I have only two questions:
1. Would Shakespeare feel the need to shoot a portrait of Burroughs?
2. Would he find it amusing?
Defacing others’ work is a recurring theme in modern and postmodern art:
“Picasso took one of Matisse’s portraits of his daughter—and used it as a dartboard, encouraging his friends to do the same. Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) is a rendition of the Mona Lisa with a cartoonish beard and moustache added. Rauschenberg erased a de Kooning work with a heavy wax pencil. In the 1960s, a gang led by George Maciunas performed Philip Corner’s Piano Activities (1962)—which called for a number of men with implements of destruction such as band saws and chisels to destroy a grand piano. Niki de Saint Phalle’s Venus de Milo (1962) is a life-size plaster-on-chickenwire version of the classic beauty filled with bags of red and black paint; Saint Phalle then took a rifle and fired upon the Venus, puncturing the statue and the bags of paint to a splattered effect.”
As an undergraduate with a (vacuously?)open mind I read Burroughs’ NAKED LUNCH, but could not finish it. It was so obscene as to make one vomit. One phrase sticks in my mind, “…the monkey farted out fresh hors d’oeuvres on the plate…” In fact the book had been loaned me by a homosexual attempting my seduction (he, and all others, have failed). So, Burroughs is not worth shooting, that settles that.
The destruction of art — writing, music, sculpture, drama, poetry, art — is allied with the two pronged thrust of Nihilism and Marxism, those Siamese children of the 19th century. Marxism must replace (but first destroy) the healthy competitive world, and Nihilism/Anarchism (as in Bakunin) keeps it company. Many modern “works of art” are “great” only by default, i.e. Picasso, de Kooning, Pollock, Warhol, Rothko. Indeed the use of “representational” and “non-” contradicts art’s basic purpose of recreating reality according to principles of harmony/beauty. There was also a “pop art” group which depicted (almost exclusively) peoples’ genitalia. Most “artists” emerge from the sewer of NYC and are sponsored by “Guggenheims” who buy their stuff cheap, bribe or cajole “art critics”, and then cash in big-time. Same with the Broadway stage, which began with Lehar stuff and since Camelot has rarely produced delightful tunes or drama. OK, there is a bright spot or two, as in The Phantom of the Opera or Evita — the rest is garbage, sustained by brilliant staging and lighting.
There are deeper causes, but I can not cover them here.
Your experience reading Burroughs parallels mine, Stephen.
The entire point of post-modernism is to destroy all esteem for Western civilization. It’s no surprise that its practitioners might occasionally take this to the literal extreme.