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Queer Burroughs
William S. Burroughs is consistently thought of as a novelist who is gay, rather than a gay novelist. This distinction is slight, yet remarkable, since it has meant that Burroughs has been excluded from the gay canon and from the scope of queer theory. In this book, Jamie Russell offers a queer reading of Burrough's novels. He explores how the novels of Burroughs can be seen as a sustained attempt to offer a very personal rethinking of gay subjectivity, and as an attempt to overturn stereotypes of gay men as effeminate. Yet in his celebration and appropriation of some of the most violent, misogynistic, and effeminaphobic elements of heterosexually identified masculinity, Burroughs's life and writing suggests a subjectivity which has been deeply troubling to many in the gay community.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2001
74 people want to read
About the author
Jamie Russell
27 books18 followersWhen Jamie was five, he saw a Space Invaders arcade machine in a greasy fish and chip shop at the seaside. It blew his mind and started a lifelong love of videogames.
After graduating from London University, Jamie became a film critic for the BBC and a contributing editor for Total Film magazine. He was sent to special movie screenings and fed free sandwiches. He thought it was the best job ever.
But he was wrong…
A little later, he wrote for videogame magazine EDGE and realised that you could actually get paid for shooting aliens in the face with shotguns.
Since then he has worked as a screenwriter, speechwriter and as a narrative consultant for a big US tech company that swore him to secrecy. He has written several non-fiction books for grown ups on everything from videogames to zombies.
His fiction debut is the SKYWAKE trilogy for readers 9+ launching in March 2021. It's a story about videogames, aliens and what it takes to be a leader.
After graduating from London University, Jamie became a film critic for the BBC and a contributing editor for Total Film magazine. He was sent to special movie screenings and fed free sandwiches. He thought it was the best job ever.
But he was wrong…
A little later, he wrote for videogame magazine EDGE and realised that you could actually get paid for shooting aliens in the face with shotguns.
Since then he has worked as a screenwriter, speechwriter and as a narrative consultant for a big US tech company that swore him to secrecy. He has written several non-fiction books for grown ups on everything from videogames to zombies.
His fiction debut is the SKYWAKE trilogy for readers 9+ launching in March 2021. It's a story about videogames, aliens and what it takes to be a leader.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 28, 2021
"So here I am in Kansas with my cats, like the honorary agent for a planet that went out light-years ago." -William S. Burroughs (The Western Lands, 1987)
Having read only about 4 or 5 of William S. Burroughs's works, I can't call myself a Burroughs scholar in any way, but I still find something fascinating about his character. There's something at once wonderful and terrible about the man sometimes fondly called "Uncle Bill," a man steeped in myth, to some one of the oldest member of the Beats, but simultaneously removed from that group by age and experience. At once he is a man who championed freedom of word, freedom of the body, freedom of thought, and on the other hand he is the junky of questionable sexual predilections who shot and killed his second wife, Joan Vollmer, trying to reenact William Tell. Burroughs has said that if not for Vollmer's death, he wouldn't have become a writer. So there's always that eerie bit of biographical history hanging over us when we encounter his texts, as if Vollmer's ghost always haunts us as readers of his wonderful and twisted prose.
Later in life he was not only the writer and proponent of the "cut-up" technique in writing, but also became a counterculture hero, counting Patti Smith, David Bowie, Lou Reed and later Kurt Cobain among his followers, and later an embracer of visual and recording media, which reached even younger generations. The grandson of the inventor William Seward Burroughs, he was born in St. Louis, Missouri and died in Lawrence, Kansas, and although he widely traveled the globe, he was undoubtedly part and parcel of the Midwest and the myth of what Kenneth Rexroth called "the old, free America," the America of Kit Carson and of Walt Whitman tending to wounded Civil War soldiers, the American frontier with its wide open spaces and the promise that anyone could do anything without having to worry about others meddling in their business. He was part of that America whose mythic status might just be larger than his own. The old, free American William Burroughs loved guns almost as much as he loved cats, or maybe strike that and reverse it, but either way it attests to a sort of glamorization of both independence and violence.
It can be difficult to disentangle the deeply flawed man from the gifted thinker or artist (Louis Althusser, French philosopher who killed his wife; Michael Jackson; Woody Allen; Phil Spector; the list could go on endlessly); but it's the artist (and a gifted but flawed artist at that) that is of principle concern here, both in this review and in Jamie Russell's study of Burroughs' life and works. While Russell's arguments felt at times a bit of a stretch to fit with the picture he was drawing of the effeminophobic, chauvinistic, gay writer who was concerned with the creation of a free gay, masculine male identity throughout his long career, it was undoubtedly eye-opening.
