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131-419: The EBSN is run by a board of eight that includes Beat scholars Paul Aliferis, Benjamin J. Heal, Estíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedo, Raven See, Chad Weidner and Florian Zappe. Art historian Frida Forsgren stepped down from the board in 2020. Current membership stands at over four hundred, drawn from across Europe and around the world. Professor Harris, a William Burroughs scholar, has done much to promote and develop

262-473: A "William Tell" stunt . He later told investigators that he had been showing his pistol to friends when it fell and hit the table, firing the bullet that killed Vollmer. After he fled Mexico back to the United States, he was convicted of manslaughter in absentia and received a two-year suspended sentence. Much of Burroughs's work is highly experimental and features unreliable narrators , but it

393-458: A "family where displays of affection were considered embarrassing." During his childhood, Burroughs developed a lifelong interest in magic and the occult , which would eventually find their way repeatedly into his writings. Significantly, he later described how, as a child, he'd seen an apparition of a green reindeer in the woods, which he identified as a totem animal , as well as a vision of ghostly grey figures at play in his bedroom. As

524-761: A Mississippi River expedition led by Laclède, who searched for a location to base the company's fur trading operations. Though Ste. Genevieve was already established as a trading center, he sought a place less prone to flooding. He found an elevated area overlooking the flood plain of the Mississippi River, not far south from its confluence with the Missouri and Illinois rivers. In addition to having an advantageous natural drainage system, there were nearby forested areas to supply timber and grasslands which could easily be converted for agricultural purposes. Laclède declared that this place "might become, hereafter, one of

655-671: A boy, Burroughs lived on Pershing Avenue (now Pershing Place) in St. Louis's Central West End . He attended John Burroughs School in St. Louis, where his first published essay – "Personal Magnetism", which revolved around telepathic mind-control – was printed in the John Burroughs Review in 1929. He then attended the Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico, which was stressful for him. The school

786-528: A circle of exiles, homosexuals, and runaways. There, he met Ilse Klapper, born Herzfeld (1900–1982), a German Jewish woman fleeing her country's Nazi government. The two were never romantically involved, but Burroughs married her, in Croatia , against the wishes of his parents, to allow her to gain a visa to the United States. She made her way to New York City, and eventually divorced Burroughs, although they remained friends for many years. After returning to

917-415: A collection of short stories, was published. Under the strong influence of a marijuana confection known as majoun and a German-made opioid called Eukodol , Burroughs settled in to write. Eventually, Ginsberg and Kerouac, who had traveled to Tangier in 1957, helped Burroughs type, edit, and arrange these episodes into Naked Lunch . Whereas Junkie and Queer were conventional in style, Naked Lunch

1048-526: A customs house was constructed in the Greek Revival style in 1852, but was demolished and replaced in 1873 by the U.S. Customhouse and Post Office . Because much of the city's commercial and industrial development was centered along the riverfront, many pre-Civil War buildings were demolished during construction of the Gateway Arch. The city's remaining architectural heritage of the era includes

1179-576: A divorce from Ilse Klapper. Meanwhile, Vollmer's addiction led to a temporary psychosis that resulted in her admission to Bellevue Hospital , which endangered the custody of her child. Upon hearing this, Burroughs immediately returned to New York City to gain her release, asking her to marry him. Their marriage was never formalized, but she lived as his common-law wife . They returned to St. Louis to visit Burroughs's parents and then moved with her daughter to Texas. Vollmer soon became pregnant with Burroughs's child. Their son, William S. Burroughs Jr. ,

1310-443: A factor in her willingness to take part in the risky William Tell stunt. After leaving Mexico, Burroughs drifted through South America for several months, seeking out a drug called yagé , which promised to give the user telepathic abilities. A book composed of letters between Burroughs and Ginsberg, The Yage Letters , was published in 1963 by City Lights Books . In 2006, a re-edited version, The Yage Letters Redux , showed that

1441-700: A family friend, who was also a neurologist at a psychiatric treatment center, Burroughs waited five months in limbo at Jefferson Barracks outside St. Louis before being discharged. During that time he met a Chicago soldier also awaiting release, and once Burroughs was free, he moved to Chicago and held a variety of jobs, including one as an exterminator . When two of his friends from St. Louis – University of Chicago student Lucien Carr and his admirer, David Kammerer – left for New York City, Burroughs followed. In 1945, Burroughs began living with Joan Vollmer Adams in an apartment they shared with Jack Kerouac and Edie Parker , Kerouac's first wife. Vollmer Adams

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1572-521: A fellow student. Yet, according to his own account, he left voluntarily: "During the Easter vacation of my second year I persuaded my family to let me stay in St. Louis." Burroughs finished high school at Taylor School in Clayton , Missouri, and in 1932 left home to pursue an arts degree at Harvard University , where he was affiliated with Adams House . During the summers, he worked as a cub reporter for

1703-543: A greater population than New Orleans. Settled by many Southerners in a slave state , the city was split in political sympathies and became polarized during the American Civil War . In 1861, 28 civilians were killed in a clash with Union troops . The war hurt St. Louis economically, due to the Union blockade of river traffic to the south on the Mississippi River. The St. Louis Arsenal constructed ironclads for

1834-495: A labour of love. The EBSN is frequently discussed and endorsed in both popular and scholarly works such as Professor Andrew Lees' memoir Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment (2016) and Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack (2018). Simon Warner, an editor of the latter, writes in his acknowledgments thanking 'those involved in Popular Music Studies and Beat Studies (with special reference to

1965-687: A large advance from Playboy to write an article about his trip back to St. Louis, one that was eventually published in The Paris Review , after Burroughs refused to alter the style for Playboy ’s publishers. In 1968 Burroughs joined Jean Genet , John Sack , and Terry Southern in covering the 1968 Democratic National Convention for Esquire magazine. Southern and Burroughs, who had first become acquainted in London, would remain lifelong friends and collaborators. In 1972, Burroughs and Southern unsuccessfully attempted to adapt Naked Lunch for

