Taafe. Hes more well-known in Europe than he is in America, but I think he does alright here.We painted togetherhe did part of the painting and I did another part. NZ: When you take a blow-up of one painting and put it in another, does that lead to more and more abstraction as things get bigger and bigger? WB: Not necessarily, no. Although it depends upon what you mean by abstraction. Any painting is abstract, of course. Its an abstraction of something. It isnt the thing itself. It isnt even an approximation of the thing itself. Its just what the artist has abstracted over the period of time that he made the painting. NZ: I just wondered whether the actual recognizable image became more abstract. WB: Oh no. Thats what Im looking for, a recognizable image. There are a lot of secondary images. In a lot of paintings therell be a lamp, a curtain, or a wall, or a cloud or facesquite definitely recognizable images. I like to concentrate on those. NZ: Do these things emerge more by chance than by deliberation?
WB: Well, I dont believe that anything is random. But they certainly do not emerge by conscious manipulation.You wont get anything that wayits not the way it happens. It happens with the hands, or whatever.These images are quite clear. Its not subjective, anyone can see them.Then I use a lot of silhouettes. I may make a painting using random techniques like shotgun blasts of paint across the surface, and then impose random order by putting in quite recognizable silhouettes of faces, of trees, or cars, or whateverthe silhouette of a bottle, anythingof perfectly recognizable objects, so the viewer can see something clearlya lot of leave s ,f l owers, things like that. NZ: Towards the end of your essay, Entrance to the Museum of Lost Species, you say that you are interested in unforseeable, unpredictable images and patterns. WB: Well, a lot of them are ambiguous. But Long Radio Silence Over Portland Place [1988] is an image of Portland Placea place right here in St. Louis. Its one of the private sectors, so that they have big posts with a chain across it. NZ: So its a picture of a particular environment? WB: Yes, sure. Its like snow, snow on everything, the grass, the windows NZ: Did you want to do a painting of Portland Place, or did Portland Place emerge? WB: Portland Place emerged. I name them afterwards. After the picture is finished I see what it is. NZ: This process seems reminiscent of some of the references to Paul Klees writings that James Grauerholz quotes in his essay on your work. Is Klee a painter you particularly like?
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WB: Well, I like his writing. Its more interesting than anything else Ive heard from any other painter. He says for one thing,The way in which a picture is made may be more interesting than the picture itself. Now if Ive got a piece of paper here, and heres my painting here, and Im using this piece of paper to test colors ,t h e n when I get through, this may be more interesting than that. And he said,Art does not render nature, it renders visible.That is, the artist sees something that others dont see, by seeing it in painting. Painting renders it visible. NZ: Would that fit into your maxim that writing allows people to know things that they already know, but dont know that they know? WB: Well, yes, exactlyor painting. It certainly applies to painting. NZ: What new things do you feel that youve been able to explore in painting, as opposed to the verbal media? WB: We l l ,t h e re s the obvious difference that painting can convey simultaneous images and events that you cant do in writing. Theres another thingyou cant help but know what youre writing, just by the thoughts and process of writing it. But with painting you dont knowyou see with your hands. NZ: In another of your famous statements, you quote Brion Gysins assertion that writing is fifty years behind painting. Does your painting allow you to catch up with the present? WB: Well, I attempt to. But you see, there are differences in the medium. In writing youve got a book, youve got a page, which must be read in a certain way, and you cant get away from that. In painting you have a medium, you have a frame. So there are these given limitations.
NZ: But in painting you have a more immediate juxtaposition of images? WB: Certainly, because in writing you have to translate.Youve got the words there, and the reader has to translate those into images.Whereas in painting you have the images there.You dont need to go through the process of translation. NZ: Has there been any feedback from your painting into your writing? WB: Oh yes, I find that very often. NZ: Which one seemed to come first? Did you find that you were writing something that youd already painted, or that you were painting something that you were writing? WB: Both. I may paint something that I will write later, or write something that I will paint later, and so on. Theres no necessary sequence. NZ: I like your comments on the paintings. In fact, the paintings seem to be very good subject matter for your writing. I noticed that in your text Entrance to the Museum of Lost Species you were saying that in one wo r k , Winston Churchill Comes into Focus, Cigar and All, adding,so what is the mission of this dim grey agent, looking at the chewed butt of Churchills cigar? No one will ever know.The paintings seem to have that pleasant air of mystery which seems to suit your writing. WB: Yes, they should have a certain uncertainty or ambiguity. Not should have, but they do have, a degree of ambiguity.This one, Curse of the Red Seal [1987], is a mixture of all kinds of things.There are shotgun blasts there, there are photographs here.
