Latest / DISGRACELAND / William S. Burroughs: Obscenity, a Decapitated Mouse, and the Deadly William Tell Routine

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William S. Burroughs: Obscenity, a Decapitated Mouse, and the Deadly William Tell Routine · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: William S Burrows are insane. He left his son and
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: wife alone in a foreign country so he could go
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: score ayahuasca. In the jungle, he shot the head off
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: a mouse while the person holding it by the tail
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: feared for their life. He was a convicted killer who
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: only did thirteen days in jail, and all this before
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: he became a literary icon, an icon whose novel Naked Lunch,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: one of the signature works of the Beat generation, was
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: banned and went on trial for obscenity. William Burrows's writing
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: was so evocative that it inspired generations of musicians, from
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones in Patti Smith to Kirk Cobaine to
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: make great music. Unlike that loop I played for you
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: That was a preset loop for my melotron called modern
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Life is Luscious MK one. I played you that loop
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: because I can't afford the rights to Come Out of
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: My House by Rosemary Cooney. And why would I play
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: you that specific slice of Forbidden Candied Cheese? Could I
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: afford it? Because that was the number one song in
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: America on September sixth, nineteen fifty one, and that was
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the day that william S Burrows, at the time an
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: unknown and mostly failed writer, made the most fateful decision
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: of his life when he pointed a gun at a
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: highball glass balanced atop his wife's head and pulled the
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: trigger up. On this episode Aahuasca in the Jungle, Guns
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: in Mexico, Obscenity, literary icon and william S Burrows. I'm
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Jake Brennan in This Is Disgraceland. It's late. You're in
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: your room looking at your phone because you're fifteen. What
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: else are you going to be doing on a Tuesday night? Homework?
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Not likely? You're scrolling TikTok, going on a deep dive
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: of Kurt Cobaine interviews that populate infinitely in your feed
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: because you're not a conformist like the other kids at school.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: You're not into Cardi B or Imagine Dragons or whatever.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: The fuck. I don't even know. I'm not going to
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: pretend I know. You like classics like Rim, Soundgarden, Sonic Youth,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Nirvana is your favorite year. Your older sister she played
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: you Heart Shaped Box and you were instantly hooked. Not
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: just on Nirvana's music, but on Kirk Covain's Whole Vibe,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Kurt understood the world for what it truly was. Bullshit, school, bullshit, work, bullshit, conformity, bullshit,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: total bullshit. Today, as you watch the same old interview clips,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: you discover something new. It's Kurt Cobain talking to a
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: German interviewer. Somehow they get on the subject of the
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: beat poets. You understand the reference. You have your sister
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: to thank for that too. She brought home a paperback
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: copy of On the Road from her English Lit class,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and it blew your mind. Kurt isn't talking about Jack Kerouac,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: though he says William Burrows is the King. He grins
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: when he says that the two of them wrote a
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: few letters back and forth to each other, and that
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: they even recorded together. Holy shit, a Kurt Cobain recording
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: that you ever heard Jack pond. Immediately you flip over
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: to YouTube and find the song that he's talking about,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: the priest they called him. There's a picture of Kurt
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: with a frail looking old man in glasses and a
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: tall bone sin. You hit play, and this old man
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: takes you on a chilling tale of a heroin addict,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: searching for one last fix on Christmas Eve, while Kurt
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: contributes scraps of paint peeling feedback on guitar. It's dark, haunting.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Suddenly there's a call from the kitchen and your snap
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: back to reality. Dinner time. In the hallway, you ask
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: your sister if she's ever heard of William Burrows. Yeah,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: she tells you. He's like the guy who taught Jack
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Kerouac and now in Ginsburg how to write or something
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: like that. At the dinner table, you ask your dad
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: if he knows Borrows. Dad smiles, definitely, He's the guy
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: who inspired the band named Steely. Look it up, he says,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: on second thought, don't though, of course you do, and
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: it's gross. A Steely Dan is a steam powered Bildo
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Even better, your dad tells you
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Borrows inspired micking Keith's lyrics for and you're rolling your
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: eyes as your old man says this for the million time,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the greatest rock record ever made Exile on Main Street.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: After dinner, you keep googling. You read about William Burrows,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the Godfather of Punk, hanging out with Patti Smith and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: lou Reid. William Burrows, the pioneer of the avant garde
