The Three Wives of Queer William S. Burroughs
Although he was openly homosexual, the Beat writer William S. Burroughs married three women. Famously, he married the first of them, Ilse Herzfeld, to help her escape Nazi persecution, but almost nothing was known about her except an assortment of assumptions and exaggerations. Perhaps the most consequential act of his life was the accidental killing of another wife, Joan Vollmer, in 1951, but again her life has been poorly documented. His third marriage remained entirely unknown until 2025...
The Three Wives of Queer William S. Burroughs digs deep into the lives of these three women and explains how they came to marry Burroughs. It takes us through the Weimar Republic and the anti-fascist struggles in Europe of the 1930s and 1940s, then through New York, Texas, Louisiana, and Mexico, exploring the lives of dozens of fascinating characters. It is based on an astounding volume of research and no small amount of luck, and is presented as an investigative narrative of a researcher's constant struggle with myth, hearsay, and the absences of archival data due to the horrors of World War II.
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