Junky : the definitive text of "junk"
(Book)

"This edition with material by Allen Ginsburg and edited with an introduction by Oliver Harris published by arrangement with Penguin Classics and imprint of Penguin Books"--Title page verso.

"[T]he novel appeared in 1953 ... [as] "Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict by William Lee"--Page xiii, Introduction."

Includes bibliographical references.

Analyzes the cycle of addiction through the eyes of a former heroin addict. It is a personal study of crime and drugs and their affect upon the mind and body.

Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch, an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junk, his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an unvarnished field report from the American post-war underground." "Unafraid to portray himself in 1953 as a confirmed member of two socially-despised under classes (a narcotics addict and a homosexual), Burroughs was writing as a trained anthropologist when he unapologetically described a way of life - in New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City - that by the 1940s was already demonized by the artificial anti-drug hysteria of an opportunistic bureaucracy and a cynical, prostrate media.