A Quote by Yony Leyser
Authors and artists are still afraid of breaking away as far as [William Burroughs] did... And he did it in the 50s!
Related Quotes
When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.
Norman Mailer thinks William Burroughs is a genius, which I think is ludicrous beyond words. I don't think William Burroughs has an ounce of talent.
It was good to launch the economy in the '50s. Japan did this; China did this; even South Korea did this. All the East Asians did this - import substitution. I think all countries followed import substitution in the '50s and in the '60s, but I think by the '70s, countries were getting out of that first phase of the strategy.
Never did tombs look so ghastly white. Never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom. Never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously. Never did bough creak so mysteriously, and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.
[Allen] Ginsberg totally helped that out. He was the best sales person. He was the most pop. They are still shocking and relevant, especially [William] Burroughs.
I tell this anecdote with tongue in cheek at the start of my book William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination, but my academic involvement with Burroughs was entirely due to my tutor at Oxford, Peter Conrad. I was discussing with him the idea of staying on to do graduate work and when I tossed the name of Burroughs into the conversation - well, he let it fall loudly onto the floor, and proceeded to cross himself as if warding off an evil spirit. Since I was very ambivalent about an academic career in any case, that decided it for me.
And still everything’s the same, even though I did my best to get as far away as I could.
The feat of superbly imitating a muscle, as Michelangelo did, or a face, as Raphael did, created neither progress nor a hierarchy in art. Because these artists of the sixteenth century imitated human forms, they were not superior to the artists of the high periods of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indochinese, Roman, and Gothic art who interpreted and stylized form but did not imitate it.
I hear you guys all the time talking about Daniel Bryan, trained by Shawn Michaels. One curious thing to me is, how come you guys never mention William Regal? William Regal did the real work with this young man. Shawn Michaels took $3,000 from him, that's all he ever did.
It's awful to be afraid of sex, but I'm afraid that's what the '50s did to people. It was just sex is disgusting, it shouldn't be talked about. Nudity is disgusting, we just don't talk about those kinds of things.
The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part.
Film directing has perfected my theater directing. I think when I first started directing, a lot of my stuff was very lateral; I was afraid to have the actors' backs turned away, afraid to put them too far upstage, and I think once I did more things with film, I got more interested in composition.
In TV, you can carve out a beautiful little niche like 'Breaking Bad' did. Like 'The Wire' did. Like 'Homeland' did.
These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us to eat fish during the month of Ramadan. He is breaking us away from meats. That was a wonderful way to do it and use the month of Ramadan for fish. I did that too during one of my Ramadan's. We would just eat fish.Breaking away from land animals is a right thing to do.
I did teach elementary school for quite a while, and so I didn't have to reach too far back for the titles and authors that populate the early chapters 'of The Borrower.'
