Real Junk

Decades before James Frey made it big with his controversial and highly popular fictionalized-claimed-as-true book A Million Little Pieces, William S. Burroughs documented HIS own unexaggerated account of his hopeless addiction to just about every narcotic available on the market in Junky.

And I thought that Jack Kerouac's last book Big Sur was dark. Junky comes pretty close to superseding it. Most people I know are fortunate enough to not go to such extreme lengths to forget themselves and their fear of the damning world they're in. Most people I know are fortunate enough to have no idea what it is like to wake up in the morning and think only of when the next big high is going to come. Getting high for Burroughs comes hand in hand with pushing drugs and constantly running from the police of the 1950s that were thoroughly against men like him and Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder -- all those wild literary beatnik types that seem to do nothing but drink and get high and really sexed up as though life is just one big roaring party.

Burroughs is remarkably frank for someone so hated and rejected for being an addict, homosexual, and beat writer . His documentation of his being a complete outsider is fairly linear, a return to some normalcy for me the reader after all Kerouac's liberal misspellings and lack of a familiar and linear story-telling path. But while Kerouac bounced around everywhere searching for shining stars of adventure and LIFE, Burroughs makes no effort to conceal the fact that he is diving headfirst into a pool of drugs to make his fear go away.

The refreshing thing about this book is that Burroughs doesn't hide the ugly that everyone tries to deny. He gives us the life of a complete social reject. Ever think about how much our media our books our IMAGES delude us into avoiding certain kinds of ugliness? What is so wrong with ugly and what is so wrong about degenerate? Burroughs gives the reader NEW images to consider without the censor, and thank god for that. I've been tired of the happily-ever-afters for a long while now, because life isn't about simply achieving the happily-ever-afters.

I can't wait to read Naked Lunch, also by W.S. Burroughs. It should be amazing.

The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain is quite good, actually. I love me some bad characters. Breaking the rules always makes things so much more interesting.
Open your mind and burn some paper spines.