The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs

First English translation

The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs is a book by Daniel Odier built around an extensive series of interviews with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs conducted in the late 1960s.^[1] Originally published in France in 1969, it was later reissued in several different English-language editions. Odier and Burroughs share authorship of the book, but it is common to see Burroughs given sole front cover author credit.

As Burroughs explains in a foreword, what began as a series of impromptu interviews covering topics ranging from Scientology to Burroughs' longtime drug addiction led to a work that contains flashbacks and cinematic-style "fade outs". Some of Burroughs' replies to Odier's questions are presented in near novella-length form (such as the chapter "Academy 23").

Later editions of the book added a prologue by Burroughs entitled "Playback from Watergate to the Garden of Eden" that reflected on topics of discussion that emerged after the Odier interviews. The prologue first appeared in The Electronic Revolution - the entirety of which is included in some editions of The Job. (Note: the 1989 Penguin Books reprint edition, which as of 2012 is the most widely available edition of the work, does not include The Electronic Revolution.)

Notes

1. William S. Burroughs; Allen Hibbard (1999). Conversations with William S. Burroughs. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. xiii. ISBN 978-1-57806-183-9.