You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The letters in this book tell two stories: my father's experience as an 18-year old Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Army between 1947 and 1948; and his mother's struggle to run a funeral business in a small North Carolina town. In the letters, Julian Carr Burroughs, Jr. is preoccupied with the girl he left behind and the morale of his family--while his mother, Ruby Morton Burroughs Sedberry, confronts her loneliness and isolation in a home that doubles as a place where bodies are embalmed and placed in caskets for their loved ones to view. These letters between mother and son paint a unique and detailed picture of the challenges faced by parents and children involved in the military right after WWII and by Southern women emerging from the Great Depression to the possibilities of a better life.
None
Being the son of counter-culture author William S. Burroughs is bound to be a trial. After all, the man who frequented lesbian dives and had a fascination with firearms couldn't possibly make that great of a father. Perhaps inevitably, William Jr. (called Billy) referred to himself as "cursed from birth" and in the book of the same name editor David Ohle collects parts of Billy's third and unfinished novel Prakriti Junction, his last journals and poems, and correspondence and conversations to recreate this tortured life. Endowed with the sufferings — but not the patience — of Job, Billy's life was often characterized by tragedy and frustration, although there were also pockets of success and levity. More than just the memoir of a casualty of the Beat Generation, Cursed From Birth provides rare insight in Billy's father, as well as his scene, friends, and times. It also provides an all-too-familiar story of familial difficulties that anyone with difficult parents can understand and appreciate.
Born in 1947 to the writer William S. Burroughs and his common-law wife Joan Vollmer, William S. Burroughs, Jr. (known as Billy Jr.) would later describe himself to his father as "your cursed-from-birth son". Cursed from Birth is testimony to the difficulty of living up to a famous father, and a lucid; shattering depiction of a life going down the tubes. Raised by his paternal grandparents in Palm Beach after his mother was killed by his father in a shooting accident, Billy saw his father become suddenly famous for Naked Lunch just as he became a teenager. Billy Jr.'s short life was defined by creating trouble to catch the attention of his father, mourning the death of his mother, descent into alcoholism and drug addiction, and reckoning with it all by beginning his own literary endeavors. Compiled by writer David Ohle from Burroughs Jr.'s third and unfinished novel Prakriti Junction, his last journals and poems, and correspondence and conversations with those who knew Billy, Cursed from Birth is faithful to Billy's own intentions for a last artistic effort. With the sufferings -- but not the patience -- of Job, Billy Burroughs's li