"Naked Lunch": the First Fifty Years

Photographs > Photographs: William S. Burroughs and friends

Louis Cartwright (left) and William S. Burroughs
New York: , [c.1979-80]

 

Burroughs and the photographer Louis Cartwright (d. 1994), companion of Herbert Huncke

William S. Burroughs with David Prentice (left), and Stewart Meyer (right)
New York, 1981

 

Burroughs with the painter David Prentice (left), and Stewart Meyer, a member of Burroughs’s circle at the time, probably 1981, the year that Cities of the Red Night (visible in the background) was published.  Meyer is the author of The Lotus Crew.

Louis Cartwright, d.1994
William S. Burroughs

New York, [c.1979-80]

 

Burroughs with coffee cup.

Louis Cartwright, d.1994
Herbert Huncke (left) and William S. Burroughs

New York, [c.1979-80]

 

Burroughs with Herbert Huncke (1915-1996), in the Bunker c. 1979-80.  Huncke, a Times Square habitué, was a longtime friend of Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac.  He appears in Junky as “Herman”—a prototypical street-hipster-junkie.  In the forward to the Herbert Huncke Reader, Burroughs wrote: “Huncke had adventures and mis-adventures that were not available to middle class, comparatively wealthy people like Kerouac and me.”  Kerouac is said to have picked up the term “beat” from Huncke.

Louis Cartwright, d.1994
William S. Burroughs

New York, [c.1979-80]

 

Burroughs at his kitchen table.

Louis Cartwright, d.1994
William S. Burroughs

New York, [c.1979-80]

 

Burroughs in profile.

Louis Cartwright, d.1994
William S. Burroughs

New York, [c.1979-80]

 

After a trip to the firing range, Hunter S. Thompson remarked, “William was a shootist.  He shot like he wrote—with extreme precision and no fear.”  Burroughs in the Bunker with rifle and friends, including Herbert Huncke (far left).

Ann Charters
William S. Burroughs

London, 1972

 

This photograph was taken shortly before Burroughs left England to settle in New York City. 

 

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