WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: A WORD FROM THE WISE GUY

Billy Hough is a longtime fan of William S. Burroughs. He sees parallels between Burroughs’ writings and our present moment. We will let Billy explain it all to you.

The country has been taken over by a fascist regime using false news and opiates to confuse and control its people. The billionaire-fascists who control the world are on the hunt for the few dissenters who retain their own thoughts and therefore see through the state’s propaganda. On the brink of ecological disaster, a deadly virus escapes and threatens to destroy everyone it finds.

The above sentences describe (loosely) the long-running plot lines and timely warnings in the novels of Beat OG William S Burroughs. Famous for the banned and still shocking Naked Lunch, the longtime friend and mentor to Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Patti Smith and Kurt Cobain, is also widely known as the Patron Saint of Heroin. His books are challenging but hugely rewarding if you can “crack the code.”

Longtime Burroughs fan and PKM contributor, Billy Hough, gives the new and curious some ideas on where to start with the “American genius” (Norman Mailer) at a moment when Burroughs’ warnings and advice about surviving fascism are not just prescient, they might just save your life.

A word to the wise guy.

MORE FROM PKM:

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW #4: BRIAN ENO

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW #3: MARIANNE FAITHFULL

BILLY HOUGH: THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT PATTI SMITH’S HORSES ALBUM