Marriage To Burroughs
Burroughs initially tried to support his family by farming cash crops in the Rio Grande River valley. When this failed, he moved Vollmer and their children to New Orleans. While living there he was arrested for heroin possession, during which time police searched Vollmer's home, unearthing letters from Ginsberg discussing a possible shipment of marijuana. The resulting criminal charges were grave — upon conviction Burroughs would have served time in Louisiana's infamous Angola State Prison; he fled for Mexico City. Once he was settled, Vollmer joined him, along with her children.
In her son’s novel Kentucky Ham (1973), Vollmer is remembered as a gentle and considerate mother who was meek and deferential to her husband's parents. Yet she is also depicted as being prone to wild bouts of self-destructive behavior. The book recounts a reckless, almost deadly drive down a mountainside road in Mexico. Joan's battered appearance and unpredictable behavior alarmed Ginsberg when he visited with Lucien Carr in 1951. During their visit she expressed some bitterness and hostility toward Burroughs' lack of affection and continued drug addiction. In fact, at the time of Ginsberg's visit, Burroughs was away in Guatemala with a young man he pursued unsuccessfully.
According to research by James Grauerholz, a petition for divorce was initiated in Mexico by Burroughs, Vollmer, or both, about a year before Joan's death despite the fact that they had never been legally married; however, the application was later withdrawn by their Mexican attorney. The divorce was likely required due to Burroughs' stated desire to take custody of their son upon dissolution. From the same source, there is some speculation that Vollmer was romantically linked with several men while living in Mexico; nevertheless, Ted Morgan describes her in Literary Outlaw as a woman suffering from serious drug and alcohol addictions which had aged her noticeably. Her face was swollen; she limped due to a recent bout of polio.
Read more about this topic: Joan Vollmer
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or burroughs:
“With my desire to write he seemed in full sympathy, and in urging our early marriage he argued that my first necessity was leisure in which to develop and to master my craft. It appeared to me that with such a man as teacher and guide I could not fail, and it was in a queer mixture of young love and vaulting ambition that I became a wife.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)
“No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, he’s got the fridge full of sausages and spring water.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)