During the 1950s, William S. Burroughs blazed many trails to and from the elucidation of human suffering, and his obsession with the means to this end became an enduring facet of popular culture. He exuded the heavy aura of a misogynistic, homosexual, drug-addicted gun nut, both in life and in print. Yet he inspired a generation of aimless youths to lift their heads out of the sands of academe, to question authority, to travel, and, most importantly, to intellectualize their personal experiences.

Born William Seward Burroughs February 5, 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri, he was the son of a wealthy family (his grandfather invented the Burroughs adding machine) and lived a quiet mid-Western childhood. He graduated from Harvard, but became fascinated with the criminal underworld of the 1930s and sought to emulate the gangster lifestyle, dealing in stolen goods and eventually morphine, to which...