With William Burroughs: A Report From the Bunker

by William S. Burroughs, Victor Bockris

Burroughs, the eccentric, brilliant artist who burned the bridge with logic and wrote the classic Naked Lunch, has a court recorder in Victor Bockris. Bockris has collected into a cogent whole the man's most brilliant moments of conversation, thinking, and interview repartee. This fascinating material, gleaned from the fertile time at Burroughs's New York headquarters, the Bunker (which was located on the Bowery, three blocks from CBGB), encompasses the years 1974 to 1980, and also includes a 1991 Burroughs interview from Interview magazine. The Beats' devotion to subjective experience has left readers with a profound amount of objective material to analyze and debate. Choice public and private utterances, hallucinatory and prescient diatribes such as these, remain rich sources of literary history. As Americans we find the Beats' approach to life romantic, even heroic. Tearing the walls down in the name of freedom and spirituality strikes a particularly pilgrimesque chord. With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker is a fascinating compendium of Burroughs-speak, so complete it can be considered a credo.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Drugs, Classics, Memoir, Biography Memoir

286 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1979

About the author

William Seward Burroughs II, (also known by his pen name William Lee) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century".
His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays.
Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.
He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation.
Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".
Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.

Reviews

[Lynx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Victor Bockris and his tape recorder capture interesting conversations Burroughs had with an array of impressive minds such as Lou Reed, Alan Ginsberg, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol and Susan Sontag to name a few. These excerpts cover an array of topics that Burroughs fans if given the opportunity to sit down with the man would ask including his writing methods, opinions on other authors, current events, and his personal life. Those looking for a more linear biography of Burroughs life and career should look elsewhere. This is more for Burroughs fans who already know what he's all about.




*Thank you Open Road Media for this review copy.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, I hope Bockris never reads this review b/c I don't really want to hurt anyone's feelings but I just HAVE TO SAY THIS: by this point in Burroughs' career every moronic parasite in the world was trying to attach theirself to him & this bk exemplifies that. Bokcris cd take the most brilliant subject & trivialize it thru gossip & name-dropping 'til you'd feel like puking. All of Bockris' bks shd just be called "If I Drop These Names Will I Be Famous TOO?!" I mean, why not just get to the point? The cover portrait is by Robert Mapplethorpe - another artiste whose work I hate. This bk is SO New York in the worst way. Too bad the center of the publishing industry is there b/c we end up w/ idiocies like this: this bk MUST BE IMPORTANT b/c it has ALL the scenesters in it (no matter if half of them are idiots!)! The only thing that salvages this is that Burroughs is, yes, actually represented in it somewhat. If you're going to read everything connected to the guy, save this one for LAST. I'd hate to see you die w/ this one under yr belt & "The Book of Breeething" (eg) unread.

[David Corvine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could have done with less Bockris and more Burroughs but still a valuable source for students of WSB.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Joan Lee: I’m shooting up your bug powder [...:] It’s a very literary high.
Bill Lee: What do you mean it’s a literary high?
Joan Lee: It’s a Kafka high. You feel like a bug.
(Dialogue from David Cronenberg’s film adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch).

“The only evidence that this conversation ever took place here is the recording, and if those recordings were altered, then that would be the only record.” (William Burroughs).

“Certainly of the Beat Generation, Bill was the one that no one was ever able to put tabs on, because his approach was always so very different.” (Miles).

“A number of people saw someone on a sort of momentous occasion and each has a different version of what happened. (William Burroughs).

In a book that could be described as "oral documentary," William S. Burroughs speaks about his writing, about drugs, about recent American history and about current events. The interesting thing is that it is not always the book’s “author,” Vincent Bockris, interviewing Burroughs. Instead, in many instances, Bockris simply follows Burroughs around and records his conversations with other people. Frequently, these latter are celebrities, including writers like Susan Sontag, Tennessee Williams and Terry Southern; musicians like Debbie Harry and Lou Reed; and artists like Andy Warhol. At one point Bockris follows Burroughs to Hollywood and the movie set of Heart Beat , where they meet some of the cast (John Heard as Jack Kerouac, Nick Nolte as Neal Cassady and Sissy Spacek as Carolyn Cassady).

