CURSED FROM BIRTH:
THE SHORT, UNHAPPY LIFE OF WILLIAMS S. BURROUGHS JR.
by David Ohle
Soft Skull Press
by Carl Macki

 

 

Cursed from Birth:
The Short, Unhappy Life of William S. Burroughs Jr.
by David Ohle
Paper 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" 256 pgs. ISBN: 1-933368-38-1 List: $13.95 11/1/2006
Soft Skull Press.

The saga of William Burroughs saga continues, not because he was America's most famous literary junkie, but, in part because like Orwell, he foresaw the rise of the Control State in a so-called Age of Terrorism.

Unlike some youth of famous parents, William S. Burroughs, Jr. did not rebel against the traditional trappings of celebrity and success. He used them and looked forward to a wealthy life as a famous writer.

He came to see that his conflict with achieving that came from the hurt that he experienced, real enough for him and for others around him, but perhaps not for his father, whose achievements in triumphing over one's self-induced adversity did not pass to his son.

This is what we have to learn from this the "failure" of a book, and there is beauty in it.

Billy did not have the exact same drives and disciplines as his father. It appears that this period of adolescence resulted in a crucial, defining split from his father in seeking his own identity, albeit in a negative way.

In an unsent letter by Billy, discovered after his son's death, Billy signed off as "your cursed-from-birth son," and wrote afterwards, "P.S. From one who has intently studied your work all his life let it be known that in this one's opinion, everything since Naked Lunch is tripe of the worst con-artist type--as far as art goes that's your only kind--Con."

David Ohle does a meticulous job of stitching together the writings from Billy Jr's third and unfinished so-called novel "Prak riti Junction," According to an earlier interview with him, published in Hobart:

So Burroughs hired me for a fee to "edit" Billy's last novel, "Prakriti Junction." But when I got to Ohio State, where the filed boxes were stored, there was no novel to speak of, so I conceived the idea of doing a memoir, a compilation of his writings, his letters and testimonials about him. . . . I guess Billy thought some background was necessary to provide context for readers who were not familiar with his entire life. I thought the same thing when I was compiling Cursed From Birth, and so used background material from Speed at the beginning to provide context. I think Billy began Prakriti Junction before his liver transplant, which changed everything and made it impossible for him to continue in any organized, coherent way. He continued writing, but not regularly, and always obsessively about his physical degradation, suicidal thoughts, and hopelessness. I suppose his post-transplant writings were a form of catharsis. Perhaps writing about suicide prevented him from doing it (directly). . .

Editor Ohle has written two cult science fiction novels whose "indeterminate" fiction has been likened to Burroughs'--Motorman (first published by Knopf in 1972) and The Age of Sinatra (Soft Skull, 2004).

His forthcoming Pisstown Chaos i s due to come out by Soft Skull in the Spring of 07.