Junky (26 page)

APPENDIX
7

INTRODUCTION TO
JUNKY
(1977)
BY ALLEN GINSBERG

Bill Burroughs and I had known each other since Xmas 1944, and at the beginning of the '50s were in deep correspondence. I had always respected him as elder & wiser than myself, and in first years' acquaintance was amazed that he treated me with respect at all. As time wore on & our fortunes altered—me to solitary bughouse for awhile, he to his own tragedies and travels—I became more bold in presuming on his shyness, as I intuited it, and encouraged him to write more prose. By then Kerouac and I considered ourselves poet/writers in Destiny, and Bill was too diffident to make such extravagant theater of self. In any case he responded to my letters with chapters of
Junky
, I think begun as curious sketching but soon conceived on his part—to my thrilled surprise—as continuing workmanlike fragments of a book, narrative on a subject. So the bulk of the Ms. arrived sequentially in the mail, some to Paterson, New Jersey. I thought I was encouraging him. It occurs to me that he may have been encouraging me to keep in active contact with the world, as I was rusticating at my parents' house after 8 months in mental hospital as result of hippie contretemps with law.

This took place over quarter century ago, and I don't remember structure of our correspondence—which continued for years, continent to continent & coast to coast, and was the method whereby we assembled books not only of
Junky
but also
Yage Letters, Queer
(as yet unpublished), and much of
Naked Lunch
. Shamefully, Burroughs has destroyed much of his personal epistles of the mid-'50s which I entrusted to his archival care—letters of a more pronouncedly affectionate nature than he usually displays to public—so, alas, that charming aspect of the otherwise Invisible Inspector Lee has been forever obscured behind the Belles Lettristic Curtain.

Once the manuscript was complete, I began taking it around to various classmates in college or mental hospital who had succeeded in establishing themselves in Publishing—an ambition which was mine also, frustrated; and thus incompetent in worldly matters, I conceived of myself as a secret literary Agent. Jason Epstein read the Ms. of Burroughs'
Junky
(of course he knew Burroughs by legend from Columbia days) and concluded that had it been written by Winston Churchill, it would be interesting; but since Burroughs' prose was “undistinguished” (a point I argued with as much as I could in his Doubleday office, but felt faint surrounded by so much Reality . . . mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors . . . my own paranoia or inexperience with the Great Dumbness of Business Buildings of New York) the book was not of interest to publish. That season I was also carrying around Kerouac's Proustian chapters from
Visions of Cody
that later developed into the vision of
On the Road
. And I carried
On the Road
from one publishing office to another. Louis Simpson, himself recovering from nervous breakdown at Bobbs-Merrill, found no artistic merit in the manuscripts either.

By grand chance, my Companion from N.Y. State Psychiatric Institute, Carl Solomon, was given a job by his uncle, Mr. A. A. Wyn of Ace Books. Solomon had the literary taste & humor for these documents—though on the rebound from his own Dadaist, Lettriste & Paranoiac-Critical literary extravagances, he, like Simpson, distrusted the criminal or vagabond romanticism of Burroughs & Kerouac. (I was myself at the time a nice Jewish boy with one foot in middle-class writing careful revised rhymed metaphysical verse—not quite.) Certainly these books indicated we were in the middle of an identity crisis prefiguring nervous breakdown for the whole United States. On the other hand Ace Books' paperback line was mostly commercial schlupp with an occasional French Romance or hardboiled novel nervously slipped into the list by Carl, while Uncle winked his eye.

Editor Solomon felt that we (us guys, Bill, Jack, Myself) didn't care, as he did, about the real Paranoia of such publishing—it was not part of our situation as it was of his—Carl's context of family and psychiatrists, publishing house responsibilities, nervousness at being thought mentally ill by his uncle—so that it took bravery on his part to put out “this type of thing,” a book on Junk, and give Kerouac $250 advance for a prose novel. “The damn thing almost gave me a nervous breakdown—buildup of fear and terror, to work with that material.”

