William S. Burroughs Net Worth

William S. Burroughs Net Worth is
$19 Million

William S. Burroughs Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018

William Seward Burroughs II (/ˈbʌroʊz/; also known by his pen name William Lee; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century". His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films.He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studied English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attended medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he picked up the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of which grew into the Beat Generation, and later the 1960s counterculture.Much of Burroughs' work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Burroughs accidentally killed his second wife, Joan Vollmer, in 1951 in Mexico City, and was consequently convicted of manslaughter. In the introduction to Queer, a novel written in 1952 but not published until 1985, Burroughs states, "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan's death ... [S]o the death of Joan brought me into contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I had no choice except to write my way out". (Queer, 1985, p.xxii).Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64).In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947–1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. He died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.

Full Name	William S. Burroughs
Date Of Birth	February 5, 1914, St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Died	August 2, 1997, Lawrence, Kansas, United States
Place Of Birth	St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Height	6' 1" (1.85 m)
Profession	Writer, Actor, Soundtrack
Education	Mexico City College, Harvard University, John Burroughs School, Los Alamos Ranch School
Nationality	American
Spouse	Joan Vollmer (m. 1946–1951), Ilse von Klapper (m. 1937–1946)
Children	William S. Burroughs Jr.
Parents	Mortimer Perry Burroughs, Laura Hammon Lee
Awards	John Scott Legacy Medal and Premium
Nominations	Nebula Award for Best Novel, Locus Award for Best Short Story
Movies	William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, Naked Lunch, The Junky's Christmas, Drugstore Cowboy, Häxan, Chappaqua, The Discipline of DE, Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs: Commissioner of Sewers, Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees, Bloodhounds of Broadway, Towers Open F...
Star Sign	Aquarius

#	Trademark
1	Gravelly voice, a fedora tipped to the right with heavy glasses and dark, sardonic sense of humor.

#	Quote
1	[Naked Lunch] The writer sees himself reading to the mirror as always ... He must check now and again to reassure himself that The Crime Of Separate Action has not, is not, cannot occur ... Anyone who has ever looked into a mirror knows what this crime is and what it means in terms of lost control when the reflection no longer obeys ... Too late to dial Police ... I personally wish to terminate my services as of now in that I cannot continue to sell the raw materials of death ... Yours, sir, is a hopeless case and a noisome one ... "Defense is meaningless in the present state of our knowledge," said The Defense looking up from an electron microscope ... Take your business to Walgreen's. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight. I don't know how to return it to the white reader. You can write or yell or croon about it ... paint about it ... act about it ... shit it out in mobiles . . . So long as you don't go and do it ..
2	Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
3	Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
4	You see, should I stand in front of a landscape and paint it, I'm completely ignoring the factor of time. While I am painting it, it's changing, clouds are changing, all sorts of things. So there's the myth there of someone creating in a timeless vacuum.
5	It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formulae is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally FUNCTIONAL, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae.
6	I've seen villages in South America with no police whatever. Then the cops would arrive, then the sanitary inspectors, and before you know it they've got all the problems - crime, juvenile delinquency, the whole works - just like us.
7	There is a boy sitting at the counter thin faced, his eyes all pupils, I see he is hooked and sick.
8	Do not try and cheat the muse.
9	We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems.
10	[Naked Lunch, Dr. Benway] Jeder macht eine kleine dummheit.
11	Wouldn't it be great, as Scott Peck suggests, if all medical students had to undergo the symptoms and feeling of a spectrum of illnesses. From acute infections to terminal cancer - and Kuru, the laughing sickness. Just a month for each exposure, controlled of course, and a good heavy dose of excruciating pain. So they'll know what that feels like.
12	The program of the ruling elite in Orwell's 1984 was: "A foot stamping on a human face forever!" This is naive and optimistic. No species could survive for even a generation under such program. This is not a program of eternal, or even long-range dominance. It is clearly an extermination program.
13	Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention
14	One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and don't know they know... Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough... So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness.
15	If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically for the "higher ups" so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it
16	There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
17	We must all face the fact that our leaders are certifiably insane or worse
18	God save the Queen and a fascist regime ... a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire.
19	If a weaker baboon be attacked by a stronger baboon the weaker baboon will either (a) present his hrump fanny I believe is the word, gentlemen, heh heh for passive intercourse or (b) if he is a different type baboon more extrovert and well-adjusted, lead an attack on an even weaker baboon if he can find one.
20	If everyone is to be made responsible for everything they do, you must extend responsibility beyond the level of conscious intention.
21	Society is cancerous and bureaucracy is its cancer.
22	Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.
23	I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.
24	A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom. In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased.
25	He asked if I wouldn't like to live completely without problems, say in Greece maybe, nice climate, everything provided? I say: "When we find out what we are actually doing and who we actually are, that is the point of living...it may be only a few seconds...a few seconds of significant actions, out of a lifetime..."
26	The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility.
27	Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.
28	England has the most sordid literary scene I've ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy's writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They're all scratching each other's backs.
29	If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you've lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.
30	Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
31	The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.
32	A consumer society is about simplifying and degrading the consumer as well as the product.
33	All abilities are paid for with disabilities. Perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. Insight into one area involves blind spots in another.
34	There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.
35	As soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.
36	Many doctors are drawn to this profession (psychology) because they have an innate deficiency of insight into the motives, feelings and thoughts of others, a deficiency they hope to remedy by ingesting masses of data.
37	All political movements are basically anti-creative - since a political movement is a form of war. "There's no place for impractical dreamers around here," that's what they always say. "Your writing activities will be directed, kindly stop horsing around."
38	A paranoid is someone who has a small idea of what is going on. A psychotic is someone who has found out what is going on.
39	Never go into business with a religious SOB, as he'll always have his God telling him how to screw you on the deal.
40	The mark of a basic shit is that he can't mind his own business.
41	Anyone from outer space would look at this planet and say, 'I want to see the manager'.
42	I don't mind people disliking me. The question is, what are they in a position to do about it?
43	If civilized countries want to return to Druid Hanging Rites in the Sacred Grove or to drink blood with the Aztecs and feed their Gods with the blood of human sacrifice, let them see what they actually eat and drink. Let them see what is on the end of that long newspaper spoon." -- "Naked Lunch
44	A simopath - the technical name for this disorder escapes me - is a citizen convinced that he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army, and discharge cures it.
45	America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.
46	[on his alma mater, Harvard University]: "I hated the University and I hated the town it was in. Everything about the place was dead. The University was a fake English setup taken over by the graduates of fake English public schools."
47	The road to the western lands is by far the most heavily guarded and therefore most dangerous road in all the world.
48	The face of evil is always the face of total need.
49	A functioning police state needs no police.
50	Language is a virus from outer space.
51	In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.
52	Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.

