With William Burroughs Page 5

  BURROUGHS: I would like to lay to rest for all time the myth of the Burroughs millions which has plagued me for many years. One reviewer has even gone as far as to describe me as “the world’s richest ex-junkie” at a time when I had less than $1,000 in the bank. My grandfather, who invented the hydraulic device on which the adding machine is based, like many inventors received a very small share of the company stock; my father sold the few shares in his possession in the 1920s. My last bequest from the Burroughs estate on the death of my mother in 1970 was the sum of $10,000.

  BOCKRIS: Do you ever get worried that being a writer provides a pretty thin income?

  BURROUGHS: It’s gotten very thin. I’ve sat down many times and tried to write a bestseller but something always goes wrong. It isn’t that I can’t bring myself to do it or that I feel I’m commercializing myself or anything like that, but it just doesn’t work. If your purpose is to make a lot of money on a book or film, there are certain rules to observe. You’re aiming for the general public, and there are all sorts of things the general public doesn’t want to see or hear. A good rule is never ask the general public to experience anything they cannot easily experience. You don’t want to scare them to death, knock them out of their seats, and above all, you don’t want to puzzle them.

  GLENN O’BRIEN: Maybe we have to go into show business.

  BURROUGHS: We already have, for Godsakes, with all these readings. That’s the way I make a living, man!

  O’BRIEN: We’ll probably wind up as stand-up comedians or something.

  BURROUGHS: My God! I already have been described as a stand-up comedian.

  MALANGA: Would you ever like to apply your knowledge of telepathy in areas other than writing? Let’s say, the stock market?

  BURROUGHS: A deep misuse of these powers is always going to fuck you up. I used to do some gambling. Horseraces. I’ve had dreams and intuitions, and something always went wrong. That is, I had a number but I didn’t have the horse, or I had the horse and I didn’t have the number. I think this is a misuse of telepathy. If you’re trying to take something from this level and bring it down to this level, you’re going to get fucked every time. The classical story about that was The Queen of Spades—a Russian story about someone who was getting telepathic tips on gambling and, of course, finally got fucked.

  MALANGA: SO you think using telepathy for gambling purposes is a disrespect of one’s powers?

  BURROUGHS: All gamblers use telepathy for gambling purposes; all gambling works on telepathy. But it’s a tricky area. And gambling is something I absolutely don’t want to know about anymore, or let’s say the use of telepathic powers or extrasensory perception in those areas, because I know sooner or later you’re going to get the shaft and you’ll well deserve it.

  BOCKRIS: How do they absorb used-up money?

  BURROUGHS: They burn it. Ted Joans had an uncle who worked in the combustion department and he figured out some way to get this stuff out under his coat and he had a big stack of it under his porch. His wife saw somebody going by in an old beat-up car and she said, “It’d be nice to get one,” and he said, “Well, pretty soon we will,” and he told her. Next thing he knew they were knocking on his door. Telephone. Telegraph. Television. Tell a woman. He got twenty years.

  DINNER WITH TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: NEW YORK 1977

  BURROUGHS: When someone asks me to what extent my work is autobiographical, I say, “Every word is autobiographical, and every word is fiction.” Now what would your answer be on that question?

  TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: My answer is that every word is autobiographical and no word is autobiographical. You can’t do creative work and adhere to facts. For instance, in my new play there is a boy who is living in a house that I lived in, and undergoing some of the experiences that I underwent as a young writer. But his personality is totally different from mine. He talks quite differently from the way that I talk, so I say the play is not autobiographical. And yet the events in the house did actually take place. I avoid talking about writing. Don’t you, Bill?

  BURROUGHS: Yes, to some extent. But I don’t go as far as the English do. You know this English bit of never talking about anything that means anything to anybody … I remember Graham Greene saying, “Of course, Evelyn Waugh was a very good friend of mine, but we never talked about writing!”

