WRITER

William S. Burroughs

1914 - 1997

Photo of William S. Burroughs

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William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories, and four collections of essays. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of William S. Burroughs has received more than 6,651,454 page views. His biography is available in 59 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 55 in 2019). William S. Burroughs is the 568th most popular writer (down from 474th in 2019), the 580th most popular biography from United States (down from 479th in 2019) and the 55th most popular American Writer.

William S. Burroughs is most famous for his novel "Naked Lunch" and for his work as a spoken word artist.

Memorability Metrics

  • 6.7M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 65.96

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 59

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 4.69

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 4.85

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

The Soft Machine
1961
Naked Lunch
1959
The wild boys
1971
The ticket that exploded
1962
Nova Express
1964
Junkie
1953
Naked Lunch
Drug Use, Heroin, Drug addicts
Controversial and bizarre cult novel based on the author’s own experiences as a drug addict, first published in 1959. Formed as a series of inter-connected adventures set in locations as diverse as the U.S. Mexico and Morocco sees the protagonist, Burroughs’ alter-ego William Lee on the run from the police and always searching for his next fix. Burroughs once stated that the chapters can be read in any order.
1959
Queer
Gay men, Fiction, Aliens
Set in Mexico City during the early fifities, the story follows William Lee from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene as he pursues a young man named Allerton.
1985
You Can't Win
Biography, Criminals, junkie
William Burroughs, at the age of 13, was inspired by this book, as he mentions in a preface to Naked Lunch. You Can't Win is a memoir that explodes our ideas about the supposedly lawful past; Jack was a drifter, robber, junkie, and hustler that survived from the frontier times til the depression era...apparently. He became a librarian of sorts, wrote his memoir, and then vanished...
1926
Nova Express
Ciencia-ficción, Fiction in English, American fiction (fictional works by one author)
1964
Junkie
Drug addicts, Heroin abuse, Fiction
A semi-autobiographical account, narrated in a matter-of-fact manner, of the author’s life as a drug addict. The story ranges from the backstreets of New York to a drug rehabilitation hospital in Kentucky, the bars of New Orleans and on to Mexico, recounting the difficulties of obtaining drugs, financial problems and homosexual encounters. Burroughs significantly stretched the boundaries of publishable material with his debut novel.
1953
The Soft Machine
Fiction, Gay men, Gay men -- Fiction
In Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs revealed his genius. In The Soft Machine he begins an adventure that will take us even further into the dark recesses of his imagination, a region where nothing is sacred, nothing taboo. Continuing his ferocious verbal assault on hatred, hype, poverty, war, bureaucracy, and addiction in all its forms, Burroughs gives us a surreal space odyssey through the wounded galaxies in a book only he could create.
1961

Among WRITERS

Among writers, William S. Burroughs ranks 568 out of 7,302. Before him are Ausonius, Marina Tsvetaeva, Sidney Sheldon, A. A. Milne, Faxian, and Romain Gary. After him are Al-Zamakhshari, Harry Martinson, Gaius Julius Hyginus, Jaroslav Seifert, Laurence Sterne, and Denis of Portugal.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1914, William S. Burroughs ranks 19. Before him are Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Richard Widmark, Mohammed Zahir Shah, Bohumil Hrabal, Abd al-Karim Qasim, and Romain Gary. After him are Willi Stoph, Lída Baarová, Joe Louis, Aribert Heim, Richard Laurence Millington Synge, and Karl Carstens. Among people deceased in 1997, William S. Burroughs ranks 21. Before him are The Notorious B.I.G., Roy Lichtenstein, Bohumil Hrabal, Chaim Herzog, Sviatoslav Richter, and Hans Eysenck. After him are Fred Zinnemann, Isaiah Berlin, Allen Ginsberg, Bảo Đại, Helenio Herrera, and Dodi Fayed.

Others Born in 1914

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Others Deceased in 1997

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In United States

Among people born in United States, William S. Burroughs ranks 580 out of 20,380. Before him are Babe Ruth (1895), Harry Belafonte (1927), Roy Orbison (1936), Sidney Sheldon (1917), Stanley Cohen (1922), and Matt Damon (1970). After him are Hugh Everett III (1930), Jennifer Aniston (1969), Frank Abagnale (1948), Julianne Moore (1960), Carrie Fisher (1956), and Glen Campbell (1936).

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Among WRITERS In United States

Among writers born in United States, William S. Burroughs ranks 55. Before him are Alvin Toffler (1928), Tennessee Williams (1911), Richard Bach (1936), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804), T. S. Eliot (1888), and Sidney Sheldon (1917). After him are James Baldwin (1924), Allen Ginsberg (1926), Ellen G. White (1827), Theodore Dreiser (1871), Napoleon Hill (1883), and John Irving (1942).

American born Writers

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