Depending on your expectations, this book may not be entirely satisfying. It is a realistic depiction of the day-to-day existence of an aging writer in the late 1970s as he gets together with friends, finds entertainment for the evening, and talks about his memories and about his expectations for the future; in that respect, those who read this expecting to hear the satiric and dystopian voice they know from Naked Lunch and The Adding Machine: Selected Essays may be disappointed. Moreover, the addition of voices like Sontag’s or Warhol’s does not necessarily raise the intellectual quotient of these conversations. Reading them, I felt that the dialogues included here were not that far away from the kind of conversation anyone might have with his or her own friends on a night when everyone was being particularly witty and enjoying the company. Perhaps it is useful to see that the creative and intellectual individuals with whom Burroughs speaks are not so different from any one of us; at times, however, their conversation can read like the minutes from a mutual appreciation society, which does not always make for the most entertaining reading.

Some of the conversation is interesting, including Burroughs’s ideas for dealing with muggers and his prescient projection of what we now refer to as “virtual reality.” However, for me, a lot of the discussion is only on the edge of being interesting: there are many you-had-to-be-there moments that are frustrating to read because, while you can enjoy them on some cerebral level, you feel that you are not enjoying them to their full potential. Such moments do not always work so well on the page, and one wonders whether film rather than print might not have been a better medium for these interviews.

In The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America, Martin Amis comments on writing about other writers in a passage that expresses it pretty well:

This business of writing about writers is more ambivalent than the end product normally admits. As a fan and a reader, you want your hero to be genuinely inspirational. As a journalist, you hope for lunacy, spite, deplorable indiscretions, a full-scale nervous breakdown in mid-interview. And, as a human, you yearn for the birth of a flattering friendship. All very shaming, I thought, as I crossed the dun Chicago River, my eyes streaming in the mineral wind.

I don’t want to go as far as saying that With William Burroughs: Report From the Bunker is not worth reading. There are some interesting passages including some on one of Burroughs’s favourite themes, that of control. But for me, it does not really satisfy any of the three desires to which Amis alludes. The Job - Interviews with William S. Burroughs by Daniel Odier, though? Does all three things at once. Uncut, high-grade Burroughs, and certainly recommended.

Acquired May 24, 2010
Powell's City of Books, Portland, OR

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much important information for my lifelong study. Information about the Seavers popped up, the publishers/editors I tried to locate on my last trip to NYC. Ms. Seaver evidently still lives, though Mr. Seaver passed on about a decade ago. I was unsuccessful in tracking down Ms. Seaver, and I expect she resides in a special echelon that requires special credential access. The Seavers published my all-time favorite book by Burroughs: The Adding Machine. All these books piece together a puzzle that I feel contains the meaning of life, ie, all I will need to know about it. My quest goes back to my childhood. But that, as the narrator says, is another story.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

This marks the hipster-apex of Burroughs-related works. You'll get a sense of the era and the scene as much as any deep understanding of the man.

[Matthew Langley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Burroughs from the fan-boy position - ok in parts but not extrodinary

[John Pistelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now here is a good Little Free Library find—a waterlogged copy of book I didn’t even know existed, which I grabbed to peruse before teaching some Beat anthology pieces in my Contemporary American Literature class and plan to replace when I’m done.

This book was brought out by a mainstream publisher in its time, hard to imagine nowadays: even supposing it made it through editorial, the staff would revolt at the passage where Burroughs says he likes "young boys" who are "between fourteen and twenty-five," where Ginsberg laments his failure to pick up a 15-year-old, where Burroughs explains sex tourism’s convenience with the blasé line, "The boys are poor," or even the part where Susan Sontag tries to explain the hardships of womanhood to him, and he simply replies, "It’s hard to draw breath on this bloody planet" (this is following a passage where he explains his belief that women are biologically obsolete, perhaps an opinion more in line with today's increasingly anti-natalist progressivism). No, the Slack channel at Hatchette or wherever would not be having this, despite the relative obsequiousness shown throughout the book to Burroughs by Sontag, Debbie Harry, and Patti Smith.

Probably the best part of the book is the pair of chapters devoted to a Rashomon account of the visit Burroughs, Ginsberg, Sontag, and several others made to Beckett in Berlin. Did Beckett sing? What did he sing—an old Irish song, one of Schubert's lieder in English or what? Did the visit last 20 minutes or over an hour? The parties can't agree, though all recall that Ginsberg did all the talking, and that the room had no books in it because Beckett's art did not depend on "input." Sontag may or may not have said that Beckett was the sexiest man alive; Burroughs concludes that his oeuvre, overall, is broader than Joyce's.

At the end of the book, either just before or just after we hear about how Burroughs went to see Whitley Strieber to make contact with the aliens, editor Bockris asked him if he was a fearful man. "Are you mad?" Burroughs replies. He confides, "Like most people, I live in a continual state of panic."

