“… Joan Vollmer’s memory has long been framed within the narrative of the troubled five-year common-law marriage to the writer William S. Burroughs… her accidental death at her husband’s hand is unforgettable, the most enduring event of her short life. The shooting made her life a taboo topic for those who knew her well and a subject of fascination for those who did not. But the shooting tells us nothing about the 28 years of Joan’s life that preceded it… Joan Vollmer was extraordinary. The dean of her college knew it. Burroughs knew it. We knew it, too…”
(from the introduction to the book by the authors)
The Moloko publication Ordinary Stupid People is aptly subtitled Joan Vollmer’s Life Before the Beats Began. Written by Cathy Marshall and Simon Johnson, the book is a first extract from a wider biographical work on Joan Vollmer which has received support and encouragement from members of the Vollmer family, as well as James Grauerholz of the William S. Burroughs Estate. Supplemented with photos, and beautifully designed by Robert Schalinski, this little book is another fine publication in the series of Moloko’s scholarly studies on Burroughs and his circle.
Cathy Marshall has published over a hundred scholarly articles about hypertext, digital libraries, ebooks, annotation, crowdsourcing, and personal digital archiving, as well as a book about ebook research, Reading and Writing the Electronic Book (Morgan Claypool, 2009). With artist Judy Malloy, she co-created a collaborative hypertext memoir, Forward Anywhere (Eastgate, 1995). Ordinary Stupid People is her first foray into biography. A full biography of Joan Vollmer Burroughs, based on ten years of research and interviews, is forthcoming.
Simon Johnson is an archivist, based in Scotland. His research has led to collaboration with James Grauerholz, literary executor of the estate of William S. Burroughs, and he contributed research to Barry Miles’ 2014 publication Call Me Burroughs. He has conducted extensive research into the life of Anthony Burgess, working in collaboration with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, which invited him to present his findings at the Life, Work, Reputation conference in Manchester in 2017.