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Burroughs remains interesting inspite of his beat associations which, as N'ik says, have sort of acted as a kind of red herring in trying to get to grips with a lot of what he wrote. He's certainly far less reducible to that movement than say Ginsberg or Kerouac. I see little now that can relate to something like Howl or On the Road whereas the ideas at play in books like Place of Dead Roads are arguable more pertinant now than when he first wrote them. Current interests in ideas such as psychogeography, as well as the emergence of writers like Iain Sinclair, Alan Moore and Will Self (I've not read Ligotti but will check him out) and the lyrics of someone like Mark E. Smith have a strong link with Burroughs but can in no way be seen as continuing in the tradition of the Beats. The only contemporary writer who I'd say is remotely interesting and has any connection with the Beats is Irvine Welsh - albeit a more experimental, European strain of the movement, more associated with someone like Trocchi (who I love) than either Ginsberg or Kerouac (who I couldn't care less about).
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