Source: Daily Telegraph
Contact: et.letters@telegraph.co.uk

Burroughs attacks America from the grave
By David Sapsted in New York

ONE of the final acts by the "beat generation" author, William Burroughs,
who died a fortnight ago, was to write a stinging attack on the hopes of
Newt Gingrich, the House Speaker, of making America drugsfree by 2001.

In excerpts from his diary published in this week's New Yorker magazine,
the author of Naked Lunch shuddered at the thought of a sober world.

"That vile salamander Gingrich, squeaker of the House, is slobbering about
a drugfree America," said, just good, cleanliving, decent Americans from
sea to shining sea."

Burroughs, 83, found time to praise Allen Ginsberg, another of the hippy
movement's founding fathers, who died in April. He wrote: "Allen made holes
in the Big Lie, not only with his poetry but with his presence, his
selfevident spiritual truth."

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