Book Group: Burroughs, Junky / Queer (Week 2 of 3) (Second half of Junky)

Not relaxing, but short. William S Burroughs was one of the most important figures of the 1950s beat generation. Junky is his first novel. Its original subtitle was "Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict." This is really interesting--it was originally published by ACE publishing, which published those old dime store novels from the fifties with the lurid watercolor pictures on the covers of dames in distress and the men who loved them. ACE catered almost exclusively to New York City subway riders. Isn't that weird? So this book was never intended to be anything other than salacious pulp fiction to read while you're jostling against a million other New Yorkers on their way home. Middle-America sensibilities could not be further from their mind!

Queer is a sort of sequel to Junky. It was written in 1951, but was not published until 1985. It would have been too much even for 1950s New Yorkers.

Junky is short, we can read it in two weeks, and Queer is VERY short--it will only take a week. This week we will read the second half of Junky.

As always, an electronic (epub) version of both books can be found at:

https://gregoryberry.net/fiction/

Don't be all creepy and shy about joining even if we're in the middle of a book!

See you next week!