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William S(eward) Burroughs 1914-97
American novelist
Born into a wealthy American family, Burroughs rejected the conventions of his background, preferring instead to use his family's financial support to seek out the darker seams of life.
In his 30s, he went to New York to join the gangster underworld. There, as a heroin addict, he met Herbert Huncke and, through him, was introduced to a group of young non-conformists at Columbia University who were to become the Beat poets. Under their influence, he began to write.
With Huncke and another of the Beat group, Joan Adams, Burroughs moved to Texas, where the three of them grew cotton, oranges and marijuana. Forced to flee from the authorities, it was in Mexico that Burroughs, while drunkenly showing off his marksmanship in a William Tell-style demonstration, accidentally killed Joan, the mother of his child, with a single shot.
Subsequently, Burroughs travelled through South America and Africa, ending up in Tangier, which became a celebrity destination for the now successful Beat poets. While visiting, Jack Kerouac discovered a messy pile of his short stories, which were later published as Burroughs' most successful work, Naked Lunch (1959).
Find out more …
American Museum of Beat Art
www.beatmuseum.org
Biography and links — in particular to a tribute site and an excerpt from 'My Own Business'.
Burroughs.net
www.burroughs.net
Online archive project featuring extensive William S Burroughs links.
The Letters of William S Burroughs: 1945 to 1959, edited by Oliver Harris (Picador, 1994) £7.99.
First volume of Burroughs' letters, ending in the year that saw the publication of The Naked Lunch.
Hunter S(tockton) Thompson 1939-
American novelist and 'Gonzo' journalist
Born in relative poverty in Kentucky, the teenage Thompson's evident literary ability enabled him to join the local upper-class literary society, The Athenaeum. But while his peers went on to Ivy League universities, Thompson was sent to prison for robbery. As a condition of his sentence, he was forced to join the military on his release.
After leaving the US Air Force, Thompson became a journalist and wrote for many years for Rolling Stone magazine. He was the first reporter to infiltrate the Hell's Angels and rode with them for a year. This led to a beating that almost killed him and the publication of Hell's Angels: A strange and terrible saga (1966).
It was in Rolling Stone that his two most famous books first appeared: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972), a description of a drug-crazed trip to Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (1973), his coverage of the 1972 American presidential campaign between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. These books won him a wide cult following for his anarchic, reckless lifestyle and witty, satirical view of modern life, which he called 'Gonzo' journalism.
More recently, Thompson has run for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado and awarded himself a doctorate. His only novel — The Rum Diary, originally written in 1959 — was published in 1998. He now lives on a ranch in California.
Find out more …
Hunter S Thompson interviewed
www.web-presence.com/mac/elk.html
Transcript of conservative satirist P J O’Rourke's interview with Thompson in the early 1980s.
The Proud Highway — Volume 1: The Fear and Loathing letters 1955-67: Saga of a desperate southern gentleman by Hunter S Thompson (Bloomsbury, 1998) £9.99.
Letters spanning a 12-year period, during which Thompson survived his first incarceration, was discharged from the Air Force, drank to excess and finally achieved notoriety with the publication of Hell's Angels.
Will Self 1961-
British novelist and journalist
Will Self grew up in London, the son of liberal parents who were unable to control their brilliant but destructive son. Self-harming from an early age, he was drinking at nine, on speed at 15 and using coke and heroin by the time he was 17.
After Oxford, Self spent most of his 20s taking drugs and bum jobs until finally being hired as a cartoonist by the New Statesman. He began straightening himself out in order to pursue his intense ambition to write, and won critical acclaim with his first collection of short stories, The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1991).
Once published, Self crossed easily into alternative journalism. While covering the 1997 election campaign for the Observer, he shot to instant notoriety when he was publicly sacked for taking heroin on board John Major's plane.
Since then Self seems to have kicked his drug habit. An intellectual heavyweight and the enfant terrible of contemporary English literature, he continues to write bruising satirical fiction set in absurd, often violent worlds of his own creation.
Find out more …
Guardian Unlimited Books
The page dedicated to Self is strewn with links to various reviews and interviews, plus a brief biography.
Cock and Bull by Will Self (Penguin, 1993) £6.99.
Black comedy in two parts.
The Quantity Theory of Insanity by Will Self (Penguin, 1994) £6.99
Collection of interleaved short stories.
For more from Will Self, see his interview.