Posted by Ritch on June 5, 2003, at 10:25:09
In reply to Re: Burroughs and post WW-II America » Ritch, posted by wendy b. on June 5, 2003, at 7:31:18
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> > Wendy, thanks for that tidbit of info! I wonder if he was drafted in WWII? He would have been the "age" for being drafted. ?
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> Well, it says in the Barry Miles book that he tried to enlist in the Navy in 1940, but he flunked the physical. He also tried the American Field Service (I don't know what that is, really), but the elitist recruiter disapproved of his lodgings at Harvard (he'd been there for undergrad and then grad work since 1932), so he did not get in there, either. Then, he tried to join the OSS -- forerunner of the CIA -- as a field agent, using a well-connected uncle as his contact. But the Colonel Donovan who conducted the interview brought in a guy named James Phinney Baxter, his director of research and analysis, who it turned out had been Burroughs' house master at Harvard, and get this - he hadn't allowed Burroughs to keep a ferret in his room! (I find this so funny!) And he intensely disliked Burroughs, so he didn't get in there, either. Probably a good thing for us literati, though, cuz can you imagine Burroughs' sensibility getting poisoned by working for the CIA? Now there's an image!
> For one final foray into the service: Bill was drafted in 1942, finally, but his mother was connected enough to pull strings to get him out.
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> There ya go, Mitch. Hope you are well, and all...
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> WendyThat's interesting that he was *wanting* to get into the service before the war started. I can't recall ever reading a biography on anybody. I believe I bought Gore Vidal's "Lincoln: A Novel" and was going to start on that one and never quite made it... I'm doing OK for now, just waiting for my summer depression to start! Kind of like listening to the theme from "Jaws" :)
poster:Ritch
thread:228711
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/books/20030426/msgs/231611.html