Young Adam

Alexander Trocchi was one of the seminal beat figures. Born in Scotland, he made his way in Paris and New York, and Young Adam is one of his most important works. Joe is a drifter who works as a hired hand on a barge traveling the Clyde River between Glasgow and Edinburgh. As Young Adam opens, Joe finds the corpse of a young woman floating in the water. Was it an accident, a suicide, or was she murdered? As the police investigate and arrest a suspect, Trocchi's haunting novel reveals that Joe knows far more than he's telling. Meanwhile, confined in the claustrophobic space of the barge, an unspoken attraction develops between Joe and the wife of the barge skipper. Originally published in 1954, this is an absorbing existential thriller, a forgotten gem by an important beat writer.

“Praise for Alexander Trocchi and Young Adam : "Trocchi may be the greatest unknown writer in the world . . . What Trocchi was about, in life and art, was the testing of boundaries, the eradication of acceptable behavior in the name of something more engaged." -- Bloomsbury Review "Everyone should read Young Adam ." -- Times Literary Supplement "Trocchi has the courage so essential to a writer. He writes about spirit, flesh, and death and the vision that comes through the flesh. He has been there and brought it back." --William S. Burroughs "The most brilliant man I've ever met." --Allen Ginsberg "Mr. Trocchi's ideas (or, rather, his gropings toward the distant glow of ideas) are set down in prose that is always clean and sharp and often ferociously alive with poetry." -- New Yorker "[Young Adam] is rife with desire and longing, a sense that, in the physical, we might free ourselves, however temporarily, from the strictures of society. More than anything, though, it's a philosophical novel, a tautly written existential thriller." --David L. Ulin, LA Weekly”

Praise for Alexander Trocchi and Young Adam:

"Trocchi may be the greatest unknown writer in the world . . . What Trocchi was about, in life and art, was the testing of boundaries, the eradication of acceptable behavior in the name of something more engaged."--Bloomsbury Review

"Everyone should read Young Adam."--Times Literary Supplement

"Trocchi has the courage so essential to a writer. He writes about spirit, flesh, and death and the vision that comes through the flesh. He has been there and brought it back."--William S. Burroughs

"The most brilliant man I've ever met."--Allen Ginsberg

"Mr. Trocchi's ideas (or, rather, his gropings toward the distant glow of ideas) are set down in prose that is always clean and sharp and often ferociously alive with poetry."--New Yorker

"[Young Adam] is rife with desire and longing, a sense that, in the physical, we might free ourselves, however temporarily, from the strictures of society. More than anything, though, it's a philosophical novel, a tautly written existential thriller."--David L. Ulin, LA Weekly

Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984) was a Scottish novelist whose numerous works include Cain's Book. He resided mainly in Paris and New York throughout his life. He was an editor of the literary journal Merlin, which published works by Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others.

David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel Ear to the Ground. His other books include Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he spent ten years as book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times.

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