Comments on: Hikuta!

By: RACKY

RACKY — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:01:34 +0000

great reading!

By: Dan Peschio

Dan Peschio — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:40:45 +0000

Thanks Tom. Enjoyed the window into WSB’s gun cabinet. Disturbing? Not at all. It just made me sad that my life no longer includes dinner parties thrown with such abandon.

Got any more?

By: Lisa Lebowski

Lisa Lebowski — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:03:00 +0000

Nice job Tom! At 61 I’m mild and quieted down some, but the scene in Lawrence sounds jus’ like home t’me…and yes, there’s holes here n there at my place.

Shoulda stopped by and said hi while Bill was with us. (Met Hunter long ago – Was on acid at the time – and thought he was a timid fake, but it was in the 60’s and Hunter was still young, so maybe he grew up…)

“What good is an empty gun” eh? Gimme a .38 anytime…

By: Jules Minton

Jules Minton — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:42:49 +0000

After reading this (and knowing of Jim Morrison’s fascination with Burroughs), I strongly suspect that the Doc Holliday character in Mick Farren’s “Jim Morrison’s Adventures in the Afterlife” is as much based on Bill as it is on the historic Doc Holliday. Doc was needed because Burroughs was still fresh (well, as fresh as he got) in his grave when the book came out in 1999…but the portrait seems clear. With TB substituted for the drug addiction and a voracious heterosexuality taking the place of Burrough’s homo/bi-sexuality, the shared alcoholism, gun-lust and macho posturing make speculation inevitable.

More recently, the portrait of Burroughs as a trigger-happy gunslinger who pulls Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady’s fat out of the fire more than once in Nick Mamatas’ “Move Under Ground” (2004) plays on this same Holliday-like archetype. A fever-dream as experienced by Kerouac breaking down in Big Sur in 1960, the novel blends the fate of the Beats, a final road trip, Cold War political paranoia and H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos into a stew…one the mythos monsters seem especially fond of, despite Bill’s heroics with pistols and bug sprayers.

Does anyone else know of other fictionalized portraits of Mr. Burroughs as the western icon some part of him clearly wanted to be?

By: Wayne Propst

Wayne Propst — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:33:22 +0000

Well done TP…..I own the errant round moment…..to clarify …WSB opened the cylinder…
dumped the rounds on the bed….pulled the weapon thru twice…handed the gun to me…I “dry” fired once…….”go ahead give it another pull”…..with that the weapon discharged….we counted the rounds on the bed four(4)……one round had “stuck” …..My bad…….Wayne Propst 07-12-09

By: sally

sally — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:13:32 +0000

i think this guy is really mental. i also think he should go to jail and stay there. this is because if someone has 1 gun\knife they get into lots of troble. You should read how much he had.

By: Grant

Grant — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:38:07 +0000

Great work as always TP. Hope all is good in your world.

By: Conlon

Conlon — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:22:20 +0000

I, for one, thought this article was fucking hilarious, not the least bit disturbing.
What I miss most about WSB was his humor – his stuff never upset me, for some reason – and I really appreciate you bringing that out in this.
Thank you kindly.
(The bit about the ballpoint literally had me crying I was laughing so hard.)
Is it just me, or does it seem like all the giants have disappeared?

By: johnny strike

johnny strike — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:11:13 +0000

i very much enjoyed this article. i look forward to more wild tales and kansas gunslinger lore.

By: George Laughead

George Laughead — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:59:02 +0000

Great piece, T.P. — thank you. I’ll find the photo I took of you with Williams’ gun, the day before his funeral. Sorry I haven’t sent it to you before. Best, from Dodge City, G.