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: who inspired Jean Michel Basquiat. William Burrows the Enigma, conservative,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: gum loving and gay. And then there's William Burrows the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: drug addict, and William Burrows the criminal, and of course
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: William Burrows the murderer. Nineteen fifty one, Mexico City. He
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: took a deep break and cocked the handgun. He tried
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: not to think about how bad his hands were shaking,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: or how it felt like bugs were crawling all over
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: his skin. He licked his thin, dry lips. God, he
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: needed another drink or another joint, anything, First, he needed
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: to hit his target. Thirty seven year old William Burrows
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: raised the three eighty pistol in the air. Ten feet
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: ahead of him stood a bus boy trembling, and Burrows
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: lined up a shot, and the bus boy shut his
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: eyes tight. He took another deep breath. The bus boy
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: stretched his arm out away from him and whispered a
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: prayer under his breath. Borrows went still, his hands quit shaking,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: and then he fired. The bullet flew out of the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: barrel and tore through its intended target. Bones, blood and
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: body parts went flying in all directions. The busboy opened
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: his eyes slowly. He could see the hail of the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: mouse still pinched between his fingers. The rest of the
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: mouse's body was splattered against the wall behind him, except
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: the head, which came clean off and was now spinning
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: like a bloody top by the doorway of this barrow's
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: storage room. A cheer rose up in the room. William
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Burrows gave a slight nod and put the pistol back
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: in his holster. He smirked and looked over at John Healy,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the American owner of this ex pat bar in Mexico City,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: told you, I could do it. John just shook his
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: head and pulled out a hundred payso note. Burrows snatched
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the bill triumphantly. He didn't really need the money, since
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: his parents still sudden him a couple hundred bucks a month,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: but a bet was a bet, and John slapped him
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: on the back. He grabbed a few bottles of liquor,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: and they turned to head back upstairs to the party.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: As they were doing so, Burrows looked down and saw
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the mouse's bloody head lying on the floor. He almost
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: screamed when it opened its eyes and looked at him.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Now the decapitated mouse's head was speaking, will you really
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: seem to be compensating for something with that gun? Burrows
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: them again, the mouse's head lay motionless in the doorway.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Six months ago, William Burrows kicked heroin, and still these
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: hallucinations stalked him. At least he was clean, though for good.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: This time, he was sure. Although clean was a relative
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: term for william S Burrows, clean didn't include alcohol or opium.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: It definitely didn't include marijuana. Those weren't hard drugs, no
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: danger of forming a habit. Burrows followed John Healy to
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: his apartment above the Bounty Bar in Mexico City. The
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Bounty Bar was the favorite hangout of Burrows and his wife,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Joan Volmer. Every day at five o'clock, they grabbed a
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: table near the front window and worked their way through
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: a bottle of tequila while watching their four year old
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: son and Joan's seven year old daughter play on the sidewalk.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: This was William Burrows's new habit, not junk drinking alongside Joan,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: who gobbled inmphetamines by the handful and leveled them out
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: with tequila or gin. Starting around eight am no special
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: occasion required. Today, however, was a special occasion. Borrows was
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: finally back in Mexico City after a two month journey
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: through the Amazon rainforest in search of a mystical hallucinogen.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: The trip was a disaster. He never found the drug,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: and to make matters worse, Joan was furious at him
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: for leaving her alone with two small children while he
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: went on a boondoggle with Lewis Marker, a student friend
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: fifteen years his junior. Didn't help that Borrows was sleeping
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: with him the whole time. Joan knew her husband liked men,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: but his crush on Lewis was turning into an obses ess.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: It gave her a bad feeling bruise in hand. Burrow's
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and John Healey stumbled up to Healey's apartment, and before
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: they opened the door, Burrows hesitated. The latest hallucination had
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: spooked him, felt like a premonition. He had to get
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: out of here. He told John he was going to
