Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2011 Writing William Burroughs, performing the archive John LeBret Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation LeBret, John, "Writing William Burroughs, performing the archive" (2011). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 233. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/233 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. WRITING WILLIAM BURROUGHS, PERFORMING THE ARCHIVE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Communication Studies by John LeBret B.A., State University of New York at Albany, 2004 M.A., State University of New York at Albany, 2005 December 2011 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project exists only because of the kindness, generosity, and grace of others. Words cannot convey the depth of my gratitude for each person who has bore me through my creative odyssey, yet I humbly offer them just the same. Thank you to the members of my committee, for challenging me with your diverse specialties and interests, and encouraging me to excel rather than simply achieve. Thank you to the Louisiana State University Graduate School for awarding me with the Dissertation Fellowship that made this research possible. I must include a special word for my advisor, Ruth Laurion Bowman, without whom these words would never have met the page. I discovered my scholarly voice through dialogue with you, my sharpest critic and ardent collaborator. Thank you for shepherding me as I found my path to extend our conversation to others and for sheltering me from the many storms along the way. Thank you also to Michael Bowman, for inviting me to discover the potential performance in my writing and providing the spaces in which to do so. I also offer a heartfelt thanks to Jennifer Alford and Brandon Nicholas for your friendship and gentle ministration in my darkest days. To Josh Carr, thank you for your patience and occasional indulgence of my temperaments. And to my family, thank you for your unwavering confidence in my ability to see my project through. Finally, a special thank you to my collaborators, Sarah Jackson, Holley Vaughn, and Rebecca Walker. Knowing you and working with you touches everything I do. My affections know no bounds. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ………………………………………………….…………………………ii List of Figures …………………………...………………………………………………………v Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………....vi SECTION 1. PERFORMING WRITING AND BURROUGHS ………………….........…….1 SECTION 2. THE ARCHIVE …………………………………….…………………………...25 2.1 July 7, 2009 …………………………........………………...……………………….25 2.2 Alice – Part 1 …………………………….………......……………………………..31 2.3 December 3, 2009 ………………………..……..………………………………….33 2.4 July 7, 2009 ………………………………...……………………………………….34 2.5 Blue Bell Hill 4 ………..……………………………………………………………39 2.6 July 8, 2009 …………………………………………………………………………40 2.7 July 9, 2009 …………………………………………………………………………41 2.8 Goat Rocks 16 ……………………………………………………………………...46 2.9 July 14, 2009 ……………………………………………….……………………….47 2.10 Goat Rocks 17 ...……………………………………………...…………………….49 2.11 Alice – Part 2 ………………………………………………….……………………50 2.12 July 14, 2009 ………………………………………………………………………..54 2.13 Ipomoea violacea 12 ……………………………………………………………....55 2.14 August 4, 2009 ……………………………………………………………………..57 2.15 July 22, 2009 ………………………………………………………………………..60 2.16 August 15, 2009 ……………………………………………………………………63 2.17 Alice – Part 3 ……………………………………………………………………….64 2.18 September 29, 2009 ………………………………………………….……………..67 2.19 November 3, 2009 ………………………………………………………...………..68 2.20 G. Forelli 8 ………………………………………………………………………….69 2.21 Ipomoea violacea 25 ……………………………………………………...……….71 2.22 August 25, 2009 ……………………………………………………………………71 2.23 November 5, 2009 ……………………………………………...………...………..74 2.24 September 3, 2009 ………………………………………………………………....77 2.25 September 8, 2009 ………………………………………………………………....78 2.26 October 22, 2009 …………………………………………………………………...82 2.27 September 15, 2009 ………………………………………………..……………....83 2.28 Blue Bell Hill 6 ……………………………………………………………………..87 2.29 September 1, 2009 ……………………………………………………………….....88 2.30 G. Forelli 13 ……………………………………………..……………………….....92 2.31 September 22, 2009 ……………………………………………...…………………94 2.32 Blue Bell Hill 16 …………………………………………….……………………...98 2.33 September 25, 2009 ……………………………………………………………....100 2.34 Ipomoea violace 17 ……………………………………...……………………….104 iii 2.35 Goat Rocks 4 …………………………………………….