Junky, William S. Burroughs
Junky, William S. Burroughs
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Junky
The Definitive Text of "Junk"

Author: William S. Burroughs, Oliver Harris

Narrator: T. Ryder Smith, Andrew Garman, Mark Nelson

Unabridged: TBD

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/05/2027

Synopsis

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 listener 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.

About William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) was an American author, painter, and spoken-word performer who has had a wide-ranging influence on American culture. Jack Kerouac called him the “greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift.” Norman Mailer declared him “the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius.” A postmodernist and a key figure of the beat generation, he focused his art on a relentless subversion of the moral, political, and economic conventions of modern American society, as reflected in his often darkly humorous and sardonic satire. He wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six short-story collections, and four collections of essays.

About Oliver Harris

Oliver Harris, a British academic and professor of American literature at Keele University in Staffordshire, England, is the author and editor of numerous books, including works by William S. Burroughs and two series, the D. C. Belsey and the Elliot Kane mysteries.

About T. Ryder Smith

T. Ryder Smith is a narrator whose audiobook readings have won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration as well as several AudioFile Earphones Awards. As an award-winning actor, he has appeared on Broadway in Equus and in many off-Broadway shows including Passion Play, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, and Lebensraum, for which he won a Drama Desk Award. He has also made numerous television appearances on series such as Nurse Jackie, Blue Bloods, Law & Order: SVU, and others.

About Andrew Garman

Andrew Garman is a television, film, and voice actor. His acting credits include the film Julie & Julia and appearances the television series Law & Order, Mercy, and Conviction. Among his audiobook narrations are Arcadia by Lauren Groff, Simply from Scratch by Alicia Bessette, and Love Is a Canoe by Ben Schrank, among others.

About Mark Nelson

Mark Nelson is an experienced audiobook narrator and producer. Also recording as Harry Shaw, he has recorded more than fifty professional audiobooks, including crime fiction, science fiction, horror, nonfiction, histories, and classics.

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Quotes

“Of all the Beat Generation writers, William S. Burroughs was the most dangerous…He was anarchy’s double agent, an implacable enemy of conformity and of all agencies of control-from government to opiates.”

“William was a Shootist. He shot like he wrote—with extreme precision and no fear.”

“Ever since Naked Lunch…Burroughs has been ordained America’s most incendiary artist.”

“Burroughs voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American.”

“In 1953, at the height of American conformism and anti-communist hysteria, William S. Burroughs published Junky, an irresistible strung-out ode to the joys and perversities of drug addiction…Junky eschews allegory for scrupulous realism…More than anything else, Junky reads like a field guide to the American underworld.”

“A creator of grim fairy tales for adults, Burroughs spoke to our nightmare fears and, still worse, to our nightmare longings…And more than any other postwar wordsmith, he bridged generations; popularity in the youth culture is greater now than during the heady days of the Beats.”

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