Samuel Beckett and William S. Burroughs

Abstract The works of Samuel Beckett and William Burroughs have rarely been compared. When the two have been compared, it has been mainly in biographical studies or more generally in works on experimental literature. The two authors shared the same publisher in the 1950s, and Burroughs, who in those years was using the cut-up technique, declared that he had used Beckett’s texts in his work, without specifying which texts or scenes he had used. Common themes between Beckett and Burroughs which have not yet been explored, such as the theme of the agent-writer, as well as images that recur in their work, could lead to the hypothesis that the work of the Irish author may have inspired the guru of the Beat Generation. The aim of this paper is to propose an initial investigation into the hypothesis that some of the central themes in Naked Lunch , and especially in Burroughs’ Nova trilogy , were already present in Beckett’s Trilogy and, as such, provided inspiration.