DISGRACELAND - William S. Burroughs: Obscenity, a Decapitated Mouse, and the Deadly William Tell Routine

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

William S. Burroughs was a literary icon whose novel Naked Lunch, one of the signature works of the Beat Generation, was banned and went on trial for obscenity. His writing inspired generations of musicians, from the Rolling Stones and Patti Smith to Nirvana and Sonic Youth. But long before all that, in 1951, when he was an unknown and mostly failed writer, William S. Burroughs made the most fateful decision of his life when he pointed a gun at a highball glass balanced on top of his wife’s head…and pulled the trigger.To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership.Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan GroupTikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about William S. Burrows are insane. He left his son and wife alone in a foreign country so he could go score ayahuasca in the jungle. He shot the head off a mouse, while the person holding it by the tail feared for their life.

He was a convicted killer who only did 13 days in jail. and all this before he became a literary icon. An icon whose novel, Naked Lunch, one of the signature works of the beat generation, was banned and went on trial for obscenity. William Burroughs' writing was so evocative that it inspired generations of musicians, from the Rolling Stones and Patty Smith to Kirk Cobain

to make great music. Unlike that loop I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Modern Life is Luscious, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to come on to my house by Rosemary Cooney. And why would I play you that specific slice of forbidden candy cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on September 6, 1951. And that was the day that William S. Barrows, at the time an unknown and mostly failed writer,

made the most fateful decision of his life when he pointed a gun at a highball glass balanced atop his wife's head and pulled the trigger. On this episode, Aahuasca in the jungle, guns in Mexico, obscenity, literary icons, in William S. Barrows. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is... disgrace land. It's late. You're in your room looking at your phone because you're 15. What else you're going to be doing on a Tuesday night? Homework? Not likely. You're scrolling TikTok, going on a deep dive of Kurt Cobain interviews that populate infinitely in your feed. Because you're not a conformist

like the other kids at school. You're not into Cardi B or Imagine Dragons or whatever the fuck. I don't even know. I'm not going to pretend I know. You like classics like REM, SoundGuard. Sonic Youth, Nirvana is your favorite. Last year, your older sister, she played you heart-shaped box, and you were instantly hooked. Not just on Nirvana's music, but on Kurt Covain's whole vibe.

Kurt understood the world for what it truly was. Bullshit. School? Bullshit. Work, bullshit. Conformity, bullshit. Total bullshit. Today, as you watch the same old interview clips, you discover something new.

It's Kurt Cobain talking to a German interviewer. Somehow they get on the subject of the beat poets. You understand the reference. You have your sister to think for that, too. She brought home a paperback copy of On the Road from her English lit class, and it blew your mind. Kurt isn't talking about Jack Kerouac, though. He says William Barrows is the king. He grins when he says that the two of them wrote a few letters back and forth to each other,

and that they even recorded together. Holy shit, a Kirk Coimane recording that you'd never heard. Immediately you flip over to YouTube and find the song that he's talking about. The priest, they called him. There's a picture of Kurt with a frail-looking old man in glasses and a hat. Tall, bone-sin. You hit play, and this old man takes you on a chilling tale of a heroin addict searching for one last fix on Christmas Eve,

while Kurt contributes scraps of paint-peeling feedback on guitar. It's dark, haunting. Suddenly, there's a call from the kitchen and you're snapped back to reality. Dinner time. In the hallway, you ask your sister if she's ever heard of William Barrows. Yeah, she tells you. He's like the guy who taught Jack Carowack and Alan Ginsberg how to write or something like that. At the dinner table, you ask your dad if he knows Barros.

Dad smiles. Definitely. He's the guy who inspired the best of the best of the best of the dinner table. man named Steely Dan. Look it up, he says. On second thought, don't. Though of course you do, and it's gross. A Steely Dan is a steam-powered build-over, something like that. Even better your dad tells you. Barrow's inspired Mick and Keith's lyrics for, and you're rolling your eyes as your old man says this for the millionth time, the greatest rock record ever made, exile on Main Street. After dinner, you keep Googling. You read about William Barrows, the godfather of punk,

hanging out with Patty Smith and Lou Reed. William Barrows, the pioneer of the avant-garde, who inspired Jean-Michel Basquiat. William Barrows, the enigma. Conservative, gum-loving, and gay. And then there's William Barrows, the drug addict, and William Barrows, the criminal. And of course, William Barrows, the murderer.

