So, this is William S Burroughs's first book, so it's not all... crazy. It's actually pretty readable, and really interesting. It's pretty much an account of junk usage over here, there, and everywhere. In our Rebels class an excerpt was presented to contrast Kerouac's On the Road--where Jack set up an optimistic, energetic picture of the time, William S Burroughs was darker, dimmer, and paid more attention to the dirt.
Oh, and one more thing: the version I'm reading is the "50th Anniversary Definitive Edition", so I decided that this time around I'd read all the bonus materials (now that the fear induced by Naked Lunch is fading--heck, I might even reread The Yage Letters--well--no--) included. So if you're just reading along with me, hanging onto every miserable typed word, go out and get this version. I think it's really the only version that's available now, but even if it's not it's probably the cooler-looking edition.
The introduction in the beginning of the book is by Oliver Harris, it was written eight years ago. One of the most important things he says comes on the first page: "One thing you can say about any book by William S Burroughs, however, is that whenever you think you've got it pinned down, that's when it slips from your fingers" (IX). It's doubtful that truer words have ever been spoken. Though a better description of how one feels when reading Naked Lunch would probably be more like: It is forever slipping through your fingers and you will never grab it no matter how much you flail around--and it may just be better that way. But I'd say Harris is definitely correct in what he's said in regard to The Yage Letters. I haven't read Burroughs's other books, but this kind of makes me want to read Queer, so perhaps we'll see further...?
One thing Harris brings up that bothers me is his praising of Burroughs's writing--now, the praise doesn't bother me, don't get me wrong, but what he should praise bothers me. He quotes: "You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere" (X). The point, I saw immediately--it's ironic, because you need what doctors are supposed to have, but if you have it, doctors will trust you--and subsequently, give you what you need. I guess what put me off is that Harris dwells on it and gets so worked up about dissecting something that seems pretty obvious--well, I don't know. It just bothered me. Maybe I'm just like the casual observer as compared to the connoisseur: I know it tastes good, but I couldn't tell you why and thus I can't properly appreciate it. Or something like that.
"Junky did not follow that path of group myth-making, autobiographical fiction that characterized Beat Generation writing" (XV). I can only imagine because it lacks the optimism and vigor (and I mean this about the three of his books I've read in general) Kerouac exercised. When it is more upbeat than "I'm going to make you cry" Burroughs tends to be alone. Well... I guess that's true about Kerouac too, but... There's some subtle difference, though that may lie in my own biases. Well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't more inclined to read Kerouac than Burroughs, in any case.
Okay, here we go, the start of the actual, original text:
Burroughs starts by describing his early life: "I recall hearing a maid talk about opium and how smoking opium brings sweet dreams, and I said: 'I will smoke opium when I grow up'" (XXXVII). I only bring this up because 99% of the time, opium sleep is supposed to be deep and undisturbed by dreams. Unless if the maid meant that the feeling induced by opium brought sweet dreams after the other effects wore off--I don't know. Whatever, I'm just nit-picking again. He heard what he heard.
"I read more than was usual for an American boy of that time and place: Oscar Wilde, Anatole France, Baudelaire, even Gide" (XXXVIII). Might I point out that all of these authors were reputed to be gay (and some were a little more than reputed). Burroughs was gay, though he practices a very odd dissociation--I mean, you know he's gay, he says he is, he talks about sleeping with other men--but he always refers to other gay men as "the/queers" and speaks of them--almost like a field researcher doing a case study. So, even though you know he's gay, you doubt it, because he sees other gay men as almost not human or a different species. Just kind of odd, I guess.
"I have never regretted my experience with drugs. I think I am in better health now as a result of using junk at intervals than I would be if I had never been an addict. When you stop growing you start dying. An addict never stops growing. Most users periodically kick the habit, which involves shrinking of the organism and replacement of the junk-dependent cells. A user is in a continual state of shrinking and growing in his daily cycle of shot-need for shot completed. Most addicts look younger than they are. Scientists recently experimented with a worm that they were able to shrink by withholding food. By periodically shrinking the worm so that it was in continual growth, the worm's life was prolonged indefinitely. Perhaps if a junkie could keep himself in a constant state of kicking, he would live to a phenomenal age" (XL-XLI). It's not difficult to believe that the drugs would preserve you. Might I mention that Burroughs lived to be eighty-three and Herbert Huncke (a junky who goes by the name of Elmer Hassel in On the Road, and "Hunk" or "Huck" in Desolation Angels, and appears in here and also there in other Beat writings) lived to eighty-one. It's kind of curious, and certainly interesting. On a side note, something about this section reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk--specifically Invisible Monsters when Shannon's ex is describing how every life is just a channel on God's TV and if he changes the channel we die--so we must never, ever get boring.