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: take a walk into town, and he returned a few
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: hours later to find the party in high gear. Lewis Marker,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: that student friend and sometime lover, was chatting up a
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: curvacous blonde, and Joan was slashing another drink and mumbling
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: a story to their host. The bad feelings washed over
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Burrows again. This party was dull, hell off the drugs,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: everything was dull. If he wanted excitement tonight, he was
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: going to have to make it himself. So William Burrows
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: stood up and made his announcement. Darling, he said, looking
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: at Joan, I think it's time for our William Tell routine.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty five, Boston, Massachusetts. The unmistakable sound of woods
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: slamming into wood reverberated through the courtroom. Alan Ginsburg stood
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: up and approached the stand. America's most famous and controversial
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: poet was about to testify for the defense. Not in
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: defense of a person. He was defending a book, specifically
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: William Burrows's magnum Opus Naked Lunch. After his own Mister
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Piece Howell was banned in California in nineteen fifty five.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Alan Ginsburg and his publishers had been able to overturn
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: the decision in court. Now a decade later, Ginsburg was
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: trying to do the same for his friend, here to
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: convince the court that the book in fact had literary
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: merit and thus first Amendment protection that it was not pornography,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: but a work of art with redeeming value. As he
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: raised his hand to be sworn in, Alan Ginsburg cut
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: quite a figure. A mop of curly hair hanging beneath
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: the balding top of his head, a beard descending past
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: his shirt collar, yet his three piece suit was perfectly tailored.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: He looked like a wild eyed English professor after one
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: too many cups of coffee. On the opposite side of
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: the witness stand stood an attorney. Mister Ginsburg, would you
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: please tell the court whether or not, or to what
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: extent naked lunch the book has had importance for your
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: own creative work. Alan Ginsburg cleared his throat. He leaned
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: forward to give his answer, and as he did, memories
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: of Tangier flashed through his mind. William Burrows stumbled into
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the kitchen. He turned around in a panic as the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: doctor burst through the doorway behind him. The bastard was
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: dressed in full Nazi regalia, a swastika on each term.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Burrows tried to run, but it was too late. The
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: doctor plunged a syringe deep into his arm. Bill The
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: doctor was saying, cackling, really his eyes wild with madness.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Hold still, you must dig zi cure. Burrows pushed the
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: doctor away and again tried to run. He stepped out
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: into a dank alley, but a dead cat lying on
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the dirt stopped him in his tracks. Blood oozed out
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: from a hole in the feline's head. Then its eyes
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: shot open and spoke, what's the matter? Bill cat? Cut
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: your tongue? William Burrows lurched back in terror. He turned
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: to escape and nearly slammed into someone. Thank God, it
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: was a familiar face, Alan Ginsburg, his friend, his savior,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: his obsession. Suddenly they weren't in an alley anymore, but
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: standing in a cramp kitchen. It looked just like the
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: apartment in New York where they bonded after that business
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: in Mexico City, a bond that quickly turned into a
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: love affair, an affair that became an all consuming obsession
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: for Burrows, so intense that it scared Ginsburg. After two months,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Ginsburg broke it off, and that's when Burrows split the
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: United States for here Tangier, the lawless, internationally run city
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: in Morocco. Now Ginsburg was right in front of him.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Burrows reached out to embrace him, but Ginsburg just pushed
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: him away. He forced Burrows's head down towards a huge
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: cast iron pot boiling on the stove and lifted up
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: the lid. Borrows looked down in there, he wondered. Ginsburg
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: gave the answer. Although his mouth didn't move brains, it
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: was almost telepathic. Burrows saw a mass of white worms
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: writhing and squirming in the pot. He screamed. He snapped
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: his head up toward the ceiling, and he was back
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: in the bright white hospital room. A doctor watched him
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: as he strained against the bonds that held him down.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: No swastikus, no Nazi regalia. Reality set in. Burrows was
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: kicking junk again. He'd been through the cycle more times
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: than he could count than this time. After three days
