Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Chicagoland / Onstage / LGBT / Lit & Lectures / Film / Visual Art / Performing Arts / Arts / Books Performances mark 50th anniversary of "Naked Lunch"
Posted by Albert Williams on 08.11.09 at 03:44 PM
Actor Peter Weller, poets John Giorno and Anne Waldman, and performance artist Penny Arcade are among the notables scheduled to appear Friday, August 28, at Thinkart Salon to mark the 50th anniversary of William S. Burroughs's landmark novel Naked Lunch. Weller, who played Burroughs's alter ego William Lee in David Cronenberg's 1991 film version of the book, will headline "an evening of art, readings, happenings, and performances" to raise money for the new documentary William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser. The event will feature a preview screening of the documentary's trailer as well as an exhibition of Burroughs' efforts at visual art. Also on hand will be 60s radical William Ayers and James Grauerholz, Burroughs's longtime secretary, sometime companion, editor, and estate executor. For more information, call 773-252-2294.
Naked Lunch, published in Paris in 1959 by Olympia Press and in the U.S. in 1962 by Grove Press (in a substantially different version), is Burroughs's hallucinatory yet autobiographical account of life in "Interzone"—his name for 1950s Tangiers, a city divided among several different political jurisdictions. The book—considered by many one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century—was shockingly candid for its time about drugs and homosexuality; today, its most powerful resonances come from Burroughs's prescient satire of political corruption and the lust for power, which Burroughs presented as an even more potent and evil addiction than drug addiction. (If you've ever spent time scratching your head trying to figure out just what is it with Dick Cheney, go back and read Naked Lunch—it explains everything.)
Prior to the book's formal publication, excerpts of it appeared in 1958 in the Chicago Review, a literary magazine published at the University of Chicago. Chicago Daily News columnist called the excerpts "one of the foulest collections of printed filth I've seen publicly circulated." The Reader covered the controversy in depth in a two-part 1995 article: "Naked Censorship, Part I: The University Goes Ballistic" and "Naked Censorship, Part II: The Beats Strike Back."
The August 28 event runs from 5:30 to 9:30 Friday, August 28, at Thinkart Salon, 1530 N. Paulina, Suite F. There will be live music by Maya Jensen, cuisine catered by Chef Daniel Mejia, and an open bar serving "Burroughs's special elixirs." Tickets are $60 in advance or $75 at the door; the price includes an after party with live music and an open bar starts at 9:30 PM at the Stop Smiling Storefront, 1371 N. Milwaukee Ave.
(Full disclosure: I had the extraordinary privilege of working with Burroughs in the 1970s, when Columbia College produced a stage version of Naked Lunch here and later off-Broadway. In 1981 I worked with him again, helping to publicize a reading he and John Giorno were giving at the now-defunct rock club Tuts. It was during this engagement that Burroughs learned his son, William Jr., had died at age 33 of alcoholism-related liver disease.)
Comments (15)
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like
dislikeI had to interview Burroughs once, when he was an old man in town for an exhibit of his paintings. On the way to the appointment I obsessed about how he was a murderer, having famously weaseled his way out of the rap when he shot his wife dead in Mexico while trying to knock an apple off her head. By the time I got there I was so creeped out by the thought that I practically refused to talk to him. Made for an odd interview.
@Tony Adler
I thought it was a drinking glass, not an apple.
Not that I blame you for not wanting to ask him.
Whether or not Burroughs' shooting his wife Joan was an accident or manslaughter or even murder remains one of the great mysteries of modern American literature. If Joan feared for her life why did she participate in their game of William Tell?
When I was helping publicize Burroughs' appearance at Tuts in 1981, we set up a dinner interview at the Pump Room with Henry Hanson of Chicago magazine. At one point Burroughs asked for a light (you could smoke at the table then), and my friend Julie Milliken brought out an elegant little matchbox. "Mmm," said Burroughs as he looked at the tiny container while lighting his handrolled cigarette. "I have a little gun that would fit right in that box."
There's no question Burroughs was an odd, sometimes creepy duck--as many great artists are.
Aw c'mon, Bill. He had a gun, he was high, he shot his wife. No mystery there, just cause and effect. And asking why Joan participated is queasily close to the why'd-she-dress-that-way-if-she-didn't-want-it defense for rape. Burroughs was one hell of an artist, but he was also a murderer. Or a manslaughterer, if you prefer. The only thing that kept him out of jail was the fortune handed down to him as the grandson of the founder of the Burroughs Business Machine Co., liberally spread around the Mexican justice system. Well, that plus a timely trip back north.
