Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

For the obsessed, the pursuit of the subject of fascination inevitably ends in minutiae. If that subject is an author, it means that the entire bibliography has been analyzed and devoured. The secondary sources have been exhausted. The pursuit has bled over into related and tangential areas. For Burroughs that means one might have dug deeply into Scientology, Mayan history, language theory, lemurs, or pirates. Slowly but surely nothing remains to be examined. But for those truly under Burroughs’ spell, there always remains more to explore. As Eric Shoaf has shown, new items can be uncovered for the bibliography. These scraps must be obtained and processed.

For the obsessed, there is great significance placed in detritus. Pieces of bone, scraps of cloth, shards of wood, a yellowed sheet of paper. These fragments contain the truth. Juvenilia are a prime example of minutiae. They sit among letters, photographs, and aborted drafts of master works awaiting their time to see the light of day. As Burroughs fans know, letters and the like hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of the man’s creative process. So it is with great anticipation that the faithful awaited publication of And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks.

It is strange to think of the writing of a thirty year old man as juvenilia but that is how I view Hippos. It is the work of a writer in an early stage of development — in writing terms, a work of adolescence. For Kerouac, Hippos sits on the same shelf with Atop an Underwood, Orpheus Emerging as well as the other 1,000,000 words he wrote by his early twenties. Hippos belongs with Burroughs’ early efforts “Autobiography of a Wolf” or “Twilight’s Last Gleaming.” Like Charles Bukowski, Burroughs reached his maturity as a writer later in life. Junkie, published when Burroughs was nearly forty, is his first mature work and contains many of the major themes of his oeuvre.

The fact that Hippos is a collaboration is key. The partnership with Kerouac began a method of composition that would fuel Burroughs’ creative fire for the rest of his life. Kerouac deserves to be placed next to Ginsberg and Brion Gysin in terms of importance as an influence for Burroughs. This goes far beyond the fact that Kerouac titled Naked Lunch. Kerouac provided a model of the writer at work. The struggling writer facing the typewriter day after day replaced boyhood dreams of an opium addicted pretender lounging in luxury. Burroughs acknowledged as much in the essay “Remembering Kerouac.” Burroughs stressed that the most admirable thing about Kerouac was that he was a writer, i.e., he wrote. Kerouac also provided encouragement and criticism, but most important was his model of discipline. Hippos in its structure and method of composition highlights Kerouac’s influence and importance in Burroughs’ development as a writer, not so much on the level of style but on the level of providing an example of the writer at work.

Hippos should put to rest (if Oliver Harris has not done so already) the myth that Burroughs felt compelled to become a writer as a result of the death of Joan Vollmer. Long before that tragic night in Mexico, Burroughs was possessed by the Ugly Spirit, i.e., the compulsion to write and express himself. Like Kerouac, Burroughs was a born writer, and Hippos shows his obsession with and deep knowledge of literature and the writing life. The comments on the forum mention Dennison’s interest in Rimbaud as poet and persona, and all the male characters in Hippos are overcome with the fantasy of living the life of the artist. The murder of Kammerer destroyed Lucien Carr’s dreams of becoming a poet as it gave birth to three other writers. Citing the Surrealist, Dada, and proto-Surrealist texts that formed the philosophy of the early Beats, it could be argued that killing Kammerer was Carr’s most inspired and most terrible poetic act.

Readers will no doubt see connections in Hippos to Burroughs’ later works. The RealityStudio forum has a thread that does just that. A review in the Observer pointed out the scene where Dennison shoots up as a precursor to Junkie. More interesting to me is how we leave Dennison. He is waiting to hear about a shipment of stolen goods obtained from a shipyard. It was just such a shipment that introduced Burroughs to the world of drugs when he obtained some cartons of morphine along with some hot weapons. This led to Burroughs’ meeting with Herbert Huncke and his initiation into the drug underworld. In his afterword, Grauerholz suggested that Burroughs was introduced to the needle after the events depicted in Hippos. If that is the case, Burroughs wrote his experiences with Huncke and heroin back into the Carr-Kammerer story.

The genesis of Queer resides in Hippos as well. Burroughs must have seen how the relationship of Carr and Kammerer mirrored his relationship with Lewis Marker. Nearly a decade later, Burroughs would replay the events in Hippos for himself complete with a murder that provided a shocking twist a la Law and Order. Burroughs was no stranger to sexual obsession. In the late 1930s, his feelings for Jack Anderson lead to a Van Gogh trip resulting in the cutting off of a finger. This early experience made Burroughs uniquely qualified to understand and to humanize a figure like Kammerer.

