William S. Burroughs’ Scathing “Thanksgiving Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

“Thanks­giv­ing Day, Nov. 28, 1986” first appeared in print in Tor­na­do Alley, a chap­e book pub­lished by William S. Bur­roughs in 1989. Two years lat­er, Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunt­ing, My Personal Pri­vate Ida­ho, Milk) shot a mon­tage that introduced the poem to movie, mak­ing it no less than the sec­ond time the direc­tor adapt­ed the beat author to movie.

For those who’ve seen Bur­roughs use Shake­speare’s face for tar­get prac­tice, or in case you’ve watched The Junky’s Christ­mas, you’ll know that he was­n’t type to con­ven­tion or tra­di­tion. And there are not any pris­on­ers tak­en right here, as you’ll see above.

For again­floor on Bur­roughs, learn the New York­er piece “The Out­legislation, The additional­or­di­nary lifetime of William S. Bur­roughs.” Discover the textual content for “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer” right here.

Now time for a lit­tle Thanks­giv­ing din­ner.…

If you want to enroll in Open Tradition’s free e mail newslet­ter, please discover it right here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­e book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you want to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our website. It’s laborious to rely 100% on advertisements, and your con­tri­bu­tions will assist us con­tin­ue professional­vid­ing one of the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to study­ers each­the place. You may con­tribute by means of Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!