  WILLIAMS: There’s something very private about writing, don’t you think? Somehow it’s better, talking about one’s most intimate sexual practices—you know—than talking about writing. And yet it’s what I think we writers live for: writing. It’s what we live for, and yet we can’t discuss it with any freedom. It’s very sad … Anyway, I’m leaving America, more or less for good. Going to England first.

  BURROUGHS: For good or for bad …

  WILLIAMS: Well, when I get to Bangkok it may be for bad, I don’t know [laughter]. And after I get through with this play in London, I should go to Vienna. I love Vienna. You remember the twenties?

  BURROUGHS: Oh heavens, yes.

  WILLIAMS: I only ask because there are few people living who do … That’s the sad thing about growing old, isn’t it—you learn you are confronted with loneliness.…

  BURROUGHS: One of the many.

  WILLIAMS: Yes, one of the many—that’s the worst, yes.

  Burroughs and Williams in the drawing room of the latter’s suite at the Elysee Hotel. Photo by Michael McKenzie

  BURROUGHS: After all, if there wasn’t age, there wouldn’t be any youth, remember.

  WILLIAMS: I’m never satisfied to look back on youth, though … not that I ever had much youth.

  BURROUGHS: Writers don’t, as a rule.

  WILLIAMS: I was in Vienna in 1936. Remember the Römanische Baden?

  BURROUGHS: The Roman Baths. I went to them … they’re lovely, too.

  WILLIAMS: Right near where the Prater used to be.

  BURROUGHS: I’ve ridden on that ferris wheel in the park.

  WILLIAMS: Me, too.

  ON DREAMS

  DINNER WITH GERARD MALANGA: NEW YORK 1974

  BURROUGHS: There couldn’t be a society of people who didn’t dream. They’d be dead in two weeks.

  MALANGA: Do you have a certain technique for notating dreams?

  BURROUGHS: If you don’t write them down right away, in many cases you’ll forget them. I keep a pencil and paper by my bed. I’ve had dreams where I’ve continued episodes—“to be continued”—and if they’re goodies you want to get back there as quick as possible, but I always make a point, even though I want to get back there, of making just a few notes, otherwise the next day you’ll lose the whole thing. If I just make two words here, that’ll get me back there. There’s some basic difference between memory traces of a dream and the actual event. Now I’ve had this happen: I’d wake up and I’m too lazy to get up and I’ll go over it ten times in my mind and say, “Well, sure I’ll certainly remember that.” Gone. So memory traces are lighter for dreams than they are for so-called events. I keep a regular dream diary. Then, if they’re particularly interesting or important I’ll expand them into dream-scenes that might be usable in a fictional context by making a longer typewritten account. Sometimes I get long sequential narrative dreams just like a movie, and some of these have gone almost verbatim into my work. In some ways the most fruitful dreams have been when I find a book or magazine with a story in it I can read. It can be hard to remember, but sometimes I get a whole chapter that way and the next day I just sit down and write it out. The opening chapter of Cities of the Red Night—The Health Officer—was such a chapter, a dream that I had about a cholera epidemic in Southwest Africa, and I just sat down and wrote it out. I was reading rather than writing. And then the story They Do Not Always Remember, which appeared in Exterminator, was also a dream. I don’t know if other writers have them, but it’s certainly a writer’s dream.

  William and James with first proof copies of Cities of the Red Night, which Grauerholz worked on closely with Burroughs. Note the subtitle, A Boy’s Book,
which was later removed from the jacket and title page. Photo by Victor Bockris

  MALANGA: Learning to get hold of this material is a technical matter, so I presume it’s something you get better at.

  BURROUGHS: You can get feedback: I’ve had a dream and I write something about it; then, as a result of writing something, I have a further dream along the same lines. I’m getting feedback between what I write and what I’m dreaming about.

  BOCKRIS: Have you always had this habit of waking up a lot during the night?