Other reviewers have categorized Hippos as a period piece, arguing that the book provides a unique perspective on the world of the post-WWII hipster at the time and place of his birth — the rain-washed streets, the seedy bars, the cramped apartments, the corner restaurants. More than Junkie, Hippos reads like a noir novel. Dennison works as a private eye. The cover of Kulchur 4 features a picture of Burroughs and Kerouac from the time of their collaboration in Hippos. They are dressed the part of the noir detective and the caption for the photo names them as Inspector Maiget and Sam Spade.  

I am tempted to see Hippos less as a noir novel than as a memoir like Anatole Broyard’s Kafka Was the Rage or Edie Parker-Kerouac’s You’ll Be Okay. If these books explored the same geography years later, Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler’s novel The Young and Evil (1933 by Obelisk Press) provided Kerouac and Burroughs with a model in terms of subject matter, method of composition (a collaboration), and atmosphere a full decade earlier. These books also capture the New York hipster scene described in Hippos. Although an act of misreading, I first approached Hippos as memoir more than novel because so much of the material from Hippos had been cannibalized for the biographical record. You finish Hippos with a sense of déjà vu since in a way you have read it all before in the Literary Outlaw and elsewhere. I see Kerouac’s Vanity of Dulouz in a similar manner.

As a result, reviewers of Hippos have treated the book as a straight telling of the Carr-Kammerer story, more period memoir than novel. This is a dangerous practice. If we think of Hippos in terms of memoir, we have to be acutely aware of what is missing. Hippos purports to be a factual accounting of the murder but it is in effect a cover-up. What is missing is the star witness in the case: Allen Ginsberg.  

In the afterword, Grauerholz states that reader will have a good time trying to place the characters with real people. Besides the main quartet, side players include Edie Parker, Celine Young, and John Kingsland. But where is Ginsberg? As Ginsberg’s journal of the period, The Journal of Martyrdom and Artifice, makes clear he was an intimate on the scene. Included in that journal was Ginsberg’s own novel based on the Kammerer-Carr murder entitled The Bloodsong. This passionate proto-novel was suppressed by Columbia University to prevent any additional bad publicity from infecting the college. Ginsberg was bad press.

Kerouac and Burroughs erased Ginsberg from Hippos for exactly the same reason. As Grauerholz mentions in the afterword, Ginsberg had a sexual relationship with both Kammerer and Carr. Ginsberg was exhibit A for the homosexual obsession that bound the entire New Vision circle. If Ginsberg’s story as told in his journal and The Bloodsong would have gotten out, Ginsberg would have been the star witness for the prosecution, and Carr might have gotten the electric chair. We can understand Ginsberg’s terror in 1948 when his notebooks were seized by police. The hot goods in the car were not the stolen furs and coats but the details of sexual obsession, murder and madness recorded in the journals.

A close reading of Chapter 17 proves very interesting in light of Hippos’ complex relationship with and treatment of homosexual obsession. Kerouac wrote this chapter, and it is full of the literary flourishes and symbolism that would weigh down his first published novel: The Town and the City. There are references to Saroyan and T.S Eliot as well as to foreign movies and popular music of the time. Kerouac and Carr talk repeatedly of writing poetry. No other chapter in the novel reveals so clearly the literary aspirations of the early Beat circle.  

Among the movies playing as Philip Tourian and Mike Ryko walk through the city is Port of Shadows. This French classic about a deserter from the French Army references the recent trials and travails of the pair getting a ship. Kerouac later writes that Philip reminds him of Boldieu and his white gloves in La Grande Illusion. Both these movies reflect the realism and sense of impeding tragedy that Burroughs and Kerouac attempt to capture in Hippos. Yet the movie references can also be read as comment on homosexual obsession. Tourian and Ryko see Korda’s Four Feathers on their way to the Museum of Modern Art. Kerouac writes, “There was an ambush scene where you saw British soldiers and Fuzzy Wuzzies hacking away at each other with sabers and knives and much blood. Most of the picture kept reminding us of Al lying in the yard in a pool of blood, so we couldn’t enjoy it that much. And one of the characters in the story was named Dennison.” This movie depicting combat with a threatening racial Other draws parallels with Tourian’s sacrifice of the dangerous sexual Other in the form of Al. The taint of homosexuality must be exorcised.  

