2022
The Death of Joan Vollmer and Decoding William S. Burroughs’s Work
ZITA, AntonínZákladní údaje
Originální název
The Death of Joan Vollmer and Decoding William S. Burroughs’s Work
Autoři
Vydání
Moravian Journal of Literature and Film, 2022, 1803-7720
Další údaje
Jazyk
angličtina
Typ výsledku
Článek v odborném periodiku
Obor
60206 Specific literatures
Stát vydavatele
Česká republika
Utajení
není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství
Organizační jednotka
Centrum jazykového vzdělávání
Klíčová slova česky
William S. Burroughs, Joan Vollmer, Beat Generation
Klíčová slova anglicky
William S. Burroughs, Joan Vollmer, Beat Generation
Příznaky
Recenzováno
Změněno: 15. 5. 2023 16:46, Mgr. Antonín Zita, M.A., Ph.D.
Anotace
V originále
When the writer William S. Burroughs suggested to his common-law wife Joan Vollmer that they do their William Tell act for their guests, little did he know that it would result in him accidentally killing Vollmer. While research undertaken in the last two decades shows that they performed this act on a regular basis, Burroughs vehemently denied ever performing the William Tell act with Vollmer for most of his life and even changed the story several times. Soon after Vollmer’s death, he started working on what eventually became Naked Lunch, a novel composed of short narratives resisting a direct interpretation. This experimental aspect of his writing—resisting the process of signification—was further amplified by his cut-up method in subsequent novels. Together with his interest in linguistics, the occult, the Mayan calendar, or Scientology, his writing is charged with a singular purpose—to break free from the control mechanisms affecting us, as Burroughs believed, throughout our lives. Finding a method for regaining control is, then, one of the dominant themes of his writing, and yet, as some of his later diary entries suggest, all of this had one unconscious motivation—finding a rational explanation for him fatally shooting Joan Vollmer.