About an Author - William S. Burroughs Research

Well off English background, Studied literature and anthropology at Harvard then went to medical school in Vienna, turned down by the US army because of a drug addiction.

Lived in Mexico City, London, Paris, NYC, Morocco

He received an allowance of $200 a month from his parents which allowed him to live freely/ travel

He got addicted to morphine so sold heroine to fund this addition

His flatmate also became an addict (had a daughter) - husband divorced her because of this when he returned from war, she got put in a hospital and Burroughs married her to get her released

The two plus children fled to Mexico to escape prison laws, lost without heroin he started pursuing other men and his wife tuned to alcohol

In a Mexico city bar he asked his wife if they could do their William Tell act, she put a glass on her head, he shot low and killed her, his brother bailed him for prison, they convinced two witnesses to say the gun went off while he was loading it/ he skipped back to the US and got away with a two year suspend sentence 

Put on trial for importing narcotics into Paris

Heroine addiction cotinued - tried to take ‘the cure’ - a withdrawal treatment using apomorphine multiple times

Successfully tackled addiction, moved to NY, tried being a professor, wrote for a column, in a book shop

started writing trilogy

Became regularly addicted to Heroin again 

Toward the end of this life he did a bit of painting and was featured in the RA etc. - fired paint at canvas, ink, collage etc. 

Work is semi - autobiographical - confessional - follows accidental murder of wife, heroine addiction etc. 

Satirical, dark humoured, sardonic books, very very shocking

Most Famous Works:

‘Junkie’ - traditional narrative - semi-autobiographical/ confessional - abut his experiences as a drug addict/ selling drugs 

‘Naked Lunch’ - no longer a straight narrative - nonlinear, phrases cut up etc. - work from other authors, pictures - claimed obscene by US Government, obscurity trial - jumps around a lot - buying heroin, murder of two police officers, giant orgy 

Trilogy: wrote a straight narrative then chopped it up:

‘The Western Land’ - shifts between Burroughs’ character and episodes from his life (him sinking amphetamine bottles in the river while his mum stalls the police), bits from Ancient Egypt  

I personally find Burroughs' life really really interesting as well as the excerpts that I have read from some of his books, simply because of how honest and shocking they are. However, I'm not sure I could tackle a whole book of his just because it is so intense and gruesome. However, he does give some really intense descriptions of some of the characters that he has met and imagined and I think that these could translate into some really interesting drawings. I like that it is quite far from anything that I have done in the past. 

About an Author - Italo Calvino Research

Magical realism - short stories/ novels of fairytales are what I’m interested in

An Italian writer, who grew up on a farm around agriculture 

Part of a communist group in the Italian Resistance - under the name ‘Santiago’/ his parents were held hostage by the Nazis because of his refusal to be a conscript and they pretended to shoot his father three times in front of his mother's eyes

Calvino returned to Uni, took up writing - war provided raw material/ he confirmed his membership to the Italian Communist Party - did some journalism, released 3 novels (not very successful)

Eventually moved away from communist writing toward magical realism/ fables (left the communist group - no longer wanted to have an active role in politics)

He described himself as an atheist

Some of his most famous works:

• The Cosmicomics collection of short stories - (my favourite) 12 stories each is a fictional story built around a scientific fact - mainly space and evolution based - really interesting characters - ‘The Distance of The Moon’ - really vivid description of moon surface, ladder, boat, sea - interesting setting/ description of girl covered in limpets, tenticles, barnacles etc.

• 'Invisible Cities' - A conversation between Polo and the emperor about the 55 cities in his empire - each city is described in a poem - really cool for location! 
• 'If on a Winters Night a Traveller' - Whole story is about someone trying to read a book - first half of each chapter is about the person trying to read a book/ 2nd half is the start of a new book - all unfinished - as he reads themes from the books come into the whole novel - postmodern - sounds interesting I guess I could pick out place, characters from short stories/ library etc.

If I look at Calvino I'd like to start by ordering the Cosmicomics then maybe invisible cities..

About an Author - Angela Carter Research

Mixing of the gothic and the female - dark, twisted, intense, sad fairytales 

Magical realism - feminist themes (independent minded)

bought up by her grandmother, battled anorexia as a child, studied English lit in Bristol

divorced husband and moved to Tokyo - discovered what it is to be a woman/ became radicalised  

traveled a lot and was residence in lots of unis around England and US

wrote fiction essays - about desire, sacrifice of women, female enslavement 

All writing has this strong underlying political context 

dark twisted tales - central character almost always a woman - men doing most of the dark twisted things - incest, crime, sexual abuse, murder, pornography, rape 

in later life her work focuses less explicitly on these themes and more magical realism comes into it - particularly in her novels (earlier short stories focus on these taboo themes) 

Writing very descriptive !! - dark twisted - surreal creatures, gothic things - interesting to draw?

