”If you only know one photograph of the Beat Generation, you know this one. It’s the single most famous picture of Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac. But who took it, when, where, and why? What are its secrets, and how can it be a crime scene? Whatever you think you know is almost certainly wrong, so to unravel its mysteries and find out where all the bodies are buried, follow in the footsteps of the world’s most dedicated Burroughs scholar as he applies his forensic sleuthing skills to the image that defined the Beat Generation. Always fascinating, sometimes funny, occasionally dark, and with a twist ending, ‘One Shot’ is a page-turner, a hybrid of detective fiction, personal memoir, and endlessly obsessive scholarship. Or as Harris himself puts it: ‘Depending how you look at it, this is either a triumphant tour de force, a virtuoso performance of scholarly ingenuity and passion, or an indulgent self-parody, a reductio ad absurdum of academic work. I like to think it’s hard to tell the difference”.
(from the blurb of this edition)
Analysing the only existing photograph that captures in one frame the three protagonists of the Beat Generation – William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg – Oliver Harris unravels its background, origin and context and debunks several earlier stories about this iconic Beat document. Along lines of semiotics and psychoanalysis paired with gumshoe perseverance, Harris expertly guides the reader through a wilderness of details, stories, references and personal disclosures only to find that… yes, what? Captivating and beautifully written, One Shot is a surprising reflection of Professor Harris’s long and meticulous research of the Beats and Burroughs in particular.
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 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, The Poetics of Minutes to Go, Making Naked Lunch: Two Appetisers, 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. He is Professor Emeritus of American Literature at Keele University, England, President of the European Beat Studies Network and the proud father of Ella, Mia, Nina and Vivi.