Gentleman Junkie: the Life and Legacy of William S. Burroughs

The impetus for this book was born out of an interst in reversing this process -in mapping out how the idea of Burroughs has its own realities, its own narratives: and how the man contains and is contained by their interactions. Rather than rescuing the man from the myth, I intend to speculate on how the one might be located in the other. My project is not to uncover Burroughs´s `authentic personality`, but rather to ask why it is that he invites us to wonder whether or not he actually has one. If there was a truth to Burroughs´s life, then what better place to look for it than in the fictions in which it came cloaked? If Burroughs comes across to us as a concept, what is his `reality`, then what are the dynamics that keep them in dispute; moreover, what is it that is produced by their dialogue? What is on offer, then, is a chronology of the Burroughs phenomenon, an unpacking of a performance in which the subject is both the spectacle and the spectator.