Creative Reading With Burroughs

( Recorded at Naropa University, 1979)

Above the mountains of Boulder Colorado, sits NAROPA University; A private institution founded in 1974 by a Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa. The university’s non-traditional approach to teaching helped spark inspiration in many of its future luminaries that attended, and no decision personified this approach more than allowing Beat legend ( and lifelong self-described “junky”) William S Burroughs to teach a creative reading class in 1979. With his slow Southern drawal owing to Burroughs growing up on a farm in Missouri, he examines a reading list equal parts out-of-print book, New York Time best sellers, and classic pieces of literature, to a pack of hungry minds. Books such as “Heart Of Darkness”, “The Shining”, and the works of Brion Gysin, are just a few of the novels that Burroughs weaves through his unique approach to the medium, having been the patron saint of the cut-up techique of writing.