by Art Chantry:
wm. burroughs loved guns. he was photographed shooting guns so many times that it was a standard deal when you dropped by to visit him that you’d go out back and shoot with him, then get your picture taken with him doing so.
—artchantry.com—
he began to market and sell “artwork” that consisted of splatter paintings of shotgun blasts. he’d package them in nice little portfolio cases and sell them to wannabes (i have one somewhere. it’s even signed by him). he made a nice little business on his gun fetish.
this is a postcard from wm. burroughs to s. clay wilson. bill was in the habit of shooting his correspondence before he mailed it. it was practically his signature.
when he was a younger man, he and his then wife (yes, and he was gay then, too) were living in a cheap place in a run down part of mexico and drinking and doping and generally living the beat lifestyle. one night during a drunken blowout, they decided to play “william tell”. his wife placed something on her head (an apple?) and then a very drunken billy attempted to shoot it off her skull. he missed, of course. somewhere i’ve got a mugshot of his arrest for murder (later bribed into ‘accidental death’.)
some say he was never the same again. some say he mourned her the rest of this life. some say he was haunted by his crime. some say he even went mad.
i don’t really think so. LOL!
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