#	Fact
1	Did not start writing until he was 39 years old.
2	The prosecution of Burroughs' book "Naked Lunch" by the Comonwealth of Massachusetts is considered the last major obscenity trial in the United States. The book was initially found obscene, but the Massachusetts Supreme Court overturned the decision on appeal in 1966. For the initial trial, Grove Press had gathered together an impressive list of "experts" such as Norman Mailer to defend the book, but Burroughs' modern classic initially lost and was declared obscene in Massachusetts. However, the state Supreme Court (Memoirs v. Massachusetts) found that the book "was not without social value, and therefore, not obscene." With the ruling, an era that began in 1870s when anti-smut crusader Anthony Comstock led the charge for stricter enforcement of obscenity laws by the federal and state governments came to an end.
3	Highlander (1986) director Russell Mulcahy bought the rights to Burroughs' novel "The Wild Boys" in the 1980s with the intention of making it into a feature film. When the project fell through, he used the book as the basis for the 1985 Duran Duran video of the same name.
4	Produced several albums throughout the 1980s featuring spoken word and his own style of electronic music.
5	After shooting his second wife Joan, he fled to Tangiers, Morocco, and remained there for many years, a fugitive in both his birth country of the U.S. and in his adopted homeland of Mexico.
6	In 1937, while studying medicine in Germany, he agreed to marry a German Jewish woman named Ilse Herzfeld Klapper so she could escape Nazi persecution and become a U.S. citizen. They never lived together, separating immediately upon entering the U.S., but remained friends, meeting weekly for lunch. Burroughs formally divorced her nine years later so he could marry his second wife, Joan.
7	Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 84-87. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
8	Created the "cut-up" style of writing along with Brion Gysin, in which sections of a story are cut up and reassembled to create a new story. This technique is similar to the "tape collage" style of experimental music, which Burrough was known to dabble in.
9	Was a good friend of Genesis P-Orridge, leader of the avant-garde/industrial band Throbbing Gristle. The two were frequent correspondents and great fans of each others' work, and P-Orridge collaborated with Burroughs on his tape work occasionally.
10	Was addicted to heroin. This was a recurring theme throughout many of his novels.
11	Lived in Tangiers (Morocco) for several years, partly to avoid the legal and social fallout from shooting his wife when they were living in Mexico and partly because Tangiers was even cheaper to live in than Mexico, which meant that the allowance he got from his family trust fund allowed him to live in luxury.
12	Was an heir to the Burroughs Cash Register Co. fortune. A family trust fund allowed him to write without holding other jobs.
13	Was a good friend of Kurt Cobain. He was even asked to appear in Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box" video as Jesus Christ, but later refused. He made an EP with Cobain titled "The Priest They Called Him".
14	In 1951 Burroughs and his common-law wife Joan got drunk at a party in Mexico City, where they were living (he was a heroin addict and she was addicted to Benzedrine, and drugs were easier to come by in Mexico). They decided to do a "William Tell" act with Joan balancing a glass on her head and Burroughs shooting it off with a gun. He missed and Joan was killed. This incident was later worked into the movie adaptation of Burroughs' novel "Naked Lunch" (Naked Lunch (1991)).
15	His novel "Naked Lunch" provided the name for the famous rock group Steely Dan. "Steely Dan III From Yokohama" was the name of a rubber phallus used in the book.
16	Once lived in a windowless apartment in the basement of what used to be a YMCA. His friends often called the apartment "Bill's Bunker".
17	The acknowledgment given to him at the end of the film Blade Runner (1982) was for legal reasons. He had written a screenplay with an identical title (and completely different storyline), but it was never put into production.
18	He is featured on the song "Just One Fix" by Ministry with a vocal speaking part. Like frontman Al Jourgensen, Burroughs was also a heroin addict.

