Class On Creative Reading - William S. Burroughs - 1/3

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  • Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
  • Lecture 1 of 3
    William S. Burroughs lecture on Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and A Short Trip Home, and Stephen King's The Shining. Burroughs also discusses exercises for increasing awareness, and the subjects of books as mental film, codes of conduct, heroes, and the film of Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch.
    Recorded August 1979, Naropa University
    This recording and the entire Naropa Collection is licensed under a CC BY-ND-NC 1.0 licence. This video is fair use of the material. Licence: creativecommon...
    This audio has been carefully selected and enhanced to ensure the highest quality of audio-clarity. Enjoy plugging in to this Master Class on creativity from legendary beat writer and lecturer W. S. Burroughs

Комментарии • 118

  • @patrickmccormack4318
    @patrickmccormack4318 5 лет назад +29

    "I'm postulating that the function of art, and I include in this category creative work in science -- that is, creation in the widest sense -- is to put us in touch with what we know and don't know that we know. You can't tell anybody anything he doesn't know already."
    -- William S. Burroughs

    • @Blissblizzard
      @Blissblizzard 2 года назад

      But never basic human decency, this intellectual masturbation is brought to you from Burrough's Word Salad Bar.
      Glass beads to the digital natives from just another boomer trustafarian snuff sex tourist.
      Naice!

  • @Modernmeemsshop
    @Modernmeemsshop 8 месяцев назад +2

    This man is a walking revolution of thought. I went to his grave and he has a tiny headstone, compared to his father. He deserves the biggest shrine to creative arts.

  • @Jack1Free
    @Jack1Free 4 года назад +27

    I was in this class, or one just like it, at Naropa 1981-ish...

    • @MichaelWaisJr
      @MichaelWaisJr 3 года назад +2

      You’re so lucky! I was born in ‘81! Big time Burroughsian since I was 15 years old. I hand-wrote a letter I mailed to him in 1996 (which he may or may not have read). I missed the opportunity to meet him in person or see him live. :(

    • @MichaelWaisJr
      @MichaelWaisJr 3 года назад +2

      However, I did have a fan sighting of Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights about 15 years ago! He was giving an elderly couple a tour of the building and the “Beat” room where Ginsberg first did his reading of “Howl”! It was so awesome! I was polite and didn’t interrupt him or act like an asshole “fan-boy”, especially since he was busy talking to those two other customers and I just let him do his thing. Was SO cool!!

    • @Blissblizzard
      @Blissblizzard 2 года назад +1

      @@MichaelWaisJr If you were 15 you were way too old for his sadistic practices, you must be gutted.

    • @Blissblizzard
      @Blissblizzard 2 года назад +1

      You were in his class, or maybe you were not? Intellectual rigour and eidetic recall right there.
      How the elites still dictate culture, this why we are where we are today kids.
      Folks will follow trust fund kids like Burroughs to hell and back kissing their feet all the while.
      How ironic after all those drugs and paranoia his scattered thought processes are permanently "cut up"

  • @superfuzzymomma
    @superfuzzymomma 11 лет назад +24

    This is a Master Class on writing! Rest in Peace William - Hope you made it to The Western Lands - VISIONARY SIR!!!

    • @Blissblizzard
      @Blissblizzard 2 года назад

      Oh that's SO super, momma, praising a sadistic pedophile.
      You should consider teaching mental gymnastics and or moral inversion.
      or Stay Fuzzy
      ... This generation of kids have it worst ever ...

  • @bfposner
    @bfposner 3 года назад +8

    Such a clear and insightful speaker and thinker.

  • @stimso
    @stimso 4 года назад +16

    His exercises work. The Job list others, like walking to see certain colors. Not paranoia, but the nexus of consciousness and external events. WSB was a real psychic explorer. Read his experiments and try 'em. Kind of a crank at times, but his hits make up for his misses.