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: of hell, he was finally starting to come back to earth.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: The doctor muttered something in German as he prepared another injection.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: He shot Burrows full of sedatives, but not enough to
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: completely knock him out. For the cure to work, he
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: needed to be conscious. Burrows groaned in pain as the
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: needle stabbed him again. He would later portray this doctor
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: as the villain Doctor Benway in his book Naked Lunch.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: For now. He was so desperate to get off the
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: junk that he was willing to try anything. After Alan
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Ginsburg broke it off with him, William Burrows arrived in
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Tangier wrecked. He blew through the monthly stipend his parents
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: sent him on young male prostitutes, but that only helps
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: so much for total numbness. He turned to drugs, and
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: in Tangier in nineteen fifty five, drugs were everywhere. It
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: took no time to get hooked on the German painkiller yucadol.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: It got so bad that he quit bathing, quit eating,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: but he kept writing, even if it was just letters
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to Ginsburg, who, despite the breakup, was still acting as
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: his literary agent. These letters are filled with grim portraits
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: of addiction and depravity, stories so dark they gave Alan
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Ginsburg nightmares, and that's how Ginsburg knew they were good.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: He begged his friend to get clean and pulled these
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: bits together into a novel. Thus William Burrows was subjecting
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: himself to the cure once again. It took several more
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: attempts and a trip to a London clinic, but by
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven Burrows was mostly clean. In letters he
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: asked Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac to visit him to help
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: turn what he'd been writing into a real manuscript. They
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: were nervous. Newspapers reported the tensions in Tangier were rising.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Moroccans were calling for the city to return to their control,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: and there were large protests. Violence was in the air.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Burrows downplayed the danger and assured his friends they would
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: be safe. A decade ago, the trio explored the seed
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: underbelly of New York, giving rise to the Beat generation. Now, Borrows, Ginsburg,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and Karrouak were finally together again, even if Ginsburg had
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: arrived with his new partner in tow. When they stepped
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: off the boat together, a jealousy cut right through William
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Burrows's heart like a bullet. He channeled that jealousy and
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: pain into his writing, writing that had now replaced sex
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and drugs as his addiction of choice. His new routine
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: was this wake up, swim or row a boat in
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the bay, eat breakfast, and Popma June, basically the original
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: hash Brownie. Before settling in the handwrite up to six
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: thousand words a day. Kerouac and Ginsburg tried to make
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: sense of his notes and scribbles and type them into
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a workable manuscript. The schedule was grueling, but soon the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: vivid sights and sounds of Tangier were coming to life
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: as the dreamlike inter zone of Naked Lunch. Meanwhile, the
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: protests in Tangier turned into outright conflict. Borrows, on his
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: way home from his morning workout, passed by a large
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: group of protesters, pushing up against a wall of French soldiers,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: screaming at them to go home. The soldiers inched backwards slowly,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: until suddenly one of them fired into the crowd. People
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: scattered in all directions, and as the crowd cleared, Barrows
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: stood there, horrified, watching his soldier pull a body out
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: of the water. A bullet lodged in the forehead. He
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: closed his eyes and shook his head, but when he
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: opened them the body was still there. This was no hallucination.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: It was a sign Tangier was changing. By nineteen fifty eight,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: he left Tangier for Paris, following Ginsburg to the notorious
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Beat Hotel, a CD forty two room artist hangout, where
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: they rearranged Burrows's text by literally cutting it up and
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: spicing it back together. The cut up technique in Naked
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Lunch became Borrows's signature and later inspired the lyrics of
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Mick Jagger, David Bowie and others. The result was a
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: series of semi connected stories that touched on everything political violence, bloodshed, withdrawal, addictions,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: to drugs, to sex to power. The result was dark,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: complicated work in many ways. Yes, it was obscene, but
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: did it have literary merit? Absolutely. Back in the Boston courtroom,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what Allen Ginsburg testified when asked, he said,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the book is a confession. The important thing that struck
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: me was the enormous courage it took to make such
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: a total confession. In his opinion, it was a work
