LAST WORDS - THE FINAL JOURNALS OF WILLIAM BURROUGHS [First UK paperback edition]

William Burroughs [edited and with an introduction by James Grauerholz]

ISBN 10: 0006552188 / ISBN 13: 9780006552185

Published by Flamingo [Harper Collins], London, 2001

About this Item

First impression of the first UK paperback edition, with the complete number string sequence on the printer's page including the no. "1": 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Originally published by Flamingo in 2000 in hardback. With a fourteen-page introduction by James Grauerholz to the fore. ***Near fine in monochrome-illustrated card covers, with a cover photograph of William Burroughs, taken in 1980, by Robert Mapplethorpe. The covers are clean and unmarked. No reading creases to the spine. No tears. Internally also near fine with no inscriptions. No creases or tears. No fading. Covers bright. Spine tight. ***198mm x 130mm. xx prelim pages including introduction and 273 pages plus two-pages of acknowledgments at the back of the book. ***'"Last Words" is an addition not just to the literature of swansongs but a valid final addition to his extraordinary body of work.' Times Literary Supplement. [Review quote taken from the back cover] ***First impression of the first UK paperback edition, in near fine condition. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc.

Seller Inventory # 4234x

Bibliographic Details

• Title: LAST WORDS - THE FINAL JOURNALS OF WILLIAM BURROUGHS [First UK paperback edition]
• Publisher: Flamingo [Harper Collins], London
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0006552188
• ISBN 13: 9780006552185
• Binding: Original Wraps
• Edition: First UK Paperback Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, as Issued
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature
  • Collectable Paperbacks
  • Beat Writers & Counter Culture

About this title

Synopsis

The journal of the last months of William Burroughs’ life.

20 November 1996: ‘Well, it’s time for my Ovaltine and a long good night.’

Burroughs died in 1997, after a lifetime of notoriety. The granddaddy of the Beats, druggy, dangerous and bleak, author of thirteen controversial, shocking novels.

In his final years, he was writing only in his journals. The last nine months of his diaries are here in ‘Last Words’, and they form a complex, rarely seen, personal portrait of Burroughs at the end of his life, coming to terms with ageing and death. Although well into his eighties, the man we see is nevertheless the same old Burroughs, still riling against the Establishment, still contemptuous of the state of the human race, still shocking, bleak and very funny. The diaries are full of anecdotes and memories, entries on the joys of housekeeping, dealing with doctors, shooting a video with U2, musings on his beloved cats, drug-taking and government cover-ups.

These journals contain some of the most brutally personal prose Burroughs has ever written. The deaths of his friends, Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, provide a window onto the preparations he was making for his own death – a quest for absolution marked by a profound sense of guilt and loss.

About the Author

William Burroughs was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1914. Immensely influential among the Beat writers of the 1950s – notably Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg – he already had an underground reputation before the appearance of his first important book, ‘Naked Lunch’. William Burroughs died in 1997.