Possessing little knowledge of queer theory, the work better-acquainted me with the ideas of writers like Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, whose seminal works on gender and sexuality I was familiar with in name but not so much in terms of content. The work also contains for those unfamiliar with it an excellent socio-historical overview of the periods in which Burroughs was writing, from the McCarthy era to the years of Gay Liberation and the AIDS crisis. It also provides a lot of wonderful source material, some of which I plan to explore further -- not only the works of Butler and Foucault, but L. Ron Hubbard's work (which was very influential for Burroughs), and the works of thinkers like Reich and Deleuze.
Russell makes a compelling case for contextualizing Burroughs' body of work within an effeminophobic, pro-masculine sphere of gay male identity, even if the arguments seem at times a little difficult to digest.
The chauvinism and often unflinching endorsements of masculinity and violence in Burroughs' works made him at times a sort of god of the counterculture, but he was always on the margins. As queer theory has become more feminist in its approach, thanks in part to Judith Butler's contributions, and as many on the Left have become more PC and have come more to embrace postmodern discourses, Burroughs' thoughts have perhaps become even more fringe than they were before, more isolated once again. But his position in the cultural canon has changed with the times. People change as do politics, and the tide has moved in such a way that Burroughs' status has risen and fallen over the years. Where we list Burroughs with the other artists of the 20th century is not yet firmly established. Whatever conclusions the future world makes in regard to William Burroughs, we'll just have to wait and see. For now we'll leave him isolated, forgotten by some, shunned by many, admired by a few, somewhere far off with his cats - but something tells me he's not in Kansas anymore.
Having read only about 4 or 5 of William S. Burroughs's works, I can't call myself a Burroughs scholar in any way, but I still find something fascinating about his character. There's something at once wonderful and terrible about the man sometimes fondly called "Uncle Bill," a man steeped in myth, to some one of the oldest member of the Beats, but simultaneously removed from that group by age and experience. At once he is a man who championed freedom of word, freedom of the body, freedom of thought, and on the other hand he is the junky of questionable sexual predilections who shot and killed his second wife, Joan Vollmer, trying to reenact William Tell. Burroughs has said that if not for Vollmer's death, he wouldn't have become a writer. So there's always that eerie bit of biographical history hanging over us when we encounter his texts, as if Vollmer's ghost always haunts us as readers of his wonderful and twisted prose.
Later in life he was not only the writer and proponent of the "cut-up" technique in writing, but also became a counterculture hero, counting Patti Smith, David Bowie, Lou Reed and later Kurt Cobain among his followers, and later an embracer of visual and recording media, which reached even younger generations. The grandson of the inventor William Seward Burroughs, he was born in St. Louis, Missouri and died in Lawrence, Kansas, and although he widely traveled the globe, he was undoubtedly part and parcel of the Midwest and the myth of what Kenneth Rexroth called "the old, free America," the America of Kit Carson and of Walt Whitman tending to wounded Civil War soldiers, the American frontier with its wide open spaces and the promise that anyone could do anything without having to worry about others meddling in their business. He was part of that America whose mythic status might just be larger than his own. The old, free American William Burroughs loved guns almost as much as he loved cats, or maybe strike that and reverse it, but either way it attests to a sort of glamorization of both independence and violence.
It can be difficult to disentangle the deeply flawed man from the gifted thinker or artist (Louis Althusser, French philosopher who killed his wife; Michael Jackson; Woody Allen; Phil Spector; the list could go on endlessly); but it's the artist (and a gifted but flawed artist at that) that is of principle concern here, both in this review and in Jamie Russell's study of Burroughs' life and works. While Russell's arguments felt at times a bit of a stretch to fit with the picture he was drawing of the effeminophobic, chauvinistic, gay writer who was concerned with the creation of a free gay, masculine male identity throughout his long career, it was undoubtedly eye-opening.
Possessing little knowledge of queer theory, the work better-acquainted me with the ideas of writers like Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, whose seminal works on gender and sexuality I was familiar with in name but not so much in terms of content. The work also contains for those unfamiliar with it an excellent socio-historical overview of the periods in which Burroughs was writing, from the McCarthy era to the years of Gay Liberation and the AIDS crisis. It also provides a lot of wonderful source material, some of which I plan to explore further -- not only the works of Butler and Foucault, but L. Ron Hubbard's work (which was very influential for Burroughs), and the works of thinkers like Reich and Deleuze.
