--- title: William S. Burroughs: 100th Birthday of Famed 'Naked Lunch' Writer description: On the centenary of the American writer and spoken-word pioneer's birth, LIFE presents photos of the famed iconoclast in Paris in 1959. canonical: https://time.com/3878907/william-s-burroughs-naked-lunch-author-100th-birthday/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-02-04T22:00:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:46.838Z og:title: William S. Burroughs: 100th Birthday of Famed 'Naked Lunch' Writer og:description: On the centenary of the American writer and spoken-word pioneer's birth, LIFE presents photos of the famed iconoclast in Paris in 1959. og:url: https://time.com/3878907/william-s-burroughs-naked-lunch-author-100th-birthday/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte56a77c5f5033f68/69884b30e20a872977a8ad7f/140204-william-burroughs-1959-01.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: William S. Burroughs 1959 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: William S. Burroughs: 100th Birthday of Famed 'Naked Lunch' Writer twitter:description: On the centenary of the American writer and spoken-word pioneer's birth, LIFE presents photos of the famed iconoclast in Paris in 1959. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blte56a77c5f5033f68/69884b30e20a872977a8ad7f/140204-william-burroughs-1959-01.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # William S. Burroughs at 100: Rebel, Junkie, Exile, Genius by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Feb 4, 2014 10:00 PM UTC  Not published in LIFE. William S. Burroughs in Paris, 1959 -- the year his novel Naked Lunch was published. Not published in LIFE. William S. Burroughs in Paris, 1959 -- the year his novel Naked Lunch was published.Loomis Dean—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Feb 4, 2014 10:00 PM UTC The American writer, painter and spoken-word pioneer William S. Burroughs was born 100 years ago Wednesday, on Feb. 5, 1914, in St. Louis. He died — after an improbably long life, considering the self-inflicted abuse he endured through the years — at 83 in Lawrence, Kansas. It’s somehow perversely appropriate that an iconoclast of Burroughs’ power and scope — an artist who so brutally skewered middle-class hypocrisy in so many of his works — lived a life that began and ended in the middle of middle America. Born into a wealthy Missouri family, Burroughs attended Harvard (as well as medical school in Vienna) and was, seemingly, on track for a relatively unadventurous life and career. But in the 1940s — having been rejected by the U.S. Navy in the middle of World War II — he set a far different course for himself. He became a heroin addict. In New York, he met and influenced Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and the biggest voices of the Beat generation. In 1951, in Mexico City, he shot and killed his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, in what was reportedly a drunken, catastrophic [game of William Tell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan%5FVollmer#Death) gone wrong. Ultimately convicted in absentia of homicide (he had fled back to the States by then) and given a two-year suspended sentence, the scarred Burroughs embarked on the journeys — London, Paris (where the photos in this gallery were made in 1959), the Amazon, Tangier and beyond — that would shape and define so much of the rest of his life. And always, everywhere, he wrote. He wrote short stories, essays and hilarious, harrowing, difficult, indispensable novels. _Junkie (_later _Junky)_, [_Naked Lunch_](http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/naked-lunch-1959-by-william-burroughs/), _The Ticket That Exploded_ and other classics established him as a singular force in the postmodern cultural landscape. Other writers sang his praises, with some — like J.G. Ballard — arguing that Burroughs was the premier writer of the post-war age. (Many critics, on the other hand, weren’t quite so impressed, especially when the revolutionary [cut-up technique](http://www.openculture.com/2011/08/william%5Fs%5Fburroughs%5Fon%5Fthe%5Fart%5Fof%5Fcutup%5Fwriting.html) Burroughs employed when constructing many of his books made their heads spin.) Later in life, Burroughs became something of an _éminence grise_ of the post-punk demimonde, collaborating with Sonic Youth, Nick Cave, the experimental English “noise” collective, Throbbing Gristle, and many others. Brian Eno once famously stated that, while the Velvet Underground’s first record sold only 30,000 copies in the first years after it was released, “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.” The same observation, slightly altered, might be made about Burroughs, as his influence on music, literature and the visual arts — during his lifetime and long after his death in 1997 — can’t be overstated. Many artists are desperate to be seen as rebels; in Burroughs, we find the unlikely real deal: the born rebel who could never stop creating art. _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter_ [_@lizabethronk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Not published in LIFE. William S. Burroughs in Paris, 1959 -- the year his novel Naked Lunch was published. Loomis Dean—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. William S. Burroughs with unidentified companions in a Paris cafe, 1959. Loomis Dean—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. William S. Burroughs with unidentified companions in a Paris cafe, 1959. Loomis Dean—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. William S. Burroughs at his typewriter, Paris, 1959. Loomis Dean—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. William S. Burroughs with his frequent collaborator, the English artist Brion Gysin, in Gysin's Paris studio, 1959. Loomis Dean—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. William S. Burroughs, Paris, 1959. Loomis Dean—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. William S. Burroughs in his room at the Beat Hotel, Paris, 1959. 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