Admittedly, my reaction to the new William S. Burroughs Documentary A Man Within is probably rather skewed because of my familiarity with the Beat Generations and the authors therein. That said, the documentary itself was rather disappointing in that most of the information conveyed could have been located on Wikipedia or doing a random Google search. Objectively, there was a wealth of information covered, and for anyone who has no idea who Burroughs was, the significant contribution he made to American literature beginning in the 1950’s, his interactions with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and the lasting impact that his poetry and novels have had on various musicians – particularly punk rock, which Burroughs is credited to have started – over the last sixty years, the ninety minute documentary will be a beneficial, though very brief, glimpse into the life of the man whom Norman Mailer called “the most talented writer in America” and “one of the geniuses of the English language” while Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch was on trial for obscenity.
That said, the major flaw with A Man Within is the same flaw that befell Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008): both documentaries are merely summaries of the authors’ lives, and while their lives deserve attention for the influences they have had on literature and journalism respectively, the documentaries are unfocussed and neglect to make their subjects real. Instead, they come off as characters, or True Hollywood Stories.
Regarding Burroughs, there are many moments tackled by A Man Within, but none of them are broken down further than a superficial exploration. Burroughs died at 82, and for sixty of those years, he lived as a functioning heroin junkie, publishing prolifically and creating a cut-up style of writing that expanded on Late Modernist rhetoric, creating a bridge to post-modernism while at the same time injecting allusions to writers of the Romantic era – primarily Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Throughout Naked Lunch, Burroughs’ most famous novel, he references Coledridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Sea Mariner: “Gentle reader, I fain would spare you this, but my pen hath its will like the Ancient Mariner,” paralleling the narrator of Naked Lunch (himself) to the wandering, cursed, judged, and ultimately doomed narrator of Coledridge’s epic poem (29).
As a junkie, Burroughs is an outsider, an other, and a non-conformist, reflecting on his existence as one who “will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy” junk, “the ideal product … the ultimate merchandise.” And, it is this self-dehumanization that allows him to study his ostracism in an oppressive society that frowns upon illicit addictions, but endorses legal addictions and cravings like merchandise, consumerism, and the quest for an idyllic American Dream. Being a junkie was not merely an escape from reality, or a “kick.” For Burroughs, “It is a way of life,” and for Burroughs it was a long life, one of turmoil, but one he dragged out for quite a while, outliving his heroin-indulging counterparts like Layne Staley and Kurt Cobain. But all this is skimmed over in the movie. Perhaps it’s faux pas to make another artist / drug movie, but this one wouldn’t end with a fatal overdose a la Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, or Janis Joplin biopic. This one could have been a tribute to the modern man, one who indulges and functions. But, it wasn’t.
Branching on a similar tangent, A Man Within could have very well spent more time exploring the social importance of Naked Lunch. While the novel is still most well known because of its rather graphic and obscene chapters filled with sodomy, gang rape, and drug use, the novel explores the aforementioned “legal addictions,” particularly consumerism, and even more so, our social addiction to violence. Under the guise of patriotism, faux propriety and global protection we “bomb brown people” – to take a line from comic philosopher George Carlin. Burroughs explores the same phenomena as various groups in Naked Lunch are attacked for creeds, sexual orientations and indulgences – often focusing on homosexuality and drug use.
Likewise, in the Introduction to Naked Lunch, Burroughs likens himself to Jonathan Swift, whose rather obscene – yet hilarious – A Modest Proposal is read widely on college campuses. In fact, I taught it to my students just the other day. Burroughs notes, “Certain passages in the book that have been called pornographic were written as a tract against Capital Punishment […] These sections are intended to reveal capital punishment as the obscene, barbaric and disgusting anachronism that it is.” Fine point, no? But somehow, cannibalizing babies is more palatable that sodomy. Who knew?
The precise moments of obscenities aside, Naked Lunch also joined the likes of Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1957) and Nabokov’s Lolita (1958) as a triumvirate of literary works that were put on trial for being too obscene – or provoking ideas that would rattle the bourgeois establishment’s faux propriety and showcase their hypocrisies. And, on a less anarchic note, Ginsberg, Nabokov, and Burroughs were standing up for that whole “freedom of speech” thing that is so often invoked so long as it works in our favor.
In the end, it is not the fault of A Man Within that this information isn’t covered, but to tackle an author like Burroughs, some focus needs to be employed. Aside from a survey of his life, what is a central moment that can be seen throughout his eight decades? What really drove him? There are a number of times that contemporary rockers and authors credit Burroughs for being an inspiration, but there is rarely an explanation. Cobain was a huge fan of Burroughs. Why? Iggy Pop waxes – mostly coherently – about Burroughs, but what is the inspiration? Burroughs is an icon, not just a footnote.
DYL MAG Score: 6
