Originally published at: A Thanksgiving Prayer from William S. Burroughs | Boing Boing
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AND … we now welcome newbies to our annual competition to see who can compress the most comprehensive critique of Bill Burroughs into the shortest post
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Christ, what an asshole.
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For sale: pedo books, never read.
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What is “the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams”?
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I look forward to this every year now! It’s become a comfort!
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Waiting 20 minutes for your dealer and he is nowhere in sight
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He murdered his wife, but some people still admire him.
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It’s really not Thanksgiving for me, until Kathy reminds us that Burroughs murdered his wife!!! Now I can enjoy the day!
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I have one job!
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And you do it well!
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Sure beats cleaning up after Thanksgiving dinner!
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It’s an example of a certain mid-twentieth century pose, one that struck some as poetically profound.
Fortunately, sufficent hindsight enables us to see what it really is – pretentious, tedious twaddle.
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I think this is why Burroughs ended up appealing to later generations of youth counterculture, especially during the punk/post-punk era - he summed up a lot of cynicism of those generations… But maybe it’s time to embrace something less cynical?
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It was a different time, I guess? I think part of it was the quality of his voice and the strangeness of his prose which did pair well with her work. I mean, even without access to the internet and his complete background there were plenty of sources back then to know that he was not a good guy (citation: all of his own works). I wonder if she has ever talked about her thoughts, or regrets, around it since.
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I have that album… Also, I think that he did have some insights (language is a virus, maybe)… but still, problematic to say the least.
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I thought this tradition was supposed to be like Mornington Crescent, and that’s we’d work up to, “He shot his wife.” via careful stages. However, this is a winning gambit; so fair does. 
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interesting / depressing to see the 80s/90s underground zine context of boingboing drift a little more each year away from the current readership 
