Wading Into The Swamp

Over at my literature blog:

My hunch is that I would not enjoy reading any of Burroughs' writing, but he may represent an important element of postmodern writing. So, with that, I will read a bit and see if I enjoy any of it. I will probably enjoy the biographical notes, the analysis, but I probably would not enjoy the original works, and I know I won't agree with Burroughs' worldview.

But here we go, into the swamp.

The four seminal figures of the first Beat circle: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Herbert Huncke.

I started reading  The New Yorker when I went out to California in the summer/fall of 1973 to begin medical school at the University of Southern California. It's possible I started reading the magazine in college, but I seriously doubt it. Reflecting back on that, it seems strange that I would "start reading" when I would be hit with a fire hose of reading in medical school. I had had no real-life experiences up to that point, having lived a sheltered life in small-town America (and an incredibly rural America, at that) and then attending college in the same small-town America, albeit a slightly bigger city.

But it was Los Angeles where my life began, I suppose. And for some reason I started reading The New Yorker. And one of the first articles was about free love, Big Sur, and Michael Murphy. An Army psychologist. Smile. Some will see the irony.

But I digress.

So, having stumbled on Word Virus, the William S Burroughs Reader, I have come full circle, I suppose.

[Note: some years later I was surprised to find that my brother enjoyed The New Yorker, perhaps his favorite magazine. And he had never left small-town rural America. I think he was frustrated that very few of his peers read. One of his closest friends, however, was an English/literature professor in one of the state universities. I have four sisters; had one brother; all younger. My brother died in 2011, five years after he was diagnosed with a rare cancer. His goal was to see his one child graduate from high school. He succeeded, seeing her graduate, and then a few weeks later he was gone. Craig did not introduce me to The New Yorker. But he did introduce me the Bose Radio/CD player, and Leonard Cohen.]