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While young men wage war against an evil empire of zealous mutants, the population of this modern inferno is afflicted with the epidemic of a radioactive virus. An opium-infused apocalyptic vision from the legendary author of Naked Lunch is the first of the trilogy with The Places of the Dead Roads and his final novel, The Western Plains.
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.
The legendary novel whose true events inspired the film KILL YOUR
DARLINGS
In the summer of 1944, a shocking murder rocked the fledgling
Beats. William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, both still unknown,
we inspired by the crime to collaborate on a novel, a hard-boiled
tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and
art, obsession and brutality, with scenes and characters drawn from
their own lives. Finally published after more than sixty years,
this is a captivating read, and incomparable literary artifact, and
a window into the lives and art of two of the twentieth century's
most influential writers.
Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an
enigma - both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a
coruscatingly political novel, Burroughs' only realist love story
and a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies that paved the way for
his masterpiece, Naked Lunch. Set in Mexico City during the early
fifties, Queer follows William Lee's hopeless pursuit of desire
from bar to bar in the American expatriate scene. As Lee breaks
down, the trademark Burroughsian voice emerges; a maniacal mix of
self-lacerating humor and the Ugly American at his ugliest. A
haunting tale of possession and exorcism, Queer is also a novel
with a history of secrets, as this new edition reveals.
Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso,
taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through
Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity,
political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments and
endless, gnawing addiction. One of the most shocking novels ever
written, Naked Lunch is a cultural landmark, now in a restored
edition incorporating Burroughs' notes on the text, alternate
drafts and outtakes from the original. 'A masterpiece. A cry from
hell, a brutal, terrifying, and savagely funny book that swings
between uncontrolled hallucination and fierce, exact satire'
Newsweek 'Naked Lunch is a banquet you will never forget' J. G.
Ballard
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Queer (Paperback)
William S. Burroughs
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R438
R363
Discovery Miles 3 630
Save R75 (17%)
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A haunting tale of possession and exorcism, now reissued on the
seventieth anniversary of the year of its writing, the definitive
text of William S. Burroughs's early, long-unpublished novel, now a
cult classic and a highly regarded part of his oeuvre Originally
written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an enigma.
Both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a
coruscatingly political novel, it is both Burroughs's only realist
love story and a montage of comic-grotesque fantasies that paved
the way for his masterpiece, Naked Lunch. Set in Mexico City during
the early fifties, Queer follows William Lee, the protagonist of
Burroughs's debut novel Junky, a man afflicted with acute heroin
withdrawal and romantic yearnings for Eugene Allerton. As Lee
breaks down over the course of his hopeless pursuit of desire from
bar to bar in the American expatriate scene, the trademark
Burroughsian voice emerges, a maniacal mix of self-lacerating humor
and the ugly American at his ugliest. Now reissued on the
seventieth anniversary of the year of its writing, this edition of
Queer features a contextualizing introduction by the eminent
Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris.
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has
become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century.
Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it
is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American
culture. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this
volume--that contains final-draft typescripts, numerous unpublished
contemporaneous writings by Burroughs, his own later introductions
to the book, and his essay on psychoactive drugs--is a valuable and
fresh experience of a novel that has lost none of its relevance or
satirical bite.
An outrageous hybrid of pulp science fiction, obscene experimental
poetry, and manifesto for revolution, The Ticket That Exploded is a
last chance antidote to the virus of lies spread by the ad men and
con men of the Nova Mob, a call to arms against those driving our
planet toward the point of destruction. Like the other two volumes
of Burroughs' Cut-Up Trilogy, The Soft Machine and Nova Express, it
is today as fresh in its form and as urgent in its message as it
has ever been. Edited and introduced by renowned Burroughs scholar
Oliver Harris, this new edition reveals how the book's cultural
reach has expanded with the viral logic of Burroughs' multi-media
creative methods.
