Queer Burroughs
Jamie Russell(Author)
St Martin's Press
Published on 1. June 2001
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-0-312-23923-7 (ISBN)
Description
William S. Burroughs is consistently thought of as a novelist who is gay, rather than a gay novelist. This distinction is slight, yet remarkable, since it has meant that Burroughs has been excluded from the gay canon and from the scope of queer theory. In this book, Jamie Russell offers a queer reading of Burrough's novels. He explores how the novels of Burroughs can be seen as a sustained attempt to offer a very personal rethinking of gay subjectivity, and as an attempt to overturn stereotypes of gay men as effeminate. Yet in his celebration and appropriation of some of the most violent, misogynistic, and effeminaphobic elements of heterosexually identified masculinity, Burroughs's life and writing suggests a subjectivity which has been deeply troubling to many in the gay community.
Reviews / Votes
'...Convincing and compelling...accessible and understandable to any educated general reader. The prose is engaging, supple, fluid, readable, and clear. I think the moment for this book is here right now; it illuminates the paradox of perhaps the most out and queer writer in American culture being somehow excluded from most queer canons. Russell's theory explains more of Burroughs than anything else I have read. A well-written, thoroughgoing, excellent piece of scholarship which breaks new ground by relating Burroughs to queer theory...' - Bill Savage, Northwestern University '...informative and discriminating book...' - ChoiceMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York, NY
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 209 mm
Width: 139 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
315 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-312-23923-7 (9780312239237)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
JAMIE RUSSELL is a lecturer in English and a freelance journalist. He lives in London.
Content
Queering the Burroughs Canon Resisting the Paradigm: Battling the Discourses of Effeminacy in Junkie, Queer, and Naked Lunch Imagining it Otherwise: Engrams, Effeminacy, and Masculine Identity Powers of Pleasure: Hypermasculinity, Hedonism, and Self-Mastery The Flight of the Soul from the Body Afterword