Above is the cover of Billy's second book Kentucky Ham.
Below is a link to a recent book about Billy Burroughs Jr. titled
CURSED FROM BIRTH.
Billy was a friend of mine.I knew him at Green Valley School in Orange City, Fla. in 1972 and afterwards until his death in 1981. I think this book tells his story the way he would like. Literary Outlaw is the other good bio of Bill Burroughs, Sr. in which Billy's life is well told. Read both of these books and you will know the Burroughs. The old man was a genius and a great writer but a lousy father. The son was cursed from birth(that title is something Billy wrote himself and signed a letter with to his father).
I tried to tell Billy to change his name in 1972. I thought that would be his only chance of surviving the Burroughs name. But of course his course was set. He was and would always be a Burroughs. To have your father kill your mother when you are 4 and then to be sent to grow up with your grandparents(abandoned by your father)and then to learn in your teens that your father is the notorious junkie homosexual genius author of NAKED LUNCH well how would you handle that? So self destruction was Billy's fate. This is an excellent book and anyone who is interested in either father or the son should enjoy and learn from it. One thing though. Billy enjoyed his life VERY MUCH until he got sick. So his life was not that short and was certianly not all unhappy. Just the last ten years.
Below is a letter Billy wrote to me from Atlanta in Nov. of 1973. Click and double click on the pictures to enlarge and read the letter.
Click and double click if necessary to enlarge and read this letter from Bill Burroughs Jr. to me from Nov. 1973.
Bill Jr. never had a chance. Not as long as he
played the part of Burroughs,Jr.
In the summer of 1972(I think it was) Esquire
Magazine printed a bit of the unpublished Kentucky
Ham. Reading this piece which is the chapter on Green
Valley I became interested not only in Bill Burroughs,
Jr. but Green Valley School. I had heard some 3 years
before of the school and had read GVH's book(How To Live With Your Special Child) that
year. And years before(maybe 1969)I had seen GVH on a
noontime talk TV show in Washington, D.C. Needless to
say he was interesting. So adding all those things up
I decided to go to GVS(Green Valley School) as a staff member in late
August 1972. But it was always in the back of my mind
that I wanted to meet Bill Jr. I really lucked out on
that because Bill and Karen had left GVS for good
sometime before my arrival. It was only because Bill
Jr. decided to leave Dobbs Ferry,N.Y. and come to
Deland, Florida to finish Kentucky Ham that I had a chance to
meet him.
I was in the Big House(administration building)front
room when in walked a young man who I had never seen
before. I over heard him mention his name to the
receptionist. I introduced myself and we adjourned to
the kitchen of the Big House to have some coffee.
Bill Jr. asked to see GVH. He was told GVH would
not see him. When he asked the person to ask why. I
think it was Cathy told Bill that GVH said Billy
would not follow instructions. And no one will ever
dispute that.
My first conversation with Billy went like this:
Me: "Have you ever thought of changing your last
name?"
Bill: "Yes on the drive down here from New York I saw
a sign that said SNEAKER CITY. I think I will change
my name to that."
I told him in regard to his vices that he could
change vices. I told him "one vice is as good as
another". Bill Jr. used that line in his dedication of
Kentucky Ham to GVH.
Later Bill,Jr. gave me a signed copy of the hardcover
first edition of Kentucky Ham. Which I am glad to say
I still have. Nice dustjacket too.
Bill Burroughs Jr and I ran around together in Deland, Orange
City, and Green Valley School in the Fall of 1972. Much drinking
ensued. I met Karen and her parents in Savannah when I
stopped there to see Billy in Jan. of 1973 on a field
trip with 8 GVS students to Washington D.C.
Bill and I exchanged many letters. For some reason he
liked to write long letters to me. I saw him one last
time in the summer of 1974 when he and Karen were in
Atlanta. She was managing a bar. They were getting
ready to split. All three of us went out to a lake
outside of Atlanta to a house owned by the owner of
the bar to spend the weekend.
Karen was a really splendid looking young woman. She
told me that she wanted to sun bathe nude and that the
locals were looking at her and what should she do. I
suggested she climb up on the roof of the house so they
could not see her. That is what she did.
Bill and I went to see Jeremiah Johnson(the movie)at the local
movie house. He loved that movie. Before the movie he
said, "Listen to them". I said what? He said, "Listen
to them chomping on the popcorn". Billy really did
have sharp sensitive hearing. He mentions his acute
hearing in Kentucky Ham.
I knew him at Green Valley School when he came down from Dobbs
Ferry,NY to finish Kentucky Ham in the fall of 1972.
He was staying at the Motel. Some time later he got an
apartment in Deland.
One night after we had been drinking we came back to
GVS and he drove in odd S curves on the way back. More
off the road than on. Once we got back to GVS I
declined to get back in the car when he wanted to go
out for more music and drinking.
The next day I got a note from the receptionist in
the Big House to call Billy at the hospital in Deland.
He had been in a car wreck but survived it OK. He
asked me to bring him some cigarettes and science
fiction books. I did both. But then he wanted me to go
to the drug store and get him some paregoric which I
refused to do. I asked him what he was going to do
with it. He said he would soak the cigarettes in it
and smoke them. I said no way. He felt the doctors
were cutting back on his pain medication. I told him
to listen to his doctors.
I like to remember Bill Jr. like he was in the Fall
of 1972 and the way he was in 1973 and 1974.
When he and Karen split in Atlanta he went to
California and fell on really hard times. And also in
Boulder. He was in great pain the times he called me
on the phone over the next few years. I met his old
man twice here in Washington D.C. Once at a reading
at Georgetown University and again at Lisner
auditorium on the G.W.University campus after a
reading with Allen Ginsburg. Both of them were
friendly and happy to meet a friend of Billy's.
But he really was cursed from birth.
The first time I met him in the fall of 1972 in the
Big House kitchen I suggested he change his last name
to something else. But obviously his whole career was
being the son of William Burroughs. Before he died he
told his father that he(Billy)had ruined
his(Billy)life trying to be like him(the old man).
