http://aande.blogs.heraldtribune.com/11977/addressing-burroughs-complex-legacy/
by Billy Cox
April 17th, 2010
During the audience Q&A following today's screening of "William S.
Burroughs: A Man Within," biographer Victor Brooks took an emotional
pause to compose himself as he disclosed the words of his final
correspondence with the late Beat Generation icon. "He said, 'I love
you very much, too.'"
Maybe only hardcore Burroughs fans can appreciate the gravity of the
revelation. Largely reviled by the American mainstream when
underground classic The Naked Lunch challenged legal standards for
obscenity, Burroughs was an openly gay, guilt-haunted, gunslinging
junkie whose lacerating commentaries on politics and culture would
eventually lay the literary foundations for punk rock and more.
The truth as he saw it "Every man has inside himself a parasitic
being who is acting not at all to his advantage" manifested in a
leathery reptile hide that kept most friends and even lovers at a
distance. But Yony Leyser's 87-minute documentary makes a bid to
grasp Burroughs' elusive essence, an emotional vulnerability that
would finally attain permanence during the last journal entry of his life.
For a man so often linked with a fixation on debauchery and
cartoonish self-indulgence, "William S. Burroughs: A Man Within" also
reminds or perhaps reintroduces audiences of and to the subtle
evolution of his imagery into commercial successes. Terms like "Blade
Runner," Steely Dan" and "Heavy Metal" coiled from his imagination.
Nothing, apparently, can contain a subversive notion whose time has come.
Beat Generation scholar and professor in Humanities & Sciences at The
School of Visual Arts in New York Regina Weinrich whose commentary
also appears on camera also fielded audience questions. Although
Burroughs was a man of his times and manned the ramparts during the
cultural shift that began in the Fifties, she said his message is
ultimately for the future.
"The thing I most learned from him was keep your eyes and ears open,"
she said. "Don't accept what other people tell you forge it for
yourself. His art was all about opening up."
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