1951, Mexico City. He took a deep breath and cocked the handgun. gun. He tried not to think about how bad his hands were shaking or how it felt like bugs were crawling all over his skin. He licked his thin, dry lips. God, he needed another drink or another joint, anything. First, he needed to hit his target. Thirty-seven-year-old William Burroughs raised the 380 pistol in the air. Ten feet ahead of him stood a bus boy, trembling. And Burroughs lined up his shot. And the busboy shut his eyes tight. He took another deep breath. The bus boy stretched his arm out away from him and whispered a prayer under his breath. Barros went still. His hands

quit shaking. And then he fired. The bullet flew out of the barrel and tore through its intended target. Bones, blood, and body parts went flying in all directions. The bus boy opened his eyes slowly. He could See the tail of the mouse still pinched between his fingers. The rest of the mouse's body was splattered against the wall behind him, except the head, which came clean off and was now spinning like a bloody top by the doorway of this bar of storage room. A cheer rose up in the room. William Burrows gave a slight nod and put the pistol back in his holster.

He smirked and looked over at John Healy, the American owner of this expat bar in Mexico City. Told you I could do it. John just shook his head and pulled out a hundred-p-po note. Burroughs snatched the bill triumphantly. He didn't really need the money since his parents still sent him a couple hundred bucks a month, but a bet was a bet. And John slapped him on the back.

He grabbed a few bottles of liquor and they turned to head back upstairs to the party. As they were doing so, Burroughs looked down and saw the mouse's bloody head lying on the floor. He almost screamed when it opened its eyes and looked at him. And now, the decapitated mouse's head was speaking. You really seemed to be compensating for something with that gun. Burroughs closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them again, the mouse's head lay motionless in the doorway. Six months ago, William Burroughs kicked heroin.

And still, these hallucinations stalked him. At least he was clean, though. For good this time, he was sure. Although, clean was a relative term for William S. Burroughs. Clean didn't include alcohol or opium. It definitely didn't include marijuana. Those weren't hard drugs. No danger of forming a habit.

Burroughs followed John Healy to his apartment above the bounty bar. In Mexico City, the bounty bar was the favorite hangout of Barrows and his wife, Joan Volmer. Every day at 5 o'clock, they grabbed a time. table near the front window and worked their way through a bottle of tequila, while watching their four-year-old son and Joan's seven-year-old daughter play on the sidewalk. This was William Barrows' new habit, not junk, drinking, alongside Joan who gobbled amphetamines by the handful and leveled them out with tequila or gin starting around 8 a.m. No special occasion required. Today, however, was a special occasion. Burroughs was finally back in Mexico City after

a two-month journey through the Amazon rainforest in search of a mystical hallucinichent. The trip was a disaster. He never found the drug, and to make matters worse, Joan was furious at him for leaving her alone with two small children while he went on a boondoggle with Lewis Marker, a student friend 15 years his junior. Didn't help that Barros was sleeping with him the whole time. Joan knew her husband-liked men, but his crush on Lewis was turning into an obsession. It gave her bad feeling. Booze in hand, Burroughs and John Healy stumbled up to Healy's apartment. And before they opened the door, Burroughs hesitated.

The latest hallucination had spooked him. It felt like a premonition. He had to get out of here. He told John he was going to take a walk into town. And he returned a few hours later to find the party in high gear. Lewis Marker, that student friend and sometime lover, was chatting up a curvaceous blonde, and Joan was sloshing another drink

and mumbling a story to their host. The bad feelings washed over Burroughs again. This party was dull. Hell, off the drugs, everything was dull. If he wanted excitement tonight, he was going to have to make it himself. So William Burroughs stood up and made his announcement. Darling, he said, looking at Joan,

I think it's time for our William, tell routine. 1965, Boston, Massachusetts. The unmistakable sound of wood slamming into wood reverberated through the courtroom. Alan Ginsberg stood up and approached the stand. America's most famous and controversial poet was about to testify for the defense.