After seeing this disturbing film, the pair retreats to the Museum of Modern Art. Tourian and Ryko seek solace in culture in order to get away from the anarchy of barrooms and darkened alleyways of the City. What they see at the Museum instead are examples of the culture that was the seeds of their destruction. They stop to examine a portrait of Jean Cocteau by Modigliani. The decadence, bisexuality, effeminacy and drug use that fascinated the early Beats is represented by the figure of Cocteau. The portrait was painted in 1916 and two years later Cocteau would meet the 15-year old poet Raymond Radiguet. Cocteau denied there was a sexual aspect to this relationship but rumors hounded the pair. The relationship of Cocteau / Radiguet mirrors that of Verlaine / Rimbaud and of course Kammerer / Carr. Radiguet died young leaving Cocteau distraught. Cocteau turned to opium. Of course, Verlaine shot Rimbaud. Carr provided an ironic twist to this tragic history of literary obsession, by killing his pursuer. 

European culture, particularly French culture as represented by Cocteau, filtered through Rimbaud, Gide, the surrealists and others would prove irresistible to the early Beats. Ryko and Tourian study Peter (?) Blume’s analyses of the decline and fall of the West as well. The reference suggests to the reader Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, a key philosophical text of Tourian / Carr’s New Vision. Given the existential and surrealist underpinnings of the early Beats, the murder of Al / Kammerer can be viewed as less of an honor killing and more of a violent act gratuite. Ur-surrealist Vache’s fantasy of shooting into a crowd would be the precedent. Tourian’s murder of Al can also be viewed as an assisted suicide/sacrifice of a tortured soul.

Ryko and Tourian finish their tour of the Museum by viewing Tchelitchew’s Cache-Cache (Hide and Seek). At that moment, Kerouac writes, “There was a tall blond fag, wearing a striped polo shirt and tan slacks, who kept looking at Phil out of the corner of his eye. Even when we went downstairs to see the one-hour movie, the fag was sitting behind us.” Obviously the fag plays hide and seek with Ryko and Tourian as he tails and shadows the pair. But the blond man also symbolizes the ghost of homosexual obsession that haunts and follows Ryko and Tourian threatening to queer the honor killing defense. Clearly, this doppelganger is on one level Al / Kammerer, but I would suggest that it is more appropriate to view the blond fag as the specter of Ginsberg that hangs at the edges of the entire text and demands to be acknowledged. Ginsberg’s membership in Carr circle and his sexual relationship with Carr and Kammerer endangered Carr’s defense and threatened his life. Kerouac performs a game of hide and seek with Ginsberg by suggesting his presence all the while excluding him as a character in Hippos.

The women in the story were meant to serve as key witnesses for the defense. These heterosexual relationships protect the early Beats against the charge of homosexuality. In the actual Carr investigation, Celine Young testified that Carr was straight and offered their sexual relationship as proof. Yet in Hippos, the female characters are aware of their outsider status in the boys’ club and realize they are in some ways being used as beards. Barbara and Janie repeatedly accuse Ryko and Tourian of being fags throughout the novel. Given Carr’s intended defense, being accused of homosexuality was a matter of life and death.

Homosexuality and homosexual obsession in Hippos are centered on the character of Kammerer and deflected from the other characters. This is most striking in the depiction of Dennison. Dennison is portrayed as straight. He has a wife and has sexual relationships with women in New York. In a scene that shocked me, Dennison feels up a woman’s thigh in an apartment. In order for the honor-slaying defense to be believed, the bisexuality of the New Vision circle had to be suppressed. Yet Burroughs’ true feelings on the subject of women slip out. Dennison’s wife is strategically placed in Colorado. She is a shadowy figure at best. One wonders if she exists or is a cover story. In a statement similar to Burroughs at his most misogynistic in The Job, Dennison punningly states, “Al’s right, my boy… Women, Philip, are the route of all evil.” This line reminded me powerfully of Naked Lunch. It is an act of ventriloquism. Dennison distances himself from homosexuality by speaking through Al. In addition, Dennison speaks Al’s words in a “Lionel Barrymore tone of voice.” Barrymore was famous for his booming voice as well as being a womanizer and ladies’ man. More ventriloquism; more deferral.  

