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List Price: $27.95Price: $6.00 You Save: $21.95 (79%)as of 11/21/2009 00:49 EST
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780316137256
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 0316137251
Label: Little Brown & Co (T)
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (T)
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 1998-06
Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T)
Studio: Little Brown & Co (T)
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
There have been several solid conventional biographies of William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), and this imaginative consideration of his "life and legacy" does not seek to replace them. Instead, British scholar Graham Caveney concentrates on Burroughs as a cultural phenomenon whose unsettling ability to depict personal degradation with modernist detachment first awed contemporaries in the beat generation and continued through the 1990s to inspire artists as diverse as grunge rocker Kurt Cobain, painter Keith Haring, and film director David Cronenberg. Even before Naked Lunch became a literary and legal cause célèbre--the book was ultimately judged not obscene in a landmark 1966 court decision--Burroughs was a legend in avant-garde circles for his epic drug use, unabashed homosexuality, and adventurous prose. In later years he became an elder statesman of the counterculture, an icon of excesses survived, revered for his unflinching portraits of the existential abyss. Caveney astutely examines the appeal for Americans of this complex figure whose highly experimental work had more in common with that of such Europeans as Jean Genet than with pals like Allen Ginsberg. The book's design reflects its genre-bending aspirations: Caveney's text jostles against reproductions of photos, newspaper clippings, and other documents, all of it laid out on pages colored red, orange, yellow, and blue. Words, images, and colors form an inventive whole that pays fitting tribute to a man who lived entirely by his own rules. --Wendy Smith
Product Description:
William S. Burroughs, founding father of America's counterculture, was born in 1914 into a wealthy St. Louis family. He originally planned to be a doctor but soon found another calling: literary outlaw and professional iconoclast. During his youth, he led a life almost as strange as his writing, drifting from job to job--as bartender, private detective, and insect exterminator--before writing his first book, Junkie, a harrowing account of his fifteen-year heroin addiction. But it was Naked Lunch, a surreal Dante's Inferno of narcotics, urban nightmares, and explicit sex, that became his masterpiece and made him an icon of the avant-garde, and sealed his role as hero to generations of artists, poets, punks, and rock musicians. By the time of his death in the summer of 1997, he was not only the last surviving Beat but the acknowledged granddaddy of America's counterculture, with everyone from Apple Computer's Steve Jobs to Philip Glass to U2 claiming him as an inspiration.Now, with Gentleman Junkie, Graham Caveney gives us the definitive life of William S. Burroughs--less a biography than a "chronology of the Burroughs phenomenon," an examination of the myth behind the man. Filled with 150 color photos--many of them never seen before--and new biographical material, Gentleman Junkie shows how Burroughs's fascinating life, from Harvard to Greenwich Village to Tangiers, was matched only by his enormous impact on modern literature and pop culture. Dapper radical, literary experimentalist, and mentor to countless artists, Burroughs had an indelible influence on American culture.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Caveney's Gentleman Junkie, published in the United Kingdom under the title The Priest They Called Him, is the MTV Video of the Burroughs biographies.
The layout of the book is visually stunning, often placing images of Burroughs' paintings, Burroughs himself, Burroughs' friends, or collages of his work underneath, behind, along with, or beside the text. If you've read the Barry Miles biography of Burroughs, or Literary Outlaw by Ted Morgan, there is nothing here in the pre-1980 ... Read More
Rating:  -
This book is shallow and pretentious, the literary equivalent of a wine-and-cheese eater at a Soho gallery who cares more about being seen with the art crowd than exploring art. Caveney is the wine sipper, Burroughs the unfortunate artwork buried beneath Caveney's oh-so avant garde style. Rather than providing insight or information about his fascinating subject, Caveney pastes together a collage of hackneyed Burroughs images, and a few airy snippets of idolatrous prose. I got more pleasure from ... Read More
Rating: -
An excellent introduction to the life and work of American artist William Burroughs, it's especially notable for the beautiful design which incorporates snapshots, artifacts such as hat-cleaning receipts and Army reports, and washes of Burroughs' shotgun paintings which background each textured-paper page. This substantial hardback is reminiscent of Burroughs' own scrapbooks and penchant for the pastiche, its look and feel mimicking the experiments in randomness-- cut-ups and ballistics-- which (in)formed ... Read More
Rating: -
The only reason I read this book was because it was in Amazon's under $5 bargain bin. The fact that it is on sale should have been a red flag that it is not that good...
However, this book makes a very nice coaster. It prevents my beautiful furniture from getting water stains from the beverages I set on it. This book is less then $5...
Would it really hurt you that much to buy it??
Rating:  -
This book is excellent. This book not only provides an insight into the world of W.S. Burroughs, but also brief insight into the lives of such figures as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. There are picturs throughout, and numerous quotes from Burroughs to spark the imagination, and promote new mental growth. This biography spans the time from his birth to his death, and to my knowledge is the most accurate and complete biography published so far about this dynamic literary figure. If you wish to learn ... Read More
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Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780316137256
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 0316137251
Label: Little Brown & Co (T)
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (T)
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 1998-06
Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T)
Studio: Little Brown & Co (T)