Alasdair Gray – 1982, Janine

Will Self wrote an introduction for the Canongate edition of Alasdair Gray’s book.

Synopis:
An unforgettably challenging book about power and powerlessness, men and women, masters and servants, small countries and big countries, Alasdair Gray’s exploration of the politics of pornography has lost none of its power to shock. Disliked by some and praised by others, 1982 Janine is a searing portrait of male need and inadequacy, as explored via the lonely sexual fantasies of Jock McLeish, failed husband, lover and business man. Yet there is hope here, too, and the humour (if black) and the imaginative and textual energy of the narrative achieves its own kind of redemption in the end.

William Burroughs: Junky

Penguin 2002 edition
Introduction by Will Self

[Read Will's introductory essay online]

Buy from Amazon
William Burroughs
Junky
Buy from Amazon.co.uk Buy from Amazon.com





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 this complete and unexpurgated edtion of Burroughs’ famous book, he depicts the addict’s life: his hallucinations, his ghostly noctural wanderings, his strange sexuality and his hunger for the needle. Junky remains one of the most accurate and mesmerising account of addiction ever written.

Alasdair Gray: An Introduction

[This essay appears in the British Library edition of Essays on Alasdair Gray, edited by Phil Moores. Reproduced by kind permission of the British Library. © The British Library 2002]

A letter arrives from Phil Moores whose address is listed as follows: British Library, Customer Services, Document Supply Centre, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West Yorkshire. He encloses a selection of essays about the work of the Scottish novelist, artist, poet and politico-philosophic eminence grise, Alasdair Gray. You are holding this book in your hand so you know what those essays are, but picture to yourself (and let it be a Gray illustration, all firm, flowing pen-and-ink lines, precise adumbration, colour – if at all – in smooth, monochrome blocks), my own investigation of these enclosures.

‘Junky’ by William S. Burroughs: Preface To The Penguin 2002 Edition

[This essay is the preface of Penguin's 2002 edition of William Burroughs' Junky].

Buy from Amazon
William Burroughs
Junky
Buy from Amazon.co.uk Buy from Amazon.com





I have it on the desk beside me as I write – the first edition of ‘Junky’ by William S. Burroughs. The world has changed a great deal in the fifty-odd years since it was originally published, and some of those changes are evident in the differences between the first edition of this memorable work and the one you are currently holding in your hands.