smulder
November 29, 2019, 10:22am
17
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.
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.
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.
Christ, what an asshole …
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