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Theres a photograph up here of one of the paintings, reduced in size. So theres quite a number of different elementsbrushwork, silhouettes,montages. NZ: This seems to be in the tradition of some of your collages in The Third Mind, where you and Brion juxtaposed texts, reduced images and handwritten commentaries. WB: Thats right, yes. That one, Heart of Darkness [1987 ], has got a lot of shotgun blasts in it.Theres no collage there, no photographs. NZ: Do you have any preference for using photographs or not? WB: No. It depends upon the pictureentirely upon the picture. NZ: I think I prefer the ones with the photographs. Maybe thats because I like some specific images. WB: Well, sometimes I only do one with spray paint, and I take one look at it and I say,No, dont add anything, no brush work. Then I do something with brushwork and I say, Im not going to have any spray paint or anything elsejust leave it as it is.The most important thing for a paintercertainly, I find this one to be trueis to know when a painting is finished, and nothings to be added. NZ: And is that a sort of gut reaction? WB: Yes, exactlyyou know. NZ: Have you had problems on occasion, when you havent let go of the balloon, and youve had a big fall?
WB: Absolutely. If you make too much of a mistake, and then you try to rectify it, it gets worse. In some cases where Ive made a mistake, I will just put a photograph over it. NZ: So: photographs to the rescue! WB: Photographs to the rescue, absolutely. Sometimes it may work very welljust what it needs. But there are no hard-andfast rules. NZ: Has your painting changed much since you began? WB: It keeps changing all the timeI dont like to keep on doing the same thing. I began by shooting at plywood.Where the blasts came out you get all these striations of woodsome of which were very interesting, and some of which were not. Then I started using tubes of paint, and I began putting brushwork on first, and brushwork on afterwards. So it soon progressed. NZ: Are some of these works painted from different directions? I was thinking of Brion Gysins calligraphic overlays and permutations. WB: A good many of them are painted up and down and crosswards. So then theres the question of which way the painting goes.Well, I think of these as being Space-Art, and there is no up and no down in space. So its not always easy to say. It can go one way or another. It can probably go four ways. Ive been meaning to do other shapes like circlesits a question of getting plywood cut in different shapes. NZ: Have you found yourself looking more at art and finding out whats going on?
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WB: Oh yes, oh yes. I look at art magazines to see what people are doing, definitelywhat effects they are getting, all those things. Its always very important to know what other people are doing. NZ: Are there any particular painters that you feel sympathetic towards? WB: Well, B ri o n , principally. But there are many others. I like Klee very much, and Jasper Johns.You look at your paintings, and youll find that little pieces of painting have found their way into your own paintinglittle pieces of van Gog h , Jasper Jo h n s , Picasso. NZ: Have you ever deliberately quoted other painters work? WB: Oh well, ye s ,I ve done some of that.That is, Ive used some sections of reproductions in the works. I did one using Boschs Garden of Delights, painting over that. NZ: When we spoke last time, some years ago, you were quite enthusiastic about popular fiction like The Godfather and Jaws. You said youd discussed some of these novels when you were teaching. Does popular imagery of that sort occur very much in your painting? WB: Not much. It is certainly not Pop Art in any sense. Its just not my mediumyou knowbillboards, and that whole area. Im pretty far, should we say, from Warhol and David Hockney. NZ: Your work often seems primitive, ritualistic or magical perhaps. The Milky Way [1988], for example, looks rather like some kind of cave painting.
WB: Its supposed to be, yes. Its supposed to have an element of magical invocation.Then theres a whole series called The Land of the Deada number of paintings illustrating the land of the dead in The Western Lands and The Place of Dead Roads. N Z : H ave you begun any more sustained fiction since T h e Western Lands? WB: We l l ,I ve just finished oneGhost of Chance, which is about the lemurs in Madagascar and Captain Missions pirate settlement there, and also about Jesus Christ. Its a short novel, and its also illustrated by about 15 of my paintings. Also, Ive been working on a libretto for an opera that Robert Wilson is doing called The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets. Its an old German folk thing, Der Freischutz, about selling out to the devilthe devils bargain, which is always a fools bargain.Well, this man is in love with the foresters daughter, but the forester must have a hunter as his son-in-law, and he cant hit anything. So he meets an old soldier, the devil, who gives him these magic bulletsthey always find the mark.When hes got one left, which belongs to the devil, he shoots at a dovebu ti ti sh i sb e t ro t h e d whofa l l st ot h eground.Thebullethas hit her in the forehead. So in the last scene, hes in an asylum. Now its not my story, but Ive made a number of notes on it. I suppose he will use themI dont know. This is in Hamburg in September, so I suppose Ill have to be there for a couple of weeks. NZ: Have you discussed the project in any detail yet? WB: No, I havent discussed it yet, because I said, well, Ill get a few ideas down and then see how he reacts to these. Ive got about 30 pages down. NZ: Did you also suggest various forms of scenery or staging?
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WB: No, thats his job.Thats what he does. He says,I can put the most beautiful pictures on stage.These are only suggestions in any case. I dont know how much of it will find its way into the actual libretto. Remember that it has to be translated into German. I went to considerable trouble to make it rhymein rhyming couplets. Well,thats going to be lost in the translation, of course. NZ: How did you get in contact with Robert Wilson? Did Wilson suggest this collaboration to you? W B : He contacted me on this, and he came to see me in Lawrence. NZ: Have you seen much of Wilsons work? WB: Some of it, yes. I think its very interesting. NZ: I think so too. He seems to use fragments as well, and relies on the audience to complete his pictures. WB: Oh yes, he uses all sorts of things. Im interested in the project. NZ: Do you have any other projects on the boil? WB: Well, in two weeks I go to Basel where theres a show, and Rome where theres a show. These are very crucialRome is very important. Keith Haring told me,Listen, after the first six or seven, you dont have to go. But you have to do it at first. NZ: So, this is the spade work? WB: This is the spade work, yes. I went to all of them.There was the October Gallery in London; t h e re was an art fair in Amsterdam where I had some paintings; there was Vancouver,
