# I love william s. bourrghs



## whaleofashrimp (Feb 3, 2012)

*i found this great obscure william burroughs article from esqure about the 1968 democratic convention with a great routine (thats his word_ i call em "Tangents") about the trueist all american canadate for president being a purple assed babboon. one of my faves..the greats*

*http://72.9.228.149/~blackie/media/pdf/Esquire%201968.pdf*
‎72.9.228.149


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## whaleofashrimp (Feb 3, 2012)

A REPTILIAN REPRINT
The Coming
of the Purple
Better One
by William Burroughs
Originally in the November 1968 issue of ESQUIRE Magazine,
also reprinted in EXTERMINATOR! (1973) and a portion was
issued as one of the Mayfair Academy Bulletins the following
year. That excerpt was known as MAN! YOU VOTED FOR A
GODDAMN APE!
As the excerpt in Mayfair Academy Series (More or Less)
comes from the whole article, we present it here in the same
formatting as the original ESQUIRE Magazine article.
Saturday August 24, 1968: Arrive O’Hare Airport, Chicago. First visit
in 26 years. Last in Chicago during the war where I exercised the
trade of exterminator.
“Exterminator. Got any bugs lady?”
“The tools of your trade” said the customs officer touching my
cassette recorder.
Driving in from the airport note empty streets newspapers in the
wind a ghost town. Taxi strike bus strike doesn’t account for the
feeling of nobody here. Arive Sheraton Hotel where I meet Jean
Genet. He is dressed in an old pair of corduroy pants no jacket
no tie. He conveys a remarkable impact of directness confronting
completely whoever he talks to.
Sunday August 25: Out to the airport for the arrival of McCarthy.
An estimated fifteen thousand supporters there to welcome him
mostly young people. Surprisingly few police. Whole scene touching
and ineffectual particularly in retrospect of subsequent events.
Monday August 26: We spend Monday morning in Lincoln Park
talking to the Yippies. Jean Genet expresses himself succinctly on
the subject of America and Chicago.
“I can’t wait for this city to rot. I can’t wait to see weeds growing
through empty streets.”
May not have to wait long. Police in blue helmets many of them
wearing one-way dark glasses stand around heavy and sullen. One
of them sidles up to me while and says: “You are wasting film.”
Of course the sound track does bring the image track on set so
there is not all that much difference between a recorder and a
camera.
Another sidles up to my right ear. “They’re talking about
brutality. They haven’t seen anything yet.”
The cops know they are the heavies in this show and they are
going to play it to the Hilton.
Monday night to the Convention Hall. Cobblestone streets smell
of coal gas and stockyards. No place to park. Some citizen rushes out
screaming. “You can’t park here! I’ll call the police! I’ll have your
car towed away!”
Through line after line of police showing our credentials and
finally click ourselves in. Tinny atmosphere of carnivals and penny arcades without the attractions. The barkers are there but no freaks no sideshows no scenic
railways.
Up to Lincoln Park where the cops are impartially clubbing Yippies newsmen and bystanders. After all there are no innocent bystanders. What are they doing
here in the first place? The worst sin of man is to be born.
Tuesday August 27: The Yippies are stealing the show. I’ve had about enough of the convention farce without humor barbed wire and cops around a lot of
nothing.
Jean Genet says: “It is time for writers to support the rebellion of youth not only with their words but with their presence as well.”
It is time for every writer to stand by his words.
Lincoln Park Tuesday night: The Yippies have assembled at the epicenter of Lincoln Park. Bonfires, a cross, the demonstrators singing “The Battle Hymn of
the Republic.”
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword.
“Wet a handkerchief and put it in front of your face . . . Don’t rub your eyes.”
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
“Keep your cool and stay seated.”
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.
“Sit or split.”
At this point I look up to see what looks like a battalion of World War I tanks converging on the youthful demonstrators and I say “What’s wrong with you Martin
you wig already?”
He just looks at me and says: “Fill your hand stranger.” And hauls out an old rusty police force from 1910 and I take off across Lincoln Park tear-gas canisters
raining all around me. From a safe distance I turn around to observe the scene and see it as a 1917 gas attack from the archives. I make the lobby of the Lincoln
Hotel where the medics are treating gas victims. The Life-Time photographer is laid out on a bench medics washing his eyes out. Soon he recovers and begins
taking pictures of everything in sight. Outside the cops prowl about like aroused tomcats.
Wednesday August 28: Rally in Grant Park to organize a march to the Amphitheatre. I am impressed by the organization that has been built here. Many of the
marshals wear crash helmets and blue uniforms. It is difficult to distinguish them from the police. Clearly the emergent Yippie uniform is crash helmet, shoulder
pads, and aluminum jockstrap. I find myself in the second row of the nonviolent march feeling rather out of place since nonviolence is not exactly my program.
