“I have learned the cellular stoicism that junk teaches the user. I have seen a cell full of sick junkies silent and immobile in separate misery. They knew the pointlessness of complaining or moving. They knew that basically no one can help anyone else. There is no key, no secret someone else has that he can give you.” Junky was a concise yet vivid account of heroin addiction, delineated by someone who’d actually lived the life. Though the book was often bleak, it never degraded itself by ind

I listened to the audiobook on YouTube. There are two different audiobooks, one read by the author and one read by David Carradine. The reader is not credited in the YouTube video, but I'm guessing it's the author. He has a raspy voice, but it works well for the reading. This was my first time reading anything from the beat generation, unless you count Charles Bukowski, who came along a little later. I tried reading some Jack Kerouac things and didn't get into them right away, so I moved on to t...

I actually wish I'd read this before Naked Lunch or any of his other books as it shows an unsplintered version of his psyche.

Mmm mmm drugs. Yummy. Like adult smarties with extra kick and an added naughty factor.Ok, that is not strictly true but you have to admit that sometimes it is difficult to pick your way through the troubled and varied history of drugs culture in literature. Drugs good? Drugs bad? Drugs indifferent? You're cool. Or not cool. Or an addict or a victim. See? Confusing. Lets look back through the literature - Coleridge, De Quincey, Kerouac, Thompson and the production of wondrous drugs madness such a...

First published as a pulp novel as other publishers didn't dare to put it out into the world, Burroughs' largely autobiographical account talks about his descent into addiction, his criminal career and the cycle of withdrawal and relapse. In dry, laconic language, the author turns away from the romanticization of drug as tools to expand the mind; rather, he shows opioid consumption (junk as opposed to psychedelic drugs) as an all-encompassing, pervasive lifestyle which, just as mirrored in Burro...

I read this while in rehab so as you can imagine it held a very special place in my heart. This is a crazy, self- indulgent, occasionally offensive defence of the junkie lifestyle. The author never really managed to break free from his addiction and despite his hatred for all things government and society died dependent on govt. administered methadone. It's unapologetic. It's hilarious. And when you finish the book you can't help but be struck by the tragedy of addiction despite the crazy ride y...

The life of a heroin addict30 July 2011 When I first bought this book I thought it was written by the same guy that wrote Tarzan (yes they have the same last name, but that is about it). It turns out that it wasn't, and Burroughs was not a fiction writer, but rather, as the introduction to the version that I read, the father of the beat generation. However, one does wonder how he ended up becoming a writer because from reading this book one wonders how he ever actually amounted to anything. Junk...

Less flouncy/convoluted and real(istic?) than Naked Lunch or Queer. (True masterpieces these.) Oddly straightforward--espesh for a first novel--it valiantly emerges as some sort of sad recounting of events in all their incendiary yet undoubted existence. So brave, so brave coming out as gay; but for a literary juggernaut, the honest truth of drug addiction MUST be depicted... & that Truth is the passport to the future glories (the aforementioned novels). Articulate clear-headedness here (not inc...

I think I prefer looking at this text in its original light: a sensationalized, dime-store paperback about junkies. I just can't take this type of work too seriously. I've met so many people who hail Burroughs as genius and I have yet to find out why. While he offers a grisly account of opiate addiction, it's hard for me to say that Junky is an important piece of literature. It spawned many copy cat memoirs and was influential to the genre of confessional fiction, which I find to be overrated.

This could be the best anti-drug book ever written. It is certainly the odd-boy out in the Burroughs family of novels.This is not the William S. Burroughs of The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead (Burroughs, William S.) and certainly not the same guy who wrote Naked Lunch: The Restored Text. This is a Burroughs who's not talking to himself or talking to his admirers. Instead this an author who is stretching to reach the reader with the actual smelly, lonely, desperate, empty reality of the junky.It'...

This was just as gritty and showing just how ugly addiction is as I had hoped it would be. Luckily I have never been addicted to drugs and for that am very happy. This book was both engaging and horrifying at times. Not because of scary monsters or thrilling events but for the sheer pain and sorrow addictions bring. There is not rose tinted glasses reading this and that this is how a book about addiction should be. Not an easy read per say but a good anywho

”Morphine hits the backs of the legs first, then the back of the neck, a spreading wave of relaxation slackening the muscles away from the bones so that you seem to float without outlines, like lying in warm salt water. As this relaxing wave spread through my tissues, I experienced a strong feeling of fear. I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving as I turned my head, so that I never quite saw it. I felt nauseous; I lay down and closed my eyes. A ser...

Let me start this out by saying that a few years ago, my pancreas tried to kill me. The doctors in the ER decided that I was going to die, so they didn't spare the painkillers. They loaded me up with Dilaudid, and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. They kept giving it to me, and then surprise! I lived. I kept getting shots of Dilaudid until I realized that the pain was gone, and I no longer needed it. But I considered lying to get another shot. Heh. That was a bad idea, so I stop...

Reading Junky as a college student was a revelation: it was the first time I felt I heard an author’s authentic voice. Burroughs’s clipped sentences, his directness, his matter-of-fact statements about what things were really like, his view of a world I didn’t know about began a life-long fascination. It’s easy to dismiss Junky because of it’s subject matter of heroin addiction; that it’s just a fad or something young adults might think is cool. But he does it with such artistic depth. Even the

Well holy shit, high-five to you, early teens me! Though I may have mixed feelings about some things I loved back in my formative, pointlessly cynical years, this rereading experience was actually, well, kinda rad. Can I say that at almost 30? Rad? Or am I getting to where it's like when your folks n' grandfolks try to quote "the hip lingo of the kids these days" and it enters your brain like aural chipboard? This novel held up, is my point. Maybe I'm just an asshole (probable), but Burroughs ma...

Okay, I can see the artistic merit in this novel. Burroughs's prose is lean, cool and convincingly realistic. He’s good with (mostly brief, introductory) characterization and telling of anecdotes. He knows his material, the drugs that is. And yet, there was absolutely nothing that held my attention as I kept reading the book. This novel was completely focused on drugs – the quest for them, the dealing, the administering – and in a tediously technical way. There are absolutely no digressions. In

Very. Informative, I dare say. But also truly unique.

It's William S. Burroughs, dude. Made me wanna do heroin to get a grasp of what he was going through though. But to really understand his plight I would have to become a junky, which you really gotta put effort into, and I don't really wanna be a junky, because once you are you are for life. Read it, he'll tell you. Or read a bio on him or any other heroin addict. You can do it once and be okay but once you're a junky you can go 20 years without and then do it once and you're hooked or sick all

William Burroughs must be high up on my list of good writers whose influence I find largely to be for the worse: While I actually like quite a few authors obviously inspired by him, I'm also quite certain that if it weren't for old Bill a good chunk of the Western world's high culture wouldn't have turned into a tiresome contest in who can be more cynical and incomprehensible than each other. Despite all this, even his relatively conventional debut novel has aged very well and lost little to non...

Burroughs does not pull any punches in this, his first novel. It is a plain account of the life of a junkie based on his own life. Burroughs describes his experience in a very matter of fact way; the many lows and very few highs. The descriptions of coming off heroin are horrific. It is still difficult to read, but describes a way of life and a downward spiral. The glossary at the end was very necessary for me.Burroughs illustartes how much junk dominates your life when you are an addict and the...