Junky did a better job convincing me not to drugs than any PSAs I’ve seen, I’ll say that.
The You Can’t Win inspiration is VERY noticeable, because the two really are quite similar even just in style of writing. I will say, though, Junky is miles more accessible than You Can’t Win. Junky keeps you on your toes throughout its tiny run of a hundred pages. Because of its length, I’m a little at a loss for words in the grand scheme of reviewing this, but I will say it makes quite a bit of sense that Burroughs was one of the beats, albeit the postmodernism-centric one. The book is pretty ruthless in terms of its portrayal of opioid abuse- not gut wrenching per se, but certainly far from pleasant. At all points you really do want him to quit, but you remember the book’s not over. Even when the one guy warns him not to take Junk, before he’s even really done that much, you feel an extreme sense of dread. I guess dread is the driving force of this book, with each chapter leaving you more uncertain about what’s coming next.
I do wish it was longer. I felt that the book would’ve been better if it was paced a little bit slower, and while I never had to go back and reread things because of missing important plot details, everything felt a little too sudden and spontaneous.
Something I thought was really interesting was the wide vocabulary of junkie slang used throughout the book, maybe it’s just the part of my brain that lit up when reading the Nadsat ramblings of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, though.
It’s a book that I didn’t know I wanted.
In other words, I’ll definitely be reading Queer and Naked Lunch in the future.
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