Seattle and Santa Fe. And then Im just back from Montreal and Toronto. All of those, Ive been to. NZ: And are you stoically tolerating it, or are you enjoying it? WB: Oh, I enjoy it. If youre going to do something, you have to do it, enjoy it.
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WB: Well, not entirely. With painting your hands do all sorts of things. For example, I read a book called Bad Medicine by C.Q.Yarbro, and in it someone had overdosed on anticoagulants, so that blood was coming out of his nose, through his skin, everywhere. And the drug was disguised in orange juice because it had an acidic taste.Well, in one of my paintings you see the guy drinking the orange juice, which is odd because I wasnt necessarily thinking about that at the time. In other words, what I am doing is automatic painting. SE: When did you recognize it?
O B S E RV I N G T H E U N K N O W N
WB: As soon as I painted it I looked at it and said, this is that scene. I have had several experiences like that, recognizing events in my paintings after they have been completed. SE: Do you think symbols come out of your unconscious mind onto the paper through your hands? WB: I would never use the term unconscious, because if it were completely unconscious, no one would ever be aware of it. Usually it is partially conscious. SE: So when you have your materials in front of you, what sort of state of mind do you get into? WB: I try my best to make my mind a blank, but there is no such thing as making the mind a blank.The whole idea is that I try to let my hands go and paint whatever my so-called unconscious mind is aware of. I try to get my pictures to move. A face comes into focus, almost smiles, snarls, speaks.There are green monkeys, a green man, very serene. But I looked at that anticoagulants afterwards and there was the man drinking the orange juice. Horrible death, horrible. One time I saw a bicycle accident that happened at the same time that I was painting the picture. I have seen many things in my paintings.
1990 SIMONE ELLIS: Youve been known as a writer since the publication of Naked Lunch in 1959. Then in the early 80s you worked with Robert Rauschenberg on his series of lithographs, American Pewter with Burroughs. Was this the beginning of your working with images instead of words? WILLIAM BURROUGHS: Not exactly. It actually goes back to the 60s scrapbooks.They were a really weird mixture of painting, writing, and collage.We were trying to break down the barrier between painting and writing. Of course, you must remember that writing arose from painting via pictographs.Theres no doubt in my mind that the pictographs were created as magic. SE: Yes, and I know that you have always viewed writing as making magic. Is painting the same sort of magical act for you?
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SE: Do your paintings serve as oracles? WB: It isnt really a question of oracles, it is a matter of the future and the past being laid out, so that you can see both the future and the past from the present.There is a very interesting book by John Donne called An Experiment With Time, written in 1925. He started writing down his dreams and found that they very often referred to future events. I dream about earthquakes, and he had a very interesting point to make about that. He said that if you dream about an earthquake, you are not foreseeing the actual event.What you are seeing is the moment when you will become aware of it.That is, the moment you will see it in a newspaper or hear about it on the news. In other words, you are moving forward on your own time track to a moment of your own future awareness. SE: You have spoken before about the clairvoyance of writing and a rt .W hy do you think making art is a clairvoyant act any more than, say, laying brick or driving a cab? WB: Well, art is a creative act. Recognition art. A particle physicist at the University of Texas named John Wheeler114 has developed something that he calls recognition physics. Wheeler says that nothing exists until it is observed.Well, the artist as observer is like that. The observer creates by observing, and the observer creates by creating. In other words, observation is a creative act. By observing something and putting it onto canvas, the artist makes something visible to others that did not exist until he observed it. SE: And by observing it, he takes part in its coming into being? WB: Exactly.
SE: You have called your artistic process nagual art, after Carlos Castaedas books, referring to the concepts of the tonal (predictable) and the nagual (unknown) unive rs e s .S o, by extension of recognition physics, is it the nagual that you are observing? WB: Yeah, the unknow n ,p re c i s e l y. I am observing the unknown. SE: And that is not the kind of art that paints the cow in the field? WB: We l l ,n o. Collage introduced the element of time. Someone walks around the block, comes back, and puts down on canvas what he is seeing, a medley of fragments, someones face in a shop window, a dog, a cyclist. It will be much more real than sitting down and painting that static moment of the cow in the grass. SE: There is no such thing as that frozen moment in time. WB: There is no such thing. SE: Furthermore, unlike the cow painters, you are not looking to the outer landscape. WB: No, I am looking into an inner landscape and, to the best of my ability, rendering it. SE: And somehow these figures continue to rise out of the ink. WB: Yes, through my hands. SE: Have you ever considered yourself an expressionist, or do you think in those terms at all?
