With William Burroughs

A Report from the Bunker

A trove of intimate conversations between Burroughs and Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, David Bowie, and more icons of ’70s New York and beyond.

During the 1970s, William Burroughs, author of Junky and Naked Lunch, lived in a loft on the Bowery in New York City’s Lower East Side. Christened “The Bunker,” his apartment became a modern-day literary salon with people like Andy Warhol, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Susan Sontag, and fellow beat poet Allen Ginsberg passing through for a drink or a joint and the promise of stimulating conversation with the ingenious and eccentric Burroughs.

Among Burroughs’s entourage was author Victor Bockris, whose tape recorder was always running to capture meandering dinner party conversations and electric late-night sessions in the Bunker. In these moments, Bockris captures Burroughs’s desires, anxieties, and thoughts on writing, photography, punk rock, and more. The recordings and recollections in With William Burroughs create an unprecedentedly multidimensional portrait of a man who is often overshadowed by his reputation.