Not in defense of a person. He was defending a book. Specifically, William Burroughs' Magnum Opus, Naked Lunch. After his own masterpiece, Howell, was banned in California in 1955, Alan Ginsberg and his publishers have been able to overturn the decision in court. Now, a decade later, Ginsburg was trying to do the same for his friend, here to convince the court that the book in fact had literary merit,

and thus First Amendment protection, that it was not pornography, but a work of art with redeeming value. As he raised his hand to be sworn in, Alan Ginsberg cut quite a figure, a mop of curly hair hanging beneath the balding top of his head, a beard descending past his shirt collar, yet his three-piece suit was perfectly tailored. He looked like a wild-eyed English professor after one too many cups of coffee. On the opposite side of the witness stand, stood an attorney. Mr. Ginsburg, would you please tell the court whether or not or to what extent

naked lunch the book has had importance for your own creative work. Alan Ginsberg cleared his throat. He leaned forward to give his answer, and as he did, memories of Tangier flashed through his mind. William Burroughs stumbled into the kitchen. He turned around in a panic as the doctor burst through the doorway behind him. The bastard was dressed in full Nazi regalia, a swastika on each arm. Burroughs tried to run, but it was too late. The doctor plunged a syringe deep into his arm. The doctor was saying, cackling really, his eyes wild with madness. Hold still, you must take the cure.

Burroughs pushed the doctor away and again, tried to run. He stepped out into a dank alley, but a dead cat lying on the dirt stopped him in his tracks. Blood oozed out from a hole in the feline's head. Then its eyes shot open and spoke. What's the matter, Bill? Cat cut your tongue? William Burroughs lurched back and,

terror. He turned to escape and nearly slammed into someone. Thank God it was a familiar face. Ginsburg. His friend, his savior, his obsession. Suddenly, they weren't in an alley anymore, but standing in a cramped kitchen. It looked just like the apartment in New York where they bonded after that business in Mexico City, a bond that quickly turned into a love affair, an affair that became an all-consuming obsession for Burroughs, so intense that it scared Ginzburg. After two months, Ginsburg broke it off. And that's when Burroughs split the United States for here, Tangier, the lawless internationally run city in Morocco. Now Ginsburg was right in front of him. Burroughs reached out to embrace him, but Ginsburg just pushed him away. He forced Burroughs his head down towards a huge cast iron pot

boiling on the stove and lifted up the lid. Burroughs looked down. Is he cooking in there, he wondered? Ginsburg gave the answer, although his mouth didn't move. Brains. It was almost telepathic. Burroughs saw a mass of white worms

writhing and squirming in the pot. He screamed. He snapped his head up toward the ceiling, and he was back in the bright white hospital room. A doctor watched him as he strained against the bonds that held him down. no swastikas, no Nazi regalia. Reality set in.

Barrows was kicking junk again. He'd been through this cycle more times that he could count. And this time, after three days of hell, he was finally starting to come back to Earth. The doctor muttered something in German as he prepared another injection. He shot Barrows full of sedatives, but not enough to completely knock him out. For the cure to work, he needed to be conscious.

Burroughs groaned in pain as the needle stabbed him again. He would later portray this doctor as the villain Dr. Benway in his book, Naked Lunch. For now, he was so desperate to get off the junk that he was willing to try anything. After Alan Ginsberg broke it off with him, William Burroughs arrived in Tangier wrecked. He blew through the monthly stipend his parents sent him on young male prostitutes, but that only helps so much. For total numbness, he turned to drugs. And in Tangier, in 1955, drugs were everywhere.

It took no time to get hooked on the German painkiller, Yucadol. It got so bad that he quit bathing, quit eating, but he kept writing. Even if it was just letters to Ginsburg, who, despite the breakup, was still acting as his literary agent. These letters are filled with grim portraits of addiction and depravity. Stories so dark, they gave Alan Ginsberg nightmares. And that's how Ginsburg knew they were good. He begged his friend to get clean and pull these bits together into a novel. Thus, William Burroughs was subjecting himself to the cure once again.