Ease that quease, Tony. I didn't "blame the victim." My point is, Burroughs and his common-law wife Joan Vollmer were addicts playing a game. A sick and stupid game, and it ended tragically. And yes, he fled Mexico to avoid prison time for culpable homicide--the unlawful killing of a person without intent to kill. The incident basically destroyed his family (I was with him when he received the news of his estranged 33-year-old son's death from alcoholism; I saw his silent, deeply guilt-ridden reaction). It also had a deep impact on his writing, as did his criminal and pathological addiction to drugs. What matters is that his writing is some of the greatest and most influential in American, even world, literature. Thus his election to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1975.
You were in the highly privileged position of being able to talk to him, a position you evidently didn't relish--you say you "had to" interview him. So if you were (and apparently still are) so obsessed about the shooting, why didn't you ask Burroughs when you had the chance?
I wonder if Burroughs's literary output and honors would be "what matters" to Vollmer?
"Obsessed" is a very, very extreme term for my feelings about the Burroughs murder, Bill--an unfair term for them, don't you think? I just don't see why being good at something should excuse anybody's criminal or immoral behavior. I also don't see how Vollmer's addiction relates to the case when she wasn't the one with the gun. And attempting to win sympathy for WSB by noting that the crime destroyed his family is like asking for clemency for the guy who killed his parents on the ground that he's an orphan.
Why didn't I confront him when I had the chance? Good question. Simply couldn't bring myself to do it. I'd ruminated over it--in particular, over my responsibility in this situation--to the point where it was a choice between holding my peace and making a scene, and I chose to hold my peace.
Tony, in your posting above you wrote "On the way to the appointment [with Burroughs] I obsessed about how he was a murderer." "Obsessed" was your term.
No one's trying to excuse anything. William Burroughs needs no excuses: he was an artist of great genius who lived emotionally in a very dark place, partly of his own making, and who found in that darkness very compelling and insightful metaphors for the political corruption in the world in which we live.
Finally, I don't see why you think asking Burroughs about the shooting would have entailed "making a scene." It's part of the historical record, and candor was an essential aspect of Burroughs' life and work. Most journalists would have jumped at the opportunity to raise the issue of the Vollmer shooting if the issue interested them.
Finally: I WOULD ask for clemency (or at least I'd argue mitigating circumstances) for a person who accidentally, while on drugs, killed his parents while they were on drugs playing a twisted game. Not because the guy's an orphan but because of the circumstances of the tragic event. But that's me.
You all might like to read this account by Reader movie critic J.R. Jones of a visit he paid Burroughs in Lawrence when he (Jones) was 23. http://chicagoreader.com/chicago/friends-o…
Sample moment:
My friend had been staring at a sculpture resting atop one of the bookcases; it was a sheet of plywood about three by four feet. A cluster of small holes showed the striations of the wood. He asked Burroughs if the sculpture was an abstraction or if it represented a city. Burroughs squinted at the plywood. "No, that's a piece of wood I shot with my gun!"
Albert-
Do you know if there's a copy of the Columbia College adaption of Naked Lunch laying around somewhere? Was Sheldon in charge at the time, or Paul Carter-Harrison maybe?
-Jaimie-Lee Wise
Dear Jaimie-Lee Wise: I doubt there is a script around. The production was created and directed by Donald Sanders, who was chair of the Columbia Theater Dept. in the early 1970s--prior to both Sheldon Patinkin and Paul Carter-Harrison. Sorry I can't be more help.
It was. Intending to capture the non-linear nature of the book (and the fact that back then there were 2 different versions of the book, the European and American), Sanders created three full-length plays that ran in rep, using the story theater form (the characters narrated their own actions). Sometimes the same scenes appeared in two or three of the plays, in different forms and/or with different actors. The effect was like skipping back and forth through the book, which was really how the book was meant to be read. It was a true ensemble piece. Very sexually candid, and in the mid-1970s (think Vietnam and Watergate) the novel's satire of authoritarian corruption was especially resonant. It was done at Columbia in 1972 or 1973, and later off-Broadway at the Truck and Warehouse Theatre, with some of the Columbia cast. At one point, Burroughs himself did a "star turn" as the mad Dr. Benway.
So the Sanders script may be lost -- but why not do your own?!
Why not indeed. . . . Thanks for the description.
I bought a ticket for the Thinkart Salon event and am looking forward to the 28th.
I spoke to William Burroughs once when he was living in Lawrence and for an unlikely set of reasons actually attended his 'very memorable' funeral.
