Stephanie Nikolopoulos

The title say it all, and I’ve got a lot of ground to cover so let’s just get on with it!

1. Burroughs was born on February 5, 1914, which would make him 100 years old today!
2. But he passed away on August 2, 1997
3. The S. in William S. Burroughs stands for Seward
4. Burroughs is actually Burroughs II
5. Burroughs’ father’s name was Mortimer Perry Burroughs
6. Mortimer ran a gift shop called Cobblestone Gardens
7. The II comes from his grandfather
8. William Seward Burroughs I was the founder of the Burroughs Adding Machine company
9. William S. Burroughs II named his son William Seward Burroughs III
10. Burroughs’ mother’s name was Laura Hammon Lee
11. Burroughs’ pen name was William Lee
12. Burroughs’ maternal grandfather was a minister
13. In the ’60s, Burroughs joined and left the Church of Scientology
14. In 1993 he became a member of the Illuminates of Thanateros
15. Laura Hammon Lee’s family claimed to be related to Confederate General Robert E. Lee
16. Burroughs’ uncle was Ivy Lee, the founder of modern PR
17. His family was not very affectionate
18. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri and lived on Pershing Avenue in the Central West End section of St. Louis
19. He attended the private school John Burroughs School, named after the naturalist
20. Burroughs was class of ’31
21. Burroughs’ first publishing achievement was at the school when his essay “Personal Magnetism” was published in 1929 in the John Burroughs Review
22. He didn’t graduate from John Burroughs School
23. On its website, John Burroughs School calls William S. Burroughs a “controversial author”
24. After John Burroughs School, he attended Los Alamos Ranch School, an elite boarding school in New Mexico
25. Another famous author later attended Los Alamos Ranch School: Gore Vidal (born 1925)
26. At the boys boarding school, Burroughs kept a diary about his attachment to another boy at the school
27. Burroughs was a virgin through high school
28. Burroughs dropped out of Los Alamos too
29. Next up, he went to Taylor School in Clayton, Missouri
30. From there, he went to Harvard to study art
31. At Harvard, he was part of Adams House
32. Back home on summer break, Burroughs became a cub reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
33. His beat? Police docket
34. Surprisingly, he hated the job and refused to cover gruesome stories
35. That summer he lost his virginity
36. He shed his virginity to a female prostitute
37. It was back at Harvard that he was introduced to gay culture when he traveled to New York City with his wealthy Kansas City friend Richard Stern
38. Stern was apparently a bit like Neal Cassady when it came to driving: he drove so fast that Burroughs wanted to get out of the car once
39. Burroughs graduated from Harvard in 1936
40. After he graduated, his parents gave him $200 a month
41. After Harvard, Burroughs went to Vienna to study medicine
42. There he became involved in the gay subculture
43. He also met his first wife there, Ilse Klapper, a Jewish woman fleeing the Nazis
44. Burroughs and Klapper were not romantically involved, but he married her in Croatia so she could move to the US
45. After they divorced in New York, they remained friends
46. By 1939, he had become so obsessed with a man that he severed his own finger — the last joint of his left little finger, to be exact
47. In 1942, Burroughs enlisted in the US Army
48. When he became depressed that he was listed as 1-A Infantry instead of officer, his mother called a family friend, a neurologist, to get him a civilian disability discharge due to mental instability
49. It took five months for him to be discharged, and he waited at Jefferson Barracks, near his family home
50. Afterward, he moved to Chicago
51. In Chicago, the Harvard grad became an exterminator
52. The Burroughs family was friends with another prominent family, the Carrs
53. William S. Burroughs II was eleven years old when Lucien Carr was born
54. During primary school in St. Louis, Burroughs had met David Kammerer, who was three years older than him
55. Kammerer had been Carr’s youth group leader and become obsessed with him, following him to the University of Chicago
56. When Carr fled to Columbia University in New York City, Kammerer followed — as did Burroughs, who moved a block away from Kammerer in the West Village
57. Carr met Allen Ginsberg at Columbia and introduced him to Burroughs and Carr
58. Burroughs met Joan Vollmer Adams around this time, and he moved in with her
59. In the summer of ’44, Carr killed Kammerer with his Boy Scout knife, and then went to Burroughs — Kammerer’s friend — for help
60. Burroughs flushed Kammerer’s bloody pack of cigarettes down the toilet and told Carr to get a lawyer and turn himself in, but instead Carr sought out help from Jack Kerouac
61. Burroughs and Kerouac were arrested as material witnesses, but Burroughs’ father posted bail for him (Kerouac married Edie Parker to get bail money)