Writer

Title	Year	Status
The Black Meat	2012	Short novel Naked Lunch
Nova Express	2009	novel
The Japanese Sandman	2008	Short written by
Ghost at No. 9	2005	Documentary short
The Last Words of Dutch Schultz	2001	Short book "The Last Words of Dutch Schultz: A Fiction in the Form of a Film Script"
Ah Pook Is Here	1994	Short
The Junky's Christmas	1993	Short story
Drug-Taking and the Arts	1993	Documentary novel "The Naked Lunch"
Thanksgiving Prayer	1991	Short text by
Naked Lunch	1991	novel
The Black Rider	1990	TV Movie libretto
Drugstore Cowboy	1989	additional dialogue - uncredited
Taking Tiger Mountain	1983	story "Bladerunner"
The Discipline of D.E.	1982	Short short story
The Cut Ups	1966	Short story
Towers Open Fire	1963	Short writer
William Buys a Parrot	1963	Documentary short writer

Actor

Title	Year	Status	Character
The Book of Life	1998		Preacher on Radio (voice, uncredited)
The Dark Eye	1995	Video Game	Edwin / Narrator (voice)
Ripley's Believe It or Not!: The Riddle of Master Lu	1995	Video Game	Pesky Peasant (as William Lee)
Ah Pook Is Here	1994	Short	Narrator
The Junky's Christmas	1993	Short	Narrator (voice)
Thanksgiving Prayer	1991	Short	A Speaker
Drugstore Cowboy	1989		Tom the Priest
Bloodhounds of Broadway	1989		Butler (as William Burroughs)
Twister	1989		Man in Barn (as William Burroughs)
It Don't Pay to Be an Honest Citizen	1984
Decoder	1984		Old Man
Energy and How to Get It	1981	Short
Thot-Fal'N	1978	Short
The Cut Ups	1966	Short
Chappaqua	1966		Opium Jones
Towers Open Fire	1963	Short
Häxan	1922	Documentary	Narrator (1968 re-release) (voice, as William Burroughs)

Soundtrack

Title	Year	Status
Independent Lens		TV Series documentary performer - 1 episode, 2010 writer - 1 episode, 2010
The Sopranos		TV Series performer - 1 episode, 2006 writer - 1 episode, 2006
Elephant	2003	performer: "Meeting of International Conference of Technological Psychiatry" / writer: "Meeting of International Conference of Technological Psychiatry"
Modulations	1998	Documentary "Recalling All Active Agents"
William S. Burroughs: Commissioner of Sewers	1991	Documentary "Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt"
Home of the Brave: A Film by Laurie Anderson	1986	Documentary writer: "Language Is A Virus"

Miscellaneous

Title	Year	Status	Character
Venus Blue	1998	Short poetry excerpts - as William Burroughs
Shamans of the Blind Country	1981	Documentary narrator