2096-441: A monthly allowance of $ 200 out of their earnings from Cobblestone Gardens, a substantial sum in those days. It was enough to keep him going, and indeed it guaranteed his survival for the next twenty-five years, arriving with welcome regularity. The allowance was a ticket to freedom; it allowed him to live where he wanted to and to forgo employment. Burroughs's parents sold the rights to his grandfather's invention and had no share in

2227-503: A multi-block district of cobblestone streets and brick and cast-iron warehouses called Laclede's Landing . Now popular for its restaurants and nightclubs, the district is located north of Gateway Arch along the riverfront. Other industrial buildings from the era include some portions of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery , which date to the 1860s. St. Louis saw a vast expansion in variety and number of religious buildings during

2358-542: A pan-tribal alliance to counter British control over the region but received little support from the indigenous residents of St. Louis. By 1765, the city began receiving visits from representatives of the British, French, and Spanish governments. St. Louis was transferred to the French First Republic in 1800 (although all of the colonial lands continued to be administered by Spanish officials), then sold by

2489-532: A party above the Bounty Bar in Mexico City, a drunk Burroughs allegedly took his handgun from his travel bag and told his wife, "It's time for our William Tell act ." There is no indication that they had performed such an action previously. Vollmer, who was also drinking heavily and undergoing amphetamine withdrawal, allegedly obliged him by putting a highball glass on her head. Burroughs shot Vollmer in

2620-659: A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories, and four collections of essays. Five books of his interviews and correspondences have also been published. He was initially briefly known by the pen name William Lee . He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "shotgun art." Burroughs

2751-595: A public corridor of 300 feet fronting the river, but later this area was released for private development. For the city's first few years, it was not recognized by any governments. Although the settlement was thought to be under the control of the Spanish government, no one asserted any authority over it, and thus St. Louis had no local government. This vacuum led Laclède to assume civil control, and all problems were disposed in public settings, such as communal meetings. In addition, Laclède granted new settlers lots in town and

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2882-530: A quarterly journal partially subsidized by the university, promised to publish more excerpts from Naked Lunch , but he was fired from his position in 1958 after Chicago Daily News columnist Jack Mabley called the first excerpt obscene. Rosenthal went on to publish more in his newly created literary journal Big Table No. 1 ; however, the United States Postmaster General ruled that copies could not be mailed to subscribers on

3013-607: A recount of the votes in November, officially did so in March 1877. The 1877 St. Louis general strike caused significant upheaval, in a fight for the eight-hour day and the banning of child labor. Industrial production continued to increase during the late 19th century. Major corporations such as the Anheuser-Busch brewery, Ralston Purina company and Desloge Consolidated Lead Company were established at St. Louis which

3144-638: A rundown hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris in 1959 when Naked Lunch was still looking for a publisher. Tangier , with its political unrest, and criminals with whom he had become involved, became dangerous to Burroughs. He went to Paris to meet Ginsberg and talk with Olympia Press . He left behind a criminal charge which eventually caught up with him in Paris. Paul Lund, a British former career criminal and cigarette smuggler whom Burroughs met in Tangier,

3275-505: A shamanic ceremony with the explicit aim of exorcising the Ugly Spirit. Oliver Harris has questioned Burroughs's claim that Vollmer's death catalysed his writing, highlighting the importance for Queer of Burroughs's traumatic relationship with the boyfriend fictionalized in the story as Eugene Allerton, rather than Burroughs's shooting of Vollmer. In any case, he had begun to write in 1945. Burroughs and Kerouac collaborated on And

3406-588: A suspended sentence, since a literary career, according to Ted Morgan, is a respected profession in France. The " Beat Hotel " was a typical European-style boarding house hotel, with common toilets on every floor, and a small place for personal cooking in the room. Life there was documented by the photographer Harold Chapman , who lived in the attic room. This shabby, inexpensive hotel was populated by Gregory Corso , Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky for several months after Naked Lunch first appeared. Burroughs's time at

3537-495: A symbol of failure in public housing, and was torn down less than two decades after it was built. Since the 1980s, several revitalization efforts have focused on Downtown St. Louis . The urban revitalization projects that started in the 1980s continued into the new century. The city's old garment district , centered on Washington Avenue in the Downtown and Downtown West neighborhoods, experienced major development starting in

3668-567: A vacation financed from his parents' continuing support. He found Rome and Ansen's company dreary and, inspired by Paul Bowles ' fiction, he decided to head for the Tangier International Zone , where he rented a room and began to write a large body of text that he personally referred to as Interzone . To Burroughs, all signs directed a return to Tangier, a city where drugs were freely available and where financial support from his family would continue. He realized that in

3799-831: A water route to the Pacific Ocean, but the party had to go overland in the Upper West. They reached the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River in summer 1805. They returned, reaching St. Louis on September 23, 1806. Both Lewis and Clark lived in St. Louis after the expedition. Many other explorers, settlers, and trappers (such as Ashley's Hundred ) would later take a similar route to the West. The city elected its first municipal legislators (called trustees) in 1808. Steamboats first arrived in St. Louis in 1817, improving connections with New Orleans and eastern markets. Missouri

3930-804: Is also semi-autobiographical, often drawing from his experiences as a heroin addict. He lived at various times in Mexico City , London , Paris , and the Tangier International Zone in Morocco , and traveled in the Amazon rainforest — and featured these places in many of his novels and stories. With Brion Gysin , Burroughs popularized the cut-up , an aleatory literary technique , featuring heavily in such works of his as The Nova Trilogy (1961–1964). His writing also engages frequent mystical , occult , or otherwise magical themes, constant preoccupations in both his fiction and real life. In 1983, Burroughs

4061-611: Is an example of the Polish Cathedral style . Among the other major designs of the period were St. Alphonsus Liguori (known as The Rock Church ) (1867) in the Gothic Revival and Second Presbyterian Church of St. Louis (1900) in Richardsonian Romanesque . By the 1900 census , St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the country. In 1904, the city hosted a world's fair at Forest Park called

