Finished Su 1/30/22
This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I first completed during a three day weekend, Sa 10/3/92.
Last week I watched the film, 'A MILLION LITTLE PIECES' and I really didn't like it. Billy Bob Thornton and Giovanni Ribisi were great, but the film seemed to lack the intensity of the novel.
KENTUCKY HAM is also a story of someone who lands in an addiction facility.
When Burroughs Jr. was 14 years old his father had him move to Tangier, Morocco. Gays, junkies, and teenagers don't mix. I wish he had devoted more of the novel to this part of his life.
Commercial fishing in Alaska as part of his recovery was very interesting.
From the book's page at Wikipedia:
"Kentucky Ham, published in 1973, was the second novel by William S. Burroughs, Jr., the son of Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs.
Like its predecessor, Speed, the book is an autobiographical novel based upon Burroughs' own life. It covers his time spent in a prison farm in Kentucky, working on a fishing boat in Alaska, and visiting his father's old haunt, Tangiers, among other events.
Burroughs Jr. went on to write a third novel, Prakriti Junction, but it was never completed. Jennie Skerl, the academic who has published critical reviews of Burroughs' father's work, the Beats and Jane Bowles, befriended Billy and reported that his third novel included material about his liver transplant in 1976. Material from the third novel was edited into his third published work, Cursed From Birth.
As with Speed, Kentucky Ham is often erroneously listed as part of the Burroughs, Sr. literary canon. In 1993 it was republished in an omnibus edition alongside Speed."
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