'Junk is the ideal product. The ultimate merchandise. The sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells his consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies his client' - Generation Terrorists

WILLIAM SEWARD BURROUGHS
(1914- ) US writer. One of the most culturally influential postwar writers, his work is noted for its experimental methods, black humour, explicit homo-eroticism, and apocalyptic vision. In 1944 he met Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, all three becoming leading members of the Beat Generation. His first novel, Junkie 1953, documented his heroin addiction and expatriation to Mexico, where in 1951 he accidentally killed his common-law wife. He settled in Tangier 1954 and wrote his celebrated anti-novel Naked Lunch 1959. In Paris, he developed collage-based techniques of writing, resulting in his 'cut-up' science-fiction trilogy, The Soft Machine 1961, The Ticket That Exploded 1962, and Nova Express 1964. Later, more conventionally written novels, include Cities of the Red Night 1981, Place of Dead Roads 1984, and The Western Lands 1987. His 'Selected Letters 1945-59' were published in 1993.