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4192-437: Is closer to the medieval model than to modern psychological explanations ... I mean a definite possessing entity." Burroughs' writing was intended as a form of "sorcery", in his own words – to disrupt language via methods such as the cut-up technique , and thus protect himself from possession. Later in life, Burroughs described the Ugly Spirit as "Monopolistic, acquisitive evil. Ugly evil. The ugly American", and took part in

4323-435: Is perhaps best known for his third novel, Naked Lunch (1959). It became the subject of one of the last major literary censorship cases in the United States after its US publisher, Grove Press , was sued for violating a Massachusetts obscenity statute. Burroughs is believed to have killed his second wife, Joan Vollmer , in 1951 in Mexico City. He initially claimed that he had accidentally shot her while drunkenly attempting

4454-455: Is the Mississippi River, which separates Missouri from Illinois. The Missouri River forms the northern line of St. Louis County, except for a few areas where the river has changed its course. The Meramec River forms most of its southern line. The urban area of St. Louis has a humid subtropical climate ( Köppen : Cfa ); however, its metropolitan region even to the south may present a hot-summer humid continental climate ( Dfa ), which shows

4585-800: Is the tallest building in St. Louis. During the 1990s, St. Louis saw the construction of the largest United States courthouse by area, the Thomas F. Eagleton United States Courthouse (2000). The Eagleton Courthouse is home to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit . The most recent high-rise buildings in St. Louis include two residential towers: One Hundred in

4716-476: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch , covering the police docket. He disliked the work, and refused to cover some events, like the death of a drowned child. He lost his virginity in an East St. Louis, Illinois , brothel that summer with a female prostitute whom he regularly patronized. While at Harvard, Burroughs made trips to New York City and was introduced to the gay subculture there. He visited lesbian dives, piano bars, and

4847-690: The Burroughs Corporation . Shortly before the 1929 stock market crash , they sold their stock for $ 200,000 (equivalent to approximately $ 3,500,000 in today's funds ). After Burroughs graduated from Harvard, his formal education ended, except for brief flirtations with graduate study of anthropology at Columbia and medicine in Vienna, Austria. He traveled to Europe and became involved in Austrian and Hungarian Weimar -era gay culture ; he picked up young men in steam baths in Vienna and moved in

4978-466: The Harlem and Greenwich Village homosexual underground with Richard Stern, a wealthy friend from Kansas City . They would drive from Boston to New York in a reckless fashion. Once, Stern scared Burroughs so badly that he asked to be let out of the vehicle. Burroughs graduated from Harvard in 1936. According to Ted Morgan's Literary Outlaw , His parents, upon his graduation, had decided to give him

5109-669: The Illinois Country (also known as Upper Louisiana) were built by the French during the 1690s and early 1700s at Cahokia , Kaskaskia , and Fort de Chartres . Migrants from the French villages on the east side of the Mississippi River , such as Kaskaskia, also founded Ste. Genevieve in the 1730s. In 1764, after France lost the Seven Years' War , Pierre Laclède and his stepson Auguste Chouteau founded what

5240-600: The Louisiana Purchase Exposition . Its architectural legacy is somewhat scattered. Among the fair-related cultural institutions in the park are the St. Louis Art Museum designed by Cass Gilbert , part of the remaining lagoon at the foot of Art Hill, and the Flight Cage at the St. Louis Zoo . The Missouri History Museum was built afterward, with the profit from the fair. But 1904 left other assets to

5371-683: The Missouri History Museum , and Tower Grove Park and the Botanical Gardens. After the Civil War, social and racial discrimination in housing and employment were common in St. Louis. In 1916, during the Jim Crow Era , St. Louis passed a residential segregation ordinance saying that if 75% of the residents of a neighborhood were of a certain race, no one from a different race was allowed to move in. That ordinance

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5502-551: The Missouri River . The Chouteau brothers gained a monopoly from Spain on the fur trade with Santa Fe . French colonists used African slaves as domestic servants and workers in the city. During the negotiations for the 1763 Treaty of Paris , French negotiators agreed to transfer France's colonial territories west of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to New Spain to compensate for Spanish territorial losses during

5633-731: The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency . Major research universities in Greater St. Louis include Washington University in St. Louis , Saint Louis University , and the University of Missouri–St. Louis . The Washington University Medical Center in the Central West End neighborhood hosts an agglomeration of medical and pharmaceutical institutions , including Barnes-Jewish Hospital . St. Louis has four professional sports teams :

5764-988: The Netherlands , Denmark , Morocco , Belgium , England and France . The Tangier , Morocco conference received significant media attention in Huffington Post Morocco and El Mundo . A review of the Brussels , Belgium conference was published in the American Studies journal Transatlantica . Notable keynote speakers and performers appearing at previous conferences include Beat poet and Naropa Institute founder Anne Waldman , poet Robert Gibbons , musician, author and broadcaster CP Lee , noted neurologist Professor Andrew Lees , writer and academic Anouar Majid, noted English Beat poets Libby Houston and Pete Brown , and folk singer-songwriter Eric Andersen . Essays derived from papers presented at

5895-661: The Office of Strategic Services and the Navy , he veered into substance abuse, beginning with morphine and developing a heroin addiction that would affect him for the rest of his life. In 1943, while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac . This liaison would become the foundation of the Beat Generation , later a defining influence on the 1960s counterculture . Burroughs found success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), but

6026-969: The St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball , the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League , St. Louis City SC of Major League Soccer , and the St. Louis BattleHawks of the United Football League . The city's attractions include the 630-foot (192 m) Gateway Arch in Downtown St. Louis , the St. Louis Zoo , the Missouri Botanical Garden , the St. Louis Art Museum , and Bellefontaine Cemetery . [REDACTED]   Kingdom of France 1690s–1763 [REDACTED]   Kingdom of Spain 1763–1800 [REDACTED]   French First Republic 1800–1803 [REDACTED]   United States 1803–present The area that became St. Louis

6157-463: The Union Navy . Slaves worked in many jobs on the waterfront and on the riverboats. Given the city's location close to the free state of Illinois and others, some slaves escaped to freedom. Others, especially women with children, sued in court in freedom suits , and several prominent local attorneys aided slaves in these suits. About half the slaves achieved freedom in hundreds of suits before