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W B : I never think in those term s . I just follow my hands. Sometimes they do not do anything interesting at all, but sometimes they do. SE: How do the gunshot paintings fit into that aesthetic? WB: When I make the shotgun-blast paintings, I am usually not thinking about the painting but about hitting the can. I line it up and you get this explosion of color.Then the gun whams against your shoulder, but not hard at all. SE: And that is the split-second of creation? WB: Yes, it happens only once. If you miss it, it is gone. SE: Like the burning-out of a star. WB: Exactly. SE: Do you get a rush out of this moment of creation, out of creating these works of art and then having them look back at you? WB: Yes, absolutely. SE: How does painting affect your emotions, your state of mind? Do you take it seriously enough to get depressed by a painting that does not turn out? WB: I take it completely seriously, but it is something to be absorbed and realized into yourself, for gods sake. SE: It allows you to exist on another level? In another dimension? WB: Exactly.
SE: You went through an obscenity trial over Naked Lunch in the 60s. Do you think that we are entering a new age of censorship? WB: Yes. It has not reached the written word in the United States yet, but it has definitely reared its head in the visual arts. I have very few overtly sexual pictures. I have one collage painting with pictures of Boschs Garden of Delight, but I do not think that anyone will be bothered by that. For one thing, it is protected by age. As Henry Miller pointed out, if it is old, then it is alright. Something that is perfectly acceptable in a museum may meet with opposition when it appears in new work. SE: Do you think that the rise of censorship could in fact further the evolution of freedom by inspiring the artist to stretch boundaries, to make more cutting-edge art? WB: Well, that is the whole idea of opposition giving impetus. I say that it does. But any new school of art always comes about as an opposition to something that has been petrified. SE: So along those lines, censorship in the United States may further the cause of creative art, however backhandedly? WB: Yes, but I do no see where it could go along those lines. There is nothing new about sexually explicit content. SE: So where do you go from here? WB: Well, I have been working with the gunshot paintings, and with India inks and watercolors on slick paper. I have also been making Rorschach monoprints that have produced some interesting results, but I think I will try oil on canvas next. I have not done that ye t .A n d , of course, I will continue to let the picture see me. If you try this method, you will always notice that some little
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detail in the picture is looking back at you, seeing you, coming alive in your presence. For instance, look at this one, which I did with my suction-cup method, dipping a rubber suction cup into ink and then sticking it to the paper and moving it across it. SE: These look like aliens. WB: They are. They are supposed to be aliens. Heres one that I like very much; they are the Root People. I recognized them the moment that the painting was finished. SE: Do you feel that you have checked into the unknownthe nagualand come back out again? WB: I do indeed, at least sometimes.You know the story about the Zen master who appeared before the emperor with his painti n g ,b owed three times and then disappeared into it? SE: Will that ever happen to you? WB: I hope so.
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WILLIAM BURROUGHS: [Sitting up straight and shooting a hard, almost petulant look across the table.] Are you mad?! VB: Well, no, I dont think of you as frightened at all. WB: Like most people, I live in a continual state of panic. Most people do if they have any sense. Maybe they think theyre not, but they are.Were threatened virtually every second.The 90s are a very unfunny decade, a very grim decade, grim and nasty.
I N VA S I O N
VB: How did you get to know Whitley Strieber? WB: It was simple. I was very interested in his first books and I was convinced that he was authentic. I felt he was not a fraud or fake.Then Bill herewho is very, very skepticalI gave him the books to read, and he said, After reading them I believe every word. I said I was convinced they were about a phenomenon. On the basis of that I wrote a letter to Whitley Strieber saying that I would love to try to contact these visitors. Anne Strieber wrote back saying,Well, we have to be surewe get a lot of crank lettersthat you are really you.And I wrote a letter back saying,I am indeed really me. When she wrote back she said, We, after talking it over, would be glad to invite you to come up to the cabin. So we spent the week-end there. I had a number of talks with Strieber about his experiences, and I was quite convinced that he was telling the truth. VB: What does he look like? WB: Well, hes quite tall, six feet two inches, medium build.The strange thing about him is that this part of his face (from the forehead to below his nose) has a sort of mask-like effect. VB: Does he have a tranquil presence?
Lawrence, 1991 We were sitting around the table in the living room of W i l l i a m Burroughs house James Grauerholz, Bill Rich ,B u rroughs and myself. William always works from the center of a small group. Grauerholz,who has been his amanuensis since 1974, is a hardened veteran of campaigns too numerous to account. Rich is a local man. Cats sit in our laps or sprawl on the floor.This is Williams cocoon and GHQ from which ,s i n c e 1982, he has issued a series of books and paintings. A successful new career in painting led to numerous international shows. Contact with other artists led to collaborations with Robert Wilson and Keith Haring and visits to, among others,Whitley Strieber.117 The night before the interview, William thrust a copy of Striebers Majestic into my hands. In 1989 he visited the author, seeking to make contact with the aliens Streiber wrote about in Communion and Transformation. [VB]
VICTOR BOCKRIS: Were you ever in your life a frightened person?