……………………......105 2.36 Spyglass 3 …………………………………………………………………………106 2.37 October 13, 2009 ………………………………………………………………….107 2.38 October 13, 2009 ……………………………………………...…………………..114 2.39 Alice – Part 4 …………………………………………...…………………………121 2.40 Al-kindi 20 ……………………………………………….……………………….126 SECTION 3. AN ADDENDUM TO THE ARCHIVE …...…..…………………………….129 SECTION 4. WHAT MATTERS THE ARCHIVE? ……………..………………………....160 BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………………………..……………169 VITA …………………………………………………………………………………………..174 => iv LIST OF FIGURES 1. List Labeled International Orange 5 …………………………………………...…….42 2. Unedited Cut-up Made From Draft Material ………………………………………75 3. Personal Fragment Labeled International Orange 19 ………………….…………..87 4. Personal Fragment ………………………………………………………...…………..93 5. Summerville Letter page one …………………………………….…………………101 6. Summerville Letter page two ……………………………………...………………..102 7. Textual Fragment Labeled Spyglass 6 …………………………….………………..121 v ABSTRACT Between 1958 and 1972, author William S. Burroughs undertook a series of radical experiments with alternative compositional modes based on the aleatory form of the Cut-up. Burroughs sold the entirety of his work from the period, assembled into an archive, to a collector in 1972. This study uses performative writing to document a year of archival research in Burroughs' collection, currently housed by The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library. Melding Bakhtin's theories of the chronotope and the grotesque body with creative writing and experimental modes of scholarly production as praxis, I theorize archival research as a uniquely embodied practice. By exploring themes of history, biography, documentation, and discovery, this project identifies Burroughs' use of the Cut-up as a mode of aesthetic collaboration and offers it as a pedagogical model for future critical/creative scholarship. vi SECTION 1. PERFORMING WRITING AND BURROUGHS "Authoritative discourse permits no play with the context framing it." – Mikhail M. Bakhtin1 "From the eye of this storm, what is/was is always on the verge of becoming something else." – Della Pollock2 "Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." – William S. Burroughs3 According to archivist notes, William S. Burroughs started organizing the sum collection of his correspondence and work in 1965. He completed the task, with assistance from his friends Brion Gysin and Barry Miles, in 1972, and sold the entire project to Roberto Altman of Vaduz, Liechtenstein. Altman sold the still sealed “Vaduz” archive to Robert and Carol Jackson of Cleveland, Ohio, in the late 1980s. The archive was made public in 2005, when the Jacksons sold the collection to the New York Public Library.4 I moved from Albany, New York, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the summer of 2005, to attend graduate school. In the late 1980s, I attended high school, got my driver’s license, and played a twelve year old in our community theatre’s production of Inherit the Wind. I was born on December 28th, 1972. Whether reading the coincidences 1 Mikhail Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel," in The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 340. 2 Della Pollock, "Performing Writing," in The Ends of Performance, ed. Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 73. 3 William S. Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded (New York: Grove Press, 1964, 1967), 230. 4 Declan Kiely and Anne Garner, Finding Aid for The William S. Burroughs Papers 1951- 1972 (New York: New York Public Library, 2006), ii. 1 or allowing the readings to coincide, I am starting to suspect Burroughs' archive and I are involved.5 The route to get to the place of our entanglement does not line up as smoothly as I mean to suggest. Rehearsing it here, however, is a helpful exercise that draws together some of the tributaries of my project in a way that identifies my interest in William S. Burroughs’ archive, my conception and use of performative writing, and anticipates the needs of the reader going forward. The nominal function of words, however, obscures the motivating currents between questions about performative writing and the study of William S. Burroughs; it erases the symbiotic ebb and flow between practices of experimental writing and the subject of experimental writers. The purpose of this introductory section, then, is to situate my project in the discursive context of performative writing so that all readers, even those unfamiliar with my specific critical, theoretical, or aesthetic