"I have learned the junk equation. 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" (XLI).
"The effect was uncanny. You would see him one time a fresh-faced kid. A week or so later he would turn up so thin, sallow, and old-looking, you would have to look twice to recognize him. His face was lined with suffering in which his eyes did not participate. It was a suffering of his cells alone" (3). I love the fourth sentence in this, but it needed some sort of context. Clearly this is discussing the affect of junk and the lack thereof on a fellow named Jack--not Kerouac, just a random fellow named Jack.
"In 1937, weed was placed under the Harrison Narcotics Act. Narcotics authorities claim it is a habit-forming drug, that its use is injurious to mind and body, and that it causes the people who use it to commit crimes. Here are the facts: Weed is positively not habit-forming. You can smoke weed for years and experience no discomfort if your supply is suddenly cut off. I have seen tea heads in jail and none of them showed withdrawal symptoms. I have smoked weed myself off and on for fifteen years, and never missed it when I ran out. There is less habit to weed than there is tobacco. Weed does not harm the general health... I once kicked a junk habit with weed... Weed does not inspire anyone to commit crimes. I have never seen anyone get nasty under the influence of weed. Tea heads are a sociable lot. Too sociable for my liking. I cannot understand why the people who claim weed causes crime do not follow through and demand the outlawing of alcohol. Every day, crimes are committed by drunks who would not have committed the crime sober" (15-16) et cetera. He goes on to explain other--perhaps you wouldn't call them positives, but at the very least un-negatives, about weed. His one negative fact about weed is that someone high on it is "completely unfit" (16) to drive. Just thought I'd insert them here.
"The American middle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not. Gains went further. He was not merely negative. He was positively invisible; a vague respectable presence. There is a certain kind of ghost that can only materialize with the aid of a sheet or other piece of cloth to give it outline. Gains was like that. He materialized in someone else's overcoat" (35).
"'Herman [Huncke] was a beautiful kid when he first came to New York. The trouble is, he lost his looks'" (35).
"Walking around the city, I spotted several junk neighborhoods... I don't spot junk neighborhoods by the way they look, but by the feel, somewhat the same process by which a dowser locates hidden water. I am walking along and suddenly the junk in my cells moves and twitches like a dowser's wand: 'Junk here!'" (58).
At one point Burroughs goes to a gay bar--yet another example of him clearly showing his homosexuality (he leaves the bar with a fellow he plans on sleeping with) but yet again strangely disassociating himself from the other gay men there. ...Can I make a poor joke and say that this habit of his is rather... queer? Oh, gosh, I am hilarious.
In this scene he describes himself as getting "lobotomized drunk" (60). There's also some more humor in this scene: "I should have been more alert, of course, but I never could mix vigilance and sex" (60).
"A sick junkie has no escape from external time, no place to go. He can only wait" (72).
At one point Burroughs is in prison for his drugs. The copper refers to him as Mr Lee. When he originally published the book, he published under a pen name--well, a few pen names, depending on when it was being reissued... But my point is (to the best of my knowledge, unless if it was some old nickname for him or some such) that the name Lee--Bull Lee full, Old Bull Lee--comes from On the Road. Just thought it was interesting. Also, I almost wrote 'On the Roast'. ...
On criticizing a hospital's psychiatrist: "He was not effeminate. He simply had none of whatever it is that makes a man a man" (82).
"In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up" (95).
"The meaning of 'manana' is 'Wait until the signs are right'" (95)/ "For the next week that was all I heard, Manana, a lovely word and one that probably means heaven" (On the Road by Jack Kerouac, page 195).
"Once a junkie, always a junkie. You can stop using junk, but you are never off after the first habit" (97).
Burroughs criticizes the "war on drugs" often as well (though I don't believe it was known as exactly that until later) as you've already seen. This image he tears apart isn't that prevalent anymore (I can't even think of the last time I even saw a drug-PSA commercial actually, so maybe it is and the fact that I've watched TV maybe twice in the last two months nullifies my statement), but if you've ever watched eighties drug PSA commercials, it seems that only kids do drugs, and also guys who can change into snakes. "Safe in Mexico, I watched the anti-junk campaign. I read about child addicts and senators demanding the death penalty for dope peddlers. It didn't sound right to me. Who wants kids for customers? They never have enough money and they always spill under questioning. Parents find out the kid is on junk and go to the law. I figured that either Stateside peddlers have gone simpleminded or the whole child-addict set-up is a propaganda routine to stir up anti-junk sentiment and pass some laws" (120). High five, William S Burroughs! Logos!
Page 121: the word haberdashery is used. And it continues to be pretty much the best word in the English language.
