Genius and Genitality: William S. Burroughs Reading Wilhelm Reich

Thomas Antonic

doi:10.3390/h8020101

Abstract

This article explores the impact of Wilhelm Reich’s theories and writings on the works and thinking of William S. Burroughs. Reich’s significance for Burroughs’ fiction is beyond doubt, as the appearance of Reich’s discoveries and inventions, such as orgones and orgone accumulators, in Burroughs’ major works demonstrates. Yet to date, no attempt has been made in academia to make all those references to Reich in Burroughs’ complete œuvre visible. In order to make the thinking of the Austrian-American psychoanalyst and scientist comprehensible for readers not familiar with Reich, the first section will provide a brief biographical outline. In the subsequent sections, the article will describe how Burroughs and other Beat writers discovered Reich, how and to what extent Burroughs incorporated Reich in his texts throughout his career and what opinions Burroughs expressed about Reich in interviews and letters. For the first time, with a summary as undertaken in this article and by documenting most of the references to Reich in Burroughs’ work, the importance of the former to the latter is revealed in a compact form.

Highlights

At some point, readers familiar with Beat literature have certainly come across the name of Generation
As the majority of scientists at that time, he missed that no science is really objective and free from ideologies. This was Reich’s major criticism of Freud, which we find repeated in Burroughs’ essay “On
The fact remains that Wilhelm Reich and his theories had a major influence on Burroughs’ writings, from the beginning onwards and into his late works and were of similar if not even more important significance than other neglected theorists such as Alfred Korzybski or L

Summary

Introduction

Perhaps the most notable reference can be found in On the Road, in which an orgone accumulator—an invention by Reich—stands in the yard of Old Bull Lee, described by Sal Paradise as “mystical outhouse” 138; this passage does not exist in the “Original Scroll”. From Junky to The Western Lands and beyond. Allan Johnston has written the only scholarly article that analyses Reich’s influence on Burroughs but this study is limited to an examination of traces of Reich’s theories in Junky and Naked. Apart from a very brief discussion in Michael Stevens’ The Road to Interzone Who is the man behind the mystical outhouse, while Old Bull Lee—Kerouac’s fictionalization of Burroughs—was sitting in it?

Wilhelm Reich in Vienna in the 1920s and 30s

Reich in the United States—Burroughs and the Beats Discover Reich

Reich in Interviews Given by Burroughs

Findings

Conclusions