Junky: The Definitive Text of 'Junk'

Burroughs, William S.

ISBN 10: 0141189827 / ISBN 13: 9780141189826

Published by Penguin Books, London, 2008

About this Item

Edited and with an introduction by Oliver Harris. With glossary, appendices, plus notes. Penguin Modern Classics. A LIKE NEW very nice clean tight solid softcover copy. 166pp. SB-23.

Seller Inventory # 003199

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Junky: The Definitive Text of 'Junk'
• Publisher: Penguin Books, London
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0141189827
• ISBN 13: 9780141189826
• Binding: Pictorial Wraps
• Edition: First Thus
• Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Beat Generation
  • Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

Burroughs' first novel, a largely autobiographical account of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses, remains the most unflinching, unsentimental account of addiction ever written. Through junk neighbourhoods in New York, New Orleans and Mexico City, through time spent kicking, time spent dealing and time rolling drunks for money, through junk sickness and a sanatorium, "Junky" is a field report (by a writer trained in anthropology at Harvard) from the American post-war drug underground. A cult classic, it has influenced generations of writers with its raw, sparse and unapologetic tone. This definitive edition painstakingly recreates the author's original text word for word.

About the Author

William S. Burroughs was born on February 5, 1914 in St Louis. In work and in life Burroughs expressed a lifelong subversion of the morality, politics and economics of modern America. To escape those conditions, and in particular his treatment as a homosexual and a drug-user, Burroughs left his homeland in 1950, and soon after began writing. By the time of his death he was widely recognised as one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century. His numerous books include Naked Lunch, Junky, Queer, Nova Express, Interzone, The Wild Boys, The Ticket That Exploded and The Soft Machine. After living in Mexico City, Tangier, Paris, and London, Burroughs finally returned to America in 1974. He died in 1997. Oliver Harris is professor of American literature at Keele University and the editor of The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945-1959 (1993), Junky: the Definitive Text of "Junk" (2003), The Yage Letters Redux (2006), and Everything Lost: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs (2008). He has published articles on film noir, the epistolary, and Beat Generation writing and the book William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination (2003). He is currently co-editing Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays (2009) and working on a new twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Queer (forthcoming in 2010).