There was at the time—not unknown to the present with its leftover vibrations of police state paranoia cultivated by Narcotics Bureaus—a very heavy implicit thought-form, or assumption: that if you talked aloud about “tea” (much less Junk) on the bus or subway, you might be arrested—even if you were only discussing a change in the law. It was just about illegal to talk about dope. A decade later you still couldn't get away with national public TV discussion of the laws without the Narcotics Bureau & FCC intruding with canned film clips weeks later denouncing the debate. That's history. But the fear and terror that Solomon refers to was so real that it had been internalized in the schlupp publishing industry, and so, before the book could be printed, all sorts of disclaimers had to be interleaved with the text—lest the publisher be implicated criminally with the author, lest the public be misled by arbitrary opinions of the author which were at variance with “recognized medical authority”—at the time a forcible captive of the Narcotics Bureau (20,000 doctors arraigned for trying to treat junkies, thousands fined & jailed 1935–1953, in what N.Y. County Medical Association called “a war on doctors”).

The simple and basic fact is that, in cahoots with organized crime, the Narcotics Bureau were involved in under-the-table peddling of dope, and so had built up myths reinforcing “criminalization” of addicts rather than medical treatment. The motive was pure and simple: greed for money, salaries, blackmail & illegal profits, at the expense of a class of citizens who were classified by press & police as “Fiends.” The historic working relationship between Police and Syndicate bureaucracies had by early 1970s been documented by various official reports and books (notably N.Y.'s 1972 Knapp Commission Report and
The Politics of Opium in Indochina
by Al McCoy).

Because the subject—
in medias res
—was considered so outré, Burroughs was asked to contribute a preface explaining that he was from distinguished family background—anonymously William Lee—and giving some hint how some supposedly normal citizen could arrive at being a dope fiend, to soften the blow for readers, censors, reviewers, police, critical eyes in walls & publishers' rows, god knows who. Carl wrote a worried introduction pretending to be the voice of sanity introducing the book on the part of the publisher. Perhaps he was. A certain literary description of Texas agricultural society was excised as not being germane to the funky harsh non-literary subject matter. And I repeat, crucial medico-political statements of fact or opinion by Wm. Lee were on the spot (in parentheses) disclaimed (by Ed.).

As agent I negotiated a contract approving all these obscurations, and delivering Burroughs an Advance of $800 on an edition of 100,000 copies printed back-to-back—69'd so to speak—with another book on drugs, by an ex-Narcotics Agent. Certainly a shabby package; on the other hand, given our naïveté, a kind of brave miracle that the text actually was printed and read over the next decade by a million
cognoscenti
—who did appreciate the intelligent fact, the clear perception, precise bare language, direct syntax & mind pictures—as well as the enormous sociologic grasp, culture-revolutionary attitude toward bureaucracy & Law, and the stoic cold-humor'd eye on crime.

A
llen
G
insberg
September 19, 1976 NYC

NOTES

PROLOGUE

“
Prologue
”: originally titled “Preface,” it was retitled “Prologue” for
Junky
(1977). Note that the whereabouts of the MS. for this text are not known.

“
put down an out-and-out con
”: corrected from “put me down as an ‘out-and-out con
'
” (in
Junky
[1977], xiv); see
Appendix 3
.

“
junk-dependent cells
”: at this point Ace inserted a note in
Junkie
(9): “Ed. note: The foregoing is not the view of recognized medical authority.”

“
phenomenal age
”: at this point Ace inserted a note in
Junkie
(9): “Ed. note: This is contradicted by recognized medical authority.”

JUNKY

“
he said, pulling up his pants
”: restores an unused line from the “Junk” MS.

“
Herman and I
”: from here to “gave us static” was an insert added to the 1950 “Junk” MS., sometime in either 1951 or 1952.

“
Here are the facts
”: before this phrase Ace inserted a note in
Junkie
(33): “Ed. note: Authorities maintain that the ­marijuana-
smoker usually forms a psychological habit pattern; under present laws, the use of marijuana is in itself a crime.”

“
Anyone who has used good weed
”: before this phrase Ace inserted a note in
Junkie
(34): “Pub. note: This opinion is contradicted by recognized medical authority.”

“
spatial relations
”: note a final phrase deleted on the “Junk” MS.;
“since space-time is an inseparable continuum.”

“
my old lady
”: after this phrase Ace inserted a note in
Junkie
(42): “Ed. note: This is, undoubtedly, the ‘common-law wife' to whom the author alludes later.”

