By William S. Burroughs (with the 1952 & 1977 introductions by Alan Ginseburg) (and the 1953 & 1964 forwards by Carl Solomon)Publisher: Grove Press (November 13, 2012) (originally published by Ace Books in 1953)
Softcover 256 pages
“The questions of course could be
asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long
enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not
have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried
it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I
ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They
did not start using any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until
they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea
what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to
be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict.”
Thus begins William S. Burroughs’s
first published book, dedicated to his one true love, drugs. This work is
unlike any of his other writings (except for a few selected essays) in that it
maintains a coherent focus and timeline. It does not devolve into
hallucinogenic insanity as does his later texts. Though we do see a few
precursor snippets of Naked Lunch
within the story. The pusher Bill Gains and the narco cop Hauser appear, both
the same brutal caricatures. The Mexican drug queen Lupita is a prominent
figure in the later parts of Junky.
Never seen, she is constantly lurking in the background, controlling his supply
of morphine. The police detective trailing someone in a white trenchcoat,
making him easy for others to spot, occurs here as well. These are all small,
but memorable parts, of what will be his seminal work.
 |
| Author William S. Burroughs |
Junky
came out at a time when a series of lurid tell-all books appeared on the
subject- H is for Heroin and The Man with the Golden Arm. This book
differed significantly because the tone is so flat, almost amoral. The heavy
handed morality play or exploitation luridness is nonexistent. “Here are the
facts,” Burroughs writes and he gives them, without social comment and without
emotion.
In a sense this is not an
autobiographical work, as you do not get a sense of eh man behind the pen. He
is in fact a dead slate. It comes as a surprise later in the work when it is
revealed that he has a wife. And you would never guess that, except in one throwaway
line, that there were two children dragged along into the gays bars and
shooting galleries of New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City. A line near the
end of the text, “My wife and I were separated,” is the only cryptic indicator
of the infamous William Tell incident, where he drunkenly shot her in the head.
This separation is permanent. All that is presented is one man and his junk.
This is not uncommon for old school
autobiographies, the fifties were just beginning to tilt that narrative. Despite
his rejection of it, the Victorian values of upper crust educated WASP society
had left an indelible mark on Burrough’s style. Simply put, you do not air your
family laundry in public. Being gay and a drug user was one thing, that was
him, but the rest of the family was out of bounds.
 |
| Original cover, title, and nom de plume from the 1953 Ace publication. |
Burroughs loves his drug habit. “Junk
does not cause addiction,” he writes, “exposure does.” A very thin hair there.
The only emotion he displays here is anger towards those who prevent him from
scoring and the psychiatrists who regularly ask him why he feels he needs it.
“I need it to get up in the morning,” is part of the standard reply. As I have
said previously in my review of his other book and that of his son's, had no one
prevented him from getting drugs, Burroughs would almost have no opinions on
anything at all.
His views on homosexuals are
interesting. He seems to have an absolute dislike for them, despite being gay
himself. “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.” He reports on this several
times, only seeming to go to such places when drunk and horny, but otherwise
abjuring them in preference to dark junk filled holes and bars on the outskirts
of poor areas. His disregard for women is also well know. Even his common law
wife. “We give them too much power. It’s some left over Southern chivalry that
we need to jettison.”
Included is the glossary that was part
of the original edition. Nowadays it’s rather laughable because all of the hip
slang terms of the time are now so ingrained in our common vocabulary that an explanation
isn’t needed. Idioms like “cold turkey”, “kick a habit”, “coke”, “weed” are all
spelled out for the 1950’s “square”.
 |
| Cover the 1977 edition |
Two additional chapters written for
the original version have been included. One detailing a stop Burroughs makes
between New Orleans and Mexico City, the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. He goes on
for some length detailing its decay over the years and its cultural stagnation.
The tone is totally different from the rest of the text. In the second he
details the idiot ideas of Wilhelm Reich and how the orgone accumulator could
cure cancer, as well as number of other illnesses. These assertions of Reich
eventually lead to the death of several children and the burning of all of his
works, ordered by the FDA. He describes building an orgone accumulator and
curing a junk habit with its use. It also was removed due to its tonal shift
from the rest of the text and for repetition, as parts of what he states in the
chapter has distributed elsewhere in the book.
In becoming the “definitive” edition
the book has ironically left something out. In the original edition there were
copious editors notes placed in the text, which clarified or disagreed with the
facts that Burroughs put forth. These were omitted as they were not the author’s
words. I still would have liked an appendix which stated what these editorial
blurbs stated.
No comments:
Post a Comment