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WB: No, hes not tranquil at all, although its not disquieting. In the first place hes a man with tremendous energy and always busy. Since Ive seen him he wrote a whole book, Billy, which apparently is going to be made into a movie. Hes always working, always busy, walks around the property, a very active person, quite clear, quite definite. He seems a very hospitable and sensible person. I cant say that I experienced anything. He told me that when you experience it, it is very definite, very physical;its not vague, its not like a hallucination. They are there. I didnt see anything like that. VB: [Dismissive] Theres no way you would have under those circumstances. WB: What! What do you mean? VB: You were a visitor going into the neighborhood as a journalist. [The interviewer, suffering from several days on the road in the role of journalist, starts screaming.] You were part of the press! WB: [Calmly] I was not. VB: [Sneering] Yes, you were.You were the journalist in the situation, and those people wouldnt come down and even talk to you. WB: [Dignified] I have never been a journalist. VB: Well, come on, youre always talking about the press, the press, the fucking press. WB: Youre crazy, man! VB: Of course, Im crazy! But theres relevance to what Im saying.
VB: No, but William, excuse me JAMES GRAUERHOLZ: William was a seeker; he was looking too hard. VB: Of course he was! JG: Look too hard and you cant find it. VB: No, what I am imagining is you came to him as a writer; he obviously knew you as a writer. Under those circumstances it seems to me unlikely that some great thing would happen. JG: Its like theyre, like, watching.Theyre in the saucers,theyre VB: Yeah, if we really accept Whitley Striebers account, which I am certainly open to accepting, why the fuck would they rush out when some writer comes up for a couple of days? WB: For every re a s o n .E ve ry reason why. VB: What do you mean? [Sneering again] Man, you really think theyd recognize who you are? WB: I think I am one of the most important people in this fucking world VB: [Jumping in] Well, I agree with you. WB: and if theyd had any sense they would have manifested themselves. VB: I agree with you.
WB: No, no, no.
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WB: So thats all Im saying. JG: Well, they did manifest themselves to Strieber. VB: Thats the crux of my argument! I say, Hey! If up comes X character, really, open,saying,I am here to connect, and he does not connect Let us ask ourselves what this means! JG: I think it means the swami has a headache. VB: No, I dont think thats what it means. WB: Now, wait a minute VB: Thats bullshit, man, thats a bullshit answer. WB: wait a minute, hold on. Dont be so stupid and unattractive. It may mean all sorts of things. It may mean it was not propitious for them to come and pick me at that particular time. It may mean that they would contact me at a later date, or it may mean that they look upon me as an enemy. VB: [Devotedly] I dont see any way they could do that. WB: Well, why not? We dont know who they are. We have no way of knowing what their real motives are. They may find that my intervention is hostile to their objectives. And their objectives may not be friendly at all. Just like when the great white gods, the Spaniards, came to the Indians in Central America. The Indians said,Here they come, and the Spaniards cut their hands off. So you dont know what their intentions are. VB:I wo u l dh ave thoughtthatWilliams intentionswerefairlyclear.I would have thought any aliens who visited the planet would have been open to Williams visit.
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WB: Not necessarily.You are thinking that they think like we do, like I do. We have no idea how they might think, or how they might evaluate, or what they want! We havent a clue. One of the aliens in Striebers books said,We are recycling souls.Were proceeding with no information. VB: No, listen, you dont have to persuade me. Im a complete WB: [Quietly] All right. VB: [Raising voice] But WB: [Speaking slowly and clearly in the calm, patient, but firm voice of a doctor] Calm down, man, calm down. Youre getting way too excited, way too strident. I think that you should just calm down and take it very, very easy.Youre obviously concerned and upset about this whole subject. Now, lets calm down and talk calmly, you are getting VB: Im upset about the whole invasion thing, because I have a very strong sense of being invaded. WB: Who doesnt? You are no more invaded than the rest of us. When I go into my psyche, at a certain point I meet a very hostile, very strong force. Its as definite as somebody attacking me in a bar. We usually come to a standoff, but I dont think that Im necessarily winning or losing. Thats why I told you to calm down, because I know youre troubled. Now, listen, just [whispers] calm down. Bring it to me. [Shrugs] I am the old doctor. After all, Ive been Listen, baby, Ive been coping with this for so many years. I know this invasion gets in. As soon as you get close to something important, thats when you feel this invasion, and thats the way you know theres something there. Ive felt my self just marched up like a puppy to
