Skip to main content

Once a junky, always a junky

‘Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life’ states William Burroughs in ‘Junkie, confessions of an unredeemed Drug Addict', credited to William Lee in its first edition in 1953. (pictured on the left hand side). In ‘Junky’ –the final title of the book, this time credited to William S Burroughs- Burroughs depicts in a raw way what is to be a heroin addict like, I just found very interesting how the story grips the reader from page number one till the last word. ‘Why does an addict get a new habit so much quicker than a virgin, even after the addict has been cleaned for years? I do not accept the theory that junk is lurking in the body al the time –the spine is where it supposedly holes up- and I disagree with all psychological answers. Once a junky, always a junky. You can stop using junk, but you are never off after the first habit’ writes WB later on.
I think raw may be the proper word to catalogue this book, there is not much room for poetry or beautiful descriptions, yet it is rich in terms of language and stile.



It shows you a character that fights and realises what junk is doing to him, but he just cannot stop it, all the attempts fail.
This character reminds me so much of Alexei Ivanovich in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s the gambler , when I thought "...come on man… you are ruined you cannot make it again...!", but he manages to hole himself up in his vice.

In the same way Bill Lee is totally hooked but tries –sometimes timidly- to get off junk, and when things seem to be all right, fatality shows up.

A really, really good book. Also, browsing for some images to sex up this post I found a very interesting catalogue on Burroughs covers over the years as well as in various languages.

The image above on the right hand side corresponds
to the cover of the version I was reading. (Penguin).


Comments

Anonymous said…
Huy que cantidad de material que tiene en este blog. Esta bien bueno...

Popular posts from this blog

Volan's last will.

This is a picture of the envelope I received. On September the 29th I received a letter sent from London Metropolitan Police’s forensic department. The envelope contains Volan’s death report. I am still recovering from such a terrible moment. As Volan’s closest (and perhaps sole) friend I am in the obligation of publishing these lines on his own blog, as it was his last will. In strange circumstances my dearest friend Volan passed away in the dawn of the 23rd of September in Homerton Hospital in London. His body was carted off from the churchyard of Saint Paul’s Cathedral after a mad night out with Siobhan (Sweeny), -an Irish-Scottish blues singer whose Volan had just met few hours before in the surrounding areas of Anexo Bar, close to Farringdon Station. At the moment that the ambulance arrived at the place Volan showed a critical state and almost without vital signals dying a while after indoors, in the above mentioned hospital. The death certificated shows a very cryptic language ...

Vomiting in Old Kent Road.

Darko's last post is dated back to 2008... have all this years been a dream, a nightmare, am I back to life, back to death?... Shioban! Shioban... where are you? I died and got back to life... or vice versa. Shioban didn't I see you in the Middle Kingdom? Didn't I? Where have you gone Shioban? Irish Muse? Back to death from life... and a sketch she made in 2006, back the "deadly ol' smoke" Back form the toxic earthly smoke, life deterrent, as I walk covered in tar and sweet pop music, baijiu. Shioban!... you are young, I am gray.... Shioban where have you taken my bones? am I ashes, tar or smog? I still have got that ugly punch you directed at me nose, that night at Kingsland road, I landed, smacked my head to the ground only to wake up at Lewisham... or near, Shioban, you crazy Irish death.... was it Old Kent and Rotherhithe where we vomited solitudes that night? Shioban.

norman mclaren

Norman McLaren was one of the most significant abstract filmmakers of the British inter-war period. Born in 1914 in Stirling, Scotland, he entered the Glasgow School of Fine Arts in 1932, where he became interested in film and joined the School's Kine Society. His earliest extant film, Seven Till Five (1933), a "day in the life of an art school", was clearly influenced by Eisenstein and displays a strongly formalist attitude. (more)