William Seward Burroughs

Junky

james cao

When you stop growing you start dying. An addict never stops growing.

Doolie sick was an unnerving sight. The envelope of personil nal ity was gone, dissolved by his junk-hungry cells. Viscera and cells, galvanized into a loathsome insect-like activity, seemed the point of breaking through the surface.

As the geologist looking for oil is guided by certain outcroppings of rock, so certain signs indicate the near presence of junk.

The conversations had a nightmare flatness, talking dice spilled in the tube metal chairs, human aggregates disintegrating in cosmic inanity, random events in a dying universe where everything is exactly what it appears to be, and no other relation than juxtaposition is possible.

William S. Burroughs

Oliver Harris

the definitive text of "junk"

A difficult book to figure how I feel on and how much I enjoyed reading it. Burroughs has an interesting writing style that I can’t decide if I love or not, but a few select passages really stood out to me. Crazy that this was his life, going to read Queer next!

i liked it a lot but in some sections i didn’t feel like hearing about the act of shooting in explicit detail. overall very interesting story from burroughs

the_basis_

Only book I’ve read about drug culture that is neither miserable nor white-knuckled (coincidentally reading Infinite Jest at the moment, which I think also has that strength) — which is a balancing act. Burroughs writes with this neutralizing effect. Comically straightforward compared to what little I’ve read/listened to by him and yet densely detailed and just really eye-opening. It speaks for itself that there’s hesitation to even call it a novel.

Alex Noble

jack

damn seventy years ago u could really just go on a bender for 5-10 years, write a book about it, and become an important author lol. honestly though, my opinion on this shifted back and forth between thinking it was a poorly written, historically interesting piece to thinking it was incredibly insightful and well written. my final thoughts lie somewhere in between. despite going into it thinking about danny boyle’s trainspotting (which is based off a different book of a similar premise), the film i was mostly reminded of was john casavettes’ debut, shadows (my second time mentioning casavettes on goodreads lol). both casavettes and burroughs convey a confessional desperation that makes their work seem both powerful and effortless. in casavettes’ reliance on improv+simple scene construction and burroughs’ reliance on a near-journalistic account of the narrator’s day to day life, the pieces’ subjects are put on full display. this is not a flaw in the style, but rather a feature of it—both are “aware of [their] talent for invisibility.” 
didn’t mean to go so long on this one, but this book is most effective when burroughs analyzes what it feels like to be addicted, and also what it doesn’t feel like. lot of cool stuff here. nice ending as well.

01010111 01000010

Junk wins by default, cause we got nothing else to do this holiday season.

Varol Aksoy

Burroughs'u Jack Kerouac gözüyle psikopat manyak bir adam olarak tanıdım, kitabın adı da bu gözlemle örtüşüyor. Bakalım neler var içinde :)

Blazgorb Throxis

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It is always fascinating to take a look into the past of Burroughs, however I found the novel sometimes became slightly rambly and incoherent which I guess is his style. The novel does a good job of being stylish without romanticizing drug addiction. The ending, however, was fucking goofy.

Relates the highs and lows of mainlining smack, from initial heroin bliss to dependency, the horrors of cold turkey.

John Balek

After reading so many other Burroughs novels I've finally gotten around to Junky. Its amazing how good this book is for it being Burroughs first. For a book that's nearing 70 years old it still feels as visceral and hard hitting as it must have been back in the 50's. I love the anecdotal approach to the book's structure in which chapters progress the narrative as well as short asides that are almost poetic in their sense. While progressing through Burroughs experiences from New York to New Orleans to Mexico City we also get insight into US anti drug policies during the 50's as well as Burroughs' knowledge and expertise on all things narcotics. Its a great contemporary to Doors of Perception and a thrilling read.

Luke Jones

Second read.

This book is more like a 7.5/10 than a 3/5.

What William S. Burroughs describes is horrible, but to dive into a world I never have and never will experience is fascinating, and the way Burroughs writes is wonderful. I tried to get through Naked Lunch a few years ago but couldn't. This might be the only readable book for me.

Julia 

rippy

Hannah Pilkington

Ada 

Analyzes the cycle of addiction through the eyes of a former heroin addict. It is a personal study of crime and drugs and their affect upon the mind and body.

The Definitive Text of Junk

Mari-Claire Parrin

Sophia Sadoughi

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 including heroin, cocaine, marijuana, paregoric (a weak tincture of opium) and goof balls (barbiturate), amongst others. For this definitive edition, renowned Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has gone back to archival typescripts to re-created the author's original text word by word. From the tenements of New York to the queer bars of New Orleans, Junky takes the reader into a world at once long-forgotten and still with us today. Burroughs’s first novel is a cult classic and a critical part of his oeuvre.

Junky

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