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go and do something that would just get me insulted or humiliated. I was not in control. Then the ultimate dream I had, I saw my body walking out of the roomthis is in Chicagobent on some deadly errand, and Im just up on the ceiling sort of fading out, with no power at all.Thats the ultimate horror of possession. There are all degrees of possession. It happens all the time. What you have to do is confront the possession.You can do that only when youve wiped out the words.You dont argue.You dont say, Oh, I Its unfair! Blah, blah, blah.You confront the invasion. If you are firmly in control, that will JG: You admit it, you allow it to challenge you so that you can repulse its challenge. You have to admit it. As long as it has you flailing, keeping it away from you, you never confront it. WB: The last thing the invading instance wants to do is confront you directly,cause that is the end of it. But invasion is the basis of fear; there is no fear like inva s i o n .N ow, look, you have, for example, a guardian angel who tells you what to do or what not to do: Dont go in here, dont do that. Theres nothing worse than a reverse guardian angel who is inside you telling you all the worst things to do and getting you into the worst situation, of course. VB: The only way I know how to fight it off is to say,No, no, no. WB: No, no, no [laughs] doesnt work.You have to let it wash through. This is difficult, difficult; but Ill tell you one thing: you detach yourself and allow this to wash through, to go through instead of trying to oppose, which you cant do. Everyone has to sort this out themselves, if they can, and very few can. All right, heres the whole liberal position: Well, people are possessed, but their intellect is not possessed, so they can oppose that which is right in there possessing them; they can oppose it intellectually. But this does not deal with it at all on the whole, should we say,
psychological and, finally, molecular level.You cant oppose something intellectually that is overwhelming you emotionally. The chain of command, or the chain of action, comes up from the viscera to the back brain and then finally to the front brain. But the front brain cannot reverse this and give orders to the back brain and the viscera; it just doesnt work. Pull yourself together! [laughs] they say. Well, you cant. The more you try to pull yourself together the further apart you get.You have to learn to let the thing pass through. I am a man of the world; I understand these things.They happen to all of us. All you have to do is understand them or see them for what they are, thats all. So dont think youre alone, because you are not. Pot is very helpful to confront and to allow you to detach yourself.Thats why its so heavily put down.There was a town in Georgia where some people were giving yoga session, and the town stopped them.They said, Well, if you relax your mind the Devil will come in! It wouldnt occur to them that, my God, the Lord might come in. O h ,n o, the Devil comes in! If you relax your mind for a minute, in comes the Devil! [Aside to one of his cats, who has just scampered into the room: Now, how did you get in here, you little beast? Thats Spooner.] Theres been a tremendous process of a rightist takeover in this country.All right, the rightists dont march in the streets, but they m a rc h .A n dt h ey ve s t o l e nt h em a rc ho nt h e,um,liberals,orwhatever theyre called. I hate that term,liberals. It sounds so vague. I just think liberals are, well, Johnsonsreasonable people who have some sort of sense of moderation and common sense and are not in some state of hysterical, self-righteous anger. VB: Do you think that you may have done some things that shocked your system and made you look at yourself in a way that caused you to be creative? WB: Well, of course. I think this is, I would dare say, pretty much a universal phenomenon with anyone creative. Creativity comes
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from a series of shocks in which you are forced to look at yourself. Thats what it all is. Everything outside is inside and vice versa, but you are making these aspects of yourself available in painting, writing, filming, or whatever. But that results from a series of these shocks, when you find yourself doing something thats absolutely awful. VB: But you dont do really awful things that many times in your life. WB: You do; you do them all the time. Everyone does.They may just be your thoughts.You dont have to massacre millions or drop nerve gas. But how many people in Saddams place would do that and worse if they had the chance? Wherever people like that are, theyre doing their little worst. They dont criticize their own behavior because they are completely possessed by the feelings they have, these hatreds.When you find yourself acting like these people, then you are forced to examine yourself in every particular. Such examination and recognition is an integral part of the whole creative process. VB: Is fear part of that process? WB: Of course. It is an integral part of the process because possession is the most extreme form of fear. When you feel yourself possessed to do something that you regard with the most profound horror or repulsion or disgust, thats the basic fear. It comes down to a question of courage. VB: The courage to be yourself, to do what youre going to do? WB: Yes, the courage to reject them. VB: Is that a conscious-mind fight against the possession?
