Junky: The Definitive Text of Junk

by William S. Burroughs

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802120423
• ISBN13: 9780802120427
• Release Date: November 2012
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Gripping

Burroughs is very raw, his way of telling a story is so gripping and it made me feel like I was there. This book is very blunt and at times may be hard to read to certain audiences. He also has some very outdated beliefs and I highly recommend to take some of the things he tries to pass as fact as only an opinion. I.e he states that cocaine addiction in his eyes isn’t possible, but today we know for a fact it’s an addictive substance.

Fantastic book

This is definitely a must read for anyone considering themselves apart of the "underground"

Down the Road of Addiction

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.

Classic of the underground

Burroughs' first book is an autobiographical tale of how he first came to try heroin and his travels across North America as, to paraphrase the author, junk became his life. To those who know Burroughs as only the writer of Naked Lunch, the straight-forward and precise prose of Junky may come as a surprise at first but, upon careful reading, all the same concerns and motifs are here. Basically, Junky tells what was happening in the real world while Burroughs was hallucinating the junk-fueled world of Naked Lunch. While it may deceptively appear to have no real structure, its meandering style instead perfectly embodies the drug-fueled lifestyle of its protaganist. Its a fascinating read that reveals that, despite beliefs to the contrary, there has always been a drug underground in the United States where junkies remain easy scapegoats for other societal problems. While Burroughs does't condemn drug use, he can hardly be accused of promoting it either. Instead, in the best libertarian tradition, he promotes only the freedom of the individual to be able to determine his own fate. However, beyond any possible political or philosophical interpretations, this is a fast-moving, informative book with a dry wit hidden amongst the deadpan prose. What is often forgotten is that Burroughs' first known stories were all parodies of other genres and in many ways, Junky is a dead-on imitation of the hardboiled, pulp novels that were also prominent at the time.

A more constructed book than people here are letting on....

Junky is a first hand tale of one man's life and drug addiction. It is a show of a slide into a world that most of its readers will never experience. It was something that at its time. immensely shocking. Beside these things, it is a really compelling tale and a wholly worthwhile read.....BUT it is also a book that is of a tradition: Burrough's was largely borrowing the style and tone of the French author Louis-Ferdinand Celine (i.e. straight ahead, haunting, almost profane at every instance, black humor at its finest). Even though the author was a drug addict, he was a HIGHLY erudite and educated drug addict-- and because of that, the bitterness of his life is interpretted in a way that comes from a man who was influenced by the doom of Celine and the historian Spengler (another must-read) as well as the sort of devil-may-care attitude of Andre Gide....Intellectual name dropping aside, this is a powerful book artistically BECAUSE of this stuff, the D.A.R.E. message aside (and I would suggest that other instances from his life-- shooting his wife in the head while playing William Tell foremost among them hint at a D.A.R.E. message better than the almost Trainspotting cinema-veritas stuff of this book). And it's a neat counterpoint to the writings of Kerouac for anyone who wants to run the 'Beats' together (but an interesting counterpart to Ginsberg-- who was, in a sense, Burrough's student as much as Lionel Trilling's....I'd read this book.... it's good....

If you haven't read this book, you haven't read at all....

A taste of self destruction....William S. Burrough's greatest book ever. A hard look into the life of an opiate addict based on the life of the author itself. It should be praised for it's realism and honesty, as it was written in a time when drugs should not have exsisted. Burroughs tells it all, and tells it like it is. Junky paints the sad life of a Junky perfectly, and still manages to throw in the classic black humor that made Burroughs famous. This is one book everyone should read, own, and reread....

Junky: a commonly misinterpreted work of brilliance

Junky is the kind of novel that you cannot read until you abandon all pretenses. Forget for a moment that this was Burroughs' first book, put aside the fact that he was himself a junky, and put your personal opinions of drug use and abuse, as well as Burroughs himself, on hold. The attempt made by Junky as a piece of art is to honestly and fairly put forward an in-depth look at a side of American life that was virtually overlooked until its publication. The novel delves very deeply into a world that, though many would rather ignore it all together, has gotten progressively worse to this day. Junky offers a detailed account of a drug addict's entrance into the seedy underworld, his daily search for a fix, the shady characters he must rely on, and the suffering he experiences while trying to fix himself. The purpose is to fully immerse the reader in the world of a man engulfed in addiction. The hero is actually an intelligent man, who immediately recognizes the risk taken in his experiments with narcotics. He also realizes, although a little too late, the fact that he has become an addict himself, and now needs the drug for basic survival. He is also rational. He recognizes his dismal circumstances, but also recognizes his guilt in the matter, and in no way tries to gain sympathy from the reader. The hero is aware of what he has done to himself, and does nothing to deny his responsibility. Junky in no way glamorizes drug use; on the contrary, in the sections that describe heroin as appealing, Burroughs is showing the immeasurable control the drug has quietly acquired over the user, distorting the addict's perception of what is happening to him. Junky pulls the reader into a dark underworld of society and depicts a man's struggle to regain his life, or what's left of it after the plague of addiction is eliminated. Burroughs holds nothing back. He uses a method of detailing the more shocking parts of the hero's experiences with a calm and almost casual frankness. This slowly makes them seem less disturbing, and introduces the reader more and more to the addicts point of view. Burroughs even attempts to alter the reader's point of view, subtly bringing the reader closer to the mind of the junky, and eventually creating an unexpected affection for a seemingly unlovable character, who appears to have very little about him that is redeeming. You begin to care for this lost, pathetic man, as you watch him attempt cure after cure, method after method, finally having to flee the country to avoid prosecution. The reader can do nothing but look on, as each good intention crumbles, making the hero more and more incapable of escaping the grip of the addiction. Burroughs states many times the degree of influence heroin has over the addict, illustrating how all other activities become less like life and more like a limbo of nothingness between scores. The junky's life is consumed. His days become more and more about scoring, leaving less and l