  BURROUGHS: I’ve always been a very light sleeper. The slightest thing wakes me up. I wake up five or six times in the course of an average night. I get up and maybe have some milk or a glass of water, or write down some dreams, if I have any. I was once in a room with another person who set the mattress on fire. His mattress, but I was the one that woke up. Oooooh, smoke! Wide awake. I’ve always defied anyone to get in the room with me without waking me up. Just the presence of another person is enough. Sometimes if I can’t go back to sleep I’ll read for a while. I have about six books by my bed that I’m reading. And it’s the only thing to do if you have a real nightmare. Get up and fix yourself a cup of coffee or tea and stay up for ten minutes to reorient yourself, because if you go right back to sleep you’re going right back into it. Sometimes I’ll have three real nightmares in a row, so I say now it’s time to stop, break the chain. I will get up, maybe have some tea, smoke a joint, anything to break it up. The best thing to do is get up and have something to drink.

  BOCKRIS: I’ve had nightmares in which it seems that somebody or something has gotten into the apartment.

  BURROUGHS: I had this experience with James. When I first came back to New York we were sleeping in a loft over on Broadway and I had this dream: There was a knock at the back door, I went to the back door and there was this person known as Marty. I’ve got a little chapter in Cities about this, and he was there with a chauffeur, a bearded man, who was so drunk he could hardly stand up. It was all sort of 1890s, see. “Come along to the Metropole and have some bubbly,” as he put it, some champagne. The Metropole was the old hangout in the 1890s. It was around Times Square. And I said, “Oh Marty, no.” I said, “You know …”

  He said, “What’s the matter, your old pals aren’t good enough for you anymore?”

  “I don’t remember that we were exactly pals, Marty!” I replied. This is someone I’d known, sort of real bad news. Then he said, “Let me in, I’ve come a long way,” and he shoved his way into the apartment. Then I had pictures of James covered with a white foam and I was trying to wake up, saying, “James! James!” When I did finally wake up he was out of bed and he had picked up a pipe threader that was there and I said, “What’s the matter?” He answered, “I just felt that there was someone in the apartment.”

  “Well,” I said, “someone indeed was in the apartment. That was Marty.” So I used Marty as a character in Cities. Marty Blum.

  In 1977, Bob Dylan invited Burroughs to join the Rolling Thunder tour to participate in some way in the movie Renaldo and Clara. Burroughs declined on the grounds that the offer was too ill-defined to be worth his while. During this period he had two dreams about Dylan.

  In the first dream he had the idea that he should suggest a benefit concert for junkies. After seeing Dylan’s Madison Square Garden benefit performance for Rubin Hurricane Carter, Burroughs had a second dream that told him to forget the idea on the grounds that he would not be able to hold the attention of the vast audience that Dylan commands.

  BOCKRIS: When did you first meet Bob Dylan?

  BURROUGHS: In a small café in the Village, around 1965. A place where they only served wine and beer. Allen had brought me there. I had no idea who Dylan was, I knew he was a young singer just getting started. He was with his manager, Albert Grossman, who looked like a typical manager, heavy kind of man with a beard, and John Hammond, Jr., was there. We talked about music. I didn’t know a lot about music—a lot less than I know now, which is still very little—but he struck me as someone who was obviously competent in his subject. If his subject had been something that I knew absolutely nothing about, such as mathematics, I would have still received the same impression of competence. Dylan said he had a knack for writing lyrics and expected to make a lot of money. He had a likable direct approach in conversation, at the same time cool, reserved. He was very young, quite handsome in a sharp-featured way. He had on a black turtleneck sweater.

  DINNER WITH STEWART MEYER: NEW YORK 1979

  MEYER: Bill, when I make something up out of the clear blue sky where is it coming from?

  BURROUGHS: Man, nothing comes out of the clear blue sky. You’ve got your memory track … everything you’ve ever seen or heard is walking around with you. Remember the line “All a Jew wants to do is doodle a Christian girl, you know that yourself,” from Naked Lunch? I heard that line verbatim. I thought to myself, “Goooooood Lord, now I’ve heard it all.” But the line came in handy.

  Stewart Meyer and Burroughs after dinner at the Bunker. Note Burroughs’ NO METRIC T-shirt. Photo by Victor Bockris

  MEYER: Right away?

