Originally published at: William S. Burroughs on the American Dream (video) | Boing Boing
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It’s worthwhile considering a few things when revering Burroughs.
He was a misogynist who killed his wife. He skipped out on responsibility because he came from a very wealthy family. And bribed police. That’s why he fled to Europe and Morocco. He first stated that he was trying to shoot a glass off her head - then changed it to he “dropped the gun on the table”. He never took any responsibility later- saying a mysterious dark spirit controlled him.
This was at a time when he was seeking to divorce Ms. Vollmer and she refused.
He wrote that women were an evolutionary mistake and should be eliminated when technology allowed. That boys were tainted by association with women.
He also didn’t believe in age of consent laws and had sex with teenage boys. As per his teenage former lover.
Politically- he was conservative, libertarian and a confirmed gun nut. His counter culture background was aristocratic. It was the freedom of privilege and his class. When he graduated college he didn’t have to work for 25 years because of his family stipend.
And after he killed his wife- he threw out all her possessions. When his son kept asking to see a picture of his mother- well into his adulthood - he refused. And Alan Ginsburg kept trying to show the son a picture of his dead mother’s corpse.
Oh - and he didn’t invent the cut up technique.
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Extensive as that is, it’s a winner for this less-than-Wonderful Boing Boing tradition, as described last year by @smulder:
That said, I’ll bow out and let the hipsters and edgelords make their traditional defenses of the privileged old sexist proto-tr0ll. Pass me some of that popcorn, please, @anon61221983.
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I would be honored.
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There are times when one can, and should, separate the art from the artist. This ain’t one of 'em. Burroughs’s art is inextricably linked to his worldview, and to his past. There’s is no separating them.
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All I think it adds up to is a wasted life.
And a lot of wasted time that others have spent idolizing him.
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… clever of him to delay his 15 minutes of fame to the end of his life, so he wouldn’t have to experience his inevitable reevaluation himself 
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It’s on the list.
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Per @KathyPartdeux, one of the actual numbers it added up to for this idol of louche rebels everywhere was an approx. $2500/month (in current dollars) allowance from his mom and dad, over 25 years (with inflation slowly reducing its buying powers). Plus occasional extra payments to buy him out of the edgy jams he got himself into.
[Pulling the handle of that machine to add it all up. Cha-ching!]
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Which was a lot of money during the Great Depression.
He attended the John Burroughs School.
The alumni are interesting.
Sam Altman
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Charles Steven Duncker, 1977: former New York Racing Association chairman,[30] partner at Goldman Sachs.[31]
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Edward N. Ney, 1942: CEO of Young & Rubicam, U.S. ambassador to Canada.
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Andrew C. Taylor: CEO and chairman of Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company.[32]
John Burroughs School - Wikipedia
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And also when one is making a virtue of necessity while on the lam in N. Africa in the 1950s.
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Him and the other famous beats always annoyed me that way.
Oh, normie squares are such a tight-assed and oppressive drag, man! Toiling away all the time working for The Man, never experiencing the real wild joys of a lived actually LIVED, you dig? So I’m going to use what I never acknowledge as my white male privilege to get out there and use other people for thrills and sex and jazz and drugs, smugly comparing myself all the while to those sad lifeless normal people who work for a living to maintain the social order that I blithely take advantage of. Let’s go man, GO!!
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Yes, but the beatnik was an essential intermediate stage in the evolution of the hipster.
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Ironic irony in sarcastic comment about supposedly radical signalers of irony noted!
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Everyone always focuses on the white dudes, but there were more interesting folks than the ones who get all the attention…
And Amiri Baraka also started out in the Beat movement…
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Historian’s “Well actually” noted! 
(I’m aware, thank you, it’s why I wrote “famous beats.”)
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Oh, I wasn’t trying to “historsplain” to you, just wanted to note for the thread that it’s not all entitled white dude dipshits!
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