Happy Birthday, Bill

Oops, forgot about this, leading to a rare second post in a day.

Today is the one hundredth birthday of one of St. Louis' most famous and infamous sons, William S. Burroughs. His writing has the power to shock even today and most of his life was wild, to put it mildly.  My pupils must have dilated hugely when I read The Western Lands and Cities of the Red Night.

He spent his last 13 years in Lawrence, Kansas, not far from Kansas City and home of the University of Kansas, but asked to be buried in the family plot here. They had money - his grandfather invented the adding machine. Now he rests in beautiful Bellefontaine Cemetery, the location marked by only a small stone.

Burroughs often wrote with ripping, outrageous humor. Here's an example with him reading the notorious Dr. Benway bit  from Naked Lunch (see also here). I like the photo that goes with this on YouTube, showing Frank Zappa standing by the writer, smiling with obvious admiration. WARNING - this recording is not for  minors, the easily offended  or people who are certain they know what good literature is.                            

Thursday Arch Series

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Chew on this for Thanksgiving Day in the US, an occasion on which most of us eat too much and some of us spend much of the day watching football in a turkey-induced torpor. Not me. I'll probably edit pictures in a turkey-induced torpor. Who knows, I might even take some.

The sign is in front of the McDonald's on South Broadway in Soulard. I wonder what D B S stands for. Damn burger slop? Don't buy spinach? Leave a comment if you have other creative suggestions.

The trip to Kansas got canceled. A local family member needed urgent medical attention. So far, so good, and I may be able to say more about it later. However, as a big fan of St. Louis native William S. Burroughs, I was blown away when I found out that the surgeon was named Dr. Benway! boggleboggleboggle... Burroughs wrote: Dr. Benway is operating in an auditorium filled with students: "Now, boys, you won't see this operation performed very often and there's a reason for that.... You see it has absolutely no medical value. No one knows what the purpose of it originally was or if it had a purpose at all. Personally I think it was a pure artistic creation from the beginning.

I hope the art was working yesterday. I really, really do.

The Western Lands

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Next to Calvary Cemetery, where Tennessee Williams rests, is Bellefontaine Cemetery. The two of them contain the remains of many people of local note and a few of international stature. Williams and William S. Burroughs top the list.

Burroughs, a native St. Louisan, was a revolutionary writer. His 1959 novel, Naked Lunch, was the last written work prosecuted for obscenity in the U.S. Burroughs won. If you don't know him and are interested, the anthology Word Virus is a perfect introduction. My copy sits by my bedside. It also has a CD of the author reading his work, much of which is hilarious. His satire of Franklin Roosevelt's pre-war administration and battles with the Supreme Court is fall-out-of-your-chair funny and not for the kiddies.

Burroughs is a champion to me but I bet that many people picking up one of his books for the first time would think he's dangerously insane, flagrantly offensive, or both. Well, you pays your money and you takes tour choice. The Western Lands is the name of one of his best-known novels (I loved it), the title referring to the ancient Egyptian home of the dead west of the Nile. At least Bill made it west of the Mississippi.

By the way, the object to the right of the stone is a decaying pumpkin with a couple of cigarette butts sticking out of it, probably left by a fan. Burroughs would approve.

WHAT I NEED TO FIGURE OUT REAL SOON: where the bleep did I put my remote shutter release?

TOMORROW: winter looking down, part 1.