Fantasist's Scroll

Today is the birthday of novelist and critic Anthony Burgess

He was born John Anthony Burgess Wilson in Manchester, England on this day in 1917. Though he had written several novels early in his career, none of them were particularly successful. His career took a different turn, however, when, in 1959, he began to suffer from severe headaches and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The doctor told him he only had one year to live. The diagnosis turned out to be incorrect. However, Burgess wrote five novels in that following year, the year he believed to be his last.

Though he wrote and edited a large body of work, including a fair selection of non-fiction, he’s best known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, which is perhaps most famous for the slang language he invented specifically for that work, called Nadsat.

Today is the birthday of Kurt Cobain.

The singer-songwriter who essentially founded the “grunge” music movement, was born in Hoquiam, Washington on this day in 1967. He started from humble beginnings, working a job as a school janitor, but he started playing in local rock bands. He spent most of this time living at various friends’ houses and on the street, even occasionally sleeping under a bridge. In 1989, he and his bandmates saved up six hundred dollars to record their first album, Bleach, under the name Nirvana. The boys signed to a major label in 1991 for their next album, Nevermind, and Cobain was shocked when it sold more than 10 million copies.

He became internationally famous almost overnight, but Cobain hated being famous. He developed a heroin addiction that got worse and worse, and on April 5th of 1994 he committed suicide at his home in Seattle.

Today is William S. Burroughs‘ birthday.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri on this day in 1914, he is best known for having written Naked Lunch, which was later turned into a movie that starred Peter Weller. Burroughs started writing while attending Harvard, but when a piece of his was rejected by Esquire magazine, he was so disappointed that he didn’t write again for six years. He tried to enlist in the military, but he was turned down by the Navy,and when he got into the Army infantry, his mother arranged for him to be given a psychiatric discharge.
So, at 30 years old, he moved to New York City and got involved in a bohemian scene. It was there that he was introduced to two younger men, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He also got addicted to heroin, and wrote his first book about it, a memoir called Junky. It came out in 1953.
Burroughs is known for his somewhat random method of writing inspiration, which he called the “cut up technique“, though he was certainly not the only writer at the time to make use of the method.
Burroughs is also famous for having accidentally shot his wife at a party while recreating the infamous “William Tell scene.”