Akashic Books launches DRUG CHRONICLES series, sister to their infamous NOIR series...Out NOV./DEC. 2011: THE SPEED CHRONICLES...I edited this monster--and the authors really slammed it home...in PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY (and, yes, that indeed is the one and fucking only MEGAN ABBOTT, not Megan Abbort, er)...details on the book below. Dear readers, please come dance with the go-fast devil...
TOUR info HERE and MORE coming SOON...
“Just reading the table of contents for this fucker makes me want to hop in my time machine, zoom back to 1966 and find those two dubious physicians who used to write me scripts for Dexedrine, even though I was too tall and skinny to live already. Mainline this book now!”—JAMES ELLROY
THE SPEED CHRONICLES
Edited by JOSEPH MATTSON
Featuring 14 NEW short fiction stories about the drug speed by SHERMAN ALEXIE, WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN, JERRY STAHL, MEGAN ABBOTT, BETH LISICK, JESS WALTER, SCOTT PHILLIPS, JAMES GREER, JAMES FRANCO, TAO LIN, JOSEPH MATTSON, NATALIE DIAZ, KENJI JASPER, and ROSE BUNCH.
Speed: The most demonized—and misunderstood—drug in the land. Deprived of the ingrained romantic mysticism of the opiate or the cosmopolitan chic of cocaine or the mundane tolerance of marijuana, there is no sympathy for this devil. Yet, speed—crystal meth, amphetamines, Dexedrine, Benzedrine, Adderall; crank, fuzz, chickenscratch, OBLIVION marching powder, the go fast—is the most American of drugs: twice the productivity at half the cost, and equal opportunity for all. It feels so good and hurts so bad.
From its dueling roots of pharmaceutical miracle cure and Californian biker gang scourge to contemporary Ivy League campuses and high school chem labs, punk rock clubs to the military industrial complex, suburban households to tin can ghettos, it crosses all ethnicities, genders, and geographies—from immigrants and heartlanders punching double factory shifts to clandestine border warlords, doctors to bomber pilots, prostitutes to housewives, T-girls to teenagers, Academy Award-nominated actors and the mansion on the hill to the poorest Indian on the rez—making it not only the most essentially American narcotic, but the most deceivingly sundry literary matter.
Some shoot for angst-curing kicks, some snort for sad endurance, some for explosive joyrides into the unknown because, no matter how delicious dying young might seem, they want to live forever.
The subject of speed is so innately intimidating yet so undeniably present that it begs to be written about. It is no secret that the drug has historically tuned up the lives of writers, including Jack Kerouac, Susan Sontag, Philip K. Dick, and scores more. Too rarely, though, has it been written about, and its jolt to the bones of the American landscape continues to peak. Akashic Books dares to bring forth the first contemporary collection of all new literary short fiction on the drug from an array of today’s most compelling and respected authors. These are no stereotypical tales of tweakers—the element of crime and the bleary-eyed, shaky zombies at dawn are here right alongside heartwrenching narratives of everyday people, good intentions gone terribly awry, the skewed American Dream going up in flames, and even some account of pure joy.
