William S. Burroughs

Queer 

Rick Powell

"While it was I who wrote Junky, I feel that I was being written in Queer." (William S Burroughs, Queer)

"Nobler, I thought, to die a man than live on, a sex monster. It was a wise old queen—Bobo, we called her—who taught me that I had a duty to live and to bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink." (William S Burroughs, Queer)

"But, surely, the novel still “works” for us today because Lee is a prisoner of love rather than a victim of historically contingent homophobia. Or to put it another way, you don’t have to be queer, or to have lived through the 1950s, to recognize Queer as an exceptionally dark and compelling anatomy of human (or at least male) desire. Paradoxically, the reason why Queer has such a corrosive political as well as emotional power is that Burroughs wrote it out of desire, for a single reader, to a personal audience of one—bluntly stating in October 1952: “I wrote Queer for Marker.” The queerness of Queer, in short, lies not in the facts behind the fiction but in the writing behind the written." (William S Burroughs, Queer)

Learning abt the author is incredible context for Queer it feels necessary to have it even though the story itself tells you so much abt him. He’s always looking at the subversive he really sees it as a challenge and I’m glad Luca stayed away from that in the film because there is such dreamy, pathetic, lovesick, desperate scenes that I love without any fear!!! When Burroughs wrote the notes at the end he doesn’t even reference queerness or same sex couples, he talks abt everything through the lens of an addict. How being a “junkie” affects his relationship and sanity. Which isn’t how I thought abt the story!! It didn’t occur to me that much how much of himself was in Lee. 

Queer

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