A Thanksgiving prayer from William S. Burroughs

[pesco]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/28/a-thanksgiving-prayer-from-wil-3.html

…

[David_Z_DazerLave]

An annual tradition at our house!

[anon15383236]

This video has a great beat.

[Papasan]

Never been more true, never…

[leicester]

A refreshing change from Alice’s Restaurant

[ChuckV]

[aasmith64]

Thanks for the American Dream to vulgarize and falsify until the baaare liiies shiiiiiiiiine through.

From your lips to Trump’s ear…

[anon78706664]

Hey, it’s this.

[_osivot]

Oh god, he would be in schadenfreude heaven if he were alive today.

[girard]

My annual reminder that William S. Burroughs murdered his wife, and probably shouldn’t be celebrated as the good kind of countercultural bad boy.

[dug]

Ah Thanksgiving, that happy time of year when the editors of BoingBoing set aside their qualms about privilege and abuse to offer a cheery homily from Good old William S Burroughs who lived off his parent’s money, taking drugs and having sex with minors.

[GulliverFoyle]

Reader Request Week 2014 #6: Enjoying Problematic Things

Also, sharing a poem is not equivalent to celebrating its author.

[noah]

I saw a new take on thanksgiving yesterday… Heather Cox Richardson tells us why it’s really a holiday about kicking over the southern slaveholding fascist bastards.

[smulder]

@GulliverFoyle

Also, sharing a poem is not equivalent to celebrating its author

and he’s dead now anyway. and he’s been dead for a while, and he only manslaughtered his wife, and

[GulliverFoyle]

I realize you’re being sarcastic but posting the reading of a poem by a dead writer isn’t celebration, and accusing @pesco of celebrating Burroughs is inaccurate. Don’t like Burroughs or his work? Excellent, I don’t like Burroughs either and from what I know of him he was in the balance a rotten person, although I appreciate some of his work and don’t have to worry about him profiting from that appreciation. But if one is snide to someone else for liking problematic works or the works of problematic authors then they open themselves to a little pushback. Your implication that that pushback is apology for the author is likewise inaccurate.

ETA: for added context, here are my comments about Burroughs over the past couple years this was posted…

Killer gets 180-day sentence for YouTube stunt gone wrong

True. I’m ordinarily against taking away custody of parents’ kids, but it’s hard to argue with in this case. There’s also the part about the deceased husband being equally culpable. William Burroughs got 13 days. But at least Joan Vollmer’s death inspired a couple of beatniks. /bitter-sarcasm Well really, intentionality has nothing to do with it. In practice, cops are above the law. /merely-bitter

A Thanksgiving prayer from William S. Burroughs

I don’t like Burroughs as a person, but I like this poem. I get why some aren’t willing to accept his work though.

William S. Burroughs: "A Thanksgiving Prayer" (1986)

[1] Burroughs was a lowlife. The operative word is was. Were he alive to benefit from my appreciation of his prose, I’d be a lot more circumspect. But I’m thankful Burroughs is dead and can’t profit from my clicks. And what’s Thanksgiving for if you can’t be thankful silver-tongued scum are dead? If you feel differently, I wholeheartedly support your choice to do so. But do not conflate love of the writing of a dead fucker with love of that same dead fucker.

[smulder]

He’s a historical figure now, like Mark Twain or Walt Whitman or Ernest Hemingway. He’s past liking or disliking, outside our power to approve or condemn. We can’t excuse him or redeem him or punish him.

Now in print: William S Burroughs' lost guide to overthrowing a corrupt government

It’s just entertaining bullshit, from an era when weirdness was unusual and hard to find. The positive impact of Burroughs, over the years, has been in things like the rise of harm reduction and decline of punishment in the War on Drugs, and of course he was Out and Proud before almost anybody. We take that stuff for granted now, but his sins, crimes, and other shortcomings are all the more glaring without that kind of context.

William S. Burroughs: "A Thanksgiving Prayer" (1986)

In the old days, in a zine, a fawning review of a Burroughs record could coexist with a heated denunciation of, let’s say, Clarence Thomas, and the editors would have no obligation to note any contradiction or to print any complaints they might receive from confused readers. The edgy misfit despair of our youth is not adapted to today’s ecosystem of populist outrage.

A Thanksgiving prayer from William S. Burroughs

Christ, what an asshole …

[ChuckV]

[anon27007144]

As noted above, Burroughs is really not a great guy. I think it’s important to keep that context in mind when reading or listening to his works. But his works still have value.

However, Alice’s Restaurant gets my vote. It’s a call to action, instead of a bunch of complaining.

[GulliverFoyle]

Zero beef with @smulder, who I like and respect.

Just clarifying that my initial response was to distinguish between appreciating problematic stuff and (as @smulder says) excusing a lowlife.

Absolutely no issue with people disagreeing with or even despising my own views, but I’ll always clarify when I believe I’ve been misconstrued (in this case honestly by a good faith misunderstanding).

@anon27007144

As noted above, Burroughs is really not a great guy.

From what I know of Burroughs that’s a sizeable understatement. And pointing that out when he’s invoked is absolutely legitimate. Equating sharing of his work as celebration is what I regard as inaccurate, and because Burroughs was a lowlife, it’s sort of a calumnious (of the person sharing it, not the lowlife author) inaccuracy, honest though that inaccuracy may have been.

Sharing is not celebration and appreciation of a work is not in any way endorsement of or apology for the artist. For those to whom that’s controversial, okay, I’ll agree to disagree with them.