WB: Heavens, no! The conscious mind is one of your puniest weapons.You have to marshal whatever forces youve got not just here [points to head] but throughout the whole organism. See it in its full psychic potential.We have 14 souls, the Egyptians say. VB: Do you think youve learned a lot from living with your cats? [One of the most significant changes in Williams life since moving to Kansas has been his relationships with a number of cats. At any given time during the last few years he has had up to five cats living with him.] WB: Oh, heavens! Ive learned immeasurably. Ive learned compassion. I remember when I was out at the Stone House, Ruski sort of attacked one of the kittens. I gave him a slight 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 was his human; his human had betrayed him. Oh,heavens, ye s ,I ve learned from my cats. They reflect you in a very deep way.They just opened up a whole area of compassion in me. I remember lying in my bed and weeping and weeping to think that a nuclear catastrophe would destroy them. I could see people driving by saying,Kill your dogs and cats. I spent hours just crying.Oh, my God.Then there is constantly the feeling that there could be some relationship between me and the cats and that I might have missed it. Some of this is in The Cat Inside [a limited edition book written by William and illustrated by Brion Gysin] .S o m e of it is so extreme that I couldnt write it. People think of me as being coldsome woman wrote that I could not admit any feeling at all. My God. I am so emotional that sometimes I cant stand the intensity. Oh, my God.Then they ask me if I ever cry? I say, Holy shit, probably two days ago. Im very subject to violent fits of weeping, for very good reasons. VB: Do you have any memories of or reflections on Jean Genet? [Genet was one of the few writers whom Burroughs felt some connection
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with.] Did you know, for example, that during the last six years of his life Genet was writing a great book, Prisoner of Love? He was hanging out with the young soldiers in Syria and Jordan. WB: No, I knew nothing of this; this is fascinating.The last time I saw him was in Chicago in 1968. But Brion saw him after that; he was in Tangier and they had quite an encounter. But I know nothing about his love for Syrian soldiers.Tell me, tell me. VB: Well, Ill make sure to send you the book. Its a beautiful meditation on the plight of the young soldier. WB: Do I admire that man being able to keep up an almost adolescent intere s t .I t s really great. [William gets up and leaves the room. Coming back minutes later, he is glowing, gliding across the room.] I just had such a tremendous feeling of Genet coming in as I walked into the toilet to take a piss. Genet, Genet, Genet. Oh, my God, it was overwhelming! VB: He was right there in the room? WB: No, right in me. Hes not just wandering aroundhe was in me. Genet, Genet, Genet. Oh! JG: I am born.Genet means I am born in French. WB: Thats true, but I just had such a tremendous feeling of his spiritual presence.Wow! JG: William, if Genet has come into you tonight, can we interview him for just a few questions? WB: [Formally] Well, of course. Go ahead.
J G : Monsieur Genet, what is the meaning of this sentence: There was me and there was the French language. I put one into the other and WB: [As Genet] Cest fini. That was all I could do. I could take myself and I could put myself into the French language. It is the only language I could put myself in, just as I could only have been a French thief. And when I had done that I had done everything that I could do. [Reverts to himself] He died in a hotel. He always lived in sort of this anonymous VB: Do you have a good memory? WB: Yes, I have an almost photographic memory. VB: Even going back 50 years you have vivid images of particular events? WB: Wait a minute, this isnt quite true. Some instances Ill remember very clearly, and others I will not remember at all. My memory for years back is much better than my recent memory. This is my earliest conscious memory: I came down the stairs and there was a mirror and I was three years old and I said to the mirror, Three, three.There was another one, I dont know if it was earlier or later, drinking Whistle in the backyard and it was very hot. I remember the taste of Whistle. I can see the Whistle bottle. JG: So if I got you a bottle of Whistle today you might, like Proust, have a real flashback. WB: I doubt it. It was just It wouldnt be the same Whistle. [Eyes hooded, with a tranquil expression,William looks as if he is seeing something very far away and dimly lit. He hums.] Whistle, Whistle, Whistle,Whistle.Yes. [Silence]
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BURROUGHS LIVE

