Peter Oehler
Reshaping the Blue Frontier in the Burroughsian Crucible
Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 19 (2025), pp. 41-51

Abstract: The aim of this article is to examine whether and how Burroughs’ work contributes to an ecocriticism with a focus on an ocean- and water-centric view by his dealing with liquids and fluids. Burroughs occasionally deals with water in his writings, although he feels more drawn to sewage. Life-giving viscous liquids, on the other hand, were his favorite. In the countless fuck scenes in The Wild Boys, for example, the obligatory bead of juice on the cock appears again and again. There are even meat plants whose tubes erect into huge phalluses when stimulated by human hands and which then ejaculate with a groan. Initially, the wild boys are maintained by artificially inseminating certain women with their semen. After birth, however, male offspring is immediately separated from them. And they continue to develop and can then, in a ritual sexual act, bring a recently deceased wild boy back to life virtually out of nowhere, who only manifests himself physically when the sperm is ejaculated. Although there is no longer any biological reason for this, Burroughs clings to the life-giving power of male semen in his fantasy. Burroughs’ obsession with semen represents the tension in his relationship with water as both a life-giving and limiting force. This tension is visible in his treatment of the aqualung. The aqualung is a device that allows people to breathe underwater and to cross the boundary to the water, to the ocean, at least for a short time. Interestingly, the term aqualung appears several times in Burroughs’ work, but always in a negative sense, namely as ballast or hindrance. The essay “Women: A Biological Mistake?” makes it clear why: just like a fish that has come ashore, survived and gradually lost its gills (and for which there is therefore no going back into the water), man will evolve by setting off into space. In doing so, he will shed his body. And even with this next evolutionary step, there will be no turning back. So even if Burroughs moves away from the water or ocean, he does not remain land-based in his thinking, but goes beyond it: “We are here to go—into space.”

Keywords: William S. Burroughs, Ecocriticism, ocean-centric view, water-centric view, sewers, Naked Lunch, The Wild Boys, life-giving, viscous liquids, aqualung, evolution

DOI: 10.7311/PJAS.19/2025.04

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