  BURROUGHS: Give or take thirty years.

  MEYER: What stops the flow for me is, I’m sitting there writing and dreaming freely, then I start to watch myself.

  BURROUGHS: Who’s watching you when you’re watching yourself?

  MEYER: Is a tightrope walker a tightrope walker all the time?

  BURROUGHS: Well, yes. I’ll just cower in the Bunker and leave that stuff to the professionals.

  MEYER: Too bad the subconscious mind can’t be triggered like the conscious.

  BURROUGHS: It can.

  MEYER: What? How?

  BURROUGHS: Do nothing. Only secret to tapping the subconscious mind is do nothing. This corresponds to the Buddhist thing.

  MEYER: But it isn’t a direct trigger.

  BURROUGHS: The conscious and subconscious work completely differently.

  MEYER: How necessary do you think the conscious mind is?

  BURROUGHS: I think the conscious mind will eventually be phased out as a failed experiment. Think of it: no conscious egos. All that negativity done away with.

  BOCKRIS: What do you believe in?

  BURROUGHS: Belief is a meaningless word. What does it mean? I believe something. Okay, now you have someone who is hearing voices and believes in these voices. It doesn’t mean they have any necessary reality. Your whole concept of your “I” is an illusion. You have to give something called an “I” before you speak of what the “I” believes.

  BOCKRIS: What’s your greatest strength and weakness?

  BURROUGHS: My greatest strength is to have a great capacity to confront myself no matter how unpleasant. My greatest weakness is that I don’t. I know that’s enigmatic, but that’s sort of a general formula for anyone, actually.

  DINNER WITH ALLEN GINSBERG: NEW YORK 1980

  BOCKRIS: What frightens you most?

  BURROUGHS: Possession. It seems to me this is the basic fear. There is nothing one fears more or is more ashamed of than not being oneself. Yet few people realize even an approximation of their true potential. Most people must live with varying degrees of the shame and fear of not being fully in control of themselves.

  Imagine that the invader has taken over your motor centers. There you are at a party, press cameras popping away, and suddenly you know you are going to exhibit yourself and shit at the same time. You try to run, your legs won’t move. Your hands, however, are moving, unzipping your fly.

  And all this is within the range of modern technology. Professor Delgado can make a subject pick something up by electric brain stimulation. No matter how hard the subject tried to resist the electronic command, he was helpless to intervene.

  No doubt this good thing has come to the attention of the dirty trick department. So Brezhnev shits in the UN and Reagan exposes himself in front of a five-year-old child at a rally. Perhaps they decided to outlaw that one like the Jivaro [a tribe of
headhunting Indians found mostly in Ecuador] outlawed the use of curare darts in feud killings. It’s such a horrible death. And the humiliation inflicted by MC [Motor Control]. Sanction is literally a fate worse than death, a horrible maimed existence … madness or suicide.

  It shouldn’t happen to your worst enemy because the way this universe is connected, it could happen back at YOU.

  Centipedes frighten me a good deal, although this is not an actual phobia where people are incapacitated by the sight of a centipede. I simply look around for something with which to combat this creature. I have a recurring nightmare where some very large poison centipede, or scorpion about this long, suddenly rushes on me while I’m looking about for something to kill it. Then I wake up screaming and kicking the bedclothes off. The last time was in Greece in August 1973. I was with my mother in a rather incestuous context. I think the ideal situation for a family is to be completely incestuous. So this is a slightly incestuous connection with my mother and I said, “Mother, I am going to kill the scorpion.” It was a big thing, about this long. At this point the scorpion suddenly rushed upon me, and I had nothing to kill it with. I was looking around for a shoe or something. I woke up kicking the bedclothes off. Then I remember another dream, which is in Exterminator, where someone had one of these fucking things about eighteen inches long and I said, “Get away from me!” I had a snub-nosed .38 in my hand. And I said, “Get away from me with that fucking thing or I’ll kill you!” This was a combination scorpion-centipede about six inches long that runs very quickly.