In January 1953, William Burroughs began a seven-month expedition
into the jungles of South America, ostensibly to find yage, the
fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. But Burroughs also cast his
anthropological-satiric eye over the local regimes to record
trademark vignettes of political and psychic malaise. From the
notebooks he kept and the letters he wrote home to Allen Ginsberg,
Burroughs composed a narrative of his adventures that appeared ten
years later as "In Search of Yage" within The Yage Letters. That
book, published by City Lights in 1963, was completed by the
addition of Ginsberg's account of his own experiences with yage as
he traveled through South America in 1960, and by the addition of
other Burroughs letters and texts. For this new edition, Burroughs
scholar Oliver Harris has gone back to the original manuscripts to
untangle the history of the text, telling the fascinating story of
its genesis and cultural importance in his wide-ranging
introduction. Also included in this edition are extensive
materials, never before published, by both Burroughs and Ginsberg
that shed new light on their adventures in exploration and writing
"A complete understanding of the literary legacy of William
Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg is impossible without reading this
amazing collection of letters and documents centered on yage, the
fabled hallucinogen of the Amazon. . . . These crucial texts go
beyond simple curiosity about mind-changing drugs to set the
foundation of what would later become a literary movement that
changed American literature."-Bloomsbury Review "Burroughs' book
about his search for the 'ultimate fix', The Yage Letters,
possesses an equally strange and secret history. Published in 1963
but written a decade earlier, it has long been seen as a
fascinating curio in the Burroughs canon, yet a new edition of the
book, edited by Oliver Harris, places it more centrally in the list
of key Burroughs texts. . . . The Yage Letters marks the point when
Burroughs moved full-time into his own, fully realised
universe."-The Independent UK William Burroughs is widely
recognized as one of the most influential and innovative writers of
the twentieth century. His books include: Junky, Naked Lunch,
Queer, The Wild Boys and The Place of Dead Roads. Oliver Harris is
a professor in literature and film in the School of American
Studies at Keele University. He is the editor of The Letters of
William S, Burroughs (Penguin) and the 50th anniversary edition of
Junky (Penguin).
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Junky (Paperback)
William S. Burroughs
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R261
R211
Discovery Miles 2 110
Save R50 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment
of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life' William
Burroughs, legendary drug addict, founder member of the Beats and
author of Naked Lunch, relates with unflinching realism the
addict's life: from initial heroin bliss to an unabated hunger for
the needle, and the horrors of cold turkey and back again.
As this new edition reveals, the cultural reach of "The Ticket That
Exploded" has expanded with the viral logic of Burroughs's
multimedia methods, recycling itself into our digital environment.
A last chance antidote to the virus of lies spread by the ad men
and con men of the Nova Mob, Burroughs's book is an outrageous
hybrid of pulp science fiction, obscene experimental poetry, and
manifesto for revolution--as fresh today as it ever has been.
Edited from the original manuscripts by renowned Burroughs scholar
Oliver Harris, this revised edition incorporates an introduction
and appendices of never before seen materials.
A legendary cult classic from America, a bestseller in 1926 and
reprinted five times, 'You Can't Win' is the ripping true saga of
criminal, convict and hobo Jack Black.
This surreal fable, set in America's Old West, features a cast of
notorious characters: The Crying Gun, who breaks into tears at the
sight of his opponent; The Priest, who goes into gunfights giving
his adversaries the last rites; and The Nihilistic Kid himself, Kim
Carson, a homosexual gunslinger who, with a succession of beautiful
sidekicks, sets out to challenge the morality of small-town America
and fight for intergalactic freedom. Fantastical and humorous, The
Place of Dead Roads continues William Burroughs' exploration of
society's controlling forces - the State, the Church, women,
literature, drugs - with a style that is utterly unique in
twentieth-century literature.
The most ferociously political and prophetic book of the Cut-Up
Trilogy, Nova Express fires the reader into a textual outer space
to show us our burning planet and to reveal the operations of the
Nova Mob in all their ugliness. As with The Soft Machine and The
Ticket That Exploded, William Burroughs deploys his cut-up methods
to make a visionary demand that we take back the world that has
been stolen from us. Edited and introduced by renowned Burroughs
scholar Oliver Harris, this new edition reveals how Nova Express
was cut from an extraordinary wealth of typescripts to create
startling new forms of poetic possibility. The third book of
Burroughs' linguistically prophetic 'cut-up' trilogy - following
The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded - Nova Express is a
hilarious and Swiftian parody of bureaucracy and the frailty of the
human animal.
