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Talk:William S. Burroughs

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Blind Donkey (talk | contribs) at 21:57, 9 March 2021 (→Smack My Crack: slight edits). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Smack My Crack

"A collaboration with musicians Nick Cave and Tom Waits resulted in a collection of short prose, Smack My Crack, later released as a spoken word album in 1987."

My understanding is Smack My Crack is a compilation, assembled by Giorno Poetry Systems, meant to explore the relationship between poetry & "outsider" music. Burroughs, Cave, and Waits all appear on the album - but so do the Butthole Surfers, Swans, and various others. The present description presents Smack My Crack as a Cave/Waits-backed vehicle for Burroughs' spoken word, which it clearly isn't. Blind Donkey (talk) 21:52, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Inconsistencies

How does a man who attended Harvard at 18 drop out nearly ten years later to attempt to join the Navy and/or OSS? The intro needs a re-work.

Yes! Excatly! I read he dropped out on and off over the course of twenty years or so! Then I also read he spent the next twenty years as a drop out! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:554E:7801:CC2E:9B42:447D:EAF4 (talk) 06:58, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Wording of Vollmer's death

I made this change earlier thinking it to be a fairly uncontroversial improvement, but it got reverted, so I should explain my reasoning.

When Vollmer was killed, Lewis Marker and Eddie Woods were present, while several others were nearby in the apartment but were not eye witnesses. (See Ted Morgan in Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs, and Barry Miles in Call Me Burroughs (working off research from Burroughs's friend and manager James Grauerholz)). As I understand it, there are two main sources for the notion that Burroughs told Vollmer, "It's about time for our William Tell act." Burroughs seems to have initially told reporters this (El Nacional 7 September 1951). Lewis Marker gives the same version to Ted Morgan. The other eyewitness, Eddie Woods, denies having heard it, and Burroughs also denied it to the police. In Burroughs's 1965 Knickerbocker interview, Burroughs again denies having said it.

But whether or not he said it is fundamentally a bit of a distraction. NPOV requires we pick our words carefully and don't give undue weight or authority to sources which cannot be independently verified, and which by their nature have a very strong personal interest in conveying a particular version of events. What's absolutely crucial is that even were such testimony were consistent and plausible, it does not get you to the position where you can imply that Joan Vollmer was a willing participant. The present wording of the article carries that connotation. There has never been any suggestion that Vollmer gave her express uncoerced consent. Even if she had verbally agreed to the suggestion, this would not constitute express uncoerced consent, because Vollmer was at gunpoint.

Finally, even were we somehow satisfied that Vollmer was an enthusiastic participant, that would not get you to the position where you can say without qualification that Burroughs "accidentally" killed Vollmer. It does not even get you to the position where you can say that Burroughs deliberately risked Vollmer's life by firing a gun near her head while drunk, since we can't know for certain whether Burroughs perhaps simply intended to murder Joan Vollmer. What we can certainly say is what we know with a very high degree of confidence, attested by multiple sources: William Burroughs killed Joan Vollmer with a pistol. We can then say what Burroughs said to the reporters, and what he said to the court.

For Misplaced Pages, this is not about finding out what really happened. Nor is it about placing it in the historical context of similar events and how they were subsequently recorded and reported. It is about choosing words in a way which does not uncritically elevate legend to fact.

Franciscrot (talk) 11:48, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

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