6288-457: The avant garde little magazine Nomad at the beginning of the 1960s. Burroughs left Paris for London in 1960 to visit Dr. Dent, a well-known English medical doctor who spearheaded a reputedly painless heroin withdrawal treatment using the drug apomorphine . Dent's apomorphine cure was also used to treat alcoholism, although it was held by several people who undertook it to be no more than straightforward aversion therapy. Burroughs, however,

6419-713: The confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while its metropolitan area , which extends into Illinois , had an estimated population of over 2.8 million. It is the largest metropolitan area in Missouri and the second-largest in Illinois. The city's combined statistical area is the 20th-largest in the United States. The land that became St. Louis had been occupied by Native American cultures for thousands of years before European settlement . The city

6550-579: The counterculture of the 1960s , but also literary critics such as Mary McCarthy . Once published in the United States, Naked Lunch was prosecuted as obscene by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, followed by other states. In 1966, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the work "not obscene" on the basis of criteria developed largely to defend the book. The case against Burroughs's novel still stands as

6681-576: The 1920 census, it was the fourth-largest city in the country. It separated from St. Louis County in 1877, becoming an independent city and limiting its political boundaries. In 1904, it hosted the Louisiana Purchase Exposition , also known as the St. Louis World's Fair, and the Summer Olympics . St. Louis is designated as one of 173 global cities by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network . The GDP of Greater St. Louis

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6812-416: The 1960s and Holt, Rinehart & Winston in the 1980s. The cut-up method, because of its random or mechanical basis for text generation, combined with the possibilities of mixing in text written by other writers, deemphasizes the traditional role of the writer as creator or originator of a string of words, while simultaneously exalting the importance of the writer's sensibility as an editor. In this sense,

6943-444: The 1970s, leading to a court challenge and interdistrict desegregation agreement. Students have been bused mostly from the city to county school districts to have opportunities for integrated classes, although the city has created magnet schools to attract students. St. Louis, like many Midwestern cities, expanded in the early 20th century due to industrialization, which provided jobs to new generations of immigrants and migrants from

7074-413: The 19th and 20th century, most major cities aggressively annexed surrounding areas as residential development occurred away from the central city; however, St. Louis was unable to do so. Several urban renewal projects were built in the 1950s, as the city worked to replace old and substandard housing. Some of these were poorly designed and resulted in problems. One prominent example, Pruitt–Igoe , became

7205-800: The 2011 EBSN conference in Middelburg , the Netherlands, were published in a 2013 edition of the Journal of Comparative American Studies . Essays derived from papers presented at the 2014 EBSN conference in Tangier , Morocco, were published in a 2016 EBSN special issue of the Purdue University Press Q2 rated Journal CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture , edited by EBSN founders Oliver Harris and Polina Mackay. The EBSN website also contains original scholarship including one of

7336-537: The American Civil War. The printing press of abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy was destroyed for the third time by townsfolk. He was murdered the next year in nearby Alton, Illinois . After the war, St. Louis profited via trade with the West, aided by the 1874 completion of the Eads Bridge , named for its design engineer. Industrial developments on both banks of the river were linked by the bridge,

7467-508: The Beat Hotel was dominated by occult experiments – " mirror-gazing , scrying , trance and telepathy , all fuelled by a wide variety of mind-altering drugs". Later, Burroughs would describe "visions" obtained by staring into the mirror for hours at a time – his hands transformed into tentacles, or his whole image transforming into some strange entity, or visions of far-off places, or of other people rapidly undergoing metamorphosis. It

7598-613: The Burroughs Adding Machine company, which evolved into the Burroughs Corporation . His mother was Laura Hammond Lee Burroughs, whose brother, Ivy Lee , was an advertising pioneer later employed as a publicist for the Rockefellers. His father ran an antiques and gift shop, Cobblestone Gardens, in St. Louis and later in Palm Beach, Florida , when they relocated. Burroughs would later write of growing up in

7729-439: The Central West End neighborhood and One Cardinal Way in the Downtown neighborhood. The city is divided into 79 officially-recognized neighborhoods. According to the United States Census Bureau , St. Louis has a total area of 66 square miles (170 km ), of which 62 square miles (160 km ) is land and 4.1 square miles (11 km ) (6.2%) is water. The city is built on bluffs and terraces that rise 100–200 feet above

7860-439: The EBSN. The Jewish Telegraph notes that Harris and colleagues 'set up the European Beat Studies Network because they had found previous academic conferences boring', with the 2016 Manchester Conference described as 'the largest conference of scholars, poets, filmmakers and musical performers interested in the Beat Generation.' In a 2014 interview with Frank Rynne published on the official William S. Burroughs website Harris describes

7991-452: The European Beat Studies Network) - for their continued efforts to open up new and interesting areas of inquiry,' while Lees writes that 'Oliver Harris encouraged me to look at Burroughs' work from a scientific viewpoint and invited me to join a group of deadbeats (the European Beat Studies Network) whose imagination knows no limits.' The core function of the EBSN is to facilitate, promote and manage its annual conference, which has been held in

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8122-412: The French to the U.S. in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase . St. Louis became the capital of, and gateway to, the new territory. Shortly after the official transfer of authority was made, the Lewis and Clark Expedition was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson. The expedition departed from St. Louis in May 1804 along the Missouri River to explore the vast territory. There were hopes of finding

8253-437: The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks , a mystery novel loosely based on the Carr–Kammerer situation and that at the time remained unpublished. Years later, in the documentary What Happened to Kerouac? , Burroughs described it as "not a very distinguished work". An excerpt of this work, in which Burroughs and Kerouac wrote alternating chapters, was finally published in Word Virus , a compendium of William Burroughs's writing that

8384-533: The Moka coffee bar and the London HQ of Scientology. Burroughs himself related the Moka coffee bar incident: Here is a sample operation carried out against the Moka Bar at 29 Frith Street, London, W1, beginning on August 3, 1972. Reverse Thursday. Reason for operation was outrageous and unprovoked discourtesy and poisonous cheesecake. Now to close in on the Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Stand around outside. Let them see me. They are seething around in there ... Playback would come later with more pictures ... Playback