  • @jacob3155
    @jacob3155 8 месяцев назад +2

    Here is a list of most of the novels and films Burroughs brings up in this lecture:
    Brion Gysin - The Process
    Nightcomers film
    Jaws 2 film
    Apocalypse Now film
    Burroughs - A Book of Breathing
    Samuel Beckett - Watt
    Conrad - An Outcast of the Islands
    Conrad - Lord Jim
    Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
    Cezanne - paintings
    Joyce - Ulysses
    The Wicker Man
    Stephen King - The Shining
    Denton Wells
    Paul Bowles - The Sheltering Sky
    Jane Bowles - My Sister's Hand in Mine
    Celine - Journey to the End of the Night
    Alien film
    The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

  • @rmdomainer9042
    @rmdomainer9042 7 лет назад +11

    Thanks! Nice with hours of material. He sounds so alert here. Different pitch in the voice too.

  • @CyanBlackflower
    @CyanBlackflower 7 лет назад +21

    Although I have not actually read a single book by W.S.B. , having listened to him read some of his works, and watched quite a few videos here on You Tube, I have come to highly respect and love the Man. To me, He is Brilliant, Insightful, Funny, Endearing, and Very Entertaining.

    • @BookClubDisaster
      @BookClubDisaster 6 лет назад +6

      Why don't you just go ahead and read one of his books? Warning: Naked Lunch may creep you out to no end. I'm still trying to recover.

    • @joelkavanagh1464
      @joelkavanagh1464 3 года назад

      ... bux suggestion :: ' nova express " ...

    • @Blissblizzard
      @Blissblizzard 2 года назад +1

      Sadistic pedophiles are especially endearing if you're a starving 8 yo boy.
      They leave no written record and didn't live off trust funds
      Be careful out there Pollyanna.

    • @CyanBlackflower
      @CyanBlackflower 2 года назад

      @@Blissblizzard Little Boy Blew...
      ...He Needed the Money!

    • @CyanBlackflower
      @CyanBlackflower 2 года назад +1

      It is even MORE advisable, a wise course of action, to refrain from drawing conclusions, until ALL the FACTS have been gathered, and properly processed.
      Doing otherwise is a capital mistake. It is reckless, foolish, and dangerous. Nothing good comes of it. I've heard some allegations about certain people all my life. Some may have basis in actual fact, some not. Most is just hearsay and are convoluted, biased imaging of something else entirely.
      I personally refuse to play ball, with stupid gossipers who try to come off as being educated, and or informed about things they know NOTHING about for certain. If you want to insinuate something, or call someone out, you had best be able to stand up, with verifiable conviction and back up your claims and words.
      I would prefer to TAKE away something of VALUE from the life of this man, that HAS intrinsic value, rather than linger around like a foul odour, engaging in worthless puerile name calling. The man is dead, so he CANNOT make choices that effect the present, living affairs.
      I have YET to meet someone without some Dirt on his or her hands. I don't give a FUCK. I haven't the time for the BULLSHIT.
      If opening one's mouth has no substance worthy of attention, then the ONLY thing that comes out - says MORE about the one talking, than it does about the one being talked about, no matter WHAT is said. Therefore it is perhaps advisable in such cases, to SAVE FACE ...by keeping the lower portion of it SHUT.

  • @johncoppola8105
    @johncoppola8105 4 года назад +8

    I just now researched the life of William S Burroughs and I was totally shocked by what I learned.

    • @rabihbourji2069
      @rabihbourji2069 4 года назад +1

      He killed a person,so did your great grandpa or grandpa,get over it.

    • @epictetus9221
      @epictetus9221 3 года назад +1

      @@rabihbourji2069 How do you know what they found shocking? Arrogant prick

    • @DarkAngelEU
      @DarkAngelEU 3 года назад

      You're me one week ago.

    • @MichaelWaisJr
      @MichaelWaisJr 3 года назад +2

      @@epictetus9221 Because it was either 1) That he shot his wife because he couldn’t quite come to terms with his homosexuality yet, or 2) He was a heroin addict. It’s usually either one thing or the other that people who’ve never read him complain about. The point is that he’s human. There are a lot of things that are just bad if not worse that a lot of celebrities who are successful today do. I judge the art, not the artist. I’ve never met the man, he wasn’t a “friend” of mine, neither he nor me asked one another to lend them any money. I really don’t care.