Just before Dennison echoes Al’s thoughts on women, Burroughs as Dennison writes, “Yeah, I said to myself, why can’t we do away with women altogether.” The emphasis is Burroughs’, and it is the key question of the entire novel. The answer is simple: to do so would mean to admit to and make obvious the presence of homosexual obsession within the entire group including Carr. This could result in persecution by society leading ultimately to the death penalty for Carr. Interestingly, Burroughs poses this question in silence to himself. In an age of extreme discrimination against homosexuals, silence was a key defense against prosecution. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Silence coupled with invisibility. As a result, the key witness and chronicler of homosexual obsession in the group, Ginsberg, is gagged and hidden safely away in the margins and afterwords of the text. Not just Carr’s but all the early Beats’ survival depended on it.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I found this vaccine at the end of the junk line. I lived in one room in the Native Quarter of Tangier. I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of terminal addiction. I never cleaned or dusted the room. Empty ampule boxes and garbage piled to the ceiling. Light and water long since turned off for non-payment. I did absolutely nothing. I could look at the end of my shoe for eight hours.

— William S. Burroughs, “Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness”

When the topic of Burroughs and apomorphine arises in drug histories and biographies, it most commonly deals with the fact that in 1956 Burroughs took the apomorphine cure under the supervision of Dr. John Yerbury Dent and emerged a man reborn. The story goes that only after Burroughs overcame his addiction could he begin in earnest the work of transforming his Word Horde into Naked Lunch. The accepted tale about Burroughs and apomorphine ignores the fact that Naked Lunch had a form before the cure (“The real novel is the letters to [Ginsberg]”) and that major sections of Naked Lunch like The Talking Asshole routine were written a full year before the cure. After 1956 the apomorphine experience provided Burroughs with an overarching framework for Naked Lunch, but this would be a road not taken. In addition the road to recovery, if Burroughs truly ever walked that path, was a long and winding road. In fact, as the Deposition makes clear but as critics have ignored, Burroughs took the cure more than once between 1956 and July 1959, the date of Naked Lunch‘s publication. By 1958, he was nearly, if not completely, hooked on paregoric and shortly after the publication of Naked Lunch he would be implicated in a drug ring. The actual cure was a difficult experience (“The cure itself was awful” Letter to Ginsberg May 8, 1956) with side effects that lingered over a year later despite Burroughs’ assurances in retrospect that the apomorphine cure was quick and non-invasive. Yet the myth that the apomorphine cure effectively ended Burroughs’ struggle with drugs and jumpstarted Naked Lunch persists. Burroughs encouraged the development of just such a cover story in interviews and elsewhere, most famously in “Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness,” published as a preface to the Grove Press edition of Naked Lunch.

So what role did apomorphine play in this crucial period of development for Burroughs as a writer and individual? Why did Burroughs distort the facts regarding his experience with apomorphine, and why has that story remained unexamined for decades? Why has the “cure” in 1956 become the pivot on which Burroughs turned his life around? Why, however falsely, does the story of Naked Lunch begin at this point?

On one level, the development of this myth begins with Burroughs’ 1959 arrest on drug trafficking charges. Shortly after his arrest, Burroughs began work on the Deposition essay. In his letters of the period, Burroughs assured Ginsberg that the Deposition was sincere and represented his current beliefs on drugs and drug addiction.

“I am writing a short deposition with regard to Naked Lunch. This is essential for my own safety at this point: Naked Lunch is written to reveal the junk virus, the manner in which it operates, and in the manner in which it can be brought under control. This is no act. I mean it all the way. Get off that junk wagon, boys, it’s going down a three mile grade for the junk heap. I am off junk in sickness or in health so long as we both shall live.” (Letter to Ginsberg, Sept. 11, 1959)

The Deposition contains an account of the cure and describes the role of apomorphine as an antidote to the “Sickness.” Ginsberg felt the Deposition went too far and wrapped up Naked Lunch too neatly. He also doubted the Deposition’s sincerity. Reading the letters of the period, one gets the sense that Burroughs protested too much in defending the Deposition as an accurate, honest account of his true feelings. By 1991, Burroughs retracted his statement that he did not remember writing the notes that became Naked Lunch. The con appears to be on, but as Oliver Harris demonstrates in The Secret of Fascination, generations of critics have been willing marks parroting the Deposition into the critical record verbatim. In some cases, they have even misrepresented the Deposition, in which Burroughs admits to backsliding into addiction after the cure. Apomorphine was far from the miracle drug that Burroughs made it out to be — and, as we will see, he also left out a key component of the history of its use. It all suggests that Burroughs’ championing of apomorphine as an effective cure may have stemmed, at least on one level, from a desire to portray himself as drug-free and thereby stay out of jail.