[Gregory Beaubien · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was first published in 1981 and I read it a few years later. Now I'm re-reading the book after more than 30 years and enjoying it a lot. With his notorious persona as a literary outlaw, it's easy to forget how intelligent and learned Burroughs was. "With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker" is formatted as an illustrated series of dinner conversations that Burroughs had during the late 1970s and early 1980s, mostly in New York, with a list of artistic luminaries from the period that includes Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, Tennessee Williams, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, and many others. Re-reading this book I'm struck by how little these artists and thinkers discussed politics. They had far more interesting topics on their minds.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, no

[Smiley III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great! Essential, really.

Really.

😉

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker by Victor Bockris is a collection of interview notes from the 1970s and 1980s. Bockris is the author of several books on the people in the New York underground -- Patti Smith, Lou Reed, and John Cale. He wrote on the Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol, and Keith Richards.

Bockris is a man who was in the right place, at the right time, and with the right people. This is the second book of his I have read. The first was the unauthorized biography of Patti Smith which turned up nothing new nor, although a bit harsh, any real scandal that made it "unauthorized" in the contemporary muckraking definition of the term.

The book is a collection of notes presumably from recordings of meetings with Burroughs and Ginsberg, Lou Reed, Susan Sontag, Warhol, and a variety of other players in the New York scene. The discussions seem unscripted and flow as expected in a natural conversation. Burroughs talks about a variety of subjects from writing, politics, drugs, sex, and his wife's death. The discussions are usually interesting and it was fun to see Burroughs get irritated with Ginsberg over semantics. Burroughs also makes a stand against him being the godfather of the (New York) punk rock movement. He says he has little to do with it outside of being a Patti Smith supporter and fan.

The meetings take place in New York and are down to earth for the most part just people drinking (and sometimes using drugs) and talking about art and the problems in the world. It is common talk and not pseudo-intellectualism. It is the blending of the Beats and the rising "punk" generation. Burroughs bridges the generations and in a real way helped direct the younger group. Burroughs lived the life and quite a long one at that especially with the life he lived. Generally, he is either loved or thought of as a fraud. Myself, although I am still pretty baffled by Naked Lunch, Junkie was well ahead of its time. This collection of interviews is well worth the read for seeing Burroughs in a relaxed, natural environment.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed most of Burroughs’s nuggets about writing:

“Read and reread Conrad constantly—a gift of transmutation, like Genet.”

“Sinclair Lewis said if you have just written something you think is absolutely great and you can’t wait to publish it or show it to someone, throw it away.”

“Somerset Maugham said that the greatest asset that any writer can have is longevity.” “Involvement with his own image can be fatal to a writer.” “Creativity comes from a series of shocks in which you are forced to look at yourself.”

[Gabriel Soll · Rating 4 out of 5]

(full disclosure, I received a reviewer copy of this book, but that does not influence my review -- if it were horrible, I'd tell you).

This book is not for everyone...then again, neither is Burroughs. I believe that this book will illuminate some interesting back-story about the author and his mythos for those who would be interested to read it. While I find the personae fascinating (hell, medically he is a wonder that he survived) I don't know that this will hold the interest of someone who isnt interested in Burroughs...then again, I could be wrong.

Overall this book provides some great views into the life of the real author and is recommended for students and fans of Burroughs.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every bit as entertaining as any novel by Uncle Bill, Victor Bockris leaves no stone unturned in his conversations with Burroughs. It's all here: the accidental death of his wife ("that gun was a piece of junk"), his cut-up writing methods, special consultant to beatnik movie "Heartbeat". He dishes the dirt on his fellow writers too: Genet, Robbe-Grillet, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, etc. There's a killer anecdote on every page, for real. Highly recommended.

[Kirk Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book mostly eschews the interview approach, instead recording Burroughs' conversations and meetings with various celebrities and important persons of the day. While the book is full of sycophancy and while sometimes everyone brings the worst out in each other - an earlier conversation with Burroughs, Warhol, and Ginsberg is tragic - some of the conversations, especially those near the end, are almost enlightening.

[Stefan Lischewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. I was uncontrolably laughing in public. It was priceless.
Bizarre encounters between hilarious and weird.
A somewhat wise sage meets New York celebrities in the 70s/80s.
Surreal.

[refuzd · Rating 2 out of 5]

thought this book was interesting just cause burroughs is interesting. then i realised it was written by a hanger-on, a scenester. forget that guy! thats my opinion.

[Theo Lafleur · Rating 5 out of 5]

******

[ProofProfessor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really excellent book about Burroughs and his wide-ranging inner circle and followers - ideal as an introduction to the man's work and world view. I could not spot any editorial issues.

[David Wallis]

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