Junky: The Definitive Text of Junk (50th Anniversary Edition)
Language: English
Published by Penguin Putnam Inc, 2003
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: World of Books (was SecondSale), Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.World of Books (was SecondSale)
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Condition: Used - Good
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Add to basketItem description from seller
Junk is not, like alcohol or a weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life. In his debut novel, Junky, Burroughs fictionalized his experiences using and peddling heroin and other drugs in the 1950s into a work that reads like a field report from the underworld of post-war America. The Burroughs-like protagonist of the novel, Bill Lee, see-saws between periods of addiction and rehab, using a panoply of substances including heroin, cocaine, marijuana, paregoric (a weak tincture of opium) and goof balls (barbiturate), amongst others. For this definitive edition, renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has gone back to archival typescripts to re-created the author's original text word by word. From the tenements of New York to the queer bars of New Orleans, Junky takes the reader into a world at once long-forgotten and still with us today. Burroughs's first novel is a cult classic and a critical part of his oeuvre.
Seller Inventory # CIN0142003166G
- Title
- Junky: The Definitive Text of Junk (50th Anniversary Edition)
- Author
- William S Burroughs
- Publisher
- Penguin Putnam Inc
- Publication year
- 2003
- Condition
- Good
- Binding
- Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0142003166
- ISBN 13
- 9780142003169
Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junk, his first book, a candid, eyewitness account of times and places that are now long gone. This book brings them vividly to life again; it is an unvarnished field report from the American postwar underground. For this definitive 50th-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly re-created the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts. Here for the first time are Burroughs's own unpublished Introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages and auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others. Harris's comprehensive Introduction reveals the composition history of Junk's text and places its contents against a lively historical background.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)—guru of the Beat Generation, controversial éminence grise of the international avant-garde, dark prophet, and blackest of black humor satirists—had a range of influence rivaled by few post-World War II writers. His many books include Naked Lunch, Queer, Exterminator!, The Cat Inside, The Western Lands, and Interzone.
Oliver Harris edited The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945-1959. He is currently a lecturer in American Literature at the University of Keele.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
World of Books (was SecondSale)
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