It took several more attempts and a trip to a London clinic, but by 1957, Burroughs was mostly clean. In letters, he asked Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac to visit him, to help turn what he'd been writing into a real manuscript. They were nervous. Newspapers reported the tensions in Tangier were rising. Moroccans were calling for the city to be returned to their control, and there were large protests.

Violence was in the air. Burroughs downplayed the danger and assured his friends they would be safe. A decade ago, the trio explored the seedy underbelly of New York, giving rise to the beat generation. Now, Barros, Ginsburg, and Kerouac were finally together again, even if Ginsburg had arrived with his new partner in tow. When they stepped off the boat together, the jealousy cut right through William Burrows his heart like a bullet.

He channeled that jealousy and pain into his writing, writing that it now replaced sex and drugs as his addiction of choice. His new routine was this, wake up, swim, or row a boat in the bay, eat breakfast and pop mahjoon, basically the original hashwork. Brownie, before settling in to handwrite up to 6,000 words a day. Kerouac and Ginsberg tried to make sense of his notes and scribbles and typed them into a

workable manuscript. The schedule was grueling, but soon the vivid sights and sounds of Tangier were coming to life as the dreamlike interzone of naked lunch. Meanwhile, the protests in Tangier turned into outright conflict. Barrows on his way home from his morning workout, passed by a large group of protesters pushing up against a wall of French soldiers, screaming at them to go home. The soldiers inched backwards slowly, until suddenly one of them fired into the crowd. People scattered in all directions. And as the crowd cleared, Burroughs stood there horrified, watching a soldier pull a body out of the water.

A bullet lodged in the forehead. He closed his eyes and shook his head, but when he opened them, the body was still there. This was no hallucination. It was a sign. Tangier was changing. By 1958, he left Tangier for Paris, following Ginsberg to the notorious Beat Hotel, a seedy 42-room artist hangout,

where they rearranged Barrows' text by literally cutting it up and splicing it back together. The cut-up technique and naked lunch became Barrows' signature and later inspired the lyrics of Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and others. The result was a series of, of semi-connected stories that touched on everything. Political violence and bloodshed, withdrawal,

addictions to drugs, to sex, to power. The result was dark, complicated work. In many ways, yes, it was obscene, but did it have literary merit? Absolutely. Back in the Boston courtroom, that's exactly what Alan Ginsberg testified. When asked, he said, the book is a confession. The important thing that struck me was the enormous courage it took to make such a total confession. In his opinion, it was a work of literary genius.

The court disagreed. They upheld the ban on naked lunch, but it didn't last long. Two months later, the Supreme Court overturned the decision. The case stands as the last obscenity trial of a work of literature in American history. As for William Burroughs,

the notoriety made him a star. He rubbed elbows with Jimmy Page and Andy Warhol. He appeared on Saturday Night Live. But no matter how high he ascended, there was always something pulling him back. Back to a warm late summer night in Mexico City, September of 1951. The night a little party trick went horribly wrong. The night William S. Burroughs took a shot and wound up taking a life. We'll be right back. After this, word, word, word. In the darkness, he can only hear the voice screaming. William Barrows blindly pushed his way through an unfamiliar building.

It was the dead of night. He was half asleep. He ran his hand along the way until he finally found a door. It swung open and he can now see clearly in the moonlight. Mexico City. Outside the bounty bar, his favorite hangout. His four-year-old son lying on the dirt. road, sobbing, begging for help. His mother, Joan Volmer, Burroughs' wife, was nowhere to be seen.

Burroughs grabbed the boy, pulling him tight to his chest. He whirled around and then he saw them. Men and women surrounding him, all dressed in black and white, convict suits, screaming, something, pointing at him. He couldn't make it out at first, but then the word hit him. guilty, guilty, guilty. They were screaming it over and over, and they were all around, everywhere. He turned in circles trying to find a gap as they continued to step forward, closing in.

William Burroughs awoke from his dream with a start. He could hear the whine of mosquitoes, the rustling of bats, calls from God knows what out in the jungle. This wasn't Mexico City. He was in the Amazon rainforest. the hunt for the answer to all of his problems. The miracle drug that could cure his heroin addiction, Yahweh, better known as ayahuasca.

