Posts Tagged ‘writer’

Yesterday’s News and Burroughs Month: Double inaugural editions and an introduction

September 9, 2010

Mexico, September 8, 1951 — The Daily News reports that, in a drinking game which turned tragic, writer William S. Burroughs accidentally shot wife Joan Vollmer fatally in the head. He was aiming for the glass of gin on top of her head.


William Seward Burroughs, 37, first admitted, then denied today that he was playing William Tell when his gun killed his pretty, young wife during a drinking party last night.


via Le Revérénd Docteur right here on the wordpress.

Apparently William S. Burroughs was also a heroin addict and later threw out being bi and went whole-hog homosexual, being one of the first to identify as “queer” and reclaim the word as positive. The latter I’m way down for and think is great, the former …? — I don’t get how people can be addicted to heroin and still live long and functioning lives. Heroin addicts, clue me in on how this is possible? Seems so inescapably destructive a drug that it kind of puzzles me. I suppose having a lot of money helps. Then you don’t engage in all the risky behaviors poorer addicts do in order to acquire money to buy the drug. This is speculation: I am neither well-off nor a heroin addict. I like to try and take a “never say never” approach to life but I feel safe asserting that I will probably never be either.


I’ve used this picture before, but I cannot get enough of Burroughs’ delightfully priggish and pedantic expression. Looking straight down his nose at Kerouac and no doubt both laced to the gills. 1953, Greenwich Village.

I say “apparently,” about those factoids from his life story because, you guys, it’s super embarassing and inexplicable, but I know pretty much zip about William S. Burroughs. I don’t know how it happened, but seriously — virtually zip. I don’t even know if I’ll like all that I plan to read by him, but I was idly flipping through my millions of pictures and run across the scan of the newspaper clipping. I decided that the coincidence of a) searching for someone new to focus on this month; b) toying with an idea for a feature called Yesterday’s News that would be news out of history that had also literally been printed the day before the present date, rather than the more hackneyed “on this date in history…” etc, and c) finding something on Burroughs that’d been published yesterday in history* was too much synchronicity to ignore. So today marks the beginning of Burroughs Month. Welcome!



To be clear: Joan Vollmer was killed September 7. The article is dated September 8, and is the “yesterday’s news” to which the category will henceforth refer. This is partly a “how good am I at searching archives” challenge as well.

edit: Please read the comments, where DaveW takes us to school in re: heroin and Ms. Vollmer. Thanks for the info and insights, Dave!

Goethe Month: One life to live

July 27, 2010


Marcello Mastroianni biting Natassja Kinski’s ass. They were having a “whose-name-is-more-difficult-to-pronounce” contest and Marcello won.

One lives but once in the world.

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Clavigo, Act I, Scene 1.)

We only have one life. So we must really live it. No pressure.

Daily Batman: Enter the Siren

March 15, 2010

The lovely and talented Joan Collins portrayed the Siren in the 1960s Batman television series, seen here with her henchmen Andante and Allegro. In music, andante means “moderately slow” like a walking pace and allegro means kind of like “cheerfully,” kind of bright and sprightly. Both terms refer to tempo but have greatly to do with mood, which has made them always stick in my mind more so than technical demarcations like signature and clef: I’m a romantic, what can I say?

In Honor Band when I was a kid we played a piece titled “Andante and Allegro,” which was a little challenging for our age group at the time (I think we were elementary-aged because I remember being shocked that the piece was over a page long) whose I think secret purpose was to teach us to be more expressive as musicians. Crafty and fun — it must be a fun job to compose music for children’s primers, I never thought of that before. Well, I guess, unless the person is a frustrated composer who is secretly working on some avant-garde opus and hates children, like a writer who has to pen copy for toy catalogues and works by candlelight on the Great American Novel because they can barely afford electricity. I hadn’t thought of that, maybe it’s actually awful to write music for children’s lesson books and the composers think of drinking Drain-o every morning when they wake up, to escape the hellish cacophony of unfulfilled dreams which is their job.

That got completely out of control in a hurry. Sorry. Long story short, I can’t wait ’til the kidlet picks up an instrument.

Advice: Baby Hunter edition

January 27, 2010


When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

And, perhaps more importantly,

Call on God. But row away from the rocks.

RIP, HST.