AH POOK WILL BE HERE

Ah Pook Is Here, an experimental graphic novel by William Burroughs, celebrated Beat author of The Naked Lunch, will be published next summer by Fantagraphics, announced guardian.co.uk. Burroughs 
began the project over 40 years ago, teaming with artist Malcolm McNeill to produce a monthly comic strip for the English magazine Cyclops. “After the magazine folded, they worked to develop the concept into a full-length book, which they dubbed a ‘word/image novel’ because the term graphic novel had yet to be coined. But no publisher was interested, and after working on the book for seven years, the pair eventually abandoned it.”

Calling the Pook book not "so much a comic book as an experiment,” McNeill said: "Bill once remarked in an interview that '... nobody seems to ask the question what words actually are. And exactly their relationship to the human nervous system.' It was a concern he dedicated much of his life coming to terms with. Using words essentially to determine what words can do," said McNeill. "In the case of Ah Pook Is Here, he recruited images to the cause."

The Guardian also quoted Fantagraphics publisher and acquiring editor Gary Groth, who said the graphic novel was "quite possibly the last great work" by Burroughs, who he called "one of America's most original prose stylists," to be published. "Burroughs once said that 'The purpose of writing is to make it happen.' We are proud to make Ah Pook Is Here finally happen," he added.

Fantagraphics will also publish McNeill's memoir Observed While Falling, about his collaboration with Burroughs.