    • @epictetus9221
      @epictetus9221 3 года назад +1

      @@MichaelWaisJr Yeah, but the OP isn't you. Or me.

  • @joelkavanagh1464
    @joelkavanagh1464 3 года назад +1

    ... really DO love the man ... the grand-wizard of normality ... able to dis-rupt ALL with straight-foreward sentences ...

  • @amadeobuccinioni
    @amadeobuccinioni 11 лет назад +5

    thx very much for this precious upload! RIP Will

  • @Misserbi
    @Misserbi 8 месяцев назад

    It is interesting to note creative reading is a practice that is acquired by writing. Otherwise reading alone would be boring. To write is to read and vice versa. Furthermore, developing and applying concepts makes the process indelible. That I think is a successful reader!!

  • @68jeffrey72
    @68jeffrey72 7 лет назад +5

    I love these lectures. Thank you for posting!

  • @jaredriley6268
    @jaredriley6268 8 лет назад +16

    something about This man that is alluring.

  • @superfuzzymomma
    @superfuzzymomma 11 лет назад +6

    Most Important Advise from the "the most intelligent man in America" - Jack Kerouac said that. - William Seward Burroughs - 1914-1997

  • @trixie-rg5jj
    @trixie-rg5jj 8 месяцев назад

    Im in love with his voice omg so calming

  • @lisajojo4842
    @lisajojo4842 6 лет назад +4

    Great upload, thanks a lot!

  • @octemberfury
    @octemberfury 6 лет назад +11

    Haha, I always thought Great Gatsby would make a bad film as well, it isn't very cinematic and the sense of place is really vague.

    • @AndrewStuartBrown
      @AndrewStuartBrown 4 года назад

      Long Island and New York City. What's vague?

    • @MichaelWaisJr
      @MichaelWaisJr 3 года назад +2

      Well the movie was okay. But I mean, come on, did they really have to force-feed all that rap music in the DiCaprio movie that had NOTHING to do with the time period it was set in???

  • @davidsutherland6122
    @davidsutherland6122 9 лет назад +26

    Thank you for posting these lectures. Interesting and informative, to say the least, like his essays. How W.S.B. has gone largely undetected under "Post-Modern" philosophical probes is beyond me. Though Burroughs never addresses Philosophy directly, I can clearly and distinctly hear/read/think his concepts/notions resonating throughout the work of A. Ronell (who has indeed registered his name) and S. Zizek in particular. I don't have anything developed, and beyond the obvious possibility of projection on my part, there's definitely over-lap; "unknown knowns", time, and repetition for example. I'll stop here.

    • @AndrewStuartBrown
      @AndrewStuartBrown 4 года назад +1

      I think being the leading post-modernist author of fiction is to Philosopher what greatest dancer in the world is to being neighborhood boogie-board soloist.

    • @tobincharles8651
      @tobincharles8651 3 года назад +2

      @@AndrewStuartBrown you seem intellectual, congrats!

    • @tobincharles8651
      @tobincharles8651 3 года назад +2

      Look up Nick Land "Lemurian Time War", Deleuze "Societies of control". They directly reference Burroughs. Burroughs works are more modernist than post-modernist, see the first chapter of Deleuze's "A Thousand Plateaus", where the notion of cut-up seems to imply a supertextual dimension in which the cut up parts are unified.
      Also, Zizek is really on the border of post-modern thought; He is lacanian and hegelian. Although Lacan is a poststructuralist, his psychiatric views remain more in line with Freud's than postmodern psychologists. Hegel is the apotheosis of philosophical modernity.

    • @AndrewStuartBrown
      @AndrewStuartBrown 3 года назад +1

      I love that. You crack me up.

    • @aarcvault908
      @aarcvault908 3 года назад

      A lot to consider, in any event, gentlemen.
      Thanx for replies.