• ‘Fireworks’ - an interesting collection of short stories (all very twisted) - also ‘the bloodied chamber’ - famous short story 
• ‘The magical Toyshop’ sounds like an interesting read although very dark and twisted - girl growing up and turning into a woman - discovering her own sexuality - under rule of twisted ankle puts on sark puppet shows - has been compared to a series of unfortunate events (more adult) not a happy tale
• ‘Nights at the circus’ seems less twisted and more magical realism - still feminist themes - sexuality etc. Central character Lizzie - ‘cockney virgin’ (not) who grows wings - sort of protector of Woman’s rights in her beliefs about marriage etc. — Womans Suffrage/ Other strange circus acts rep. a turn of the century - new ideals (struggle to find themselves) - still incest, cannibalism etc. 
• ’Wise Children’ (set of twins - life/ death) also famous - gothic magical realism sounds less descriptive/ surreal?

About the Author - initial list research

Italo Calvino - Magical realism - short stories - short fairytales/ some more realism

Douglas Adams - skripts/ novels - doctor Who/ Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy - space/ science fiction

Guy Browning - comedy/ books about business

Donna Tartt - fiction - very minimalist and to the point - history/ real life murder mystery

Franz Kafka - realism - isolation, gulit, anxiety - Jewish, lived in Prague during WWII, burned 90% of his work           

Samuel Beckett - philosophical writing - black comedy - looks at human existence in a satirical way - negative - life is meaningless - descriptive but heavy - has to be unpicked

Agatha Christie - murder mystery - clever/ twisted - set in real worl

Aldous Huxley - pacifism/ satire - recalls experiences on drugs - conditioning/ new technology     

Edgar Allan Poe - short stories - gothic/ horror/ death (descriptive) - also detective/ science fiction

William Shakespeare - luurvee - na

Margaret Atwood - myths/ fairytales - time travel, zombies, superheroes, compounds, cults, new weird intensions etc.

Cormac McCarthy - gothic, post apocalyptic books, complex/ dark novels

Lin Yutang  -  society, the importance of living, philosophy, wise witty statements

Naomi Klein - economics history, capitalism, globalisation etc. 

  

Susan Sontag - critic who travelled to places of conflict - wrote about photography/ media, illness, human writes - controversial - interesting but more theories - not characters, eating etc.

Haruki Murakami - Japanese writer of fantasy (surrealistic) - alienation/ loneliness themes - uper confusing character names 

Carl Sagan - astrology - astrobiology/ physics- studied space/ constructed things to go into space - wrote scientific papers/ books - theories on space, global warming - earth on general etc.

Harper Lee - to kill a mockingbird - good and evil, morality, inequality, gothic settings, small town

Wole Soyinka - activist, first african to receive a turner prize, satirises nigerian elite etc. 

Toni Morrison - central characters always african - american, controversial themes? better if blue eyes? slavery contemporary- concerned with race

George Orwell - political injustice, control of state over people, class - animal farm - comments on class systems, Russian revolution

William Burroughs - drug culture, harrowing/ grotesque, addict himself - interesting read

Malcolm Gladwell - how to think, theories - crime, science, unconscious, underdogs - TED talk

Leonora Carrington - surrealism - paintings/ books - alchemy, symbolism, interp of female sexuality - female body and ageing - crazy surreal books - celebrates the surreal - underworlds, crazy old ladies houses shaped like cakes - The Hearing Trumpet - weird .. not sure how surreal it actually is though

Angela Carter - adult fairy tails - the magical toyshop - like contemporary Grimm tales - twisted af - pornography etc.

Oliver Sacks - interested in the brain - books about patients/ own experiences - neurological disorder - quite heavy

Rachel Carson - marine biologist - environment - nature writer - attention to conservation/ pesticides/ the sea and reefs

Ray Bradbury - fantasy , horror, science fiction - future - book burning/ terrorism, jealous aliens - humans inhabiting mars - haunted house on mars/ magic

Ursula LeGuin - science fiction, fantasy - science/ psychological and social dimensions - all set in space - travel through dimensions - sexuality (ambisexual aliens)

I would like to look more into : Edgar Allen Poe, Angela Carter, Italo Calvino, Cormac McCarthy - generally when I'm reading I go for fantasy books as I find them the most interesting reads but I am worried that I am going to struggle to respond visually to these - I generally like drawing things from reference and struggle to construct mythical characters from my imagination. But reading through the list these are the authors who cought my eye the most! Maybe this will be an interesting challenge? I am going to do some more research into these authors before reconsidering.

I also really like the sound of Carl Sagan but because his work is just theories I am not sure how I would pick out 5 characters etc. I'm also worried that I'd get stuck just drawing planets and stars - I think I can push myself a little more than this.