Interesting William Burroughs facts: concerning his life, his work, and his links with other writers
1. Before he became a famous novelist, William S. Burroughs worked in pest-control as an exterminator. Many writers started out in somewhat surprising jobs. Douglas Adams was a bodyguard to a Middle Eastern family of oil magnates; Tarzan creator (and William Burroughs’ namesake) Edgar Rice Burroughs was a pencil sharpener salesman. But William Burroughs, who was born in 1914, started out working as an exterminator in Chicago. (Fittingly, Burroughs would later title one of his short-story collections Exterminator!)Â Burroughs would quit this job and move to New York, where he would meet Allen Ginsberg an Jack Kerouac, and the Beat Generation would take over the world.