The natives claimed it could give you the power to communicate telepathically and that it could cure addictions, addictions to sex, addictions to drugs. In 1951, William Burroughs still held out hope for a respectable life. His grandfather was an inventor who made a fortune on an early, version of the adding machine. A fortune that even now, at 37 years old, allowed Burroughs' family to support him with a monthly allowance. They wanted respectable things for him, too.

Career, family. But a drug-addicted, failed writer with a thing for other men was pretty far from their mid-20th century vision of respectability. Next to Burroughs on the cot, wasn't his four-year-old son or his wife, but his 21-year-old lover, Louis Marker. Well, Lover was probably too strong of a word. Sure, Lewis slept with Burroughs, but he did so for money. And Lewis did like the older man's wild stories and outrageous sense of humor. But economics aside, Lewis preferred the ladies. He was slim, young, and straight, which made him just William Burroughs' type.

Unfortunately, their search for Yahe was a complete bust. They never found the drug. and for the last three days they've been stuck on the front porch as some American botanist place deep in the jungle while rain poured down from above. In the darkness, Burroughs tried to shake off his nightmare. He looked over at Lewis sleeping next to him, and he knew he shouldn't reach out.

Lewis was not one for affection. But still, the nightmare had been so real, and they were alone in the jungle. Barrows stretched his arm over looking for comfort, and Lewis pushed him away. way. Slack off, man. Get some rest. The rejection was too much. Tears poured down Burroughs's cheeks. He knew Lewis would never love him. Deep inside, he also knew that no miracle drug could ever change him. A wave of sadness washed over him. And then he thought about Joan, alone with the children.

It was time to get back. On September 1st, 1951, William Burroughs' return. William Burroughs' returned to Mexico City. He was relieved to find a son Billy safe and sound, but his wife, Joan, looked stressed and totally strung out. She berated him for leaving her alone, and they argued constantly. It depressed Burrows even more, rejected by Lewis and disappointing his wife, pushing 40 and never holding down a real job. Supposedly he was a writer, but without Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac around to help him. His motivation had come to a standstill. His drinking got worse. He was washed up, hopeless. These thoughts bounced around in his head as he walked away from John Healy's apartment and into town. He tried to cast them out just as he was trying to rid his brain of that last

hallucination. The one where the decapitated dead mouse spoke to him. He watched the sun sink down into the horizon, like his life was sinking down with it. Enough of this bullshit. He had to be around other people and get out of his own head. William Burroughs left his own pity party and returned to the real party. Clearly, he had some catching up to do, that everyone else was wasted. Joan was talking loudly to John, although it was hard to make out her words. Gestering with one hand, she knocked over her purse. Pills of all shapes and colors went flying under the carpet,

as she dove down and frantically started picking them up. Across the room, Lewis was ignoring Burroughs completely, his hand on a legy blonde, laughing at one of his lame jokes. Burroughs burned with jealousy. To be rejected is one thing, but to be ignored, that was something he simply could not stand. He fixed himself a drink, mixing bad Mexican gin with lime soda. He gulped it down, and then he had another and another. He felt the 100-P-o note in his pocket. Maybe tonight was the night

He could head back into town to score Six months clean Six months like six slow drops in a bucket Fuck it He knew it wouldn't last As he reached for the money in his pocket His hand grazed the pistol Maybe he could find some other way to entertain himself

Some other way to make sure He had the full attention of everyone in the room Lewis always did love his outrageous sense of humor. Burroughs stumbled to his feet. He watched as Joan continued to grab pills off the dirty carpeted floor. He pulled out the gun with a theatrical flourish and cocked it loudly. Everyone in the room turned their eyes to him. He had their undivided attention. He looked at his wife with a mischievous gleam in his eye. Darling, I think it's time for our William Tell routine. The William Tell routine, of course, was the one where Joan placed something on the top of her head

and Burrough shot it off cleanly with one squeeze of the trigger on his 380 pistol. It sent any party into a tizzy. As soon as he made the suggestion, the room grew quiet. The words hung there like a dare. Under the effects of the booze and pills, Joan felt fearless. She stood up, grabbed a highball glass, and placed it on top of her head. She called her husband's bluff. Everyone continued to stare, wondering what was going to happen next.