A terrifying, surreal space-age odyssey, The Soft Machine initiated
Burroughs' Cut-Up Trilogy that includes Nova Express and The Ticket
That Exploded. The book draws the reader into an unmappable textual
space, where nothing is true and everything is permitted, to make a
total assault on the colonising powers of planet earth that have
turned us all into machines. Edited and introduced by renowned
Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, this new edition clarifies for the
first time the extraordinary history of The Soft Machine's writing
and rewriting, demolishing the myths of Burroughs' chance-based
writing methods and demonstrating for a new generation the
significance of his greatest experiment.
Both heartwarming and meditative, The Cat Inside explores not only
the personal relationship between Burroughs and cats, but the
deeper relationship of cats with mankind, which Burroughs traces
back to the Egyptians. This book of moving and witty discourse is
for both Burroughs fans and cat lovers alike.
In this funny, nightmarish masterpiece of imaginative excess,
grotesque characters engage in acts of violent one-upmanship,
boundless riches mangle a corner of Africa into a Bacchanalian
utopia, and technology, flesh and violence fuse with and undo each
other. A fragmentary, freewheeling novel, it sees wild boys engage
in vigorous, ritualistic sex and drug taking, as well as
pranksterish guerrilla warfare and open combat with a confused and
outmatched army. The Wild Boys shows why Burroughs is a writer
unlike any other, able to make captivating the explicit and
horrific.
'He felt a sudden deep pity for the finger joint that lay there on
the dresser, a few drops of blood gathering around the white bone.'
A deliberately severed finger, a junky's Christmas miracle and a
Tangier con-artist, among others, feature in these hallucinogenic
sketches and stories from the infamous Beat legend. Penguin Modern:
fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic
Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a
concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here
are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman
Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson;
essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories
surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern
Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of
outer space.
The most ferociously political and prophetic book of Burroughs's
"cut-up" trilogy, "Nova Express" fires the reader into a textual
outer space the better to see our burning planet and the operations
of the Nova Mob in all their ugliness. As the new edition
demonstrates, the shortest of the three books was cut by Burroughs
from an extraordinary wealth of typescripts to create a visionary
demand to take back the world that has been stolen from us. Edited
from the original manuscripts by renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver
Harris, this revised edition incorporates an introduction and
appendices of never before seen materials.
A stunning clothbound edition of William S. Burroughs's cult
classic, designed by the acclaimed Coralie-Bickford Smith.
Nightmarish and fiercely funny, William Burroughs' virtuoso,
taboo-breaking masterpiece Naked Lunch follows Bill Lee through
Interzone: a surreal, orgiastic wasteland of drugs, depravity,
political plots, paranoia, sadistic medical experiments and
endless, gnawing addiction. One of the most shocking novels ever
written, Naked Lunch is a cultural landmark, now in a restored
edition incorporating Burroughs' notes on the text, alternate
drafts and outtakes from the original. 'A masterpiece. A cry from
hell, a brutal, terrifying, and savagely funny book that swings
between uncontrolled hallucination and fierce, exact satire'
Newsweek 'Naked Lunch is a banquet you will never forget' J. G.
Ballard
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Junky (Paperback)
William S. Burroughs; Introduction by Oliver Harris
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R266
R216
Discovery Miles 2 160
Save R50 (19%)
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A shocking expose of the desperate subculture surrounding heroin
addiction, William S. Burroughs' Junky is edited with an
introduction by Oliver Harris in Penguin Modern Classics.
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. Nurtured into
being by fellow Beat Generation guru Allen Ginsberg, Junky is a
cult classic that 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.
In work and in life, William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) expressed a
constant 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. If you enjoyed Junky, you might like
Burroughs' Exterminator!, also available in Penguin Modern
Classics. 'Reads today as fresh and unvarnished as it ever has'
Will Self
A fascinating mix of autobiographical episodes and extraordinary
Egyptian theology, Burroughs's final novel is poignant and
melancholic. Blending war films and pornography, and referencing
Kafka and Mailer, The Western Lands confirms his status as one of
America's greatest writers. The final novel of the trilogy
containing Cities of the Red Night and The Place of Dead Roads,
this is a profound meditation on morality, loneliness, life and
death.
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