8515-503: The Moroccan culture he had found an environment that synchronized with his temperament and afforded no hindrances to pursuing his interests and indulging in his chosen activities. He left for Tangier in November 1954 and spent the next four years there working on the fiction that would later become Naked Lunch , as well as attempting to write commercial articles about Tangier. He sent these writings to Ginsberg, his literary agent for Junkie , but none were published until 1989 when Interzone ,

8646-415: The NFL in 2017, alleging the league breached its own relocation guidelines to profit at the expense of the city. In 2021, the NFL and Rams owner Stan Kroenke agreed to settle out of court with the city for $ 790 million. The architecture of St. Louis exhibits a variety of commercial, residential, and monumental architecture . St. Louis is known for the Gateway Arch , the tallest monument constructed in

8777-450: The Second World War," while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius." Burroughs was born in 1914, the younger of two sons born to Mortimer Perry Burroughs (June 16, 1885 – January 5, 1965) and Laura Hammon Lee (August 5, 1888 – October 20, 1970). Of prominent English ancestry , his family lived in St. Louis, Missouri . His grandfather, William Seward Burroughs I , had founded

8908-412: The South. It reached its peak population of 856,796 at the 1950 census. Suburbanization from the 1950s through the 1990s dramatically reduced the city's population, as did restructuring of industry and loss of jobs. The effects of suburbanization were exacerbated by the small geographical size of St. Louis due to its earlier decision to become an independent city, and it lost much of its tax base. During

9039-417: The U.S. customs would search him very thoroughly on arrival. He claims he went through the most excruciating two months of opiate withdrawal while seeing his son through his trial and sentencing, traveling with Billy to Lexington, Kentucky from Miami to ensure that his son entered the hospital that he had once spent time in as a volunteer admission. Earlier, Burroughs revisited St. Louis, Missouri, taking

9170-412: The United States at 630 feet (190 m). The Arch pays homage to Thomas Jefferson and St. Louis's position as the gateway to the West. Architectural influences reflected in the area include French Colonial , German , early American , and modern architectural styles. Several examples of religious structures are extant from the pre-Civil War period, and most reflect the common residential styles of

9301-436: The United States on several occasions, including one time escorting his son to the Lexington Narcotics Farm and Prison after the younger Burroughs had been convicted of prescription fraud in Florida. In the "Afterword" to the compilation of his son's two previously published novels Speed and Kentucky Ham , Burroughs writes that he thought he had a "small habit" and left London quickly without any narcotics because he suspected

9432-412: The United States, he held a string of uninteresting jobs. In 1939, his mental health became a concern for his parents, especially after he deliberately severed the last joint of his left little finger at the knuckle to impress a man with whom he was infatuated. This event made its way into his early fiction as the short story "The Finger". Burroughs enlisted in the U.S. Army early in 1942, shortly after

9563-690: The aim of the EBSN: Across Europe there's so much interest in the Beats--broadly defined--and the EBSN has a mission to put them in touch with one another. I'm especially keen to break down the usual academic groupings and the Anglo-American divide from non-English speakers, although the barriers are so longstanding it's not easy. It's also hard because the EBSN is free and open to all. No fees - but also no income, so it's literally

9694-568: The area encountered by early Europeans included the Siouan -speaking Osage people , whose territory extended west, and the Illiniwek . European exploration of the area was first recorded in 1673, when French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette traveled through the Mississippi River valley. Five years later, La Salle claimed the region for France as part of La Louisiane , also known as Louisiana . The earliest European settlements in

9825-446: The area, and parts of the city are karst in nature. This is particularly true of the area south of downtown, which has numerous sinkholes and caves. Most of the caves in the city have been sealed, but many springs are visible along the riverfront. Coal, brick clay , and millerite ore were once mined in the city. The predominant surface rock, known as St. Louis limestone , is used as dimension stone and rubble for construction. Near

9956-399: The basis of obscenity laws. John Ciardi did get a copy and wrote a positive review of the work, prompting a telegram from Allen Ginsberg praising the review. This controversy made Naked Lunch interesting to Girodias again, and he published the novel in 1959. After the novel was published, it became notorious across Europe and the United States, garnering interest from not just members of

10087-404: The bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II . But when he was classified as a 1-A infantry, not an officer, he became dejected. His mother recognized her son's depression and got Burroughs a civilian disability discharge – a release from duty based on the premise that he should have not been allowed to enlist due to previous mental instability. After being evaluated by

10218-484: The central corridor has seen major investment starting in the early 2010s. Between 2013 and 2018, over $ 50 million worth of residential construction has been built in the neighborhood. The population of the neighborhood has increased by 19% from the 2010 to 2020 Census. The St. Louis Rams of the National Football League controversially returned to Los Angeles in 2016. The city of St. Louis sued

10349-567: The city hosted the World's Fair and the Olympics , becoming the first non-European city to host the games. The formal name for the 1904 World's Fair was the Louisiana Purchase Exposition . Permanent facilities and structures remaining from the fair are located in Forest Park , and other notable structures within the park's boundaries include the St. Louis Art Museum , the St. Louis Zoo and

10480-434: The city, like Theodore Link 's 1894 St. Louis Union Station , and an improved Forest Park. One US Bank Plaza , the local headquarters for US Bancorp , was constructed in 1976 in the structural expressionist style. Several notable postmodern commercial skyscrapers were built downtown in the 1970s and 1980s, including the former AT&T building at 909 Chestnut Street (1986), and One Metropolitan Square (1989), which

10611-413: The constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a life long struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out. As Burroughs makes clear, he meant this reference to "possession" to be taken absolutely literally, stating: "My concept of possession

10742-554: The construction of the Gateway Arch to publicize their effort to gain entry for African Americans into the skilled trade unions, where they were underrepresented. The Department of Justice filed the first suit against the unions under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . Between 1900 and 1929, St. Louis, had about 220 automakers, close to 10 percent of all American carmakers, about half of which built cars exclusively in St. Louis. Notable names include Dorris, Gardner and Moon. In

