The Daily Agenda for Sunday, February 5

Jim Burroway

February 5th, 2012

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Melbourne, VIC.

Also This Weekend: Belgian LGBT Film Festival: Brussels, Belgium; Whistler Ski Week, Whistler, BC.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
William S. Burroughs: 1914. A canonical figure of the Beat Generation, the novelist, poet, and spoken word performer’s best known work is his third novel, Naked Lunch. Published in 1959, it was immediately controversial for its obscene language, unabashed portrayal of Burroughs’s heroin addiction and frank descriptions of sex, including his own homosexuality. Naked Lunch was banned in Los Angeles and Boston, where it became last the work of literature to be prosecuted for being obscene in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court lifted the ban in 1966, following a series of trials that included testimony by Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer in support of Burroughs.

If there was a secret to Burroughs’s art, it was this: He simply put his chaotic life to paper. A longtime heroin addict, he and his wife fled to Mexico in 1950 after Louisiana police discovered letters between himself and Allen Ginsberg discussing a drug delivery. While there, he shot and killed his wife while playing “William Tell” at a party. He was eventually able to avoid imprisonment after witnesses testified that the gun went off accidentally. For the several decades, he was in and out of drug rehab and financially destitute much of the time before finally kicking the habit, temporarily, in the mid-1970s. It was at about that time when friends hit on the idea of booking him to read from his works in bookstores and other small performance spaces. His career as a performance artist was launched, which also revived his literary career. He went on to collaborate with Laurie Anderson, Throbbing Gristle, Kurt Cobain, Ministry, and Sonic Youth. He also appeared in Gus Van Sant’s 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy. He died in 1997 following a heart attack.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Timothy (TRiG)

February 5th, 2012

Naked Lunch was banned in Boston and Los Angeles, and is became the work of literature to be prosecuted for being obscene n Massachusetts.

Huh?

I’m guessing that is became the work should be it became the first work. Am I right?

TRiG.

Jim Burroway

February 5th, 2012

Actually, it should have read “it became the last work…

Sorry about that.

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