  • @jackiespaceman
    @jackiespaceman 11 месяцев назад

    The opening is eerie when you consider things like fifty shades of grey

  • @letmegoletmego
    @letmegoletmego 7 лет назад +9

    I am paralyzed between science and art. Under the influence, edging forward.

    • @Novaxtheartiste
      @Novaxtheartiste 7 лет назад

      sartre

    • @TrashHeapHedonist
      @TrashHeapHedonist 4 года назад

      addiction is art, not science.

    • @kellenpotter1170
      @kellenpotter1170 Год назад

      Addiction may influence certain forms of art but does not define it. Science, however, originates all form, encompassing art, influence, and addiction, thereby reducing insipid demonstrative comments as yours to phlegm.

  • @kikiperry4924
    @kikiperry4924 10 лет назад +6

    Thank you for posting these recordings. It is wonderful hearing predigital age class room discussions. The transcript offered here is pretty much nonsense. I suppose it was done via a voice recognising software.

    • @peterbailey411
      @peterbailey411 6 лет назад

      Kiki perry ...It's done on a tape recorder.... (No Software)...Just magnetic spools of tape that record sound via a Microphone...!!
      Which brings me to that joke...Secretary to her Boss.." Can i use your Dicta phone..." Boss says " No !...Use your finger like everyone else ". ... (old phones you dial a number )....

  • @jeffjones3040
    @jeffjones3040 Год назад

    It is true that the harbingers of the future ARE THERE...sometimes we see them, sometimes we don't. Other times we see them but do not recognize them!

  • @KajiCarson
    @KajiCarson 11 лет назад +6

    Anyone know if Burroughs ever saw Apocalypse Now, and what his thoughts on it were?

    • @AndrewStuartBrown
      @AndrewStuartBrown 3 года назад

      Burroughs not only "saw" Apocalypse Now, he lived it. Not speaking figuratively here, either. See the subway muggings and other thievery that runs alll through "Junkie." As well as interstellar gunslinging and banditry in other books. The endgame of all crime is dystopic.

  • @T-on-the-Tube
    @T-on-the-Tube 3 года назад +2

    Does anyone know if the booklist can be found?

  • @poem
    @poem 2 года назад +4

    ❤️‍🔥
    “Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside - remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
    ❤️‍🔥
    ― Charles Bukowski 😎

  • @robertafierro5592
    @robertafierro5592 4 месяца назад

    WOW!

  • @StarsOnProjectors
    @StarsOnProjectors 9 лет назад +2

    Did anyone note the striking similarity between Burroughs' voice and Kurt Vonnegut's?

    • @OphiuchiChannel
      @OphiuchiChannel 5 лет назад

      Opiates changes the voice

    • @AndrewStuartBrown
      @AndrewStuartBrown 4 года назад

      I don't understand the significance of this perceived similarity.

    • @MichaelWaisJr
      @MichaelWaisJr 3 года назад

      @@OphiuchiChannel I did not know Kurt Vonnegut ever did opiates. I thought he didn’t like Burroughs’s writing. Are you sure you’re thinking of the same author who wrote “Slaughterhouse Five”?

    • @MichaelWaisJr
      @MichaelWaisJr 3 года назад

      @@OphiuchiChannel Getting old changes the voice too. So does talking into a fan and pretending you’re Darth Vader.

    • @OphiuchiChannel
      @OphiuchiChannel 3 года назад +1

      @@MichaelWaisJr Idk about Vonnegut was talking about Burroughs

  • @rephlax
    @rephlax 11 лет назад +4

    could anyone write a script for this ? for me as a german speaking person it is really hard to follow without reading

  • @mountaintab77
    @mountaintab77 10 лет назад +2

    Lecture from Kansas University?

