Grab Your Edition Yonqui Penned By William S. Burroughs Disseminated As Volume
Burroughs publicó "Yonqui", en, gracias a los buenos oficios de Allen Ginsberg, que se paseó con el manuscrito bajo el brazo por diversas editoriales hasta dar con Carl Solomon, un editor más valiente y más desesperado que otros, y que años después confesó que era tal el terror que le daba trabajar con semejante material que estuvo a punto de sufrir un colapso.
Y así fue como apareció uno de los libros míticos de la literatura americana de nuestro siglo, pero también uno de los más prohibidos y subterráneos, en una editorial marginal, bajo el pseudónimo de William Lee.
Burroughs aún no era el autor de El almuerzo desnudo, ni se había constituido en el gran visionario de nuestra época, que ha inspirado a escritores, a músicos, a pintores y a cineastas, pero en esta descarnada, deslumbrante crónica de una adicción los vagabundeos en busca de droga, la avidez por el chute, la peculiar sexualidad y las no menos extrañas relaciones nacidas en la comunión de la droga estaba ya el fundamento de toda su obra posterior.
Para Burroughs, un audaz explorador del lado más salvaje de la vida y la literatura, todo debe ser experimentado hasta el límite, aunque él nunca pierde la distancia de la inteligencia.
Para llegar al paraíso de la droga hay que hundirse en su infierno, puesto que ambos son lo mismo, y la degradación nunca está muy lejos de la revelación.
Porque la droga, finalmente, no es un medio para aumentar el goce ni un estimulante: es una manera de vivir, عندما يصبح المدمن جل همه التنبيش عن وريد صالح للحقن ولا يجد عندها سوف تكون أمانيه هي أوردتك التي يحسدك عليها سوف تعلم تماما ما هي لعنة الإدمان وتوابعه
هذا الكتاب المتجلي عن نشوة المخدر بقلم من أدمن الهيروين ودرج على كل ما تحته من مخدرات يشرح بكيفية فائقة الحالة والهالة عن رحلة مضنية عجيبة مكثفة لا تستطيع أن تتوقف عن قرائتها حالة من الإزدراء سوف تنتاب من يقرآ هذه الصفحات وتجربة ثرية مفيدة سوف تخرج بها عند طي صفحاته
كتاب وزع أكثر من مليون نسخة بيع بثمن بخس لا يتجاوز الألف دولار في وقته لدار نشر إغتنت من ورائه أكثر من رائع Technically, I didn't "read" this, I listened to it, as read by the man himself, The reading of the full text is up on Youtube: sitelinkJunkie and I had some repetitive formatting work to do, so, . .
Interesting for any number of reasons: as a detailed examination of a place and time and social class as recorded by a sharp observer directly involved with that class as a blunt record of the culture around that class, both social, legal and moral as an early example of the dry, "disinterested", direct and nonstylized literary voice that was to underlay all of Burroughs later, more experimental writing like a compact skeleton as an example of how the disposable, exploitational pulp paperbacks could still offer a haven for interesting writing and as an honest, painful account of a contemplative man's own destructive tendencies without any maudlin bullshit to smear the lens.
On the other hand, if you want to be "told a story", with traditional elements like "plot" and "character", this is not for you,
What you might expect here is what you get a very lucid record of Burrough's life transposed into the "William Lee" persona as an educated man and small time criminal living in thes who becomes repeatedly addicted to heroin.
The procedures, the people some real characters, the police, the petty crime cons, rolling drunks involved in sustaining the habit, The cures, and the lapses, and the political and cultural shifts regarding drugs that occurred during that time, All drawn in stark and honest language, with very little adornment a late in the book reflection on New Orleans as a city of ruins is an atypical standout.
And thus, fascinating as a record and a particular style of writing, The ending is unsatisfying, as this is essentially an honest relation of a life lived and so there is not so much a wrapup of the "story" if one could call it that as there is an ellipsis and a "to be continued".
No moral judgment on a scurrilous sinner meted out from on high to be found here, No hand wringing.
Hearing this read by an aged Burroughs is particularly powerful, his acute experience lending authenticity, his accrued time lending weight,
Others who this book is not for: those who are perpetually offended by the portrayal of realities of how people actually lived and thought and spoke in the past.
Burroughs is brutally honest in his portrayal of a selfloathing homosexual and so the language of such is also recorded, In fact, what's so striking about the book outside of the socioanthropological aspect of its intended focus is how, with very little sentimentality, it can't help but capture the anxiety and wounded nature of a man denying his most basic self because of cultural and social taboos, and how that denial drives him while remaining ever present.
