Digital Resistances - Digital Culture - page 166

precursors of the computer as a business tool. (Originally a com-
pany producing mechanical calculating devices, Burroughs Adding
Machine Company became one of the early computing companies,
whose work included building the memory unit for ENIAC in the
early ' s, and whose engagement in banking computing enabled it

to be a competitor of sorts to IBM. In the '

50

s it merged with the
Sperry Corporation to become Unisys, under which name it contin-
ues to be a presence in computing.) The wealth that Burroughs's
invention brought allowed the inventor's grandson to enjoy many
of the privileges of an American upper-middle-class upbringing,
including a sizable allowance, and an expensive private education
culminating at Harvard. Despite these early advantages Burroughs
was attracted to other, less orthodox life choices. He was openly
homosexual at a time, in the

80

s, when such an orienta-
tion was still stigmatized. He also became a heroin addict at that
period, and, in

1940 s and ' 50

managed to shoot his common-law wife, Joan
Vollmer, in the head while supposedly emulating William Tell. At
the same time he was involved with a group of writers, including
Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who were to become known as
the Beat Generation.
Burroughs published his first novel, Junky , 62 in

1951

1953 when he was

39 . 63 In these topics he started

to develop his extraordinary literary technique. Junky does not
merely describe the lifestyle of the heroin addict, it actively mimics
it. The Naked Lunch is set in a version of Tangier, where Burroughs
spent much time, called Interzone, and deals again with addiction
and the kind of life it imposes, but in a remarkable, disjointed
fashion that defies easy understanding or précis. These techniques
were further developed in the collaboration between Burroughs and
the poet Brion Gysin in the '

, followed by The Naked Lunch in 1959

s. Gysin was a British-born artist who
shared many of Burroughs's arcane interests, including the Persian
sect the Assassins, magic and misogyny. Together Burroughs and
Gysin developed the cut-up technique of randomly assembling

60