We shuffle slowly forward the marshals giving orders over the loudspeaker.
“Link arms . . . Keep five feet between rows . . . You back there watch what you’re smoking . . . Keep your cool . . . This is a nonviolent march . . . You can obtain
tear-gas rags from the medics . . . “
We come to a solid line of cops and there is a confab between the cops and the marshals. For one horrible moment I think they will let us march five bloody miles
and me with blisters already from walking around in the taxi strike. No. They won’t let us march. And being a nonviolent march and five beefy cops for every
marcher and not being equipped with bulldozers it is an impasse. I walk around the park recording and playing back, a beauteous evening calm and clear vapor
trails over the lake youths washing tear gas out of their eyes in the fountain. Spot of bother at the bridge where the pigs and national guardians have stationed
themselves like Horatio but in far greater numbers.
So out to the Convention Hall where they don’t like the look of us despite our electronic credentials being in order and call a Secret Service man for clearance.
We get in finally and I play back the Grant Park recordings and boo Humphrey to while away the time as they count votes to all the too stupid and obvious
conclusion.
What happened Wednesday night when the guard dogs broke loose is history.
I have described the Chicago police as left over from 1910 and in a sense this is true. Daley and his night-stick authority date back to turn-of-the-century
ward politics. They are anachronisms and they know it. This I think accounts for the shocking ferocity of their behavior. Jean Genet, who has considerable police
experience, says he never saw such expressions before on allegedly human faces. And what is the phantom fuzz screaming from Chicago to Berlin, from Mexico
City to Paris? “We are REAL REAL REAL!! REAL as this NIGHTSTICK!” As they feel, in their dim animal way, that reality is slipping away from them. Where are
all the old cop sets Clancy? Eating your apple twirling your club the sky goes out against your back. Where are the men you sent up who came around to thank
you when they got out? Where is the gold watch the chief gave you when you cracked the Norton case? And where are your pigeons Clancy? You used to be quite
a pigeon fancier remember the feeling you got sucking arrests from your pigeons soft and evil like the face of your whiskey priest brother? Time to turn in your
cop suit to the little Jew who will check it off in his book. Won’t be needing you after Friday.
The youth rebellion is a worldwide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I don’t believe they will calm down and be ad execs at thirty as the
establishment would like to believe. Millions of young people all over the world are fed up with shallow unworthy authority running on a platform of bullshit.
There are five questions that any platform in America must answer not with hot air but with change on a basic level.
1. Vietnam: As I recollect the French were in there quite some years and finally pulled out to repeat the same mistake in Algeria. History tells us this
is a war that cannot be won. Perhaps it is not intended to be won but merely as a provocation and pretext to start a war with Red China. Looks like some folks
figure the only answer to this mess is blow the set up and start over. May have happened several times before what we call history going back about 10,000 years
and the human actor being about 500,000 years on set, give a little take a little, so what was he doing for the 480,000 years unaccounted for? If we have come from
stone axes to nuclear weapons in ten thousand years this may well have happened before. Brion Gysin has put forward the theory that a nuclear disaster in what
is now the Gobi desert destroyed the civilization that had made such a disaster possible and incidentally gave rise to what he terms “Albino freaks,” namely the
white race. Any case if we don’t want to see the set go America should get out of Vietnam and reach an immediate agreement with Red China.
2. Alienated youth: The only establishment that is supported by its young people is Red China. And that is why the State Department does not
want Americans to go there. They do not want Americans to realize that any establishment offering young people anything at all will get their support. Because
the western establishments are not offering anything. They have nothing to declare but their bad intentions. Let them come all the way out in the open with their
bad intentions, declare a Secret Service overwhelming majority, and elect a purple-assed baboon to the Presidency. At this dark hour in the history of the penny
arcade, Wednesday troubling all our hearts, the aggressive Southern ape suh fought for you in the perilous Kon-Tiki Room of the Sheraton.
3. Black Power: Find out what they want and give it to them. All the signs that mean anything indicate that the blacks were the original inhabitants
of this planet. So who has a better right to it?
4. Our police and judicial system: What would happen if all the cotton-picking, stupid-assed, bible-belt laws passed by bourbon-soaked
state legislators were actually enforced together with all federal and city laws? If every businessman who chiseled on his invome tax by one dollar was caught