Russell makes a compelling case for contextualizing Burroughs' body of work within an effeminophobic, pro-masculine sphere of gay male identity, even if the arguments seem at times a little difficult to digest.
The chauvinism and often unflinching endorsements of masculinity and violence in Burroughs' works made him at times a sort of god of the counterculture, but he was always on the margins. As queer theory has become more feminist in its approach, thanks in part to Judith Butler's contributions, and as many on the Left have become more PC and have come more to embrace postmodern discourses, Burroughs' thoughts have perhaps become even more fringe than they were before, more isolated once again. But his position in the cultural canon has changed with the times. People change as do politics, and the tide has moved in such a way that Burroughs' status has risen and fallen over the years. Where we list Burroughs with the other artists of the 20th century is not yet firmly established. Whatever conclusions the future world makes in regard to William Burroughs, we'll just have to wait and see. For now we'll leave him isolated, forgotten by some, shunned by many, admired by a few, somewhere far off with his cats - but something tells me he's not in Kansas anymore.
January 27, 2012
I read this book because I was going through a phase of reading Burroughs. There are many things about his books that did not make sense to me. This book goes a long way toward explaining what Burrough's project was, his choice of phrases, and present connections between his life events and what is in his fiction.
Interestingly, I was reading "Conspiracy of Culture" at the same time. "C of C" introduces the concept of "Stigmatized Knowledge" which is belief systems not accepted by mainstream society, that is embraced by people who feel rejected by mainstream society. The fact that the "Stigmatized Knowledge" is rejected by the mainstream becomes a sufficient reason in itself to embrace those beliefs.
Embracing "Stigmatized Knowledge" would explain the many alternative beliefs that Burroughs believed throughout his life. He believed in an practiced magic "curses, scriing, etc. He believed in UFOs and Aliens from other planets, he built and sat in several Orgone boxes. He tried Scientism and alturnative theories of linguistics.
If you like William S. Burroughs but find him to be puzzling then this book will enrich your reading of his work.
Interestingly, I was reading "Conspiracy of Culture" at the same time. "C of C" introduces the concept of "Stigmatized Knowledge" which is belief systems not accepted by mainstream society, that is embraced by people who feel rejected by mainstream society. The fact that the "Stigmatized Knowledge" is rejected by the mainstream becomes a sufficient reason in itself to embrace those beliefs.
Embracing "Stigmatized Knowledge" would explain the many alternative beliefs that Burroughs believed throughout his life. He believed in an practiced magic "curses, scriing, etc. He believed in UFOs and Aliens from other planets, he built and sat in several Orgone boxes. He tried Scientism and alturnative theories of linguistics.
If you like William S. Burroughs but find him to be puzzling then this book will enrich your reading of his work.
January 28, 2026
Not the easiest book to slog through, especially for someone not versed in sex/ gender studies - but in a sense this is what the book is for, to elucidate these dynamics in WSB's writing. As such, it is illuminating, a guidebook to the works of Burroughs to the end, notably to the end of The Western Lands.
April 10, 2011
I picked this up on a whim probably because my partner is so immersed in queer and gender theory as of late, and Burroughs on my mind being the relatively recent 50th anniversary of Naked Lunch and the release of the William S. Burroughs: A Man Within film.
And I couldn’t put it down. Usually I find critical analysis of Burroughs’ work blah. Russell’s book fills a lacuna that definitely need filled considering Burrough’s, as Russell calls it, problematic relationship with gay culture.
Never one accept any standard narrative, including the gay community’s, Burroughs’ hawkishness and political incorrectness alienates him from most politcal or aesthetic blocs. Hombre insivible indeed. Russell though clearly demonstrates the dialog between gay culture and Burroughs oevre. As gay culture changed so did Burroughs work with the most striking shift being before and after Stonewall and the subsequent sea change in gay consciousness. The book also works as a de facto primer on gay history in America as Russell mirrors Burroughs’ work against it.
