Here is the biography of William S. Burroughs:
William S. Burroughs was born on February 5, 1914, in St. Louis, Missouri, to the son of the founder of the Burroughs Adding Machine Co. He grew up in patrician surroundings and attended private school in Los Alamos, New Mexico, due to his sinus trouble. Burroughs took his undergraduate degree at Harvard College in 1936 but rebelled inwardly against the life that the upper-class Harvard man was supposed to lead.
Planning to become a physician, Burroughs moved to Germany to study medicine, where he married Ilse Herzfeld Klapper, a German Jewish woman, to help her escape Nazi Germany. They never lived together, and Burroughs formally divorced her in 1946 to marry his second wife, Joan.
Burroughs left Germany without completing his studies, bringing along Ilse, and began experimenting with morphine, which led to his addiction. He became fascinated with the state's control mechanisms and began conducting field "research" into New York's demimonde, aided by Herbert Huncke, a junkie and thief.
Burroughs' writing career began when Jack Kerouac urged him to write. He and Kerouac collaborated on a mystery novel, "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks," which was never published. Burroughs later became addicted to Yage, a drug rumored to offer a key to opening the doors of perception, and distributed it among friends.
In 1953, Allen Ginsberg helped Burroughs publish his autobiographical novel, "Junkie," under the pen name "William Lee." Burroughs continued writing while keeping up with his drug habit, living off a small trust fund. He began writing the sketches that would turn into his major book, "Naked Lunch," in Mexico City and Tangiers, Morocco.
"Naked Lunch" was published in Paris in 1959 and quickly became notorious for its graphic descriptions of sexual encounters, sadism, and murder. The book was eventually published in the United States in 1962, after the U.S. Supreme Court relaxed censorship standards. The book was initially banned in Massachusetts but was later found to have social value and was not obscene.
Burroughs continued to write and experiment with drugs throughout his life. He was hailed as a major American writer by critics and the public by the late 1970s and became an iconic figure in the 1980s. He died in 1997 at the age of 83.