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: of literary genius. The court disagreed. They upheld the band
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: on Naked Lunch, but it didn't last long. Two months later,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court overturned the decision. The case stands as
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the last obscenity trial of a work of literature in
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: American history. As for William Burrows, the notoriety made him
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: a star. He rubbed elbows with Jimmy Page and Andy Warhol,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: he appeared on Saturday Night Live. But no matter how
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: high he ascended, there was always something pulling him back
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: back to a warm, late summer night in Mexico City,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: September of nineteen fifty one, the night a little party
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: trick went horribly wrong, The night William S Burrows took
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: a shot and wound up taking a life. We'll be
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: right back after this. We're we're, We're in the darkness.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: He can only hear the voice screaming. William Burrows blindly
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: pushed his way through an unfamiliar building. It was the
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: dead of knight. He was half asleep. He ran his
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: hand along the way until he finally found a door.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: It swung open, and he can now see clearly in
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: the moonlight, Mexico City, outside the Bounty Bar, his favorite hangout.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: His four year old son lying on the dirt road, sobbing,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: begging for help. His mother, Joan Volmer Borrows, His wife
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: was nowhere to be seen. Borrows grabbed the boy, pulling
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: him tight to his chest. He whirled around and then
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: he saw them, men and women surrounding him, all dressed
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: in black and white convict suits, screaming something pointing at him.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: He couldn't make it out at first, but then the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: word hit him. Guilty, guilty, guilty. They were screaming it
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: over and over. Then they were all around everywhere. He
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: turned in circles, trying to find a gap. As they
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: continued to step forward, closing in. William Burrows awoke from
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: his dream with a start. He could hear the whine
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: of mosquitoes, the rustling of bats, calls from god knows
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: what out in the jungle. This wasn't Mexico City. He
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: was in the Amazon rainforest, on the hunt for the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: answer to all of his problems, the miracle drug that
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: could cure his heroin addiction, Yeah better known as ayahuasca.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: The natives claimed it could give you the power to
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: communicate telepathically and that it could cure addictions, addictions to sex,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: addictions to drugs. In nineteen fifty one, William Burrows still
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: held out hope for a respectable life. His grandfather was
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: an inventor who made a fortune on an early version
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: of the adding machine, a fortune that, even now at
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: thirty seven years old, allowed Burrows's family to support him
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: with a monthly allowance. They wanted respectable things for him, too,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: career family, but a drug addicted, failed writer with a
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: thing for other men was pretty far from their mid
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: twentieth century vision of respectability. Next to Burrows on the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: cot wasn't his four year old son or his wife,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: but his twenty one year old lover, Louis marker Well.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Lover was probably too strong of a word. Sure, Lewis
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: slept with Burrows, but he did so for money, and
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Louis did like the older man's wild stories and outrageous
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: sense of humor, but economics aside, Louis preferred the ladies.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: He was slim, young and straight, which made him just
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: William Burrows's type. Unfortunately, their search for Yaye was a
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: complete bust. They never found the drug, and for the
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: last three days they'd been stuck on the front porch
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: as some American botanists place, deep in the jungle while
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: rain poured down from above. In the darkness, Burrows tried
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: to shake off his nightmare. He looked over at Louis
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: sleeping next to him, and he knew he shouldn't reach out.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Louis was not one for affection, but still the nightmare
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: had been so real, and they were alone in the jungle.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Borrows stretched his arm over, looking for comfort, and Louis
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: pushed him away. Slack off man, get some rest. The
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: rejection was too much. Tears poured down Burrows's cheeks. He
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: knew Louis would never love him. Deep inside, he also
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: knew that no miracle drug could ever change him. A
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: wave of sadness washed over him, and then he thought
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: about Joan alone with the children. It was time to
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: get back. On September first, nineteen fifty one, William Burrows
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: returned to Mexico City. He was relieved to find his
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: son Billy, safe and sound, but his wife Joan looked
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: stressed and totally strung out. She berated him for leaving