Outside the issues of gay identity central to the book, Russell has some other great insights to Burroughs’ work. First, Burroughs' large debt to Scientology. If this surprises you, read Queer Burroughs. Second, Russell’s acknowledgement that Cronenberg’s adaption / bio-pic hybrid of Naked Lunch is a failure precisely because of Cronenberg’s disinterest/misunderstanding/ignorance of gay issues in Burroughs’ work. A recent double feature screening of A Man Within and Naked Lunch made me realize the same thing shortly before reading Russell. This is a splinter that pains any viewing Cronenberg’s film for me. And apparently for Russell too as he goes of out his way to shoehorn this point into the text early on though really any mention of Cronenberg’s film is unnecessary for his program. Let’s just take some pop shots while we have the floor? Okay – I will! Errr, I mean I did!
This book was great but I'm giving it four stars instead of five because of Russell's willful exclusion of the herion issue. For all of the analysis of Burroughs' obsession with bodily possession from without, with loss of bodily control, Burroughs' history of herion addiction (and the nature thereof) deserved a larger nod [pun?] than it got. I understand why Russell left it out but maybe it should have been addressed early to get it out of the way. Maybe it is even more important than a knock on David Cronenberg.
I should read the Wild Boys tetralogy again.
"His essentialist assumptions over issues of gender place him at odds with the prevalent trend of queer, gender, and postmodern theory. While this does not justify Burroughs'exclusion from the queer canon, it does indicate the extend to which his inclusion would be politically problematic and could only ever be regarded as a historical recuperation of a novelist whose work expresses desires that the contemporary gay movement has long since sought to distance itself from... Perhaps it is too much to expect of an author whose career as a gay novelist spans McCarthy, the Mattachine Society, Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front, the clone scene, AIDS, and the emergence of the discourses of postmodernity."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
I can't someone out there stop me from using the world "de facto" in review?
And I couldn’t put it down. Usually I find critical analysis of Burroughs’ work blah. Russell’s book fills a lacuna that definitely need filled considering Burrough’s, as Russell calls it, problematic relationship with gay culture.
Never one accept any standard narrative, including the gay community’s, Burroughs’ hawkishness and political incorrectness alienates him from most politcal or aesthetic blocs. Hombre insivible indeed. Russell though clearly demonstrates the dialog between gay culture and Burroughs oevre. As gay culture changed so did Burroughs work with the most striking shift being before and after Stonewall and the subsequent sea change in gay consciousness. The book also works as a de facto primer on gay history in America as Russell mirrors Burroughs’ work against it.
Outside the issues of gay identity central to the book, Russell has some other great insights to Burroughs’ work. First, Burroughs' large debt to Scientology. If this surprises you, read Queer Burroughs. Second, Russell’s acknowledgement that Cronenberg’s adaption / bio-pic hybrid of Naked Lunch is a failure precisely because of Cronenberg’s disinterest/misunderstanding/ignorance of gay issues in Burroughs’ work. A recent double feature screening of A Man Within and Naked Lunch made me realize the same thing shortly before reading Russell. This is a splinter that pains any viewing Cronenberg’s film for me. And apparently for Russell too as he goes of out his way to shoehorn this point into the text early on though really any mention of Cronenberg’s film is unnecessary for his program. Let’s just take some pop shots while we have the floor? Okay – I will! Errr, I mean I did!
This book was great but I'm giving it four stars instead of five because of Russell's willful exclusion of the herion issue. For all of the analysis of Burroughs' obsession with bodily possession from without, with loss of bodily control, Burroughs' history of herion addiction (and the nature thereof) deserved a larger nod [pun?] than it got. I understand why Russell left it out but maybe it should have been addressed early to get it out of the way. Maybe it is even more important than a knock on David Cronenberg.
I should read the Wild Boys tetralogy again.
"His essentialist assumptions over issues of gender place him at odds with the prevalent trend of queer, gender, and postmodern theory. While this does not justify Burroughs'exclusion from the queer canon, it does indicate the extend to which his inclusion would be politically problematic and could only ever be regarded as a historical recuperation of a novelist whose work expresses desires that the contemporary gay movement has long since sought to distance itself from... Perhaps it is too much to expect of an author whose career as a gay novelist spans McCarthy, the Mattachine Society, Stonewall, the Gay Liberation Front, the clone scene, AIDS, and the emergence of the discourses of postmodernity."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
I can't someone out there stop me from using the world "de facto" in review?
December 6, 2020
This book is supposed to be a book about the book queer but instead it's a long tedious scholarly history of the queer movement. The book contains almost very little or perhaps absolutely no information about Burroughs that I didn't already know, and the style was very boring. I had the book because, it was not on Kindle and I gave it to Good Will.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews