Whereas “Monkey Grip” is very much from the point of view of someone observing a junky’s addiction to heroin, “Junkie” throws you right into what it is like to be an addict and the world that exists around them.īurroughs presents an incredibly honest account of his life as a junky revealed in a concise, perfectly-worded tale.Īfter a brief introduction about himself (where we learn that he had a good, healthy upbringing in a “large mid West town”) we find Burroughs dismissed from the army as unfit and living in New York City in the 1940s, addicted to junk and peddling it as well.īurroughs has a nack of describing the essence of an experience. You can read my review of this novel here. The first book I read was “Monkey Grip by Australian author Helen Garner about a single mother’s tortuous relationship with a junkie set in Melbourne in the 1970s. Burroughs is the second book I’ve read as part of a mini-project of mine to examine the place of the heroin junky in literature. “Junkie” by influential Beat Generation writer William S.
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