501 Philosophy Hall Columbia University New York, NY 10027

Distributed by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, England

ISBN: Printed in the United States of America

SEMIOTEXT(E) FOREIGN AGENTS SERIES

Foreword by Sylvre Lotringer On Editing This Book by Sylvre Lotringer

The Old Lines Are Breaking Down: American Celebrity

Introduction: Ladies and Gentlemen, These Our Actors...

A Burst of Silent Fireworks: The Early Years

A Landscape I Never Saw Before: Dreams, Paintings, Afterlives

Erasing the Policeman: Verbal Revolutions

Simone Ellis, Observing the Unknown

Coda: I Have Done Everthing That I Could Do

Footnotes Bibliography Index

ON EDITI NG THIS BOOK

Introduction: Ladies and Gentlemen, These Our Actors...

THE BEGINNING IS ALSO THE END

A Burst of Silent Fireworks: The Early Years

BUR RO UGHS AF TE R LUNCH

Erasing the Policeman: Verbal Revolutions

New York, 1968

The Old Lines Are Breaking Down: American Celebrity

TERRORISM, UTOPIA AND FICTION

A Landscape I Never Saw Before: Dreams, Paintings, Afterlives

WILLIAM B URR OU GH S , INTE LLEC TUAL GUNMAN

Coda: I Have Done Everthing That I Could Do

VICTOR BOCKRIS: Were you ever in your life a frightened person?

WB: No, no, no.

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