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: her alone, and they argued constantly. It depressed Burrows even more,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: rejected by Lewis and disappointing his wife. Pushing forty and
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: never holding down a real job. Supposedly he was a writer,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: but without Alan Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac around to help him,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: his motivation had come to a standstill. His drinking got worse.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: He was washed up, hopeless. These thoughts bounced around in
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: his head as he walked away from John Healey's apartment
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: and into town. He tried to cast them out, just
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: as he was trying to rid his brain to that
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: last hallucination, the one where the decapitated dead mouse spoke
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: to him. He watched the sun sink down to the horizon,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: like his life was sinking down with it. Enough of
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: this bullshit, he had to be around other people and
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: get out of his own head. William Burrows left his
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: own pity party and returned to the real party. Clearly
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: he had some catching up to do. Everyone else was wasted.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Joan was talking loudly to John, although it was to
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: make out her words. Gesturing with one hand, she knocked
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: over her purse pills of all shapes and colors when
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: flying under the carpet as she dove down and frantically
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: started picking them up. Across the room, Louis was ignoring
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Burrows completely, his hand on a leggy blonde, laughing at
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: one of his lame jokes. Burrows burned with jealousy. To
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: be rejected is one thing, but to be ignored that
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: was something he simply could not stand. He fixed himself
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: a drink, mixing bad Mexican gin with a lime soda.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: He gulped it down, and then he had another and another.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: He felt a hundred pasent note in his pocket. Maybe
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: tonight was the night he could head back into town
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: to score six months clean, six months like six slow
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: drops in a bucket, fucket. He knew it wouldn't last.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: As he reached for the money in his pocket, his
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: hand grace the pistol. Maybe he could find some other
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: way to entertain himself, some other way to make sure
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: he had the full attention of everyone in the room.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Lewis always did love his outrageous sense of humor. Burrows
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: stumbled to his feet. He watched as Joan continued to
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: grab pills off the dirty carpeted floor. He pulled out
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the gun with a theatrical flourish and cocked it loudly.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Everyone in the room turned their eyes to him. He
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: had their undivided attention. He looked at his wife with
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a mischievous gleam in his eye, Darling, I think it's
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: time for our William Tell routine. The William Tell routine,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: of course, was the one where Joan placed something on
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: the top of her head and Burrows shot it off
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: cleanly with one squeeze of the trigger on his three
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: to eighty pistol. It sent any party into a tissy.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: As soon as he made the suggestion, the room grew quiet.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: The words hung there like a dare. Under the effects
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: of the booze and pills, Joan felt fearless. She stood up,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: grabbed the highball glass and placed it on top of
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: her head. She called her husband's bluff. Everyone continued to stare,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: wondering what was going to happen next. No choice now
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: but to follow through, or so William Burrow's thought. He
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: also thought of the mouse he just shot a few
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: hours earlier. That was ten feet away. Joan was only
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: six feet in front of him. Easy shot. He took
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: a breath. She's just six feet away. Game high. He
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: raised the gun and he pulled the trigger. The shot
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: rang out. The glass fell to the ground in front
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: of him, spinning in concentric circles, wider and wider. He
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: looked over at Joan, who was no longer standing. She
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: was lying face down on the floor. Louis ran to
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: her side and rolled her over. He screamed. Blood trickled
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: out from a hole in her forehead. The bullet was
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: lodged in her brain, and Joan Vohmer, William Burrows's wife,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: was dead.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Thrower fell slower throller throller throller flower thrower I Thrower Feller.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty two Lawrence, Kansas. Sixty eight year old William
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Burrows raised the heavy twelve gage shotgun. He took gaim
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: without hesitation. He fired the gun, kicked back into his
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: shoulder as the shot rang out through the woods. It
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: was immediately followed by another loud bang, this one coming
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: from the spray paint can he was shooting at, which
