BOCKRIS: Do you ever get worried that being a writer provides a pretty thin income?
BURROUGHS: It’s gotten very thin. I’ve sat down many times and tried to write a bestseller but something always goes wrong. It isn’t that I can’t bring myself to do it or that I feel I’m commercializing myself or anything like that, but it just doesn’t work. If your purpose is to make a lot of money on a book or film, there are certain rules to observe. You’re aiming for the general public, and there are all sorts of things the general public doesn’t want to see or hear. A good rule is never ask the general public to experience anything they cannot easily experience. You don’t want to scare them to death, knock them out of their seats, and above all, you don’t want to puzzle them.
From With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker by Victor Bockris. The selection is from Bockris’s recording of a 1978 dinner with Maurice Girodias, Gerard Malanga, and Glenn O’Brien.
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