and jailed? If every violator of all the laws penalizing sex acts between consenting adults in private was caught and jailed? How many people would be in jail? I
think 30,000,000 is a very conservative estimate. And how many people would it take to detect and arrest these criminals? And how many guards to keep them
confined? And how many judges parole officers and court personnel to process them? And how much money would this cost?
Fix yourself on 30,000,000 violators in vast internee camps all united to scream with the inflexible authority of one big mouth. “We want gymnasiums!
Libraries! Swimming pools! We want golf courses! Country clubs! Theaters!”
And with every concession they scream for MORE! MORE! MORE!
The internee delegation in a meeting with the President today demanded as a prerequisite for any talks the ‘immediate and unconditional removal of the
so-called guards.’”
Senator Bradly rose in the Senate to question the wisdom of setting up what he termed “a separate state of dubious loyalty at the very core of our nation.”
“We want tanks! Planes! Submarines!”
“An ominous atmosphere smogged the capital today as peace talks with the internee delegation bogged down.”
“We want a space program! We want an atom bomb!”
“The number of internees is swelling ominously . . . forty million . . . fifty million . . . sixty million . . . ‘America is a thin shell around a pulsing core of sullen
violators.’”
“Today the internees exploded their first atom bomb described as a ‘low yield nuclear device.’”
“It may be low yield but it’s right on our back porch” said Senator Bradly plaintively.
“Today the internees signed a mutual assistance pact with Red China.”
As regards our judicial system there are three alternatives:
A. Total enforcement. Is either of our distinguished candidates for the Presidency prepared to support the computerized police terror that such
enforcement would entail?
B. An admission that the judicial system is a farce and the laws not really intended to be enforced except in a haphazard sporadic fashion. Is either
candidate prepared to make such an admission?
C. Get some bulldozers in here and clean out all this garbage and let no state saloon reel to his drunken feet and start braying about State rights. Is
either candidate prepared to advocate the only sensible alternative?
5. The disappearing dollar: 1959 Minutes To Go: “I’m absolutely weak I can only just totter home the dollar has collapsed.” Figuring ten
years time lag the dollar should collapse in 1969. There is something wrong with the whole concept of money. It takes always more and more to buy less and less.
Money is like junk. A dose that fixes on Monday won’t fix on Friday. We are being swept with vertiginous speed into a worldwide inflation comparable to what
happened in Germany after World War I. The rich are desperately stockpiling gold, diamonds, antiques, paintings, medicines, food, liquor, tools and weapons.
Any platform that does not propose the basic changes necessary to correct these glaring failures is a farce. What is happening in America today is something that
has never happened before in recorded history: Total confrontation. The lies are obvious. The machinery is laid bare. All Americans are being
shoved by the deadweight of a broken control machine right in front of each other’s faces. Like it or not they cannot choose but see and hear each other. How
many Americans will survive a total confront?
IN LAST RESORT THE TRUTH
The scene is Grants Park Chicago 1968. A full scale model of The Mayflower with American flags for sails has been set up. A. J. in his Uncle Sam suit steps to a
mike on the deck.
“Ladies and gentlemen it is my coveted privilege and deep honor to introduce to you the distinguished Senator and former Justice of the Supreme Court Homer
Mandrill known to his many friends as the Purple Better One. No doubt most of you are familiar with a book called African Genesis written by Robert Ardrey a
native son of Chicago and I may add a true son of America. I quote from Mr. Ardrey’s penetrating work: ‘When I was a boy in Chicago I attended the Sunday School
of a neighborhood Presbyterian church. I recall our Wednesday-night meetings with the simplest nostalgia. We would meet in the basement. There would be a
short prayer and a shorter benediction. And we would turn out all the lights and in total darkness hit each other with chairs.’
“Mr. Ardrey’s early training tempered his character to face and make known the truth about the origins and nature of mankind. ‘Not in innocence and not in
Asia was mankind born. The home of our fathers was the African highland on a sky-swept savannah glowing with menace. The most significant of all our gifts was
the legacy bequeathed us by our immediate forebears a race of terrestrial, flesh-eating killer apes . . . Raymond A. Dart of the University Of Johannesburg was
the strident voice from South Africa that would prove the southern ape to be the human ancestor. Dart put forward the simple thesis that Man emerged from the
anthropoid background for one reason only: because he was a killer. A rock, a stick, a heavy bone was to our ancestral killer ape the margin of survival . . .And he
said that since we had tried everything else we might in last resort try the truth . . .Man’s original nature imposes itself on any human solution.’
“The aggressive southern ape suh, glowing with menace, fought your battles on the perilous veldts of Africa 500,000 years ago. Had he not done so you would