But there is more to the story of apomorphine and to Burroughs’ insistence of being clean than simple legal expedience. Burroughs felt the need to be drug-free before his trouble with the law in late 1959. As the letters demonstrate, Burroughs realized he was on the road to terminal addiction by late 1955. The depths of Burroughs’ despair and desperation were no con. The trip to London to seek treatment with Dr. Dent was necessary on the level of survival.

Yet the need to be clean was also closely tied to Burroughs’ strong desire to be a successful author published by the Establishment, i.e. corporate publishers. The letters from the mid-1950s are full of references to Burroughs’ desire to gain mainstream acceptance as a writer. At this time, Burroughs associated writing with respectability and social acceptance. By becoming a writer, Burroughs could redeem himself (for the death of Joan, for being a poor father, for not supporting himself financially) and give himself a place in society. Writing was a means to conform, and Burroughs felt the need to fit in strongly. The image of the opium-addicted writer held an allure for Burroughs from an early age. As he struggled with the form and content of Naked Lunch, however, Burroughs’ drug addiction not only hampered his ability to write, it also symbolized his sick creativity and his inability to write straight narrative and commercially viable material. Apomorphine, as a means of curing his drug addiction, was thus a way for Burroughs to free himself to write. In a sense, kicking drugs was a way of going mainstream and being respectable. First, the cure would facilitate the act of writing and then possibly open the door to writing of a less sick and more popular nature.

Apomorphine tied into getting straight in another, less obvious manner. In the early days of the 20th century, apomorphine was used by doctors as part of a treatment to cure patients of their homosexuality. In Queer Burroughs, Jamie Russell mentions this fact in passing and suggests that Burroughs would have been aware of this aspect of apomorphine’s history. Burroughs never discussed it. In the Deposition, Burroughs states that historically the only use for apomorphine was as an emetic for poisoning. Not true, and given the fact that Burroughs was briefly a medical student and that he was intensely interested in medical history, the assumption that Burroughs knew apomorphine’s full history is not far-fetched. Currently, apomorphine is being used to combat erectile dysfunction (Uprima). Clearly, there is a strong sexual aspect to apomorphine’s history and its side effects. Apomorphine’s sexual component coupled with withdrawal symptoms must be an intense shock to the system. Burroughs ignored these elements of apomorphine in his published writing on the subject, but not in his letters.

Immediately following the apomorphine cure in London in 1956, there are several references in Burroughs’ letters to changes in his sex drive. In his first letter after the cure, Burroughs writes, “The thought of sex with anyone gives me the horrors… Last night went to a ghastly queer party where I was pawed and propositioned by a 50-year-old Liberal MP. I told him, ‘I couldn’t sleep with Ganymede now, let alone you.'” (Letter to Ginsberg, May 8, 1956) A week later Burroughs reports to Ginsberg, “Still no interest in sex.” I am unaware if apomorphine was used by doctors as an aversion technique to combat homosexual impulses, but in Burroughs’ case the apomorphine experience did lead to a type of sexual conditioning. In the months after the cure, Burroughs’ sex drive returned as did his sexual activities with “boys.” However, as the letters show, a heterosexual element in his sexual make-up surfaced at this point. Burroughs writes, “Still no interest in sex. I am physically able you dig, just not innarested. When I look at a boy nothing happens. Ratty lot of boys they got here anyhoo. Maybe when I come around to it, I want women.” (Letter to Ginsberg, May 15, 1956)

Over the next year, Burroughs underwent a period of intense sexual questioning. For example:

So suddenly a wave of sex come over me and I have a spontaneous orgasm strap my vitals. Now a spontaneous, walking orgasm is a rare occurrence even in adolescence. Only one I ever experienced before was in the orgone accumulator I made in Texas. And another thing. I find my eyes straying towards the fair sex. (It”s the new frisson, dearie… Women are downright piquant.) You hear about these old character find out they are queer at fifty, maybe I’m about to make the switcheroo. What are these strange feelings that come over me when I look at a young cunt’s little tits sticking out so cute? Could it be that?? No! No! He thrust the thought from him in horror. He stumbled out in the street with the girl’s mocking laughter lingering in his ears, laughter that seemed to say, “who you think you’re kidding with the queer act. I know you, baby.” What it is as Allah wills… (Letter to Ginsberg, Sept. 15, 1956).