10873-496: The cut-up method may be considered as analogous to the collage method in the visual arts. New restored editions of The Nova Trilogy (or Cut-Up Trilogy), edited by Oliver Harris (President of the European Beat Studies Network ) and published in 2014, included notes and materials to reveal the care with which Burroughs used his methods and the complex histories of his manuscripts. Burroughs moved into

11004-454: The cut-up technique that influenced all of Burroughs's subsequent fiction to a degree. During Burroughs's friendship and artistic collaborations with Gysin and Ian Sommerville , the technique was combined with images, Gysin's paintings, and sound, via Somerville's tape recorders. Burroughs was so dedicated to the cut-up method that he often defended his use of the technique before editors and publishers, most notably Dick Seaver at Grove Press in

11135-511: The early 19th century. The original St. Louis courthouse was built in 1826 and featured a Federal style stone facade with a rounded portico. However, this courthouse was replaced during renovation and expansion of the building in the 1850s. The Old St. Louis County Courthouse (known as the Old Courthouse ) was completed in 1864 and was notable for having a cast iron dome and for being the tallest structure in Missouri until 1894. Finally,

11266-698: The effect of the urban heat island in the city. The city experiences hot, humid summers and chilly to cold winters. It is subject to both cold Arctic air and hot, humid tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico . The average annual temperature recorded at nearby Lambert–St. Louis International Airport , is 57.4 °F (14.1 °C). 100 and 0 °F (38 and −18 °C) temperatures can be seen on an average 3 and 1 days per year, respectively. Precipitation averages 41.70 inches (1,100 mm), but has ranged from 20.59 in (523 mm) in 1953 to 61.24 in (1,555 mm) in 2015. The highest recorded temperature in St. Louis

11397-597: The finest cities in America". He dispatched his 14-year-old stepson, Auguste Chouteau , to the site, with the support of 30 settlers in February 1764. Laclède arrived at the future town site two months later and produced a plan for St. Louis based on the New Orleans street plan. The default block size was 240 by 300 feet, with just three long avenues running parallel to the west bank of the Mississippi. He established

11528-414: The first part of the century, St. Louis had some of the worst air pollution in the United States . In April 1940, the city banned the use of soft coal mined in nearby states. The city hired inspectors to ensure that only anthracite was burned. By 1946, the city had reduced air pollution by about 75%. De jure educational segregation continued into the 1950s, and de facto segregation continued into

11659-594: The head, killing her almost immediately. Soon after the incident, Burroughs changed his account, claiming that he had dropped his gun and it had accidentally fired. Burroughs spent 13 days in jail before his brother came to Mexico City and bribed Mexican lawyers and officials to release Burroughs on bail while he awaited trial for the killing, which was ruled culpable homicide . Vollmer's daughter, Julie Adams, went to live with her grandmother, and William S. Burroughs Jr. went to St. Louis to live with his grandparents. Burroughs reported every Monday morning to

11790-567: The initial plan. International rights to the work were sold soon after, and Burroughs used the $ 3,000 advance from Grove Press to buy drugs (equivalent to approximately $ 31,000 in today's funds ). Naked Lunch was featured in a 1959 Life magazine cover story, partly as an article that highlighted the growing Beat literary movement. During this time Burroughs found an outlet for material otherwise rendered unpublishable in Jeff Nuttall 's My Own Mag . Also, poetry by Burroughs appeared in

11921-403: The jail in Mexico City while his prominent Mexican attorney worked to resolve the case. According to James Grauerholz , two witnesses had agreed to testify that the gun had fired accidentally while he was checking to see if it was loaded, with ballistics experts bribed to support this story. Nevertheless, the trial was continuously delayed and Burroughs began to write what would eventually become

12052-460: The last interviews with Carolyn Cassady , and many reviews of works of Beat and related scholarship, such as Alexander Adams' review of Iain Sinclair 's American Smoke , referenced on Sinclair's website. William Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II ( / ˈ b ʌr oʊ z / ; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered

12183-432: The last obscenity trial against a work of literature – that is, a work consisting of words only, and not including illustrations or photographs – prosecuted in the United States. The Word Hoard , the collection of manuscripts that produced Naked Lunch , also produced parts of the later works The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1964). These novels feature extensive use of

12314-501: The late 1990s as many of the old factory and warehouse buildings were converted into lofts. The American Planning Association designated Washington Avenue as one of 10 Great Streets for 2011. The Cortex Innovation Community , located within the city's Central West End neighborhood, was founded in 2002 and has become a multi-billion dollar economic engine for the region, with companies such as Microsoft and Boeing currently leasing office space. The Forest Park Southeast neighborhood in

12445-545: The late 19th century and early 20th century. The largest and most ornate of these is the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis , designed by Thomas P. Barnett and constructed between 1907 and 1914 in the Neo-Byzantine style. The St. Louis Cathedral, as it is known, has one of the largest mosaic collections in the world. Another landmark in religious architecture of St. Louis is the St. Stanislaus Kostka , which

12576-713: The length of his charge's statute of limitations . Burroughs also attended classes at the Mexico City College in 1950, studying Spanish, as well as Mesoamerican manuscripts ( codices ) and the Mayan language with R. H. Barlow . Their life in Mexico was by all accounts an unhappy one. Without heroin and suffering from Benzedrine abuse, Burroughs began to pursue other men as his libido returned, while Vollmer, feeling abandoned, started to drink heavily and mock Burroughs openly. One night, while drinking with friends at

12707-474: The letters were largely fictionalised from Burroughs's notes. Burroughs described Vollmer's death as a pivotal event in his life, and one that provoked his writing by exposing him to the risk of possession by a malevolent entity he called "the Ugly Spirit": I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with

12838-653: The manuscript was eventually published in November ;2008 by Grove Press and Penguin Books . During this time, Burroughs began using morphine and became addicted. He eventually sold heroin in Greenwich Village to support his habit. Vollmer also became an addict, but her drug of choice was Benzedrine , an amphetamine sold over the counter at that time. Because of her addiction and social circle, her husband immediately divorced her after returning from

