The book is, if you couldn't tell, about junkies (aka: heroin/opiate addicts). Drug addiction is a fascinating topic. There's something really desperate and raw when people are dependent on a chemical reaction. The book was very real and raw and even though it takes place in the 1940s/1950s, it still holds true to much of the problems with drug addiction and the addicts themselves we see today.
In the novel, Burroughs takes us from New York to New Orleans to Mexico City in his search for more (and better) drugs and in his attempts to escape the law. His story is epic and told through a haze, as much is autobiographical and then embellished where his mind let go of details that were lost in a cloud of drugs. The people and events are not always clear, but the experiences are conveyed with exceptional clarity: his first taste of morphine, picking pockets for junk money, the agony of heroin withdrawal. Though stealing money and shooting up opiates aren't things I can relate to, Burroughs lets us see the underground drug world from his eyes and we can suddenly understand the need and the addiction.
I am very eager to read more of Burroughs' work, such as another drug-centric novel, Naked Lunch. He's also been indirectly compared to Jack Kerouac and so he's another author who's standing on my To Read list (as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald; I really want to read his book The Beautiful and Damned but have heard it isn't that good... ?).
Also related to Junky would be Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If you want a book that is less coherent than Junky but undoubtably entertaining and about drugs nearly 100% of the time, that's the book for you.
Burrough's reading a segment of Junky.
1 comment:
lol... and you know he had to do all those drugs in order to write a book about junkies... lol jk
i thought it was a fairly interesting book as well
p.s. i'm sitting next to you, sorta
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