One might assume that this quote is another Burroughsian routine full of irony and black humor, but the references to heterosexual impulses in the letters are too numerous to discount as mere joking. Clearly just after his apomorphine experience, Burroughs experienced a crisis of sexual identity. It may not be possible to say whether this can be directly attributed to apomorphine, but apomorphine, sexual identity, and the form of Naked Lunch will all be interrelated by late 1957. Burroughs’ sexual questioning strikes me as very similar to the crisis Ginsberg experienced just before the breakthrough of Howl in 1955. Famously, Ginsberg met with his analyst and openly discussed his desire to live as a poet and more importantly as a gay poet despite his attempts to play it straight. Ginsberg’s analyst stated that nothing was stopping him. This advice encouraged Ginsberg on the path to sexual freedom and the poetic vision of Howl occurred shortly thereafter.

Similarly the feverish development of Naked Lunch occurred during a period of uncertainty regarding sexual identity. As Burroughs questioned his sexuality, Naked Lunch poured forth “like dictation.” In addition the desire to go straight sexually paralleled a desire to once and for all straitjacket Naked Lunch into the form and themes of the conventional novel. In early 1957, Burroughs was seriously examining his homosexuality. Burroughs writes,

All the etiology of my homosex and practically everything spill right out of me. Quotes from last night majoun high: “So what’s holding him up? — homosex orientation — Some old tired synapse pattern won’t go to its home like it’s supposed. There must be an answer, I need the answering device. I think I can arrange but it will be expensive. Modern Oedipus.” This give me an out already, I can put down the old whore and hump some young Crete gash heat my toga like the dry goods of Nexus, you might say Nexus had the rag on.” (Letter to Ginsberg, Jan. 31, 1957)

In late 1957, Burroughs examined Naked Lunch‘s form and determined to make yet another effort to conform and contain Naked Lunch. As a result, Burroughs developed The General Theory of Addiction. He writes, “At present I am working on Benway and Scandinavia angles, also developing a theory of morphine addiction… Incidentally, this theory resulted from necessities of the novel. That is scientific theories and novel are inseparable. What I am evolving is a general theory of addiction which expands into a world picture with concepts of good and evil.” (Letter to Ginsberg Sept. 20, 1957). The answer to Burroughs’ sexual and literary questioning was the General Theory of Addiction. This theory was tied to Burroughs’ sexual crisis and the form of Naked Lunch. Burroughs writes, “Briefly, the novel concerns addiction and an addicting virus that is passed from one person to another in sexual contacts. The virus only passes from man to man or woman to woman, which is why Benway is turning out homosexuals on an assembly-line basis.” (Letter to Ginsberg, Aug. 27, 1957)

The General Theory of Addiction derived directly from Burroughs’ apomorphine experience and related to the pioneering work of Dr. Dent, Anxiety and Its Treatment. “The Theory of Addiction is, incidentally, correct, in essentials. I received a letter from Wolberg, quote… ‘Particularly interesting is your theory about cancer and schizophrenia. I have made no study of this, but telephoned a friend who works for a large mental institution. He said the incidence of cancer among schizophrenics is appreciably lower than among non-schizophrenics.’ The importance of this one fact is immeasurable. My theory contains the key to addiction, cancer, and schizophrenia. I have not yet heard from Doctor Dent.” (Letter to Ginsberg, Oct. 19, 1957) Keep in mind this theory developed from “the necessities of the novel.” Even at this late date, Burroughs strongly felt the need to subject Naked Lunch to the restraints of the novel. The desire for literary form was also related to his desire to conform sexually.

In a key letter written on October 8, 1957, Burroughs sent along a copy of his General Theory of Addiction to Ginsberg. Burroughs writes:

I feel myself closer and closer to resolution of my queerness which would involve a solution of that illness. For such it is, a horrible sickness. At least in my case. I have just experienced emergence of my non-queer persona as a separate personality. This started in London where in a dream I came into room to see myself not a child but adolescent, looking at me with hate. So I said, ‘I don’t seem to be exactly welcome,’ and he say. ‘Not welcome!!! I hate you!’ And with good reason too. Suppose you had kept a non-queer young boy in a strait-jacket of flesh twenty five years subject to continual queer acts and talk? Would he love you? I think not. Anyhoo, I’m getting to know the kid, and we get on better. I tell him he can take over anytime, but there is somebody else in this deal not yet fully accounted for and the kid’s not up to deal with him, so I hafta stay around for the present. Actually, of course the kid and all the rest of us have to arrange a merger. A ver.

