"In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in dreary boredom. Make no mistake; all intellectuals are deviants in the U.S." · William S. Burroughs
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- http://alarob.wordpress.com
- Friday, Dec. 19, 2008 @ 06:14:33 pm
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Benjaminbrum
- http://www.twitter.com/benjibrum
- Friday, Dec. 19, 2008 @ 06:38:03 pm
I've always wondered... what do the people in Birmingham, AL call themselves.
We get called Brummies. Does that name get used there?
I don't think it's a true quote either. I love it. I can even hear Burroughs in my head saying it with his craggy voice.
I liked the pairing of the word dreary with the word boredom. Nice feel to it.
I googled dreary boredom expecting to see nothing at all and then the quote jumped out at me.
Burroughs flirted with the idea of being broad minded, sure he did drugs, sure he was sexually adventurous but he was still terribly conservative (small c) in some of his ideas and attitudes.-
- http://alarob.wordpress.com
- Friday, Dec. 19, 2008 @ 11:53:44 pm
Nice summation of Burroughs. And yes, "to exist in dreary boredom" makes an outstanding predicate. Sounds British to me, though, for some reason. Not that there's anything particularly British about dreary boredom. Probably it's the word "dreary." Can't think of a Yank who's used it in print since the 1840s. (Well, except Burroughs, if the quote's authentic.) It's a good word.
We of Birmingham AL are not sure what to call ourselves. You probably know we pronounce "Birmingham" differently -- not 'BU(R)mngm, with most of the vowels missing, but 'BURming'ham, with secondary stress on the last (usu. drawled) syllable. I recently heard "Birminghamsters," which has a ring to it.-
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Benjaminbrum
- http://www.twitter.com/benjibrum
- Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008 @ 12:42:21 am
Oh the British use the word dreary all the time as we wander around our castles after having the queen over for tea and playing croquet.
I think Burroughs is more conservative than people usually give him credit for.
Birminghamsters is nice. Weird, but nice.
Have you seen the British website: http://www.birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk/
It's a celebration of all things Birmingham, UK. Lots of fun.
Is there anything like that for B'ham AL? -
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- http://alarob.wordpress.com
- Saturday, Dec. 20, 2008 @ 07:27:53 pm
We have The Birminghamster (http://www.birminghamster.com/), which does irony better than most Birmingham bloggers. At present it's caught up with big events related to college football, the American kind, which is commonly treated with religious veneration in Alabama.
On a different note, there's the city's official image campaign, playing off the IN in Birmingham. Clever and less annoying than these things usually are: http://www.birminghamal.org/ Most of the world still associates Birmingham with racial violence in the '60s, and we ourselves tend to have an inferiority complex about nearby Atlanta -- often manifested in our insistence that we're glad we don't live there.
Having just dropped in from the other Birmingham (in Alabama, US), I find that quip entertaining, if false. Even in a former Confederate state, where a disproportionate number of people are still haunted by fears of black helicopters and a black president, there are many ways to exist happily that I suppose Burroughs never dreamed of. But then, his horizons were more limited, possibly more so than they are for the typical resident of Wetumpka or Burnt Corn or Bug Tussel (all Alabama towns). Everything about Burroughs reminds me of one of Ambrose Bierce's cynical definitions: "Metropolis: A stronghold of provinvialism."