I'll put in my two cents about Junkie
as a way of telling a vaguely amusing (and I hope not too
self-indulgent) story. When I read it, I thought of Junkie as
hard-boiled and pulpish. At the same time, while the book
moves along, it meanders, is episodic, etc. It lacks the
drive that Burroughs describes the Junkie lacking, with junk
alone eventually becoming the junkie's motivating and
unifying discipline of sorts. The book is also quite
reflective--as is some hard-boiled fiction, but not all
certainly.
My amusing story: I stayed up late
finishing Junkie and the next morning I had a job interview.
It is at a fairly buttoned-down financial institution
(drug tests administered, certainly, in part because of
proximity to financial stuff) --though in some regards a
loan-sharking outfit (except for the broken bones). I'm
sitting at a conference table with about six or seven people
throwing questions at me, and suddenly one woman asks "What
was the last book you read?" Well, I can't say Junkie, so I
fumble for a moment
(which makes me look like a non-reader) and the best lie I
come up with is the previous book. "Lady in the Morgue," I
say. All but two of the interviewers are women, and everybody
smiles politely at my brief description of the book. I didn't
get the job. --Third Doug
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