Junky

Junky is a fascinating book, both in ways Burroughs intended and in ways he didn't.

There is a fascinating reportorial air to the novel, an unsqueamish portrayal of a depraved world. Burroughs is a junkie, a pusher, and a thief, and just tells you what that's like, neither justifying nor condemning his actions.

That, I think, is what Burroughs was after, but he also reveals things that are outside of his own intentions. First off, he shows himself an incredible narcissist. This can be seen most clearly in his references to his wife; you don't know he has one until almost halfway through the book, but even though she appears to live with him for most or all of the book, she is rarely mentioned and only in passing. He never says something like, "we moved to Mexico," it's always I moved to Mexico.

Burroughs also reveals himself to be self-delusional (most notably in his insistence at the end of the novel that he will never go back to heroin) and a sour, misanthropic crank (notably in a rant about people buying orange groves that has little to do with his own life and seems there just because the subject bugs him.

Heroin, from what I've heard, can create some of this qualities, and it's hard to know what Burroughs would have been like without it. With it he was certainly a jerk, but one with a sharp eye and excellent descriptive powers that created a truly riveting novel.

Burroughs wrote this book much based on his own experience with addiction decades ago, and I think it'll forever be potent.

It's a very straight-forward, no-nonsense and no-tearjerker experience as Burroughs writes of Lee's addictions, faltering friendships, his fleeting meets with people while trying to attain drugs as quickly as possible, at times doing anything for it. He goes from selling drugs to using them, to robbing drunks on trains to escaping the law, to trying to fence stuff to get money to get more drugs to avoid The Sickness, to get to Mexico to live a better life, to avoid his wife, to get together with her, to be able to get out of bed, to try and get off drugs completely, to get into less hardcore stuff to get back into heroin.

It's very well-written, and eloquently cut-up in terms of what goes in which chapters. The descriptions of people, events and feelings aren't poetic - it's all straight-forward and I got the sense that his abuse just went on and on, a vortex that went round and round.

This book reminds me a lot of Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting", although this is timeless and different. It's like the inspirational big brother to Martin Amis' "Money".

And it stands out. Burroughs was a very livid writer and this is a powerful and telling work on addiction, and in his desire to explain the elements that make out addiction to everybody, he dispels myths and actually writes some really stupid shit (e.g. that cocaine does not create any form of dependency), so just have an open, questioning mind when reading this (as with every written word, anywhere).

In this edition from Penguin, there are several inclusions of nice extraneous material here: appendixes, a glossary and a long introduction.

Burroughs wrote this book much based on his own experience with addiction decades ago, and I think it'll forever be potent.

It's a very straight-forward, no-nonsense and no-tearjerker experience as Burroughs writes of Lee's addictions, faltering friendships, his fleeting meets with people while trying to attain drugs as quickly as possible, at times doing anything for it. He goes from selling drugs to using them, to robbing drunks on trains to escaping the law, to trying to fence stuff to get money to get more drugs to avoid The Sickness, to get to Mexico to live a better life, to avoid his wife, to get together with her, to be able to get out of bed, to try and get off drugs completely, to get into less hardcore stuff to get back into heroin.

It's very well-written, and eloquently cut-up in terms of what goes in which chapters. The descriptions of people, events and feelings aren't poetic - it's all straight-forward and I got the sense that his abuse just went on and on, a vortex that went round and round.

This book reminds me a lot of Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting", although this is timeless and different. It's like the inspirational big brother to Martin Amis' "Money".

And it stands out. Burroughs was a very livid writer and this is a powerful and telling work on addiction, and in his desire to explain the elements that make out addiction to everybody, he dispels myths and actually writes some really stupid shit (e.g. that cocaine does not create any form of dependency), so just have an open, questioning mind when reading this (as with every written word, anywhere).

In this edition from Penguin, there are several inclusions of nice extraneous material here: appendixes, a glossary and a long introduction.

Burroughs wrote this book much based on his own experience with addiction decades ago, and I think it'll forever be potent.

It's a very straight-forward, no-nonsense and no-tearjerker experience as Burroughs writes of Lee's addictions, faltering friendships, his fleeting meets with people while trying to attain drugs as quickly as possible, at times doing anything for it. He goes from selling drugs to using them, to robbing drunks on trains to escaping the law, to trying to fence stuff to get money to get more drugs to avoid The Sickness, to get to Mexico to live a better life, to avoid his wife, to get together with her, to be able to get out of bed, to try and get off drugs completely, to get into less hardcore stuff to get back into heroin.

It's very well-written, and eloquently cut-up in terms of what goes in which chapters. The descriptions of people, events and feelings aren't poetic - it's all straight-forward and I got the sense that his abuse just went on and on, a vortex that went round and round.

This book reminds me a lot of Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting", although this is timeless and different. It's like the inspirational big brother to Martin Amis' "Money".

And it stands out. Burroughs was a very livid writer and this is a powerful and telling work on addiction, and in his desire to explain the elements that make out addiction to everybody, he dispels myths and actually writes some really stupid shit (e.g. that cocaine does not create any form of dependency), so just have an open, questioning mind when reading this (as with every written word, anywhere).

In this edition from Penguin, there are several inclusions of nice extraneous material here: appendixes, a glossary and a long introduction.