Quote Origin: Elephants and Authors Have Long, Vicious Memories

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William S. Burroughs? Allen Ginsberg? Sam Kashner? Apocryphal?

Group of elephants from Unsplash

Question for Quote Investigator: Prominent authors can be ornery and unforgiving. Apparently, a well-known writer said:

Elephants and authors have long, vicious memories.

This statement has been attributed to William S. Burroughs, the controversial Beat Generation author of “Naked Lunch”, “The Ticket That Exploded”, and “Junkie”. Would you please help me to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: This remark appeared in a letter from William S. Burroughs to the poet Allen Ginsberg dated April 26, 1952. The letter was reprinted in the 1993 collection “The Letters of William S. Burroughs: 1945-1959”. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1

… Also discouraged and hurt, because of Marker and I got no relaxation, nobody to talk to. I shouldn’t be crowded like this. Elephants and authors have long, vicious memories.

In 2009 Sam Kashner published “When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School: A Memoir”. Kashner described traveling in a car with Burroughs, Ginsberg, and others. Kashner ascribed the quotation to Burroughs:2

“Writers, like elephants, have long, vicious memories,” Burroughs said. “There are things I wish I could forget.”

I, on the other hand, wanted to remember everything about being in the car with these men, though how strange we must have looked to the other motorists who glanced over suspiciously at us when the traffic slowed.

In conclusion, William S. Burroughs deserves credit for this remark. He included it in a 1952 letter to his fellow Beat Generation author Allen Ginsberg.

Image Notes: Family in elephants in Addo Elephant National Park. Picture from Tobin Rogers at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.

Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.

  1. 1993, The Letters of William S. Burroughs: 1945-1959 by William S. Burroughs, Edited by Oliver Harris, Letter To: Allen Ginsberg, Letter From: William S. Burroughs, Letter Date: April 26, 1952, Start Page 122, Quote Page 123, Penguin Books USA, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
  2. 2009, When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School: A Memoir by Sam Kashner, Chapter 26: Burroughs and the Box, Quote Page 155, HarperCollins Publishers, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