Tosh's Journal: July 9, 2023

If you read my July 1, 2023, you will know that I’m going on an adventure into my inner world by going through my library. I’m having difficulty deciding what to keep, give away, or sell to my favorite local bookstore, Alias Books East. I cannot keep all my books due to space, and even though I live in a large area, once it becomes fully in place due to one’s collection, then in many ways, you’re a prisoner of your possessions. And occasionally, I see a book on the shelf at my store and think it’s still my book, so yes, possessions are hard to give up.

At the same time, I’m having difficulty moving some of my books back into my office space, where most of my books seem to live. The room's spareness is airy, and my thoughts can travel freely in such a landscape. I had to remove many books on one shelf because that is where I’ll keep my books by and on Marcel Proust. The Proust adventure will not end with me reading the last volume of In Search of Lost Time but will grow within me and be the ground zero for how I look at the world, starting now. So those titles must remain close to me, and I made space for these essential books by removing and selling my William S. Burroughs collection.

Once I decided to dive deeply into Proust and that I needed room to store the books, I gave up my young man’s love for Burroughs. At one time, I thought he was the smartest man in the literary world, but then over time, I started losing interest in him and his work. I appreciate and respect him for what he has given me artistic-wise, but I began to feel that he was a minimal figure in his own making. I, of course, fell in love with the whole rock n’ roll/punk rock aspect of his image and writings, but more and more, the idea of himself started to outstrip his actual literary talents. Jack Kerouac strikes me as a writer with a great and open heart, but Burroughs had that coldness that appealed to my emotional state when I was a teenager and young adult. The one part of his writing I’m still fond of is his correspondence. There were two volumes of letters published, I think, sometime in the 1990s, and they are of interest because you sense or recognize the struggles he was going through. And I imagine his killing his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, can’t be the greatest Karma move. That, too, stayed in my brain over the years. How is it that Burroughs became an ‘artist’ due to his wife’s death, caused by his drunken behavior? One can understand the suffering that would have caused and therefore have an effect on one’s work, which can take that work to another level, but on the other hand, it seems Burroughs had a very decent existence on this planet. There is very little information on Joan Vollmer, although that moment of her death transformed Burroughs from a Junkie/drunk to a Writer who used the negative into something that could positively work for him.

One can edit authors out of one’s life, but I feel that’s wrong. You can remove them to make space for another, but you should never eliminate what you have learned, liked, or disliked about an artist’s work or personality. Read, learn, and discard what is not important to you anymore, but never erase that writer’s presence in your conscience. You never know; one may need that author’s assistance.

If interested, here is some background material for the above journal:

On The Disappearing of Joan Vollmer Burroughs by Katie Bennett

ISBN: 9780816680634

The Stray Bullet: William S. Burroughs in Mexico is a fascinating read. Written by a Mexican journalist and Beat scholar Jorge García-Robles. The book may be out of print, but one can find this title online or through your library.