Burroughs: The Movie Page #4

and any Midwestern town

in the '20s...

actually was a very important

source material for my books.

It's found in - in every book actually.

In Junkie, in Naked Lunch...

in The Wild Boys, Exterminator!

- You've -

- A recurrent theme.

You've said that a lot of your work,

or almost all your work...

is essentially autobiographical.

Yes, anyone's is.

Do you ever wish

you could go back to live then...

live here again back in the early '20s?

Oh, that's a recurrent, um...

a recurrent theme

in many, many books...

- of people going back to another era.

- Mmm.

Yeah, yes, well, I don't -

It just, uh, it just won't work.

That's all.

You can't get there.

Now if you can,

certainly only as a spectator.

At 15, I was sent to Los Alamos

Ranch School for my health...

where they later made

the atom bomb.

It seemed so right somehow,

like the school song.

Far away

and high on the mesa's crest

Here's the life

that all of us love the best

Far away

and high on the mesa's crest...

I was forced to become a Boy Scout...

exercise before breakfast...

and ride a stubborn, spiteful,

recalcitrant horse.

I formed a romantic attachment

to one of the boys at Los Alamos...

and kept a diary of this affair...

that was to put me off writing

for many years.

I persuaded my family

to let me remain in Saint Louis...

so my things were packed

and sent to me from the school.

And I used to turn cold...

thinking maybe the boys are

reading it aloud to each other.

When the box finally arrived...

I pried it open

and threw everything out...

until I found the diary

and destroyed it forthwith...

without even a glance

at those appalling pages.

This still happens

from time to time.

I will write something

I think is good at the time...

and looking at it later, I say...

"My God,

tear it into very small pieces...

and throw it

into somebody else's garbage can."

After graduating from Harvard...

I studied medicine in Vienna

for about six months...

when the war broke out in 1942.

I was in the army

for about six months...

discharged.

In 1944, I met Jack Kerouac...

Joan Vollmer, Allen Ginsberg...

and also, um, Herbert Huncke...

and some of the characters

that later appear in Junkie.

I know Allen and Greg

and, uh, and Kerouac...

and they all spoke of him

as the sort of daddy...

big daddy.

Bull. Jack called him Bull.

Everything that Jack says is

to be taken with,

uh, considerable reserve.

He was always writing fiction...

and, uh, he liked to think of me

as a teacher.

He pushed these categories

onto people.

Now you're going to be a teacher,

and you're going to be whatever.

So I don't think they're to be taken,

um, too seriously, but I -

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