    • @untrialser
      @untrialser 9 лет назад +6

      Naropa University :)

  • @joenutley135
    @joenutley135 4 года назад

    Fascinating. Actually making me think......unfortunately like most things has lost its allure over a short period of time......and now has become sincerely interesting again. Maybe it's not the narrator

  • @defoperator7993
    @defoperator7993 7 лет назад +3

    he's using all of brion gysin's teaching with the "can't teach someone what they don't all ready know" idea

    • @hawhawreally4966
      @hawhawreally4966 7 лет назад +2

      I was thinking you can't teach someone something they haven't seen, or experienced.
      like teaching someone what rain is who never seen it or how wind can sweep you off your feet when you've never been anywhere. so you saying "you can't teach something they don't, you already know that's a no"

    • @AndrewStuartBrown
      @AndrewStuartBrown 4 года назад +1

      @@hawhawreally4966 An ancient concept, predating either Burroughs or Gysin by a couple thousand years at least.

    • @eastlynburkholder3559
      @eastlynburkholder3559 4 года назад

      Learning seems to involve hooking the new information onto something the person already knows, like hooking a fish.

  • @Johnconno
    @Johnconno Год назад

    'Any of you seen this Alien thing?' 😂

  • @ahmadalkhaled9204
    @ahmadalkhaled9204 4 года назад

    who was the artist he was talking about, the one with the canveses attacked

  • @atomspacejunkman134
    @atomspacejunkman134 5 лет назад +1

    hey mates

  • @yukamiyawaki9999
    @yukamiyawaki9999 9 месяцев назад

    ER, TV SERIES

  • @puipui7382
    @puipui7382 7 лет назад

    who's canvases were attacked with umbrellas? i can't make out what he's saying.

    • @lewisbentley3177
      @lewisbentley3177 7 лет назад +1

      Cezanne

    • @zetetick395
      @zetetick395 7 лет назад

      Yeah, Same happened at the first showings of "Waiting for Godot" (The incredible sad funny Human play by Samuel Beckett) - sparking near riots in so-called 'civilized' audiences at the time.....
      - Here's a GREAT version of Waiting for Godot, gets better every time I see it! ruclips.net/video/izX5dIzI2RE/видео.html

    • @AndrewStuartBrown
      @AndrewStuartBrown 5 лет назад +1

      @@zetetick395 No riots at waiting for Godot. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Yes. Godot, no.

  • @vemacrinnon9752
    @vemacrinnon9752 3 года назад

    Ends a bit abruptly

  • @stacyanthony3367
    @stacyanthony3367 10 лет назад +2

    If you like Burroughs, you will love wasting talent by Ryan Leone.

  • @MrYowen88
    @MrYowen88 4 года назад

    14:43 is that paranoia or pronoia?

  • @NaughtyVampireGod
    @NaughtyVampireGod 4 года назад

    on the nod

  • @BatteryExhausted
    @BatteryExhausted 8 лет назад +2

    Ironic that they made a film out of 'Gatsby' lol.

    • @scottthompson7678
      @scottthompson7678 7 лет назад +1

      Battery Exhausted that's not irony mate

    • @BatteryExhausted
      @BatteryExhausted 7 лет назад +1

      Well, old Will suggested it would be impossible to make a film from the book in this lecture. Since irony can be defined as "a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result." (Google) then the fact they did make a film from a book that Burroughs said you could not make a film from is a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is wryly amusing as a result.
      So it is exactly irony.

    • @richardburton4625
      @richardburton4625 7 лет назад

      Battery Exhausted you gotta be an American.

    • @BatteryExhausted
      @BatteryExhausted 7 лет назад

      Well, I don't use the term 'gotta' my good fellow. You can check out my channel to discover my character.

    • @metatron7515
      @metatron7515 6 лет назад +4

      "old Will" also talks to a student on this very tape who had seen the 1974 movie, so he was fully aware that it had been made, what is inferred by his speech is that it wouldn't work as a film, at least by his standards. so it's still not irony at all. cheers.

  • @RexiousX
    @RexiousX 7 лет назад

    I know this man is an icon, and much of what he says is useful, but saying that a book with a few good pages only is a good book, and a movie with 5 good minutes is a good movie is utter nonsense