Barry miles william burroughs biography of albert

(Twelve, $32)

William S. Burroughs was a drug addict, a murderer, a sex fiend, a pervert, a drunk, and an all-round creep, said Michael Dirda in The Washington Post.

He was also charismatic, though, and “one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.” In this “mesmerizing page-turner” of a biography, you get the whole story—if you weren’t looking for a detailed consideration of Naked Lunch, Junky, or any of the rest of Burroughs’s oeuvre.

Barry Miles, who knew his subject personally and has written biographies of other Beat legends, “recognizes why Burroughs matters” but focuses here on the man’s extraordinary life.

Though Miles doesn’t judge his subject, “Burroughs emerges as a largely unsympathetic and sad figure,” said Matthew Gilbert in The Boston Globe.

Born into a wealthy St. Louis family in 1914, he “spent an inordinate amount of his lifetime scoring and using dru