not be living here in this great city in this great land of America raising your happy families in peace and prosperity. Who more fitted to represent our glorious
Simian heritage than Homer Mandrill himself a descendent of that illustrious line? Who else can restore to this nation the spirit of true conservatism that imposes
itself on any human solution? What candidate is better fitted for the highest office in the land at a time when this great republic is threatened by enemies foreign
and domestic? Actually, there can be only one candidate: The Purple Batter One your future President.”
To “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” an American flag is drawn aside revealing a purple-assed mandrill (thunderous applause). Led to the mike by Secret
Service men in dark suits that bulge suggestively here and there the Purple Better One blinks in bewilderment.
The Technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and belches into his hand . He is sitting in front of three instrument panels, one labelled P.A. for Purple Ass, one
labelled A. for Audience, a third P. for Police. (Crude experiments with rhesus monkeys have demonstrated that small currents of electricity passed through
electrodes into the appropriate brain areas can elicit any emotional or visceral response: rage, fear, sexuality, vomiting, sleep, defecation. No doubt with further
experimentation these techniques will be perfected and electromagnetic fields will supersede the use of actual electrodes imbedded in the brain.) He adjusts dials
as Homer’s mouth moves to a dubbed speech from directional mikes. The features of other candidates are projected onto Homer’s face from a laser installation
across the park so that he seems to embody and absorb them all.
“At this dark hour in the history of the republic there are grave questions troubling all our hearts. I pledge myself to answer these questions. One question is the
war in Vietnam which is not only a war but a Holy Crusade against the godless forces of international Communism. And I say to you if these forces are not contained
they will engulf us all.” (Thunderous applause). “And I flatly accuse the administration of criminal diffidence in the use of atomic weapons. Are we going to turn a
red and blue ass to the enemy?” (No! No! No!) “Are we going to fight through to victory at any cost?” (Yes! Yes! Yes!) “I say to you we will win if it takes ten years.
We will win if we have to police every blade of grass and every gook in Vietnam.” (Thunderous applause.) “And after that were going to wade in and take care of
Chairmen Mao and his band of cutthroat slave drivers.” (Thunderous applause.) “And if any country shall open its mouth to carp at the great American task well
a single back-handed blow from our mighty Seventh Fleet will silence that impotent puppet of Moscow and Peking.
“Another question is so-called Black Power. I want to go on record that I am a true friend to all good darkies everywhere.” (To wild applause a picture of the
world-famous statue Natchitoches Louisiana flashes on screen. As you all know this statute shows a good old darkie with his hat in his hand and is dedicated to All
Good Darkies Everywhere.) Homer’s voice chokes with emotion and tears drip off his purple nose: “Why, when I was fourteen years old our old yard Nigrah Rover
Jones got runned over by a laundry truck and I cried my decent American heart out. And I have a deep conviction that the overwhelming majority of Nigrahs in
this country is good Darkies like Rover Jones. However we know that there is in this country today another kind of Nigrah and as long as there is a gas pump handy
we all know the answer to that.” (Thunderous applause.) “And I would like to say this to followers of the Jewish religion. Always remember we like nice Jews
with Jew jokes. As for Nigger-loving Communistic agitating Sheenies well just watch yourself Jew boy or we’ll cut the rest of it off.” (That’s telling ‘em Homer.)
What about the legalization of marijuana? “Marijuana! Marijuana! Why that’s deadlier than cocaine. And what are we going to do about the vile America-hating
hoodlums who call themselves hippies, Yippies, and chippies? We are going to put this scum behind bars like the animals they are.” (Thunderous applause.) “And
I’ll tell you something else. A bunch of queers, dope freaks, and degenerated dirty writers is living in foreign lands under the protection of American passports
from the vantage point of which they do not hesitate to spit their filth on Old Glory. Well, we’re gonna pull the passports of those dope freaks.” (The Technician
pushes a sex button and the Simian begins to masturbate.) “Bring them back here and teach them to act like decent Americans.” (The Simian emisses, hitting the
lens of a Life-Time photographer.) “And I denounce as Communist-inspired rumours that the dollar collapsed in 1959. I pledge myself to turn the clock back to
1899 when a silver dollar bought a steak dinner and a good piece of ass. (Thunderous applause as a plane writes September 17, 1899, across the sky in smoke.) “I
have heard it said that this is a lawless nation that if all the laws in this land were truly enforced we would have thirty percent of the population in jail and the
