Junky: The Definitive Text of "Junk" (50th Anniversary Edition) [Paperback]

William S. Burroughs (Author), Oliver Harris (Editor, Introduction), Allen Ginsberg (Foreword)

Book Description

Release date: April 1, 2003

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 underground. For this definitive 50th-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly re-created the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts. Here for the first time are Burroughs's own unpublished Introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages and auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others. Harris's comprehensive Introduction reveals the composition history of Junk's text and places its contents against a lively historical background.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for William Burroughs:

“Burroughs voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American.”—Joan Didion

“A creator of grim fairy tales for adults, Burroughs spoke to our nightmare fears and, still worse, to our nightmare longings. . . . And more than any other postwar wordsmith, he bridged generations; popularity in the youth culture is greater now than during the heady days of the Beats.”—Douglas Brinkley, The Los Angeles Times Book Review

“The most important writer to emerge since World War II. . . . For his sheer visionary power, and for his humor, I admire Burroughs more than any living writer, and most of those who are dead.”—J.G. Ballard

“William was a Shootist. He shot like he wrote—with extreme precision and no fear.”—Hunter S. Thompson

“A book of great beauty . . . . Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius.”—Norman Mailer on Naked Lunch

“Burroughs seems to revel in a new medium . . . a medium totally fantastic, spaceless, timeless, in which the normal sentence is fractured, the cosmic tries to push its way through the bawdry, and the author shakes the reader as a dog shakes a rat.”—Anthony Burgess on The Ticket That Exploded

“Of all the Beat Generation writers, William S. Burroughs was the most dangerous. . . . He was anarchy’s double agent, an implacable enemy of conformity and of all agencies of control-from government to opiates.”—Rolling Stone

“In Burroughs’ hands, writing reverts to acts of magic, as though he were making some enormous infernal encyclopedia of all the black impulses and acts that, once made, would shut the fiends away forever.” —The New York Times on The Wild Boys

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)—guru of the Beat Generation, controversial éminence grise of the international avant-garde, dark prophet, and blackest of black humor satirists—had a range of influence rivaled by few post-World War II writers. His many books include Naked Lunch, Queer, Exterminator!, The Cat Inside, The Western Lands, and Interzone.

Oliver Harris edited The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945-1959. He is currently a lecturer in American Literature at the University of Keele.

Product Details

• Paperback: 166 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; 50 Anv edition (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142003166
• ISBN-13: 978-0142003169
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (125 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #163,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

101 of 106 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars What you see is what you get... March 5, 2002

By C. Middleton

Format:Paperback

Most serious readers have experienced a Beat phase in their reading careers...or should. Mine mainly centred on the works of Kerouac and Ginsberg with a spat of McClure and Burroughs thrown in for good measure. Through the years ~Junky~ would make an appearance, however the opportunity never presented itself to crack its covers. The book would manfest from time to time, simply to remind me that it still existed. I finally read ~Junky~ last week and it blew me away.

Despite the fact that William S. Burroughs has been thrown into the Beat literati, ~Junky~ doesn't seem to fit. The book is a one off, an important artefact of history - a testimony to an unfortunate human predicament and a way of life that is all too real; and societies ignorance, intolerance and exploitation of the condition, and its continued hypocrisy.

What I found interesting is that nothing has really changed since ~Junky~ was first published two generations ago. Drug addiction is still a 'moral issue' for a lot of people, including the addiction to alcohol. To be fair, as a society, we've probably made a little progress in the last fifty years, in terms of our understanding and treatment of drugs, but there is still a long way to go.

William Lee, a middle class, educated individual of relative privilege, tells the story of his introduction to junk, subsequent addiction and his on-going hellish relationship with the demon. This testimony is not a posing, romantic portrayal of a hip drug user, living an artistic, bohemian existence amongst poets, painters and musicians, all creating great works of art and having a wonderful time. ~Junky~ is an honest account concerning the 'vicious circle' of addiction, and the many attempts by those afflicted to escape the circle, but once you're in it, there's really no getting out - entirely.

In fact it was Burroughs who coined the phrase:

"Once a junky always a junky." And this is the tragedy.

After closing the book, I had a eerie feeling that I was holding something important in my hands. It ceased to be merely a book and became something else...a relic of a bygone era, its peculiar venacular, attitudes, dreams and nightmares. I believe it would be a mistake to include this book in any literary category for it stands alone, without pretence or device...because with ~Junky~ what you see is what you get.

