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...
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...
'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'
A shocking expos of the desperate subculture surrounding heroin addiction, William S. Burroughs' Junky is edited with an introduction by Oliver Harris in Penguin Modern Classics.