By William S. Burroughs

Rating: 2/5

Three Word Summary: Drugs are Boring

Drug addicts are self-obsessive, self-serving and self-destructive to the point of annoyance. Not to say that this book is poorly written. Compared to most other works of the Beat generation, Junky is relatively cogent, consistent and poignant.

It’s just that so much of the Beat generation is, in my humble opinion, misguided, wandering and dizzying. It’s no coincidence that many Beatniks had their brains addled with heavy use of narcotics — it shows in their writing.

Junky is a semi-autobiographical account of William S. Burroughs’ descent into drug use and dealing. Parts of it were interesting. Parts of it were dull and confusing. Listening to this tale on audiobook while driving in the car, it was far too easy to drift off and stop listening to certain sections.

The long, meandering introduction details the history of Junky, which was originally meant to be entitled Junk. Junk refers to the narcotics the characters of the book so enjoy. Junk is also a fitting title because that’s about the approximate value of these characters.

What amazes me is how matter-of-fact the whole issue of drug addiction is to Burroughs. He slips in and out of habits like he would an outfit of clothes. That fact is simultaneously amusing and depressing. He makes it seem like there is no choice in being addicted and openly admits that junk is a way of life.

Burroughs stumbles from New York to New Orleans to Mexico City. Bizarre characters come and go. He kicks a habit and lapses back into another all in the same week. Burroughs floats in and out of jobs, rehabs and jail. The one consistency in his pitiful existence is junk.

There are moments in the text that lapse into poetic genius that make me believe that Burroughs’ work would have be much more worthwhile had he chosen a more relatable subject matter. The real tragedy is that we lost a generation of potentially great authors, who wasted their time being wasted.

Too much of Beat literature is just derivative of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road — enjoyable, but meandering and meaningless. The best thing to come out of the Beat generation was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Ken Kesey may have burned himself out too quickly, but drugs certainly produced his masterpiece. Burroughs’ masterpiece cannot live up to that same standard of greatness.