Status
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Description
Junk is not, like alcohol or a weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life. In his debut novel, Junky, Burroughs fictionalized his experiences using and peddling heroin and other drugs in the 1950s into a work that reads like a field report from the underworld of post-war America. The Burroughs-like protagonist of the novel, Bill Lee, see-saws between periods of addiction and rehab, using a panoply of substances including heroin, cocaine, marijuana, paregoric (a weak tincture of opium) and goof balls (barbiturate), amongst others. For this definitive edition, renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has gone back to archival typescripts to re-created the author's original text word by word. From the tenements of New York to the queer bars of New Orleans, Junky takes the reader into a world at once long-forgotten and still with us today. Burroughs's first novel is a cult classic and a critical part of his oeuvre.… (more)
User reviews
Junky doesn't glamorize or demonize. It's more of a front-line account of how one gets from point A to point B. If one wants a morality tale, it's not coming. Make no mistake, there's no false advertising from Bill when he says, "I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life."
Junky was published as an autobiographical novel telling an almost clinically cool history of how Burroughs became addicted, which is told in a very straightforward narrative, and seemingly based on a very innocent transaction, of a pal asking him to sell some morphine and Burroughs ending up trying some himself. Assuming that Burroughs' assertion that many facts, descriptions of feelings, etc are factual and truthful, Junky would be an excellent guide to better understand the world of "junk" and "junk users", as Burroughs calls it.
The Penguin Modern Classics edition of Junky. The definitive text of 'Junk' is published with a long introduction by Oliver Harris and includes various parts and appendixes which were cut from the original manuscript. According to the original introduction Burroughs had written Junky with the intention to enlighten readers about the true life of "junk user" and separating "junk" from the mystery surrounding it.
However, in the Prologue Burroughs gives an all but sketchy impression of his life leading up to his life as a "junk". Comparing these notes with the biographical information we now have, not just of Burroughs but also of the other writers of the Beat Generation, it is clear that the biographical sketch in the Prologue is incomplete and probably deliberately vague. To present Junky as a lifestyle choice it probably did not fit the bill to explain that despite his good education and relative carefree life, receiving a monthly allowance from a trust fund, Burroughs was attracted to criminal behaviour, and the Beat Generation started with a murder in which Kerouac was charged as an accessory and Burroughs as a material witness, in 1944. It was later that same year Burroughs developed his addiction.
Burroughs and Kerouac collaborated writing a novel together ("And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks"), and Burroughs completed the manuscript of another novel, but Junky. The definitive text of 'Junk' was Burroughs' official debut in 1953. The introduction by Oliver Harris provides many interesting details about the publication history of Junky including the various suggested titles and publishers' deliberations rejecting Burroughs' original title. The Penguin edition also includes an appreciation of Junky written by Alan Ginsberg, besides a glossary, letters and excerpts which were cut from the original manuscript, such as a long passage about Wilhelm Reich's theory of "orgones", etc in six appendices.
Unlike Burroughs' later work, Junky is written in a straightforward prose style, and linear plot development. It provides a fascinating account of the life of a junky, from the point of view of a junky, explaining how heroin changes their life.
Bill was never cool: cool is transient, hip is being there,
Let's forget about him being a lifelong paedophile (after all, he himself was sexually abused when he was a child, so he was just squaring the circle, right?) let's judge him by his literary heretage.
After he had written "Junkie", he most probably realised that he would never be able to top it: so half-way through his next book "Queer" he goes all Dada on his readers and starts writing like a latter day Henry Miller who's overdosed on absinth. So his big hit is "Naked Lunch"; right time, right place; but if it wasn't for the aforementioned he would have disappeared without trace from the literary scene afore he even arrived on it; but the U.S. literati fell for his pitch hook, line and clinkers, and the preceding rubbish that he churned out over the years eventually earned him a place in the Hall of Fame.
"Naked Lunch" hasn't time-travelled all that well, nowadays it reads like a relic from the 1960s 'let it all hang out' bag. Whereas "Junkie" is still as fresh as a New York sewer rat on the prowl with a hard on fit to smash a China plate: amoral, apolitical nihilism in yer face - the narrator of "Junkie" pre-empts the post-scarcity, consumer capitalist society, where everything has a price tag and nothing has any lasting value: this is how it was, this is how it IS.
_Junky_ is surprisingly well-structured. Believe it or
Characters drop in and out of the story, so that the novel itself feels like some sort of crash pad. Everyone is fair game for Burrough's observations; many are described in a surreal, hilarious way. I like the way Burroughs varies sentence and paragraph length, giving an improvisational feel to the book, as if it's a be-bop record or a Jackson Pollock drip painting. (And maybe that's the intent?)
Again, nothing escapes Burrough's critical eye. Although he is homosexual and a junkie, he shows contempt for some of the trappings and adherents of these 1950s subcultures.
Some of my favorite lines include:
- "Waves of hostility and suspicion flowed from his large brown eyes like some sort of television broadcast."
- "'You're both mother (expletive deleted)ers.' She was half-asleep. Her voice was matter-of-fact as if referring to actual incest."
- "A young man lurched in with some object under his arm." (Burrough's word choice is hilarious - "lurched"!)
- "The place looked like a Chop Suey joint. ... The walls were painted black and there was a Chinese character in red lacquer on one wall.
'We don't know what it means,' she said.
'Shirts thirty-one cents,' I suggested."
Perhaps Burrough's self-observation and sense of humor likely contributed to his longevity. It's hard to believe he lived to age 84!
_Naked Lunch_ is next on my list.
It is a book about drugs that makes
If I recall correctly, that part is left out
The book explains the drugs on the market, at that time, and shows the sad people who partook: people who would sell their proverbial granny for a hit. From the addicts that I have come across, little has changed.
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
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.