And, given my age at the time, and the ideological company that this second wave kept, I simultaneously found Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.

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PLC's Penguin Group (USA), which originally published two of those titles, including "Junkie" by William S. Burroughs, said the publisher is in negotiations with Mr. Wylie, but declined to comment further.

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There, he meets Lucien Carr (played by Dane DeHaan), who introduces him to William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, and together, their dreams of creating a "New Vision" of literature form the nascent beginnings of the Beat Generation.

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Ms. Broackes's own Bowie highlights include a 1974 Terry O'Neill photograph of David Bowie with Beat writer William S. Burroughs (hand-colored by Bowie), the Alexander McQueen jacket from his 1997 "Earthling" album cover and the mannered starkness of Mr. Bowie's Thin White Duke garb from 1976.

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Ms. PROSE: So the fact that they're worried may actually be a good sign, and every writer I know - I mean there's a wonderful phrase of William Burroughs, and he talks about the temptation to take your work and tear it up into tiny little pieces and throw it in somebody else's wastepaper basket.

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The mysterious Topsy plays fast and loose with the so-called 23 Enigma, a phenomenon noted by William Burroughs and the occultist Aleister Crowley, based on the number's supposedly uncanny recurrence in historical, scientific and artistic spheres.

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