62. Burroughs became involved in drugs around this time, becoming addicted to heroin
63. When Burroughs got arrested for forging a prescription, he was released to his parents in St. Louis
64. When he was finally allowed to leave, he went back to New York City for Joan Vollmer Adams, and together, with her daughter, moved to Texas
65. It was Joan who gave birth to William S. Burroughs III in 1947
66. After Texas, the family moved to New Orleans
67. Around this time, Burroughs was arrested after police found letters at Ginsberg’s place that incriminated him
68. Burroughs, Joan, and the kids went on the lam to Mexico
69. In Mexico, Burroughs decided to go back to school: he studied Spanish and the Mayan language at Mexico City College
70. He studied under R. H. Barlow, a homosexual from Kansas City who commit suicide through overdose  in January 1951
71. He also decided to take up a game of William Tell. It didn’t go so well: he shot Joan in the head, killing her
72. He only spent 13 days in jail, after his brother bribed authorities to let him out while he waited for trial; witnesses were also bribed so Burroughs would appear innocent. Either way, Burroughs skipped town
73. Burroughs considers his killing of Joan to be the beginning of his life as a writer; he wrote Queer at this time
74. Queer was not published until 1985; Burroughs’ first book was actually Junkie, published in 1953 — four years before Kerouac’s On the Road came out
75. Burroughs III went to live with his grandparents in St. Louis; Joan’s daughter, Julie, went to live with her maternal grandmother
76. Burroughs himself went down to South America in search of the drug yage
77. From there, he moved to Palm Beach, Florida, with his parents
78. His parents paid for him to travel to Rome to see Alan Ansen
79. They didn’t hit it off romantically, so Burroughs left for Tangier, Morocco
80. When Kerouac visited Burroughs in Tangier in 1957, he typed up his manuscript for him and edited it into Naked Lunch
81. In 1959, Burroughs moved to the Beat Hotel in Paris; Ginsberg, Ginsberg’s lover poet Peter Orlovsky, poet Gregory Corso, and photographer Harold Chapman lived there
82. There, he discovered the cut-up technique of Brion Gysin, which greatly influenced his work
83. In 1966, Burroughs went to London to seek treatment for his drug addiction and worked there for about six years
84. Student editor Irving Rosenthal, of Chicago Review, lost his job for publishing excerpts of Naked Lunch and founded his own lit mag, Big Table, where he continued to publish Burroughs’ work. The United States Postmaster General found the work so obscene that he ruled it couldn’t be sent through the mail. This intrigued Maurice Girodias, publisher of Olympia Press
85. A 1966 case against Naked Lunch remains the United States’ last obscenity trial against literature
86. Back in the US, Burroughs’ own son had gotten involved in drugs and gotten arrested on prescription fraud (just like dear old dad); Burroughs took him to the Lexington Narcotics Farm and Prison
87. Burroughs covered the 1968 Democratic National Convention for Esquire magazine; he refused to alter his style to fit Playboy‘s literary demands for another article
88. Burroughs hated teaching because it expended all his energy and he felt like he got nothing back in return
89. Bookseller James Grauerholz initiated Burroughs’ reading tour, which helped Burroughs remain in the public eye … and make money for it
90. In 1976, Burroughs’ son had liver cirrhosis and underwent transplant surgery; Burroughs stayed with him in 76 and 77 to help care for him
91. Burroughs III cut off his father, writing an article in Esquire that said his father had ruined his life, and died in 1981
92. In 1978, the Nova Convention took place — a multi-venue retrospective of Burroughs’ work that included readings and discussions by Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Frank Zappa, and Timothy Leary in addition to concerts featuring The B-52s, Debbie Harry, and Philip Glass
93. Speaking of musicians, in the 90s Kurt Cobain hung out with Burroughs
94. In the 80s, Burroughs moved to Lawrence, Kansas, where he spent the remainder of his life
95. Always the gun aficionado, there he created an art form in which he used a shotgun to shoot spray paint bottles that would explode paint onto a canvas
96. In 1983 Burroughs was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
97. He played a character from one of his own short stories in the 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy
98. His collaboration with Nick Cave and Tom Waits gave birth to Smack My Crack, a collection of short prose and spoken-word album
99. Burroughs died from complications of a heart attack
100. He is buried the Burroughs family plot in Bellefontaine Cemetery

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