“
crippled
”: note a following line deleted on the “Junk” MS.; “
He was stupid as a man can get without being classified as defective.
”

“
mediator between man and junk
”: note a final phrase deleted on the “Junk” MS.; “
who alone could receive the contributions of the faithful.
”

“
I knew Nick was
”: from here to “pack him in” restores an unused line from the “Junk” MS.

“
take their business to Walgreen
's”: note a following line deleted on the “Junk” MS.;
“We'd be better off without their business anyway.”

“
Benny was another oldtime Jewish shmecker
”: from here to “pink face and white hair” (55) was an insert made in March 1951 (see
Letters
81).

“
outside the city limits
”: note a following line deleted on the “Junk” MS.;
“It is unthinkable that you could find anyone in Houston who has never been outside the city.”

“
The residents are surly
”: note a final phrase deleted on the “Junk” MS.;
“like most populations that subsist on tourists.”

“
In the French Quarter
”: from here to “After three quick beers I felt better” (61) was an insert made in early 1951. In his letter of March 5, Burroughs refers to this as a sample of the “connections between junk and sex” that he now wanted to develop (
Letters
81).

“
He couldn't have been anything but Irish
”: restores an unused line from the “Junk” MS.

“
as though it were actually changing color
”: restores a phrase unintentionally omitted from
Junky
(1977) (74).

“
There were a few others
”: from here to “We ought to find another place” was omitted from
Junkie
, and restored for
Junky
(1977) (76).

“
prosecute anything
”: Ace inserted a note in
Junkie
(89) at this point: “Ed. note: This statement is hearsay and the publisher accepts no responsibility for its accuracy.”

“
now. I have to go to court. If I possibly can, I'll take
”: these words, present in the “Junk” MS. and
Junkie
(103), were unintentionally omitted from
Junky
(1977) (92).

“
I lay on the narrow
”: from here to “the neck snaps” was an insert almost certainly made in April 1952.

“
deeper and tougher front
”: the “Junk” MS. continues with the struck lines, probably cut when the later chapter on Wilhelm Reich was removed in summer 1952;
“If anyone ever braces the doctor directly so he can't slide away, he will likely go into protein cleavage and end up a pile of protozoa—‘a bionous heap,' as Reich puts it.”

“
A three-lane highway
”: from here to “she will be ten years untangling” (90) was omitted
from
Junkie
, and restored
for Junky
(1977) (105–8).

“
A lot of people made quick easy money
”: from here to “a vast muttering of banal regret and despair” (91) was omitted from
Junkie
, and restored for
Junky
(1977) (108–9).

“
I had gone into partnership
”: from here to “pull out of the Valley” (92) was omitted from
Junkie
, and restored for
Junky
(1977) (109–10).

“
No one in the Valley had ever heard of quinine water
”: at this point in the original “Junk” MS. came the start of Chapter 28, the section on Wilhelm Reich; see
Appendix 1
.

“
remain in Mexico when I got there
”: the “Junk” MS. continues with the deleted lines;
“Travel books never give the information I want. I am in a process of deciding whether to go to a place or not. I want to know what I can buy there with how much money, and what is the political and legal picture.”

“
The Chimu Bar
”: from here to “we separated at a corner, shaking hands” (94) was an insert made in summer 1952. Burroughs wrote to Ginsberg on July 13: “I enclose a chapter on a Mexican queer bar which they can use or not as they see fit. It is to be inserted back in the original manuscript of JUNK at page 150 as indicated”
(Letters
135). This material was in fact first written as part of his
Queer
MS., which Burroughs transposed from third to first person.

“
I dropped my shirt and shorts on the pistol
”: when transposing this material from his
Queer
MS., Burroughs omitted the following lines;
“Though he was near forty Lee had the thin body of an adolescent. His shoulders and chest were wide across and very shallow. The line of his body curved in from the chest to a flat stomach. Body hair was sparse and dark in contrast to the light brown hair of his head.”
Clearly indicating when this material was written, and why he would drop it, Burroughs quotes these lines in his letter of April 5, 1952, in
the context of discussing the problem of deciding which person he should be writing
Queer
in, first or third (see
Letters
111).

“
The boy smiled and lay down on the bed
”: when transposing this material from his
Queer
MS., Burroughs omitted the following lines;
“Lee's body was moving in rhythmic contractions, every muscle caressing the smooth hard body of the other, the amoeba reflex to surround and incorporate. His body tensed convulsively rigid, sparks flashed behind his eyes and the breath whistled through his teeth. Slowly his muscles relaxed away from the other's body.”

