Authors: William Burroughs/Oliver Harris
Publisher: Moloko Plus, Schönebeck
Year: 2025
Size: 185 x 140 x 15 mm
Pages: 180, perfect bound
Language: English & German
Introduced and edited by Oliver Harris
German translation: Udo Breger
Cover art: Elia Inderle
Design: Robert Schalinski
Postage & packing not included
Oliver Harris’s latest Burroughs study scrutinises the background and publication history of the obscene pamphlet Roosevelt after Inauguration that William Burroughs wrote in 1953. Harris’s meticulous research and expertise make this book another fine edition in Moloko’s steadily growing Burroughs series. Elegantly written as usual, the book is a pleasure to read and provides the reader with an abundance of interesting details, such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s initial refusal to publish the pamphlet and Amiri Baraka’s arrest for having done so. The pamphlet itself has been printed facsimile of the original manuscripts and has also been expertly translated into German by author, translator and publisher Udo Breger. Add to this Robert Schalinski’s delightful book design and cover art by Italian artist Elia Inderle, and this book is a real must for all Burroughs fans.
“Hoodlums and riffraff of the vilest calibre filled the highest offices of the land”, the back of the cover quotes from Burroughs’s pamphlet. It’s a phrase that echoes biographies of the infamous Roman teenage emperor Elagabalus (or Heliogabalus), who for four years ruled and perverted his empire in the early 3rd century. For some reason the many similarities between Burroughs’s pamphlet and Elagabalus’s biographies (Antonin Artaud wrote one in 1933) have been overlooked in this edition, but will no doubt be scrutinised by Oliver Harris in due course.
Oliver Harris’s life as a Burroughsian began in 1984 with a PhD at Oxford that nobody would supervise. He has since gone on to publish more than twenty books about and by Burroughs, including William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination and new editions of three Burroughs trilogies: Junky, Queer, The Yage Letters redux; restored editions of Nova Express, The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded; and Minutes to Go Redux, The Exterminator Redux and BATTLE INSTRUCTIONS – as well as Everything Lost: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs, Blade Runner: A Movie and Dead Fingers Talk: The Restored Text. In 2023 he co-authored Two Assassins: William Burroughs/Hassan Sabbah with the Iranian writer Farid Ghadami. In 2023 he served as literary consultant to Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig for their adaptation of Queer, and in 2024 published One Shot: A Beat Generation Mystery, a hybrid of memoir, scholarship, and detective fiction. Roosevelt After Inauguration Redux is his tenth book published with Moloko. As of 2025, he is Professor Emeritus of American Literature at Keele University, President of the European Beat Studies Network, and the proud father of Ella, Mia, Nina, and Vivi.