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: was now spurting red liquid. Burrows grabbed a pair of
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: shotgun shells and reloaded. He aimed at another spray paint can.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: He blasted it and watched red paint go flying as
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the pressurized can shot up one hundred feet into the
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: air before sailing back down and smashing into the ground
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: in front of his barn. The paint splashed against a
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: huge plywood canvas leaning against the side of the barn,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: creating an eerie pattern of splatter marks pierced by buckshot.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: He examined his work not bad. After the naked lunch
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: obscenity trial, William Burrows returned to New York City as
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: a literary star in the seventies. He reveled in his
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: newfound celebrity, entertaining famous guests like lou Reed, Andy Warhol,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: and David Bowie in a Lower East Side apartment he
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: called the Bunker. New York in the nineteen seventies was
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: every bit as lawless as Tangier was in the nineteen fifties.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: The city was a wash and heroin and it wasn't
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: long before he was hooked once again. That's how Borrows
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: ended up here in the small college town of Lawrence, Kansas.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Friends knew he wasn't doing well. They urged him to
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: get out of the city and away from temptation. Out
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: in the heartland and away from his drug connections, he
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: could mostly stay clean once again, a new addiction to
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: replace an old one, this time methadone, but also painting,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: painting with shotguns. It all started by accident. He was
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: testing the site on a new twelve gage and by chance,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: he fired it at a scrap piece of plywood. When
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: he came closer to look at the markings, the beauty
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: of the striations where the buckshot damaged the woods struck him.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: It was a perfect metaphor for his life, Beauty after destruction.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: He experimented with the technique, and soon he was stringing
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: up cans of spray paint above the plywood. They were pressurized,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: so they exploded and went flying into the air after
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: a direct hit. He loved the way they added random
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: splashes of color across the wood, like Jackson Pollock packing heat.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Every time he lined up a shot, he reminded himself
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: to aim high. In aim high, he did. Even after
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: moving to Kansas, William Burrows only became more of a
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: counterculture icon. He was in the lexicon of modern rock.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Thurst and more of Sonic Youth, and Kirk Kobe and
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: from Nirvana made pilgrimages to visit him. The industrial group
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Ministry shot up Heroin in his living room during one
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: of his many lapses. He collaborated with incredible singer songwriters
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: like Nick Cave and Tom Waits, and he was elected
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. But even
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: at this level of achievement, he had to continue to
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: aim high, because he failed to do so once on
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: a warm summer night in Mexico City. The death of
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: his wife caused a major scandal south of the border
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: for shooting in killing Joan Volmer. William Burrows was arrested,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: spending thirteen days in jail before his family bailed him out.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: The trial was delayed for years before he could finally
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: leave the country. He was convicted of manslaughter in absentia
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and receives a two year suspended sentence. But no matter
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: how high he aimed, death continued to haunt him. His
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: son Billy succumbed to addiction and died at age thirty
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: three of cirrhosis of the liver, the same thing that
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: killed Jack Kerouac. Above all else, however, there was Joan.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until nineteen ninety two Burrows claimed that he
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: was able to help Joan's soul find peace with the
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: help of a Native American shaman. Three years later, he
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: was still wrestling with her ghost in his final book,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: My Education, A Book of Dreams, which he wrote at
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: the age of eighty one. William Burrows, on the other hand,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: never found peace, no cure for his addictions. Instead, he
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: learned how to create beauty out of destruction shotgun paintings,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: dark portraits of addiction. In his writing, William S. Burrows
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: learned to channel his destructive impulses into his art. It
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: saved his life. Unfortunately, he learned it too late to
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: save the life of his wife, Joan Vohmer, and that
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: was created by Yours Truly and is produced in partnership
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com. If
• 36:09
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• 36:12
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• 36:16
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• 36:18
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• 36:23
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• 36:26
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• 36:40
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