One wonders how William S. Burroughs would feel about a biography that frames his chaotic life within a rational narrative. As a figure who has always subverted and inverted standards of normalcy in his life and writing, the secret, interior Burroughs seems impervious to the x-ray of biography.
Now Barry Miles' "William S. Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible: A Portrait" assimilates this eccentric personality into the pattern of a chronological biography, an endeavor highly problematic given both the nature of the genre and Miles' subject matter.
Indeed, Miles is faced with a host of problems in explaining the life of an author and public persona as enigmatic as Burroughs. First is the problem of trying to negotiate a genre that tends either to slot its products into the tabloid blockbuster bin at the supermarket or to pan them off as fodder for trembling, sweaty fanatics.
In this light "El Hombre" successfully bridges the gap: it is at once a critical biography of Burroughs' major work and a brave attempt to chronicle the emotional struggles of a writer whose recurrent addictions to heroin, morphine, codeine, eukodol and so forth acted as both sexual and emotional suppressants. Yet "El Hombre Invisible" must overcome the further dilemma of having as its subject an author whose work is primarily autobiographical. Twisted, fictionalized, vaguely psychotic and cut-up work perhaps, yet autobiographical nonetheless. So by necessity, Miles' bio deals with Burroughs' writing, especially "Naked Lunch" and his even more experimental cut-up novels, such as "The Soft Machine," "Nova Express" and "The Ticket that Exploded."
The book is at its best when it explores the reasons and situations behind the writing of such books. Miles' history of the beginning of the Beat generation, Burroughs' relationships with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Herbert Huncke reveals the intense interpersonal dynamics of this period and shows a Burroughs who is much more approachable than the enigmatic William Lee (his alter-ego) of his novels.
Also brilliant is Miles' exploration of the pervasive though latent effects of the mysterious shooting death of Joan Burroughs, whom Burroughs killed accidentally in a game of William Tell. Miles shows how this surreal tragedy fractured Burroughs' life and how this fracture and tragic loss haunt his novels.
"El Hombre Invisible" attempts to portray and humanize a writer whose life and writing, intimately and enigmatically intertwined, is in a state of perpetual flux, constantly revised, revealed and reconcealed. Yet trying to make such an unconventional character accessible tends, in Miles' book, to conventionalize him. Burroughs, in his writing and in his life, trashes the logical and the linear. One need only recall his catch phrase, "Exterminate all rational thought." In "El Hombre Invisible," Miles cogently and compassionately explains this apocalyptic philosophy, but does not reflect it. He tells us what Burroughs is saying, why he said it and even what it means, but does not listen himself.
By fitting Burroughs' life and work into a linear sequence, and by tenderly humanizing his radicalism, Miles certainly provides a useful tool for beginning to understand Burroughs.
However, this attempt to restructure a life and career of deconstruction and disjunction, though well-intentioned, is ultimately futile and kind of frustrating, like trying to put the bones back into a filet o' fish.
Review copy courtesy Dartmouth Bookstore.