“
Some time later
”: from here to “queer bars brought me down” was an insert probably written and made in summer 1952. These passages did not appear in
Junkie
, and were restored for
Junky
(1977) (114).

“
The meaning o
f “
mañana
”: f
rom here to “Do you want to score?” (96) was the last page of the original “Junk” MS. completed in December 1950. This page did not appear in
Junkie
, and Burroughs complained about the omission in his 1959 letter to A. A. Wyn (see
Appendix 3
).

“
A user may be
”: from here to “indelible” (96) restore unused lines from an insert that was never made.

“
There is only one pusher in Mexico City
”: this marks the start of the forty pages of additional material Burroughs was required to write by Ace to make the novel up to length (see
Letters
134–35).

“
An addict may be ten years off
”: from here to “but you are never off after the first habit” were omitted from
Junkie
, restored for
Junky
(1977) (116–17).

“
One script will last a day
”: from here to “trying to shoot this crap” was omitted from
Junkie
, and restored for
Junky
(1977) (118).

“
During this time
”: this section was introduced on the MS. under the subheading “Attempts at Cure: Anti-Histamines.”

“
Our Lady of Chalma
”: this paragraph was an insert, probably made in 1952.

“
the arm swinging out
”: from here to “limp wrist of the fag” restore unused lines lightly deleted on the “Junk” MS., which clarify this ironic gesture of group identity.

“
with a few exceptions
”: this phrase was unintentionally omitted from
Junky
(1977) (123).

“
Aside from junk itself
”: from here to “the intervals of sickness” restore unused lines marked for omission on the “Junk” MS.

“
The end of the month
”: from here to “shaking her head” (103) derives from a page out of MS. sequence, probably written and inserted in spring, 1952; like all the material from this point until “Junk short-circuits sex” (104), it did not appear in
Junkie
but was restored for
Junky
(1977) (123–24).

“
My old lady looked at me
”: from here to “shaking her head” restore unused lines from the “Junk” MS.

“
You can't stop shooting C—as long as it is there you shoot it
”; restores an unused line from the “Junk” MS.

“
You don't want another shot right away
”: restores an unused line from the “Junk” MS.

“
I tried the Chinese cure
”: from here until “best go back to the needle” (105) restore unused passages marked for omission on the MS.

“
control over my actions
”: at this point, the “Junk” MS. has a further, deleted line;
“But I knew sooner or later the time would come to quit and then I would be able to do it.”

“
One morning in April
”: from here until “His toothless mouth was twisted with hate” (119), the material originally derives from the
Queer
MS.

“
the magic of childhood
”: at this point, the original
Queer
MS. has a significant line, cut when Burroughs transposed this material into his “Junk” MS.;
“The glory and the freshness of a dream.”
Quotation is from William Wordsworth's
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
.

“
A junkie does not ordinarily kick
”: from here to “a self cured junkie” restore unused lines marked for omission on the “Junk” MS.

“
than drink like this
”: the original
Queer
MS. version of this material continues with what became the beginning of
Queer
when reedited for publication in 1985 (“Lee turned his attention . . .”).

“
lay on the table
”: the original
Queer
MS. version of this material continues, in a way that clarifies the kind of cuts Burroughs had to make when transposing to his “Junk” MS.;
“He was naked. Wonder who paid for the room? Lee sat up in bed. Sore ass. ‘My God!' Lee thought, ‘I been beat for my virtue!
'
”

“
no loss either
”: the original
Queer
MS. version of this material continues;
“Cheap bastard. He makes me for all my valuables, avails himself of my person and doesn't even leave me 15 centavos car fare.”

“
What do you carry it for?
”: the original
Queer
MS. version of this material continues;
“
‘It's passive and feminine.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘A provocation. Look what happens last night. You end up getting pogged by a middle aged Mexican cop . . . or maybe he was just probing you for your money.
Thees gringo, he got it somewhere.
'
”

“
the way you've been acting lately
”: the original
Queer
MS. version of this material continues;
“And if you want to go to bed with a member of your own sex, of which I certainly disapprove, I should think you would want to dress well and come on a little. At least take a bath. You won't get anywhere waving a rusty pistola.”