The concept and linking together of sickness and queerness related directly to Burroughs’ apomorphine experience. As this letter demonstrates, the emergence of his heterosexual personality started just after the cure in London. Soon after Burroughs felt himself cured of the Sickness, i.e. drug addiction, he sought to cure himself of his queerness. The time was ripe for Burroughs to conform, to get his life together, and to play it straight. Sickness and illness also refer to the sick, obscene nature of Naked Lunch and its failure to conform to the traditional novel form as well as Naked Lunch‘s troubling (for Burroughs) link to homosexual desire and obsession. The phrase “strait-jacket of flesh” creates a wealth of associations between madness, sickness, homosexuality / heterosexuality, and literary form. As Harris demonstrates, Naked Lunch germinated in Queer (Burroughs’ account of his obsession with Lewis Marker) and his letters to Ginsberg. Burroughs strongly felt the need to cover up those personal elements in Naked Lunch. According to Harris, the junk paradigm or the General Theory of Addiction did just that. It not only provided a form to the novel, it shifted the focus from homosexual obsession to drug addiction. In a sense, apomorphine provided a means to cure Naked Lunch of its queerness.

By April 1958, Burroughs instructed Ginsberg to include the Benway section and to exclude the theoretical material. In final publication, Burroughs abandoned the General Theory of Addiction framework for Naked Lunch but traces remain in the Benway section. As Harris demonstrates, the General Theory and the related “The Conspiracy” were Burroughs’ last attempts to straitjacket Naked Lunch into the traditional form of the novel. By late 1958, Burroughs realized that his desire to be a writer did not depend on toning down his radical experimentation in literary style and drug use. In fact, those elements were what made Naked Lunch a profoundly obscene masterpiece. Burroughs’ change of heart cannot be separated from his tentative success in getting selections of Naked Lunch published to wide acclaim in little magazines beginning in 1957 and onwards into early 1959. Yet the decision to tone down the elements of homosexual desire remained. On one level, this was achieved by eliminating references to the epistolatory origins of the novel. That said, the novel as published by Burroughs in 1959 was a radical one, as much anti-novel as novel.

Yet Burroughs’ troubles with obscenity laws in 1959, in addition to his problems with drug laws (discussed above), would lead to a reassessment of Naked Lunch and to Burroughs’ re-insertion of apomorphine into the text. Burroughs strongly desired the publication of the complete Naked Lunch in the United States. Concessions had to be made to render Naked Lunch palatable to American courts and the reading public. The Deposition and to a lesser extent the “Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs” serve this purpose. In a sense, Burroughs reintroduced the General Theory of Addiction into the novel. According to Harris, this paradigm completely overshadows the other more transgressive aspects of Naked Lunch, in essence de-radicalizing it, de-sexualizing it, and de-toxifying it. First, the Deposition de-radicalizes the text by providing a means to analyze and to interpret the book. Burroughs provides a blueprint (whether con or not) for critics and readers to approach the novel. In addition, the Deposition de-sexualizes the book by taking the focus off of the homosexual obsession that formed the basis for the novel. A framework based on drug addiction replaces the sexuality of the letter economy. In the various obscenity trials surrounding Naked Lunch, doctors testified that the novel presented an accurate portrayal of the junk / drug problem. With the introduction of apomorphine, Burroughs could not be accused of immorality since he provided a solution to the problem he presented. The book was no longer obscene but instead was a public service message on a major problem facing contemporary society. The account of apomorphine effectively cures the novel of its Sickness (queerness, obscurity, immorality, and drug abuse). In essence the novel itself undergoes Dr. Dent’s cure and emerges reborn.

As the opening pages of APO-33 Bulletin: a Metabolic Regulator make clear, the Deposition and other writings on apomorphine of the Naked Lunch era left a bad taste in Burroughs’ mouth. The accepted reason is that Burroughs did not make the case for apomorphine strongly enough, since he did not implicate law enforcement and the medical community in the blackballing of his miracle drug. That may be true, but I cannot help sensing that Burroughs also felt that these writings came on much too strong and revealed too much. In APO-33, Burroughs explains his failure regarding apomorphine as an overestimation of his popularity potential. In essence, Burroughs tried to be respectable and mainstream. He played to the audience, so he watered down his beliefs about apomorphine. Yet he also pandered to “popularity” in another manner. Burroughs altered and molded the popular perception of himself and his troublesome novel for the benefit of the legal system in drug and obscenity trials. Burroughs may have realized that these pieces discussing apomorphine attached to Naked Lunch diminished the diabolical power of his novel.

