Craig's Synopsis of the book on Burroughs.

[clasp v3]

link:
Old Treachery? William S. Burroughs & the Provocation Defence

Turns out that perhaps Burroughs is not the kind of guy Craig Young would invite over for chardonnay. 
No shit Sherlock- he was also a junkie and draft-dodger who shot his wife and had a taste for hashish and young prostitutes.
While you're holding the front page, let me drop the bomb that Genet was a two-faced fraudster and thief, who swindled nearly everyone who got near to him.
So yes, maybe these men don't sit easily with a rainbow-flag-waving, labour-voting, happy-clappy gay-topia; for a start I'm pretty sure both of them smoked inside on a regular basis.
Still, it's hard for me to imagine a question less relevant to these men, either professionally or personally, than whether or not a writer of book synopses thinks we should let them in to our fetid little club.
Historical filters not required- the gay mainstream has always distanced itself from these irascible, immoral faggots.  I don't think either of them were particularly bothered by that.

[Tommi]

Unfortunately disagreeing with Craig only validates him. He considers that he is relevant because you disagree with him. The whole mutual affirmation thing that he has going with fundamentalist Christians also simply validates them - they think they're important because they have Craig (the 'gay activist'!!!) fulminating, and he thinks he is important because he has them (the 'Fundamentalist Xtians'!!!!)  ditto. It is a rather sick cycle of dependency. If Craig would only shut-up and leave them alone, they'd probably die...

I do not read Craig normally. It is a waste of energy. I did however read this one. It did not change my opinion of Craig. It is facile. It is a light, once-over with a glue-brush. You do wonder why anyone would want to write it. It is all quite irrelevant, really. There is also an air of snideness about it, like cool people like William Burroughs, I, Craig Young, always unfashionable am gunna force them to think....

23 words of Burroughs are worth more than all of Mr Young's fulminations: "cut word lines — cut music lines — smash the control images — smash the control machine — burn the books — kill the priests — kill! kill! kill!" — William S. Burroughs, The Soft Machine (1961)






 

[lavendar]

David, I suspect this is going to turn into one of those tiresome cycles in which you denounce
me as (gasp) An Overly Earnest Prescriptive Activist who Wants to Censor Our Past. In turn, I
denounce you as an Ageing Romanticist Unconcerned With Practical Politics. How tiresomely
oedipal of both of us. Yawn.

Could I point out that yes, I do think Burroughs is a brilliant author*. One can agree that he was
that, as I do. However, face facts, mon cher. Brilliant author does not always equal exemplary
human being. David Kammerer, Joan Vollmer and Bill Burroughs III's respective lives attest to that.

*And please note, this has nothing to do with Burroughs prodigious narcotics consumption. I am
not a wholesale drug prohibitionist, nor have I indeed ever been.

Craig

[lavendar]

And if we're doing Cool here, yes, I do read
Dennis Cooper, David Wojnarowicz, Patrick
Califia, Jane DeLynn et al. And Brett Easton
Ellis' American Psycho. And I saw Mapplethorpe
in the nineties. And I supported Te Papas decision
to show Tania Kovats' "Virgin in a Condom' in 1998.

To be honest, your transgressive chic posturing
reminds me of the latest Metro article on Renee
Chignell. I'm glad she was found innocent and let
free, but otherwise, she now leads a very quotidian
life.

Incidentally, doesn't this all remind you of the great
Burchill versus Paglia stoush back in the nineties?

Craig

[clasp v3]

if "brilliant author does not always equal exemplary human being" then why use the criteria of one to judge the other, and why divide the whole equation with some sort of authoritarian gay gate-keeping?

tbh, i don't really care about who's cooler than who.  I just thought the rhetoric of a decision around 'claiming' Burroughs was a shallow and irrelevant filter to view the whole episode (and man) through; as though he is a lost puppy at the SPCA, waiting for us to take him home and dress him up in mum's old nighty. 

I mean, he Fucked Men. Surely, that makes him queer.  It might or might not mean he has something more or less useful to say to us about transgression or being gay, but last time i checked it's not like there was actually an ID card you got issued.  But then, on the other hand, I am not a member of any political organisation with 'rainbow' in the title, so I may simply be unaware of our self-appointed authorities' plans for the brand.

[lavendar]

Ernest Rohm and Roy Cohn did guys too. One was a Nazi activist,
the other was a self-hating right-wing Republican. So did Ronnie
Kray, an East End gangland psychopath. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
and Francis Bacon treated their lovers like shit and they eventually
killed themselves.

So being gay absolves one from being a shitty human being through
the magical medium of mansex? Hardly.

Craig

[355]

I really appreciate Craig Young’s output.
Late at night, when I find it difficult to sleep, it comforting to know I can turn to Young’s turgid prose for a soporific tonic.
Whether discussing his limp-wristed right-wing politics, unchallenging positions on art and society or pointless views on – well – anything really, Young always comes through.
Kind of like talk-back radio – with truly dire puns – Young’s flaccid writing never fails to send me drifting off to the land of nod.
I suggest other readers follow my example and use Young’s ponderous content for the purpose it seems designed for – sending one to sleep.

[lavendar]

NB: And get it right, please...
William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac: And the Hippos Were Boiled
in Their Tanks is a book by Burroughs (and Kerouac), not
about Burroughs (pseudonymous though it was...

Craig

[Gertrude]

Incidentally, doesn't this all remind you of the great
Burchill versus Paglia stoush back in the nineties?

I just looked this stoush up - it is so much fun.

"I'm very glad you're big in Japan" - Burchill

[patrickgraham]

Lovely
http://privat.ub.uib.no/BUBSY/burchill.htm

[patrickgraham]

"I know ethnicity means a lot to you. You've got a wop name, so you think you're Robert De Niro. These little girls, Jewish and middle class and whatever, are too nice, too well bred to fight back. I'm not. Don't believe what you read about the English; our working class, from where I'm proud to come, is the toughest in the world. I'm not nice. I'm not as loud as you, but if push comes to shove I'm nastier."

[lavendar]

Yes, isn't it? I discovered it a few years ago. It's the
perfect antidote to mindless libertarians who parrot
Camille Paglia's jejune essentialism because it's in synch
with their equally banal pink and blue polarised models of
gender. Actually, though, I do like Sexual Personae, her
book of art criticism. However, Susan Sontag is my cultural
critic of preference. Burchill came out a few years back.
She used to be a Thatcher worshipper, at that...

Craig

[lavendar]

http://gaynz.com/blog/redqueen/archives/768

Some closing thoughts on this latest declamation
from Empress Papess Archimandrite Daoud...

Craig

[clasp v3]

I really regret starting this thread.

* clasp v3 goes to his room and cries.*

[Gertrude]

[giggle]...this just seems apt

I'm here to tell you that you can't come on like a street tough and then have an attack of the Victorian vapours when faced by a taste of your own style ...
-Julie Burchill