"When you give up junk, you give up a way of life. I have seen junkies kick and hit the lush and wind up dead in a few years. Suicide is frequent among ex-junkies. Why does a junky quit junk of his own free will? You never know the answer to that question. No conscious tabulation of the disadvantages and horrors of junk gives you the emotional drive to kick. The decision to quit junk is a cellular decision, and once you have decided to quit you cannot go back to junk permanently any more than you could stay away from it before. Like a man who has been away a long time, you see things different when you return from junk" (127).
Burroughs concludes the original 'story' part of the text with the discussion of yage. He mentions that Russians are also experimenting with yage to see its effects on the personality and the work--namely to turn a person into an unquestioning and obedient worker. I feel the need to mention that Nazis attempted this sort of drug experimentation with cocaine mixed into--I believe--martinis to increase stamina and willingness to work. Oh Stumbleupon, where would I be without you?
Anyways, the 'story' part of the text concludes as such: "Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of aging, cautious, nagging, frightened flesh. Maybe I will find in yage what I was looking for in junk and weed and coke. Yage may be the final fix" (128). Oh hey, lead-in to The Yage Letters. (Though that book wouldn't be published for another ten years, but shush.) ...I honestly can't tell you if it was the final kick or not, because really all I remember is that he talked about an HG Wells story and included a drawing of his that was supposed to be the great being but looked suspiciously similar to female genitalia.
Burroughs includes a glossary at the end as well. "Beat" means to takes money from someone. Special significance then, in the proclamation that "We are the Beat generation"? Not sure.
"Hep or Hip... Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands 'jive talk.' Someone who is 'with it.' The expression is not subject to definition because, if you don't 'dig' what it means, no one can ever tell you" (130). What he means to say is, either you're on the bus or you're off the bus.
Oh, and the glossary reveals that muggles was slang for marijuana back in the day. This shines a whole new light on the Harry Potter series, I must say...
And then several indexes are included.
Appendix I is the ripped apart and reseeded twenty-eighth chapter of the original manuscript of this book. It mostly has to do with orgones (just google it, I don't even know how to simply explain them) and his orgone collection box (which I'm pretty sure is briefly mentioned in On the Road). It also talks more about the constant shrinkage and growth of cells as being that which keeps a man alive for longer--more quotes similar to the one regarding the worm way, way back in the beginning.
"Possibly all pleasure is basically relief from a condition of need, or tension" (137). (The popular version of this quote is "Perhaps all pleasure is only relief".)
"Perhaps the reason for the short life of the American business man is that he experiences no cycle of shrinking and growth. He does not exercise, he is never hungry. His life is a one-way process. When his organism reaches maturity it can only start dying" (137).
"Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life" (138).
Appendix II is one of many of the various introductions to the text. It's got ten facts that prove propaganda 'facts' wrong. "Addiction ruins the health and leads to early death. As I read in a magazine article, 'Morphine addicts have numbered days on earth.' Who hasn't?" (141). Very Vonnegut-ish in tone, if you ask me.
"I do not intend to correct popular misconceptions about junk by presenting the facts that are already known to anyone informed on the subject. I am using the known facts as a starting point in an attempt to reach facts that are not known" (143).
The other Appendixes are various introduction by various fellows. I like Allen Ginsberg, but he cannot do this sort of thing for beans. He's very eloquent--but he cannot stay collected for a solid piece of writing. Case in point, the contents of one of his parenthesis: "a point I argued with as much as I could in his Doubleday office, belt felt faint surrounded by so much Reality... mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors... my own paranoia or inexperience with the great Dumbness of Business Buildings of New York" (155). The ellipses were there to begin with, by the way. But it's kind of like "No, Ginsberg! Focus, FOCUS! Come baaaaack!" He's got a few examples of good focused phrasery, though:
"...Bill was too diffident to make such extravagant theater of self" (154).
"Certainly these books indicated we were in the middle of an identity crisis prefiguring nervous breakdown for the whole United States" (155).
Woah, whooo. We made it. I happen to be rather fond of this book, though it has put in me a fear of needles that I never had, even when I was a little kid. Descriptions of junkies shooting up and blood-filled needles.... Nope, no thanks. It's rather interesting, in any case. I'd suggest a read-through if the subject interests you. If not... Then don't. And don't worry, I'm not a drug addict. Yet. (Remember where my college is!)
Works cited/MLA stuff: Burroughs, William S. Junky. Penguin Books: New York, 2003.
Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma that isn't even really that necessary because she guessed it correctly: Life on Mars by David Bowie
This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: They can't be satisfied, like junkies running dry
LOVE YOU! You've helped me out a lot by writing the page number here! Tks!!!
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