Title: Junky
Author: William S. Burroughs
Publisher: Viking Press
Junky was originally published under the pen name William Lee in 1953. As
the title implies, Junky is a semi-autobiographical look at William S.
Burroughs' heroin addiction while living in New York, New Orleans, and New
Mexico. While by today's standards the subject matter of this book is
nothing
new, you must remember the fact that this book was written in the 1950's. It
was because of the books subject matter that it was originally published
under a pen name. It is a raw and uncut look at the world through the eyes
of a heroine addict.
The story reflects on fragments of the main characters addiction and is not
really an extremely detailed or chronological narrative. As an example, in
the middle of the book, while living in New Orleans we find out that he has
a common law wife. She was only mentioned briefly and is only mentioned
briefly a couple more times throughout the book. Some of his brushes with
the law are also detailed including one episode where he is wanted for
passing fake prescriptions.
What was chilling about this book was discovering the lengths that a junky
will go through to get their next score. This is all discussed with such
honesty that is hard to put the book down. Even after seeking treatment
multiple times and successfully staying clean for months at a time the main
character is still drawn back into the deep dark depths of addiction.
If you have never checked out any of William S. Burroughs books you should
definitely pick this one up. At only 158 pages it is a fairly quick read. I
think this book unintentionally has a very strong anti-drug message. I doubt
to many people would choose to take that route in life after reading this
book.
After I posted this review, Michael Agbay was kind enough to forward along
the following:
i have a few comments/pieces of info you may be interested in ... as you
mentioned, the book was originally published under the pen name william lee
(lee is the name burroughs uses throughout his novels as his main character
(naked lunch, interzone, queer etc... it is also his mothers maiden name)
The book was also originally part of a "back-to-back" book deal - one side
of the book was a story written by a narcotics agent detailing his
adventures chasing marijuana "addicts."
Check out what other readers said
about it on Amazon.
Punkis junky@attrition.org