Thanks

Title	Year	Status	Character
Good Will Hunting	1997	in memory of
Blade Runner	1982	thanks: for the use of the title "Blade Runner"

Self

Title	Year	Status	Character
William S. Burroughs in the Dreamachine	2015	Video documentary	Himself
MENTALLUSIONS: Radical Eclectic Films of Benjamin Meade	2012		Himself
Corso: The Last Beat	2009	Documentary
Words of Advice: William S. Burroughs on the Road	2007	Documentary	Himself
Ghost at No. 9	2005	Documentary short	Himself
U2: The Best of 1990-2000	2002	Video documentary	Old Man (segment "Last Night on Earth")
Sleep in a Nest of Flames	2001	Documentary	Himself
Ministry: Tapes of Wrath	2000	Video	Himself
Condo Painting	2000	Documentary
The Source: The Story of the Beats and the Beat Generation	1999	Documentary	Himself
The Nova Convention Revisited: William S. Burroughs and the Arts	1998	Video	Himself
Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles	1998	Documentary	Himself
Reputations	1996	TV Series documentary	Himself
Relics: Einstein's Brain	1994	Documentary	Himself
American Masters	1994	TV Series documentary	Himself
Great Performances	1994	TV Series	Himself
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues	1993		Himself (as William Burroughs)
Naked Making Lunch	1992	Documentary	Himself
Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees	1991	Documentary	James 'Hive' Maker
William S. Burroughs: Commissioner of Sewers	1991	Documentary	Himself
Heavy Petting	1989	Documentary	Himself
Gang of Souls: A Generation of Beat Poets	1989	Documentary	Himself
The Beat Generation: An American Dream	1987	Documentary	Himself (as William Burroughs)
Pirate Tape	1987	Short	Himself
Home of the Brave: A Film by Laurie Anderson	1986	Documentary	Himself
What Happened to Kerouac?	1986	Documentary	Himself (as William Burroughs)
Ornette: Made in America	1985	Documentary	Himself
Kerouac, the Movie	1985	Documentary	Himself (novelist)
Ajankohtainen kakkonen	1983	TV Series	Himself
Burroughs: The Movie	1983	Documentary
Arena	1981-1983	TV Series documentary	Himself
The Dream Machine	1983	Documentary short	Himself
Poetry in Motion	1982	Documentary	Himself
Saturday Night Live	1981	TV Series	Himself
Castelporziano, ostia dei poeti	1980	TV Movie documentary	Himself
Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds	1979	Documentary	Himself
Underground and Emigrants	1976	Documentary
Image Is Virus	1975	Documentary short	Himself
Bill and Tony	1972	Short	Himself
Prologue	1970/I		Himself
Cain's Film	1969	Documentary short	Himself
Poem Posters	1966	Short	Himself
William Buys a Parrot	1963	Documentary short	Himself

Archive Footage

Title	Year	Status	Character
Uncle Howard	2016/I	Documentary	Himself
Cinemassacre's Monster Madness	2014	TV Series documentary	Narrator
Beat Generation	2013	TV Movie documentary	Himself
Neurons to Nirvana	2013	Documentary
Out-Takes from the Life of a Happy Man	2012	Documentary	Himself
For No Good Reason	2012	Documentary	Himself
The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye	2011	Documentary	Himself (uncredited)
William S. Burroughs: A Man Within	2010	Documentary	Himself
Nova Express	2009		Narrator
Chelsea on the Rocks	2008	Documentary	Himself
Obscene	2007	Documentary	Himself
Speak Out	2007	TV Movie
Absolute Wilson	2006	Documentary	Himself
Wanderlust	2006	TV Movie documentary	Tom the Priest
SexTV	2006	TV Series documentary	Himself
Silenci?	2005	TV Series	Himself
Elephant	2003		Voice (text excerpts) (uncredited)
Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man	2003	Documentary	Himself
The Battle for 'I Am Curious-Yellow'	2003	Video documentary short	Himself
Destroy All Rational Thought	1998	Video	Himself
Arena	1994	TV Series documentary	Himself
Laurie Anderson: Collected Videos	1990	Video	Himself (uncredited)
Sonic Youth: Teenage Riot	1988	Video short	Himself (uncredited)
La edad de oro	1984	TV Series	Himself

Known for movies

Source

William S. Burroughs Net Worth

William S. Burroughs Net Worth is
$19 Million