Junk as an inoculation against the pain that arises out of being alive and feeling wrong in your skin,
An important document, An interesting listen.
Very. Informative, I dare say. But also truly unique. 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 none of its power!
In fact, I'd call "Junky" more readable than not just something like the author's multidirectional psychedelic mindfuck of a magnum opus "Naked Lunch" but also most of what I've read from the likes of LouisFerdinand Céline and Hunter S.
Thompson. At least that's the case if you can stomach the subject matter, Then again, I consider Wm, Burroughs' greatest strength how good he was at making the reader uncomfortable and laugh out loud during the same paragraph, . . then afterwards make them think for weeks about what they've just read, I must say that I find his description of heroin withdrawal ten times more terrifying than any horror fiction I've read, precisely because there's so very little sensationalism or moralizing included.
Likewise, the gallows humour is effective because how deadpan the delivery is, and arises naturally from the situations described,
Another reason "Junky" has aged very well is how useful the book is as a time capsule, It was written at the dawn of the drug culture in America in its current form, and there's another larger story told here than that of the protagonist: The paradigm shift the social subcultures surrounding drug addiction went through during the Eisenhower era, from its preWWshape most familiar to my generation from the's pulp fiction and exploitation films to what "drug culture" means today.
You can really tell here that the author was a trained anthropologist! Okay, I can see the artistic merit in this novel, Burroughs's prose is lean, cool and convincingly realistic, Hes 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 this very brief book new characters appeared and disappeared on every second page, I felt like I was in a zoo, shown around a variety of exotic animals that werent that exotic for me after all the books Id already read about the world of addiction.
The utter lack of emotion from the writer/narrator made the reading particularly uninspiring, As one reviewer suggested, this book was journalistic, I know this novel was innovative for its time and refreshingly honest then, For me, though, it was sheer boredom, Creo que la visión de Burroughs sobre el mundo y la vida de los yonquis es precisa y acertada, digo 'creo' porque, por suerte, yo no conozco esa vida cerca de la mia ni, mucho menos, en primera persona.
No obstante me crié en un barrio obrero en los, por lo que sí que vi cientos de casos y, la percepción que se tenía desde fuera, era exactamente lo que describe el autor.
El autoengaño continuo en que estos adictos viven, Me llama mucho la atención que el libro se publica eny las situaciones que en él se describen en nuestro país no se vivieron hasta, al menos,años después.
Recomendable para entender el terrible drama que viven estas
personas esclavas de la droga, Reading Junky as a college student was a revelation: it was the first time I felt I heard an authors authentic voice, Burroughss clipped sentences, his directness, his matteroffact statements about what things were really like, his view of a world I didnt know about began a lifelong fascination.
Its easy to dismiss Junky because of its subject matter of heroin addiction that its just a fad or something young adults might think is cool.
But he does it with such artistic depth, Even the simplest sentences echo something profound,
Junky also has a timelessness, The historical setting is more thanyears old, but it still seems and sounds contemporary, Indeed, although it was published in, his description of New Orleans is still the most concise, accurate description Ive ever read and it applies today:
There are people in New Orleans who have never been outside the city limits.
The New Orleans accent is exactly similar to the accent of Brooklyn, The French Quarter is always crowded, Tourists, servicemen, merchant seamen, gamblers, perverts, drifters, and lamsters from every State in the Union, People wander around, unrelated, purposeless, most of them looking vaguely sullen and hostile, This is a place where you enjoy yourself, Even the criminals have to come here to cool off and relax,
But a complex pattern of tensions, like the electrical mazes devised by psychologists to unhinge the nervous systems of white rats and guinea pigs, keeps the unhappy pleasureseekers in a condition of unconsummated alertness.
For one thing, New Orleans in inordinately noisy, The drivers orient themselves largely by the use of their horns, like bats, The residents are surly. The transient population is completely miscellaneous and unrelated, so that you never know what sort of behavior to expect from anybody,
I think reading that motivated me to pick up and read sitelink A Confederacy of Dunces immediately after finishing.
And after that I read Gabriel Garcia Marquezs One Hundred Years of Solitude, It was truly the month in which I learned the true joy of reading,
Yesterday I was in the car for three hours and finally got to listen to the entire reading of Junky by Burroughs himself.
His sitelinkreal voice was even more compelling than his written voice, His voice could fit in with the work of sitelinkhiphop artists, sitelinkconceptual musicians oh this piece is so wonderful, and sitelinkreinterpret rock classics to great effect.
Despite the often grim and gritty reality of heroin addiction, Junky never fails to remind me why I love to read and inspires me to keep reading outside of my comfort zone.
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