William Seward Burroughs [ˈwɪljəm ˈsuɚd ˈbɜroʊz], né le 5 février 1914 à Saint-Louis au 4664 de Pershing Avenue, dans l'État du Missouri et mort dans sa propriété de Lawrence de complications liées à une crise cardiaque, le 2 août 1997, est un romancier et artiste américain.
Principalement connu pour ses romans hallucinés mêlant drogue, homosexualité et anticipation, il est associé à la Beat Generation et à ses figures emblématiques : ses amis Jack Kerouac et Allen Ginsberg. Il a élaboré le cut-up, technique littéraire consistant à créer un texte à partir d'autres fragments textuels d'origines diverses.
Wikipedia
“La vérité est là quand tous les mots sont effacés. Les mots ont été faits pour mentir.”
Truth is here when all words are rubbed out. Words were made to lie with.
en
Ultimes Paroles (1997), 31 décembre 1996
“Le sexe était peut-être l'ancre la plus lourde nous retenant dans le temps présent.”
Sex was perhaps the heaviest anchor holding one in present time.
en
La Machine molle (1968)
Ultimes Paroles (1997), 20 juillet 1997
Le Festin nu (1959)
“En thérapie il se présente des situations qu'il faut savoir traiter en expert.”
Ultimes Paroles (1997), 21 mars 1997
“Ce n'est pas la vérité qui blesse, c'est le mensonge éhonté.”
It is not the truth that hurts, it is the outrageous lie.
en
Ultimes Paroles (1997), 31 décembre 1996
The use of Atom bomb when it was not by any stretch of expediency necessary, getting near to the unforgivable sin, since there might not be anyone there to forgive it.
en
Ultimes Paroles (1997), 7 février, 1997
"All out of time and into space. Come out of the time-word 'the' forever. Come out of the body word 'thee' forever. There is nothing to fear. There is no thing in space. There is no word to fear. There is no word in space."
en
La Machine molle (1968)
Writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality, so [the] writer can escape the limits of reality.
en
Ultimes Paroles (1997), 2 décembre 1996
La Machine molle (1968)
“Gros Sel Mary » avait tous les « non » et aucun de ces « non » ne voulait jamais dire « oui.”
"Salt Chunk Mary" had all the "nos" and none of them ever meant "yes".
en
La Machine molle (1968)
Le Festin nu (1959)
“Sans friction, sans conflit, n'importe quel système s'arrêtera.”
With no friction, no conflict, any system will run down.
en
Ultimes Paroles (1997), 9 mars 1997
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.”
I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
Grand Street, no. 37 & The War Universe (1992)
Ordinary Men and Women
Naked Lunch (1959)
Contexte: The end result of complete cellular representation is cancer. Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand can live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus. (It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from more complex life-form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another — the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter.) Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.
"The War Universe", taped conversation, first published in Grand Street, No. 37 (1991) http://openlibrary.org/b/OL7452886M/Grand_Street_37_(Grand_Street)
Contexte: This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers.
Junkie (1953)
Contexte: A lot of people made quick easy money during the War and for several years after. Any business was good, just as any stock is good on a rising market. People thought they were sharp operators, when actually they were just riding a lucky streak. Now the Valley is in a losing streak and only the big operators can ride it out. In the Valley economic laws work out like a formula in high school algebra, since there is no human element to interfere. The very rich are getting richer and all the others are going broke. The big holders are not shrewd or ruthless or enterprising. They don't have to say or think anything. All they have to do is sit and the money comes pouring in. You have to get up with the Big Holders or drop out and take any job they hand you. The middle class is getting the squeeze, and only one in a thousand will go up. The Big Holders are the house, and the small farmers are the players. The player goes broke if he keeps on playing, and the farmer has to play or lose to the Government by default.
Opening Chapter
Naked Lunch (1959)
Contexte: Shooting PG is a terrible hassle, you have to burn out the alcohol first, then freeze out the camphor and draw this brown liquid off with a dropper—have to shoot it in the vein or you get an abscess, and usually end up with an abscess no matter where you shoot it. Best deal is to drink it with goof balls … So we pour it in a Pernod bottle and start for New Orleans past iridescent lakes and orange gas flares, and swamps and garbage heaps, alligators crawling around in broken bottles and tin cans, neon arabesques of motels, marooned pimps scream obscenities at passing cars from islands of rubbish … New Orleans is a dead museum. We walk around Exchange Place breathing PG and find The Man right away. It’s a small place and the fuzz always knows who is pushing so he figures what the hell does it matter and sells to anybody. We stock up on H and backtrack for Mexico. Back through Lake Charles and the dead slot-machine country, south end of Texas, nigger-killing sheriffs look us over and check the car papers. Something falls off you when you cross the border into Mexico, and suddenly the landscape hits you straight with nothing between you and it, desert and mountains and vultures; little wheeling specks and others so close you can hear wings cut the air (a dry husking sound), and when they spot something they pour out of the blue sky, that shattering bloody blue sky of Mexico, down in a black funnel … Drove all night, came at dawn to a warm misty place, barking dogs and the sound of running water.
“Modern man has lost the option of silence.”
The Ticket That Exploded (1962)
Contexte: The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle... yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.
"A Word to the Wise Guy"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
Forbes (2 April 2001), p. 172
"The Limits of Control"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
"The Limits of Control"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
"The Coming of the Purple Better One"
Exterminator! A Novel (1971)
“All modern systems are riddled with contradictions.”
"The Limits of Control"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
“Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.”
From "Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness", p. 201
Naked Lunch (1959)
"A Word to the Wise Guy"
The Adding Machine: Collected Essays (1985)
From the chapter entitled "And Start West," p. 5
From the chapter entitled "Lazarus Go Home," p. 62
Naked Lunch (1959)
Two Years Later: Mexico City Return
Queer: A Novel (1985)
“A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on.”
Quoted in Friend magazine (1970)