12969-406: The midst of this personal turmoil, Burroughs managed to complete two works: a novel written in screenplay format, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969); and the traditional prose-format novel The Wild Boys (1971). It was during his time in London that Burroughs began using his " playback " technique in an attempt to place curses on various people and places who had drawn his ire, including

13100-423: The north, and the grounds of the Gateway Arch, to the south. Today the road deck has been restored, allowing vehicular and pedestrian traffic to cross the river. The St. Louis MetroLink light rail system has used the rail deck since 1993. An estimated 8,500 vehicles pass through it daily. On August 22, 1876, the city of St. Louis voted to secede from St. Louis County and become an independent city, and, following

13231-815: The painting of Brion Gysin." The two would cultivate a long-term friendship that revolved around a mutual interest in artworks and cut-up techniques. Scenes were slid together with little care for narrative. Excerpts from Naked Lunch were first published in the United States in 1958. The novel was initially rejected by City Lights Books , the publisher of Ginsberg's Howl ; and Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias , who had published English-language novels in France that were controversial for their subjective views of sex and antisocial characters. Nevertheless, Ginsberg managed to get excerpts published in Black Mountain Review and Chicago Review in 1958. Irving Rosenthal, student editor of Chicago Review ,

13362-573: The pen name William Lee, retitling it Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict (it was later republished as Junkie , then in 1977 as Junky , and finally in 2003 as Junky: the definitive text of 'Junk', edited by Oliver Harris). During 1953, Burroughs was at loose ends. Due to legal problems, he was unable to live in the cities toward which he was most inclined. He spent time with his parents in Palm Beach, Florida , and in New York City with Allen Ginsberg. When Ginsberg refused his romantic advances, Burroughs went to Rome to meet Alan Ansen on

13493-480: The rest of his life. Vollmer's death also resonated with Allen Ginsberg , who wrote of her in Dream Record: June 8, 1955, "Joan, what kind of knowledge have the dead? Can you still love your mortal acquaintances? What do you remember of us?" In Burroughs: The Movie , Ginsberg claimed that Vollmer had seemed possibly suicidal in the weeks leading up to her death, and he suggested that this may have been

13624-461: The screen in conjunction with American game-show producer Chuck Barris . Burroughs supported himself and his addiction by publishing pieces in small literary presses. His avant-garde reputation grew internationally as hippies and college students discovered his earlier works. He developed a close friendship with Antony Balch and lived with a young hustler named John Brady who continuously brought home young women despite Burroughs's protestations. In

13755-661: The second in the Midwest over the Mississippi River after the Hennepin Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis. The bridge connects St. Louis, Missouri to East St. Louis, Illinois . The Eads Bridge became a symbolic image of the city of St. Louis, from the time of its erection until 1965 when the Gateway Arch Bridge was constructed. The bridge crosses the St. Louis riverfront between Laclede's Landing, to

13886-436: The short novel Queer while awaiting his trial. Upon Burroughs's attorney fleeing Mexico in light of his own legal problems, Burroughs decided, according to Ted Morgan , to "skip" and return to the United States. He was convicted in absentia of homicide and was given a two-year suspended sentence. Although Burroughs was writing before his murder of Joan Vollmer, this event marked him and, biographers argue, his work for

14017-550: The southern boundary of the city of St. Louis (separating it from St. Louis County ) is the River des Peres , practically the only river or stream within the city limits that is not entirely underground. Most of River des Peres was confined to a channel or put underground in the 1920s and early 1930s. The lower section of the river was the site of some of the worst flooding of the Great Flood of 1993 . The city's eastern boundary

14148-520: The surrounding countryside. In hindsight, many of these original settlers thought of these first few years as "the golden age of St. Louis". In 1763, the Native Americans in the region around St. Louis began expressing dissatisfaction with the victorious British, objecting to their refusal to continue to the French tradition of supplying gifts to Natives. Odawa chieftain Pontiac began forming

14279-686: The time. Among the earliest is the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France (referred to as the Old Cathedral ). The Basilica was built between 1831 and 1834 in the Federal style. Other religious buildings from the period include SS. Cyril and Methodius Church (1857) in the Romanesque Revival style and Christ Church Cathedral (completed in 1867, designed in 1859) in the Gothic Revival style. A few civic buildings were constructed during

14410-522: The war. These areas remained under Spanish control until 1803, when they were transferred to the French First Republic . During the American Revolutionary War , St. Louis was unsuccessfully attacked by British-allied Native Americans in the 1780 Battle of St. Louis . The founding of St. Louis was preceded by a trading business between Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent and Pierre Laclède (Liguest) in late 1763. St. Maxent invested in

14541-508: The war. With urging from Allen Ginsberg , and also perhaps Kerouac, Burroughs became intellectually and emotionally linked with Vollmer and by summer 1945, had moved in with Vollmer and her daughter. In spring 1946, Burroughs was arrested for forging a narcotics prescription. Vollmer asked her psychiatrist, Lewis Wolberg , to sign a surety bond for Burroughs's release. As part of his release, Burroughs returned to St. Louis under his parents' care, after which he left for Mexico to get

14672-609: The western banks of the Mississippi River, in the Midwestern United States just south of the Missouri -Mississippi confluence . Much of the area is a fertile and gently rolling prairie that features low hills and broad, shallow valleys. Both the Mississippi River and the Missouri River have cut large valleys with wide flood plains. Limestone and dolomite of the Mississippian epoch underlie

14803-499: Was $ 209.9 billion in 2022. St. Louis has a diverse economy with strengths in the service, manufacturing, trade, transportation, and aviation industries. It is home to fifteen Fortune 1000 companies, seven of which are also Fortune 500 companies. Federal agencies headquartered in the city or with significant operations there include the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis , the U.S. Department of Agriculture , and

14934-519: Was a boarding school for the wealthy, "where the spindly sons of the rich could be transformed into manly specimens". Burroughs kept journals documenting an erotic attachment to another boy. According to his own account, he destroyed these later, ashamed of their content. He kept his sexual orientation concealed from his family well into adulthood. A common story says that he was expelled from Los Alamos after taking chloral hydrate in Santa Fe with

