Junky

published	1999 by 10-18
first published	2005
binding	Paperback
isbn	2264011033 (isbn13: 9782264011039)
pages	189
description	Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junk, his first book, a candid, eyewitness account of t...more [close] Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junk, his first book, a candid, eyewitness account of times and places that are now long gone. This book brings them vividly to life again; it is an unvarnished field report from the American postwar underground. For this definitive 50th-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly re-created the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts. Here for the first time are Burroughs's own unpublished Introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages and auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others. Harris's comprehensive Introduction reveals the composition history of Junk's text and places its contents against a lively historical background. [close]
date added	03-02-07 edit book

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Chris rated it:

(review of isbn 0140043519)

05/22/08

Read in May, 2008

recommended to Chris by: the voices that beg for the needle, maaaaan
recommends it for: small-time suckaz

Junkies suck. This may not be ‘breaking news’ to some, but I just had to get that off my chest. Also, the undeniable fact that junkies suck is going to come into play a lot here, so I would guess that if you’re sympathetic to the plight of the many nimrods currently haunted by the specter of addiction, you’re probably not going to give much of a shit about what I have to say. Later. Piss off.

We haven’t purged all the scourge yet. The ‘beat’ movement sucks too. Oh, you th...more Junkies suck. This may not be ‘breaking news’ to some, but I just had to get that off my chest. Also, the undeniable fact that junkies suck is going to come into play a lot here, so I would guess that if you’re sympathetic to the plight of the many nimrods currently haunted by the specter of addiction, you’re probably not going to give much of a shit about what I have to say. Later. Piss off.

We haven’t purged all the scourge yet. The ‘beat’ movement sucks too. Oh, you think because a handful of schmucks proclaimed they were the beacon of brilliance for a generation that it’s an uncontested fact. You actually think these dudes are some hep sh!t? Don’t let the door smack your weak ass on the way out.

Lastly, this isn’t for anyone suffering from any sort of affliction beginning with the letter ‘L’, so you might as well f#ck off too. I don’t care if it is lumbago, leukemia, left-handedness, lyme disease, lupus, a lazy eye, a limp, or a lump on the nuts. You’ve got more important things to do than read this; go apply some ointment or rub some dirt on that sh!t in the hopes of a brighter future.

“Junky” truly sucks. There are about 150 characters briefly introduced in the 152 pages of the book, just random, lame-ass addicts gimping around, getting in sh!t, scoring some sh!t, peddling some sh!t, whatever. Really, that’s about it. “The heat was on so I had to chill in New Orleans for a week. I started copping H from Old Blue, but a wild-eyed, hard-drinkin queer called Brick told me Old Blue was a snitch. I had to shake the law, so I checked into rehab where I met Marcus and Squirting Pete.” Feel free to insert that anywhere within the story; seriously, it would probably go unnoticed. Not a whole hell of a lot happens, certainly nothing interesting, while Bill Burroughs goes around picking up dudes, rolling drunks, and whining about this or that between getting his smack on. Some might say that Burroughs paints a compelling portrait of the colorless and desolate landscape traversed only by the blighted and afflicted. Some might find the growing mania spawned by his simple-minded and obsessive reliance on junk an interesting account of the human condition. Where are those people and why haven’t they been bludgeoned.

I’m giving this book two stars. It deserves one star. I am going to copy the passage in the book which garnered some completely unworthy distinction:
“A room full of fags gives me the horrors. They jerk around like puppets on invisible strings, galvanized into hideous activity that is the negation of everything living and spontaneous. The live human being has moved out of these bodies long ago. But something moved in when the original tenant moved out. Fags are ventriloquists’ dummies who have moved in and taken over the ventriloquist.”

That about sums it up. That and the fact I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that this guy was an influence on my man Hunter ‘Cannon-Fodder’ Thompson. (see p.127 for something disheartening)

Lest I forget: the fact Burroughs felt the need for a ‘glossary’ is pretty badass….. This tells you several things right there. 1) He obviously thinks the work will be a timeless classic, and that the half-human-half-alien fiends of 2120 will probably need this hip reference. 2) He knows the contemporary reader is not the hardcore junkie he is, and will also require this wisdom. 3) He assumes that he’s somehow responsible (if not the key element) for the success any of these words have in making it part of standard vernacular.
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Michael rated it:

(review of isbn 0142003166)

09/23/07

Read in May, 2007

During my final senior year of university, I had an “extended” program for various reasons; a friend of mine lent me several books by authors whose works I had yet to read. These authors included the likes of Murakami Ryu, Hunter S. Thompson, and in a vague way Murakami Haruki, but at the time the most important author he introduced me to was William S Burroughs and especially the Gentleman Junkie’s morphine-soaked first novel Junky which was originally released in 1953 due to the consider...more During my final senior year of university, I had an “extended” program for various reasons; a friend of mine lent me several books by authors whose works I had yet to read. These authors included the likes of Murakami Ryu, Hunter S. Thompson, and in a vague way Murakami Haruki, but at the time the most important author he introduced me to was William S Burroughs and especially the Gentleman Junkie’s morphine-soaked first novel Junky which was originally released in 1953 due to the considerable pushing, no pun intended, by one of Burroughs’ close friends Allen Ginsberg. I wish I could say that Junky led me to indulge in a number of Burroughs’s novels, but aside from the follow up to Junky, Queer, I have not picked up another Burroughs’s novel during the past almost seven years. Why is that? I readily cannot give a good answer, but I was left with such a strong impression after completing this short novel that I was worried to be disappointed by some of later works. However, maybe I should pick some of them up in the near future just to partake more of this man’s considerable volume of work.

Junky centers on the life of Bill Lee, a man whose background betrays his eventual descent into the world of drugs. Raised in the Midwest within the confines of a three-story brick home, Lee attended an Ivy League college, but soon afterwards became disaffected with his humdrum life. Spared military service because of a “mental handicap,” he cut off one of his fingers to impress someone; Lee becomes a petty thief and hocks stolen goods for his friends. One day, a thief dumps off a tommy gun and some morphine. He doesn’t use it at first, but for some reason or another curiosity gets the better of him and starts delving into junk himself.

Burroughs’s writing is quite frank and he does not give a glamorized depiction of a junkie’s life or give a representation of the junky as a victim. However, what he does instead is make the junkie human again. He attempts to give these individuals faces after they had been demonized by society, especially their depiction in postwar America during the McCarthy era. Also, the novel is a wonderful resource dividing the different types of drugs users: heavy users versus weekend warriors and heavier drug users versus marijuana smokers. It also gives a good history of how laws against narcotics were formed.

Junky reads like an autobiography and like the lives of Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, and later Tom Waits, it is sometimes had to extricate the real being of Burroughs from the fictionalized world that he created around himself, however, Junky comes off as an incredibly honest book that, although a bit deadpan at times, really has a heart and one can feel Burroughs’s sensitivity for those who have fallen into the dregs of society....less

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