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1 results

  • Chapter 21 - The (Revised) Boy Scout

  • from Part III - Space-Time Travel
  • Edited by Oliver Harris, Keele University, Davis Schneiderman, Lake Forest College, Alex Wermer-Colan, Temple University
  • Book:
    William Burroughs in Context
    Published online:
    02 July 2026
    Print publication:
    23 July 2026, pp 272-284

  • Summary

    This chapter explores the central role of nostalgia, youth, and memory across the works of William Burroughs, challenging his reputation as an anti-sentimental icon of literary transgression. Thom Robinson traces Burroughs’ shifting relationship with nostalgia – from early satirical treatments in The Yage Letters and Naked Lunch, through the melancholic repetitions of the cut-up era, to the queer adolescent utopias of his later novels. These texts, including The Wild Boys, Cities of the Red Night, and The Place of Dead Roads, draw heavily on Burroughs’ own youth, subvert the moral codes of institutions like the Boy Scouts of America, and reimagine coming-of-age as a site of resistance and sexual awakening. Through his admiration for Denton Welch and incorporation of children’s literature tropes, Burroughs ultimately transforms nostalgia from a regressive impulse into a creative, disruptive force – an affective mechanism through which the past might be rescripted in defiance of normative adulthood.