remaining seventy percent on the cops. I say to you if there is infection in this great land it must be cut out by the roots. We will not fall into slack-assed permissive
anarchism. I pledge myself to uphold the laws of America and to enforce these hallowed statutes on all violators regardless of race, color, creed, or position.”
(Thunderous applause.) “We will overcome all our enemies foreign and domestic and stay armed to the teeth for years, decades, centuries.”
The Simian bares his canines, shits on the deck, and wipes his ass with Old Glory.
A phalanx of blue helmeted cops shoulder through the crowd. They stop in front of the deck. The lead cop looks up at A. J. and demands: “Let’s see your permits
for that purple-assed son of a bitch.”
“Permits? We don’t have any permits. We don’t have to show you any stinking permits. You are talking suh to the future President of America.”
The lead cop takes a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and reads Municipal Code of Chicago . . . Chapter 98, Section 14. . . “No person shall permit any
dangerous animal to run at large, nor lead any such animal with a chain, rope or other appliance, whether such animal be muzzled or unmuzzled, in any public
way or public place.” He folds the paper and shoves it back into his shirt pocket. He points at the Purple Better One: “It’s dangerous and we got orders to remove
it.”
A cop steps forward with a net. The technician shoves the Rage Dial all the way up. Screaming, farting, snarling, the Simian leaps off the deck onto the startled
officer who staggers back and goes down thrashing wildly on the ground while his fellow pigs stand helpless and baffled not daring to risk a shot for fear of killing
their comrade. Finally the cop heaves himself to his feet and throws off the Simian. Panting, bleeding, he stands there his eyes wild.
With a scream of rage the Purple Better One throws himself at another patrolman who fires two panicky shots which miss the Simian and crash through a
window of the Hilton in the campaign headquarters of a conservative Southern candidate. A photographer from the London Times is riddled with bullets by
Secret Service men under the misconception that he has fired from a gun concealed in his camera. The cop throws his left arm in front of his face. The Simian sinks
his canines into the cop’s arm. The cop presses his gun against the Simian’s chest and pumps in four bullets. Homer Mandrill thuds to the bloody grass, ejaculates,
excretes and dies. A.J. points a finger at the cop.
“Arrest that Pig” he screams, “Seize the assassin!”
A.J. was held in $100,000 bail which he posted in cash out of his pocket. Further disturbances erupted at the funeral when a band of vigilantes who call
themselves the White Hunters attempted to desecrate the flag-draped body as it was carried in solemn procession through Lincoln Park on the way to its final
resting place in Grant Park. The hoodlums were beaten off by A.J.’s elite guard of Korean Karate experts. The Daughters of the American Revolution who had
gathered in front of the Sheraton to protest the legalisation of marijuana were charged by police screaming: “Chippies! Chippies! Chippies!” And savagely clubbed
to the side-walk in a litter of diamonds, teeth, blood, mink-stoles and handbags.
As the Simian was laid to rest under a silver replica of The Mayflower a statue of the Purple Better One in solid gold at the helm, A.J. called for five minutes
of silent prayer in memory of our beloved candidate: “Cut down in Grant Park by the bullets of an assassin . . .A communistic Jew Nigger inflamed to madness
by injections of marijuana . . .The fact that the assassin had, with diabolical cunning, disguised himself as a police officer indicates the working of a far-flung
Communistic plot the tentacles of which may reach into the White House itself. This foul crime shrieks to high heaven. We will not rest until the higher-ups are
brought to justice whoever and wherever they may be. I pledge myself to name a suitable and worthy successor. We will overcome. We will realize the aspirations
and dreams that every American cherishes in his heart. The American Dream can be must be and will be realised. I say to you that Grant Park will be a shrine for
all future Americans. In the words of the all-American poet James Whitcombe Riley
‘Freedom shall a while repair
‘To dwell a weeping hermit there.’”


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## Belogenberg (Feb 3, 2012)

hahaha yes! I love this.


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## veraladd (Feb 3, 2012)

i love burroughs more than u but anyway why dont more people talk about him cutting off his pinky for his lover man? I mean van gogh is synonymous with ear cutting I think Burroughs got jipped. Amputation is some hardcore shit.


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## frzrbrnd (Feb 4, 2012)

veraladd said:


> i love burroughs more than u but anyway why dont more people talk about him cutting off his pinky for his lover man? I mean van gogh is synonymous with ear cutting I think Burroughs got jipped. Amputation is some hardcore shit.


cos killing your wife and getting away with it is far more scandalous.


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## dharma bum (Feb 4, 2012)

i love burroughs, ginsburg, kerouac.. the whole beat generation.

but tom wolfe has no street cred.


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