BY: Joseph Bottum — June 15, 2019 5:00 am
When Donald Fagen and Walter Becker joined to begin new recordings in 1972, they decided to call their band “Steely Dan,” taking the name from a dildo—”Steely Dan III from Yokohama”—that makes a brief appearance in William S. Burroughs’s 1959 novel Naked Lunch.
And from that stray bit of information, one could begin to construct a genealogy, a tree of inspirations and references, that takes us to a very strange place. Start with the fact that English-language rock ‘n’ roll, from the 1960s through the 1980s, remains the best-selling, most-listened-to music in the history of the world. Add the fact that just about every influential rocker has mentioned Burroughs’s books, with half of them trekking across America at one point or another, on pilgrimage to meet the man. And we arrive at the conclusion that William S. Burroughs is the single most influential novelist who ever lived.
http://freebeacon.com/culture/drawn-to-the-beat/
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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