Kentucky Ham
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Kentucky Ham | |
 1974 paperback edition |
|
| Author | William S. Burroughs, Jr. |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Autobiographical |
| Publisher | E.P. Dutton |
| Publication date | 1973 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 194 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-525-13850-1 (first edition, hardback) |
Kentucky Ham, first published in 1973, was the second of two novels written 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. In this case it covers a range of events, such as time spent in a prison farm in Kentucky, working on a fishing boat in Alaska, and visiting his father's old haunt, Tangiers.
Burroughs Jr. went on to write a third novel, Pakriti Junction, but it was never published and possibly 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.
As with Speed, Kentucky Ham is often erroneously listed as part of the Burroughs, Sr. literary canon. In the 1980s it was republished in an omnibus edition alongside Speed.