No choice now, but to follow through. Or so William Burroughs thought. He also thought of the mouse he just shot a few hours earlier. That was ten feet away. Joan was only six feet in front of him. Easy shot. He took a breath. She's just six feet away.

Aim high. He raised the gun. and he pulled the trigger. The shot rang out. The glass fell to the ground in front of him spinning in concentric circles wider and wider. He looked over at Joan, who was no longer standing. She was lying face down on the floor.

Lewis ran to her side and rolled her over. He screamed. Blood trickled out from a hole in her forehead. The bullet was lodged in her brain. In Joan Vomer, William Burroughs' wife was dead. 1982, Lawrence, Kansas. 68-year-old William Burroughs raised the heavy 12-gauge shotgun.

He took aim. Without hesitation, he fired. The gun kicked back into his shoulder as the shot rang out through the woods. It was immediately followed by another loud bang. This one coming from the spray paint can he was shooting at, which was now spurting red liquid. Burroughs grabbed a pair of shotgun shells and reloaded. He aimed at another spray paint can.

He blasted it and watched red paint go flying as the pressurized can shot up 100 feet into the air before sailing back down and smashing into the ground in front of his barn. The paint splashed against a huge plywood canvas leaning against the side of the barn, creating an eerie pattern of splatter marks pierced by Buckshot. He examined his work.

Not bad. After the Naked Lunch Obscenity trial, William Burroughs returned to New York City as a literary star. In the 70s, he reveled in his newfound celebrity, entertaining famous guests like Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, and David Bowie in a Lower East Side apartment he called The Bunker. New York in the 1970s was every bit as lawless, as Tangier was in the 1950s.

The city was a wash and heroin, and it wasn't long before he was hooked once again. That's how Burroughs ended up here, in the small college town of Lawrence, Kansas. Friends knew he wasn't doing well. They urged him to get out of the city and away from temptation. Out in the heartland,

and away from his drug connections, he could mostly stay clean. Once again, a new addiction to replace an old one, this time, methadone. but also painting, painting with shotguns. It all started by accident. He was testing the site on a new 12-gauge, and by chance he fired it at a scrap piece of plywood.

When he came closer to look at the markings, the beauty of the striations where the buckshot damaged the wood struck him. It was a perfect metaphor for his life. Beauty after destruction. He experimented with the technique and soon he was stringing up cans of spray paint above the plywood. They were pressurized, so they exploded and went flying into the air after a direct hit. He loved the way they added random splashes of color across the wood,

like Jackson Pollock packing heat. Every time he lined up a shot, he reminded himself to aim high. In aim high, he did. Even after moving to Kansas, William Burroughs only became more of a counterculture icon. He was in the lexicon of modern rock. Thirsted Moore of Sonic Youth and Kurt Cobain from Nirvana made pilgrimages to visit him. The Industrial Group Ministry shot up heroin in his living room during one of his many lapses. He collaborated with incredible singer-songwriters like Nick Cave and Tom Waits,

and he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. But even at this level of achievement, he had to continue to aim high because he failed to do so once on a warm summer night in Mexico City. The death of his wife caused a major scandal south of the border. For shooting and killing Joan Vomer, William Burroughs was arrested, spending 13 days in jail before his family bailed him out. The trial was delayed for years before he could finally leave the country.

He was convicted of manslaughter in absentia and received a two years suspended sentence. But no matter how high he aimed, Death continued to haunt him. His son, Billy, succumbed to addiction and died at age 33 of cirrhosis of the liver, the same thing that killed Jack Kerouac. Above all else, however, there was Joan. It wasn't until 1992, Burroughs claimed, that he was able to help Joan's soul find peace

with the help of a Native American shaman. Three years later, he was still wrestling with her ghost in his final book, My Education, A Book of Dream. which he wrote at the age of 81. William Burroughs, on the other hand, never found peace. No cure for his addictions. Instead, he learned how to create beauty out of destruction, shotgun paintings, dark portraits of addiction in his writing.

William S. Burroughs learned to channel his destructive impulses into his art. It saved his life. Unfortunately, he learned it too late to save the life of his life. His wife, Joan Vomer, is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show.

We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelandPod. And on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at DisgracelandPod.

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