15065-538: Was a center of the Native American Mississippian culture , which built numerous temple and residential earthwork mounds on both sides of the Mississippi River. Their major regional center was at Cahokia Mounds , active from 900 to 1500. Due to numerous major earthworks within St. Louis boundaries, the city was nicknamed as the "Mound City". These mounds were mostly demolished during the city's development. Historic Native American tribes in

15196-423: Was admitted as a state in 1821. St. Louis was incorporated as a city in 1822, and continued to develop largely due to its busy port and trade connections. Immigrants from Ireland and Germany arrived in St. Louis in significant numbers starting in the 1840s, and the population of St. Louis grew from less than 20,000 inhabitants in 1840, to 77,860 in 1850, to more than 160,000 by 1860. By the mid-1800s, St. Louis had

15327-589: Was also home to several brass era automobile companies, including the Success Automobile Manufacturing Company ; St. Louis is the site of the Wainwright Building , a skyscraper designed in 1892 by architect Louis Sullivan . In 1900, the entire streetcar system was shut down by a several months-long strike , with significant unrest occurring in the city & violence against the striking workers. In 1904,

15458-499: Was arrested on suspicion of importing narcotics into France. Lund gave up Burroughs, and evidence implicated Burroughs in the importation of narcotics into France. When the Moroccan authorities forwarded their investigation to French officials, Burroughs faced criminal charges in Paris for conspiracy to import opiates. It was during this impending case that Maurice Girodias published Naked Lunch ; its appearance helped to get Burroughs

15589-638: Was born in 1947. The family moved briefly to New Orleans in 1948. In New Orleans, police stopped Burroughs's car one evening. They found an unregistered handgun belonging to him as well as a letter from Ginsberg that contained details about the sale of marijuana. The police then searched Burroughs’s home, where they discovered his stash of drugs and half a dozen or more firearms. Burroughs fled to Mexico to escape possible detention in Louisiana's Angola State Prison . Vollmer and their children followed him. Burroughs planned to stay in Mexico for at least five years,

15720-474: Was born into a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri . He was a grandson of inventor William Seward Burroughs I , who founded the Burroughs Corporation , and a nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee . Burroughs attended Harvard University , where he studied English, then anthropology as a postgraduate, and went on to medical school in Vienna. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve during World War II. After being turned down by both

15851-519: Was carried out a number of times with more pictures. Their business fell off. They kept shorter and shorter hours. October 30, 1972, the Moka Bar closed. The location was taken over by the Queen's Snack Bar. St. Louis St. Louis ( / s eɪ n t ˈ l uː ɪ s , s ən t -/ saynt LOO -iss, sənt- ) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri . It is located near

15982-410: Was convinced. Following his first cure, he wrote a detailed appreciation of apomorphine and other cures, which he submitted to The British Journal of Addiction (Vol. 53, 1956) under the title "Letter From A Master Addict To Dangerous Drugs"; this letter is appended to many editions of Naked Lunch . Though he ultimately relapsed, Burroughs ended up working out of London for six years, traveling back to

16113-616: Was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters . In 1984, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift "; he owed this reputation to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political, and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism . J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since

16244-525: Was founded by B. F. Bowles in St. Louis, and at the time no other college in St. Louis County admitted black students. In the first half of the 20th century, St. Louis was a destination in the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South seeking better opportunities. During World War II , the NAACP campaigned to integrate war factories. In 1964, civil rights activists protested at

16375-578: Was founded on February 14, 1764, by French fur traders Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent , Pierre Laclède , and Auguste Chouteau . They named it for King Louis IX of France , and it quickly became the regional center of the French Illinois Country . In 1804, the United States acquired St. Louis as part of the Louisiana Purchase . In the 19th century, St. Louis developed as a major port on the Mississippi River; from 1870 until

16506-473: Was from this febrile atmosphere that the famous cut-up technique emerged. The actual process by which Naked Lunch was published was partly a function of its "cut-up" presentation to the printer. Girodias had given Burroughs only ten days to prepare the manuscript for print galleys, and Burroughs sent over the manuscript in pieces, preparing the parts in no particular order. When it was published in this authentically random manner, Burroughs liked it better than

16637-590: Was his first venture into a nonlinear style. After the publication of Naked Lunch , a book whose creation was to a certain extent the result of a series of contingencies, Burroughs was exposed to Brion Gysin 's cut-up technique at the Beat Hotel in Paris in October 1959. He began slicing up phrases and words to create new sentences. At the Beat Hotel, Burroughs discovered "a port of entry" into Gysin's canvases: "I don't think I had ever seen painting until I saw

16768-639: Was married to a G.I. with whom she had a young daughter, Julie Adams. Burroughs and Kerouac got into trouble with the law for failing to report a murder involving Lucien Carr , who had killed David Kammerer in a confrontation over Kammerer's incessant and unwanted advances. This incident inspired Burroughs and Kerouac to collaborate on a novel titled And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks , completed in 1945. The two fledgling authors were unable to get it published during their lifetimes, but

16899-417: Was published by his biographer after his death in 1997. The complete novel was finally published by Grove Press in 2008. Before killing Vollmer, Burroughs had largely completed his first novel, Junkie , which he wrote at the urging of Allen Ginsberg , who was instrumental in getting the work published as a cheap mass-market paperback. Ace Books published the novel in 1953 as part of an Ace Double under

17030-518: Was struck down in a court challenge, by the NAACP, after which racial covenants were used to prevent the sale of houses in certain neighborhoods to "persons not of Caucasian race". Again, St. Louisans offered a lawsuit in challenge, and such covenants were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948 in Shelley v. Kraemer . In 1926, Douglass University , a historically black university

17161-526: Was to become the city of St. Louis. (French lands east of the Mississippi had been ceded to Great Britain and the lands west of the Mississippi to Spain; Catholic France and Spain were 18th-century allies. Louis XV of France and Charles III of Spain were cousins, both from the House of Bourbon. ) The French families built the city's economy on the fur trade with the Osage, and with more distant tribes along

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