6.8 /10 1 Votes
Country United States Publication date 1973 Originally published 1973 Genre Autobiographical novel Publisher E. P. Dutton | 3.4/5 Goodreads Language English OCLC 650064 Preceded by Speed ISBN 0-525-13850-1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Pages 194 pp (first edition, hardback) William S. Burroughs books Speed, Speed and Kentucky Ham, Cities of the Red Night, The Ticket That Exploded, The Place of Dead Roads | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Kentucky Ham, first 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. 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, 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.