News at Eleven: The Soft Machine was also the name

of a 1960s rock band; the members of Steely Dan took their moniker from "Naked Lunch" (it's the name of a, uh, sexual apparatus); Smith is on board to confess "I always had a crush on William." Why did Burroughs become a devilish saint to a generation of musicians? Because he survived, for one thing, but also because the extremes of human experience and perception he wrote about were valued by the punks as they tried to punch their way out of the culture.

from The Boston Globe: William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

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