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A Burroughs' Chronology: |
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| 1914 | Born Febuary 5, in St. Louis, Missouri |
| 1926-36 | Secondary studies, then B.A. from Harvard. |
| 1938 | Chicago. Barman, private detective, exterminator of hypocrites . . . |
| 1944 | New York. Meets Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. |
| 1946 | Trouble with the police: Burroughs leaves for Texas with his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer. |
| 1947 | Birth of his son, William Burroughs III. |
| 1948 | New Orleans. Arrested for drugs. |
| 1949 | Mexico. Burroughs puts himself into writing. Visits Ecuador in search of yage. |
| 1951 | A night of drunkeness, he kills Joan while playing William Tell. Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru. |
| 1953 | Publication of "Junkie," under the pseudonym of William Lee and in expurgated version by Ace Books. |
| 1954 | Tangiers. He sets himself up in a boys' brothel and plunges into drugs. |
| 1955 | London. Undergoes treatment for his addiction. |
| 1957 | Paris. He writes "Naked Lunch," published in 1959 by Maurice Girodias at Olympia Press. |
| 1960 | Burroughs lives in London. |
| 1961 | He meets Timothy Leary, "the Father of LSD." Publication of "The Soft Machine" by Olympia Press. |
| 1962 | "The Ticket That Exploded," Olympia Press. |
| 1964 | "Nova Express," published by Grove. |
| 1967 | Tangiers. He finishes "The Wild Boys." |
| 1970-74 | London. A life "relatively calm and without disruption." |
| 1974 | New York. David Bowie, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, the Rolling Stones, Zappa pay court. |
| 1975 | At 222 Bowery, he lives in the "Bunker," a former YMCA, with guns and a target. |
| 1980 | Burroughs starts doing heroin again and writes "Cities of the Red Night." |
| 1981 | Awarded the Medal of Arts and Letters by Jack Lang. He lectures at the Palace. Moves to Lawrence, KS. |
| 1983 | Inducted into the Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. |
| 1986 | Death of his friend Brion Gysin. Deep depression. |
| 1988-89 | On a proposal by Bob Wilson, he writes the libretto for "The Black Rider," music by Tom Waits. He acts in Laurie Anderson's "Home of the Brave," and Gus Van Sant's "Drugstore Cowboy." |
| 1990 | David Cronenberg films "Naked Lunch." |
| 1990-96 | Appears in various music videos, recordings, Nike ad campaign, GAP ad campaign, "Twister," etc. . |
| 1997 | Dies of a heart attack on August 2 in Lawrence, Kansas at 83 years old |