William S. Burroughs Jr.

William Seward Burroughs III (July 21, 1947 – March 3, 1981), also known as William S. Burroughs Jr. and Billy Burroughs, was an American novelist. He bears the name of his father, William S. Burroughs, as well as his great-grandfather, William Seward Burroughs I, the inventor of the Burroughs adding machine. He wrote three novels, two of which were published as Speed and Kentucky Ham (1973). His third novel, Prakriti Junction, begun in 1977, was never completed, although extracts from it were included in his third and final published work Cursed From Birth.

Burroughs Jr. underwent a liver transplant in 1976 after developing cirrhosis. He died in 1981, at the age of 33, from alcoholism and liver failure. Burroughs Jr. appears briefly in the 1983 documentary Burroughs, about his father, in which he discusses his childhood, his liver problems, and his relationship with his family. In the documentary, John Giorno called him "the last beatnik."

Childhood

Burroughs was born on July 21, 1947, in Conroe, Texas, to novelist William S. Burroughs and Joan Vollmer, near the New Waverly farm where an as-yet unpublished Burroughs Sr was attempting to grow cash crops, supplemented with cannabis. During her pregnancy Vollmer was consuming orally two Benzedrine inhalers a day, or approximately 500 mg of powdered amphetamine. Burroughs Jr was born addicted to amphetamine and immediately went into withdrawal. Both his parents were alcoholics, with Burroughs Sr also addicted to opiates. In chapter three of his second novel, Kentucky Ham, Burroughs relates his memory of the day his mother was shot dead, as well as the subsequent reunion with his father after he was freed from a Mexico City prison. While his father stayed in Mexico, Billy went to live with his paternal grandparents, Mortimer and Laura Lee Burroughs, in St. Louis, Missouri. In spring 1952, when Billy was nearly 5, he moved with his grandparents to Palm Beach, Florida, where they relocated their store, Cobblestone Gardens.

After being released on parole in 1968, he quit his addiction to amphetamines and returned to The Green Valley School, a private institution run by Reverend Von Hilsheimer in Orange City, Florida. The Green Valley School was where Burroughs met his future wife, a 17-year-old Jewish girl from Savannah, Georgia, named Karen Perry, who came from a privileged background. The two formed a romantic relationship and were married in 1969, settling in Savannah. Burroughs began to write; Perry worked as a waitress. He published a damning article in Esquire, explaining how his life was "ruined" by his father's actions. The estrangement between father and son was never reconciled.

Death

In 1981, Burroughs stopped taking his anti-rejection drugs.

Writing style

William S. Burroughs Jr. wrote two autobiographical novels, and was working on a third. He began writing poetry at the Green Valley School when he was 21 in 1968 and completed his first novel Speed in 1970. The novels relate the experiences of a teenage runaway in the early 1960s, and are comparable in style and content to both Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and his father's Junkie.