Review of The Burroughs-Warhol Connection by Victor Bockris

by Matthew Levi Stevens

Review of Victor Bockris’ The Burroughs-Warhol Connection (Beatdom Books, 2024)

So… Victor Bockris, sometime court jester and definitely court-recorder during Uncle Bill’s Bunker years, the counter-culture con-job that was the Nova Convention, go-between for The Bunker and The Factory, and probably the first commentator-with-genuine-access to note the essential similarity between the two, even if the central figures could not have been more opposite in their outlook.

For all that Burroughs and Warhol were affectless, All American, queer boys, Burroughs was a junkie who wanted to turn all that painful input waaayy down, Warhol needed speed to turn it all up far enough. And yet both somehow succeeded in creating timeless art out of the very time-bound world they found themselves in opposition to, and in doing so became the quintessential commentators on the inevitable decline of the American Imperial Nightmare, unlike any others because of working from a position of such (ironically) insider privelige.

And Victor Bockris had a ringside seat to the whole damned carny ride, and faithfully, lovingly, recorded it ALL, like a cross between the police stenographer taking down the Last Words of Dutch Schultz and the radio-operator broadcasting desperately from the doomed Titanic (lovingly commemorated right here in our local park, in Godalming, Surrey.)

English public school boy turned transatlantic transplant, Bockris set out to “make a place for himself at the table” by quite literally making a place for himself at the table: he somehow managed to schmooze his way into being social secretary and organiser to the previously quite enigmatic William Burroughs, succeeding in introducing him to a whole new generation by all the dinner parties he managed to arrange for Uncle Bill with emerging and established talent ranging from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Susan Sontag, and even, of course, Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol.

My one criticism of the present collection would be the inordinate time and page-count allocated to the meeting with Mick Jagger — which was, by all accounts, a bit of a disaster — which no amount of trying to revisit it from various different angles really adds anything to what, at the end of the day, is a non-story. Also, with the passage of time, one has to wonder at the sheer irrelevance of Jagger, and what, if anything, this non-starter of a story manages to communicate. Or not, as the case may be.

Also, one small gripe: I am not sure — and this is echoed by a number of friends that I have shown the book to — what, if anything, is really added by the so-called “Burroughs-Warhol Tapestries” by Bockris collaborator David Schmidlapp? They seem to add little-or-nothing that was not already achieved more clearly and concisely by simply reproducing the original photos (most of which were already available in earlier editions of Victor’s seminal With William Burroughs: A Report From The Bunker. Sorry fellas, sometimes more — just for the sake of it — isn’t always… more?)

One thing that IS a definite addition is the excerpts from Victor Bockris’ diaries, kept at the time he was recording these various counter-cultural historical meetings, and they alone are worth the price of admission. The lengthy interview with Leon Horton, in which Victor describes his background, and writing past present and future, with an open heart (and a “worried penis”) is also not to be missed!

Also essential is Victor’s closing “William Burroughs and Andy Warhol: The Biography of Comparison” in which he states:

In the future, no one will write biographies of one person; all biographies will be about two people. There will be The Biography of Comparison in which one life reflects upon the other, and The Biography of Collaboration in which two people join forces to create a third mind.

In The Burroughs-Warhol Connection Victor Bockris has taken the first step towards both these ends.

Others can only follow…