This chapter explores William Burroughs’ equivocal position within the American literary canon, examining both the institutional challenges to his inclusion and the theoretical strategies scholars have used to argue for his legitimacy. Sean Bolton traces critical attempts to align Burroughs with modernism, postmodernism, and even a proposed “amodernist” tradition, while also acknowledging the persistent difficulty of assimilating his work into stable frameworks of interpretation. Drawing on Harold Bloom’s aesthetics of canonicity, poststructuralist theory, and his own concept of “narrative revolution,” Bolton contends that Burroughs’ formal innovations – particularly the cut-up method and fragmented subjectivities – both exemplify and exceed existing literary categories. Ultimately, the chapter questions whether Burroughs needs the canon at all, suggesting that his enduring cultural influence may rest precisely on his resistance to assimilation. For readers and scholars alike, Burroughs remains an outsider by design, a figure whose work continues to provoke, disturb, and inspire on its own uncompromising terms.