Acker's novel "is reminiscent of the cut-and-paste experiments of William Burroughs..."
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Kerouac's character Old Bull Lee in "On the Road" was based on Burroughs.
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American beat writer William S. Burroughs has called YOU CAN'T WIN, the autobiography of Jack Black, his favorite book.
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"I believe in God and always have. I don't know how anyone could read my books and think otherwise. In the magical universe, nothing happens unless some power wills it to happen."
"Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: For Godsake, keep your EYES open. Notice what's going on around you."
"I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have had no choice but to write my way out."
"The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them....There are also all forms of spiritual addiction. Anything that can be done chemically can be done in other ways--that is, if we have sufficient knowledge of the processes involved."
"In 'Cities of the Red Night' I parachute my characters behind enemy lines in time. Their mission is to correct retroactively certain fatal errors at crucial turning points in human history. I am speaking of biological errors that tend to block man's path to his biological and spiritual destiny in space. I postulate a social structure offering maximum variation of small communes, as opposed to the uniformity imposed by industrialization and overpopulation."
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Born into a wealthy St. Louis, Missouri family, William S. Burroughs moved to Greenwich Village in the mid-1940s, where he met and married Joan Vollmer. Vollmer introduced Burroughs to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Burroughs took up writing and became a guiding spirit to the Beat Generation. Because of their heavy use of drugs, the couple (and their baby, William Jr.) eventually fled to Mexico. In 1951, in a drunken game of William Tell, Burroughs shot and killed Vollmer. Acquitted, Burroughs more...
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02/05/1914 St. Louis, Missouri, Plains States, Midwestern States, United States,
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Disorganized thoughts and obviously the writer practiced the art of redundancy.