William S. Burroughs was born in St. Louis in 1914. He is best-known work is 1959's "Naked Lunch"--which became the focus of a landmark 1962 Supreme Court decision that helped eliminate literary censorship in the United States. Described by Norman Mailer as one of America's few writers genuinely "possessed by genius," he died in 1997. His many other works include "Junky" and "The Place of Dead Roads" (Picador).
Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Exerting its influence on authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson; on the relationship between art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media g...[SEE MORE]