William S. Burroughs
Beat-generation novelist (Junkie, 1953; Naked Lunch, Olympia Press 1959 / Grove 1962) whose work shaped Mailer's thinking on language, narcotics, and totalitarianism. Met Mailer in person for the first time at the Edinburgh International Writers' Conference, 20–24 August 1962. Mailer would later defend Naked Lunch as a witness in the 1965 Boston obscenity trial (65.5).
William S. Burroughs published Naked Lunch in Paris with Olympia Press in 1959; Grove Press’s American edition followed in 1962 and was immediately challenged on obscenity grounds. Mailer and Burroughs met in person for the first time at the Edinburgh International Writers’ Conference, 20–24 August 1962 (62.24), where Mailer also first met Henry Miller and clashed with Mary McCarthy and Lawrence Durrell over the future of the novel. In 1965 Mailer testifies on Burroughs’s behalf at the Boston obscenity trial of Naked Lunch (the testimony itself, “The Boston Trial of Naked Lunch,” appears in Evergreen Review in June 1965 — 65.5 — and is reprinted as the prefatory matter to the Grove paperback). The Edinburgh meeting also produces Mailer’s first sustained encounter with Burroughs’s cut-up method.
Stub; to be expanded.
Related pages
- 1962 | Conference Remarks (Edinburgh International Writers' Conference) | Edinburgh International Writers' Conference, 1962
- In and Out of Books (14 March 1965) (65.5)
Referenced by 15
Works
- Conference Remarks (Edinburgh International Writers' Conference)
- Defenders of "Naked Lunch" Compare Burroughs to Authors of Classics
- Frank Crowther: Norman Mailer, Part II
- Hundred Injured: 178 Are Arrested as Guardsmen Join in Using Tear Gas
- PPA Press Conference
- Some Children of the Goddess: Further Evaluations of the Talent in the Room
- The Boston Trial of Naked Lunch
- The Executioner's Song