Burroughs came from a prominent family—his grandfather had invented the adding machine—and he had graduated from Harvard in 1936. But propelled by his own deep alienation and his homosexuality, he had resorted to a kind of subterranean life of mental hospitals, prison, and a drug habit. The others thought him rich because he received a $200-a-month allowance from his family, on the condition that he go regularly to a psychiatrist.