By 1965, the time to kow-tow to popular and legal opinion was over. By being the most notorious author in the world, Burroughs had paradoxically achieved an element of respectability. He was a financial and critical success. The legal battles were basically over. Maybe Burroughs felt apomorphine had to be rescued from the squares and injected with the radical spirit. In the work of the 1960s, apomorphine no longer just embodied and played a role in a junk paradigm or the General Theory of Addiction. It represented a new theory, but a theory grounded in process: the cut-up technique. As I demonstrated in my earlier column on apomorphine, the drug became symbolic of this experimental technique. Works like APO-33 returned to the radical nature of Naked Lunch. Radical in form and in process of composition. The apomorphine experience was no longer utilized as a straitjacket. Given its non-commercial and disorienting nature, Burroughs’ work of this period was once again considered unreadable and beyond the forces of readerly control. And for Burroughs, apomorphine once again became a cure, this time for the sickness of Language and the Word.

Hank O’Neal is a photographer well known for his jazz and portrait photography. He collaborated with Berenice Abbott for many years, and also befriended many of the writers of the Beat generation. His portraits of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and others can be seen on his web site.

Abrams/Image will be publishing a new book of his photographs entitled Gay Day: The Golden Age of the Christopher Street Parade 1974-1983. The book chronicles the development of the gay pride parade in New York City’s Greenwich Village. The book includes a never-before-published preface by William Burroughs, and many of the photographs in the collection were captioned by Allen Ginsberg.

In advance of Gay Day‘s publication in Spring, 2006, RealityStudio sent some interview questions to Mr. O’Neal. He was kind enough to take the time to answer them.

RealityStudio: How did you come to know Burroughs?

O’Neal: In early 1984 Allen Ginsberg told me that William Burroughs was coming to New York for a week of celebrating his 70th birthday. He was looking for a place to stay and did I know of anything. I suggested that if he’d like, Shelley (my soon to be wife) would be happy to turn over our floor at 830 Broadway to William and his pals and we’d camp out at her uptown apartment. This seemed to work for William and I first met him the day he moved into my house for a week. He arrived on 4 February (Saturday) and was here until 10 February.

RealityStudio: Burroughs was himself an artist as well as a writer. Did you have discussions with him about visual aesthetics, techniques, principles, etc? Do you recall the substance of any of those conversations?

O’Neal: William had a terrific visual sensibility but in 1984, William was not as active as a painter in the early 1980s as he became later in the decade, i.e. 1988 – 89. We had no conversations about visual aesthetics.

RealityStudio: Was Burroughs an influence in any way on your photography?

O’Neal: I had been taking photographs for some while when I met William and the extent of his influence was that he became a subject of many of the pictures.

RealityStudio: Your forthcoming book of photographs, Gay Day: The Golden Age of the Christopher Street Parade 1974-1983, contains previously unpublished captions by Allen Ginsberg and a preface by Burroughs. Was this project prepared a long while ago and delayed for some reason?

O’Neal: Gay Day: The Golden Age of the Christopher Street Parade 1974-1983, which Abrams/Image will publish in June 2006 contains about 150 previously unpublished photographs, as well as 125 previously unpublished poetic captions for the photographs by Allen Ginsberg. William wrote the preface shortly after he became aware of the project when he stayed at 830 in February 1984. He saw some of the pictures and thought it was a terrific project. The book was seriously delayed because of outright hostility from many publishers to the project in 1984. All of us had other projects and we just moved on. I was aware the time would come when these photographs with Allen’s captions and William’s preface would become widely accepted and that time has now come. Abrams/Image is very excited about the book and plans to publicize it widely.

RealityStudio: You’re best known for your work with musicians. What was your interest in shooting the Christopher Street Parade?

O’Neal: In 1972 I built a recording studio at 173 Christopher Street. In those years the parade formed in my front yard, the wide stretch of Christopher Street between Washington and West Street. Walker Evans had once told me he started out taking pictures in his back yard, so I didn’t see anything wrong with taking pictures in my front yard. It was visually very interesting, full of energy and good times, an ideal project. Berence Abbott used to always tell me to get a good project and work on it. This seemed like a very good one and I pursued it until 1983.

RealityStudio: Do you recall Burroughs and Ginsberg being interested in the parade? Did they ever march in it?

O’Neal: I don’t believe Allen or William ever marched in the parade. They never mentioned it to me and I’m pretty sure Allen would have as he was captioning the photographs.