56 of 60 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Junky: a commonly misinterpreted work of brilliance February 3, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Junky is the kind of novel that you cannot read until you abandon all pretenses. Forget for a moment that this was Burroughs' first book, put aside the fact that he was himself a junky, and put your personal opinions of drug use and abuse, as well as Burroughs himself, on hold. The attempt made by Junky as a piece of art is to honestly and fairly put forward an in-depth look at a side of American life that was virtually overlooked until its publication. The novel delves very deeply into a world that, though many would rather ignore it all together, has gotten progressively worse to this day.
Junky offers a detailed account of a drug addict's entrance into the seedy underworld, his daily search for a fix, the shady characters he must rely on, and the suffering he experiences while trying to fix himself. The purpose is to fully immerse the reader in the world of a man engulfed in addiction.
The hero is actually an intelligent man, who immediately recognizes the risk taken in his experiments with narcotics. He also realizes, although a little too late, the fact that he has become an addict himself, and now needs the drug for basic survival. He is also rational. He recognizes his dismal circumstances, but also recognizes his guilt in the matter, and in no way tries to gain sympathy from the reader. The hero is aware of what he has done to himself, and does nothing to deny his responsibility.
Junky in no way glamorizes drug use; on the contrary, in the sections that describe heroin as appealing, Burroughs is showing the immeasurable control the drug has quietly acquired over the user, distorting the addict's perception of what is happening to him.
Junky pulls the reader into a dark underworld of society and depicts a man's struggle to regain his life, or what's left of it after the plague of addiction is eliminated. Burroughs holds nothing back. He uses a method of detailing the more shocking parts of the hero's experiences with a calm and almost casual frankness. This slowly makes them seem less disturbing, and introduces the reader more and more to the addicts point of view. Burroughs even attempts to alter the reader's point of view, subtly bringing the reader closer to the mind of the junky, and eventually creating an unexpected affection for a seemingly unlovable character, who appears to have very little about him that is redeeming. You begin to care for this lost, pathetic man, as you watch him attempt cure after cure, method after method, finally having to flee the country to avoid prosecution. The reader can do nothing but look on, as each good intention crumbles, making the hero more and more incapable of escaping the grip of the addiction.
Burroughs states many times the degree of influence heroin has over the addict, illustrating how all other activities become less like life and more like a limbo of nothingness between scores. The junky's life is consumed. His days become more and more about scoring, leaving less and less room for anything else. By the time the hero becomes aware of having a problem, it is too late, he has become a slave to the drug. He doesn't need the heroin to simply get high; he needs the heroin because he cannot survive without it. Burroughs states the difference between other drugs, which are about the high they induce, and heroin: "Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life."
There are no hidden intentions in Junky. It does not aspire to create a greater sympathy for drug addicts, nor does it make any gallant attempts at scaring away potential users. Junky has no agenda, good or bad, for its influence in the world. It simply lays out the facts, leaving them for the reader to do what they want with them. The novel is a clear, concise, and direct journey into the mind and world of a man diseased, told in brutally honest narration, without a hint of shame or pity.
This is, in my opinion, a worthy piece of literature to invest the time into reading, not only for a Burroughs fan, but for any reader who enjoys thought-provoking subject-matter and stories containing complex and intriguing characters. Basically, anyone who appreciates well-written fiction has the ability to appreciate the dark, subtle wit and stark, desperate tone of Junky, as long as they read it with an open mind. It is a chronicle, a picture, a record of a dark way of life. And as that, it succeeds.

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic of the underground October 11, 2001

By Jeffrey Ellis

Format:Paperback

Burroughs' first book is an autobiographical tale of how he first came to try heroin and his travels across North America as, to paraphrase the author, junk became his life. To those who know Burroughs as only the writer of Naked Lunch, the straight-forward and precise prose of Junky may come as a surprise at first but, upon careful reading, all the same concerns and motifs are here. Basically, Junky tells what was happening in the real world while Burroughs was hallucinating the junk-fueled world of Naked Lunch. While it may deceptively appear to have no real structure, its meandering style instead perfectly embodies the drug-fueled lifestyle of its protaganist. Its a fascinating read that reveals that, despite beliefs to the contrary, there has always been a drug underground in the United States where junkies remain easy scapegoats for other societal problems. While Burroughs does't condemn drug use, he can hardly be accused of promoting it either. Instead, in the best libertarian tradition, he promotes only the freedom of the individual to be able to determine his own fate.

However, beyond any possible political or philosophical interpretations, this is a fast-moving, informative book with a dry wit hidden amongst the deadpan prose. What is often forgotten is that Burroughs' first known stories were all parodies of other genres and in many ways, Junky is a dead-on imitation of the hardboiled, pulp novels that were also prominent at the time.