Write comments, about 400 words total, about the following:
1. In Junkie, Burroughs has a distinct way of describing the appearances of people, namely their faces but also bodies, and of describing the physical effects of drugs as if there were other elements playing a role, be these viruses, animals or even aliens, Pick an example of Burroughs’s physical descriptions (both internal and external) and write a bit about how this reflects his general approach.
2. Last Exit to Brooklyn seems at times to be a description of hell. Humans seem incapable of achieving anything or even knowing what their true desires are. Somehow (to my mind, at least), Selby still suggests that love is a driving force in people, even if it often leads to their downfall. Pick a character from the novel and write a bit about how love survives (or doesn’t survive) in this character’s story.
New York Underground in Film, Music and Literature 1955-85 
1.Burroughs’s description of the narrator’s first experience with morphine is an example of his many passages on the physical effects of drug use. It begins with a calm, both internal and external, and quickly transforms to paranoia. Burroughs describes the first hits of morphine as “a spreading wave of relaxation slackening the muscles away from the bones so that you seem to float without outlines, like lying in warm salt water” (12). Every definitive starting point, meeting point, distinction is blurred. The muscles are a vague floating object, blurred away from the bones and the very edges of the body are melting into the surroundings. The experience is set in the anatomy of his human body, in muscles, bones, tissues, and cells. “Like lying in warm salt water” is a sort of memory. The narrator is remembering past experiences of pleasure, something to liken this moment to. This description of tranquility quickly shifts to a persistent fear: “I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving, as I turned my head, so that I never quite saw it” (12-13). An external force appears, a manifestation of paranoia from this unknown new experience, an image either deliberately hiding or a stand-in for something he can never reach. The narrator’s inability to catch this image is much like his repetitive statement that he was “cut off from life.” This image could be that notion resurfacing, that life is happening somewhere else, somewhere “just beyond” his own existence, but unreachable. It is unclear whether “life” is being repeatedly and intentionally “cut off” from him or if he is just incapable of experiencing it wholly. This lurking image is also much like the wavering feeling of something supernatural lurking, of other elements being involved that Burroughs calls upon multiple times. This reflects his general approach to describing drug use, a lingering space between reality and some unattainable other space formed by foreign elements.
2. Georgette’s never-ending pursuit of Vinnie is an example of love being a driving force in Last Exit to Brooklyn. Georgette’s decisions at the Greeks are all made to impress Vinnie, to win him over despite the possibility of him rejecting her out of pride in front of his friends. She acts out a relationship with him whenever she is with him, as if they have been together for a very long time and are only fighting. She calculates every move. For example, she tries to “give a disinterested impression, wanting to let her friends see that he was hers.” She performs a relationship which in reality is her hopelessly pursuing a man who does not take her seriously, but rather keeps her around for validation. Georgette has a justification for all his actions. If he hits her, what it really means to her is “a lovers quarrel ending in a beautiful reconciliation.” She has created a life for herself and Vinnie in her mind in which he actually fulfills her desires. Love does not survive for Georgette, but rather leads to her demise. Her one-sided infatuation with Vinnie is destructive and reflective of the harsh nature of rejection by someone who cannot accept her as she is.
Works Cited
Burroughs, William S.. Junky: The Definitive Text of “Junk.” New York, Grove Press, 2003.
Selby Jr., Hubert. Last Exit to Brooklyn. Open Road Media, 2011.
LikeLike
1. The way that Borroughs describes people seems to focus on almost surreal descriptions, using odd metaphors and similes, often comparing people to animals or inanimate objects, that make each person stand out uniquely but without so much describing their actual physical details. At times his descriptions read as almost grotesque. The scene early on in the Angle bar stands out due to the number of people described back to back and how vivid the descriptions are: “Subway Mike had a large, pale face and long teeth. He looked like some specialized kind of underground animal that preys on the animals of the surface … Roy sipped his bear grimly. His eyes shone with their peculiar phosphorescence. His long asymmetrical body was draped against the bar … Subway Slim, Mike’s occasional partner, came in and ordered a beer. He was tall and bony, and his ugly face had a curiously inanimate look, as if made out of wood.” The descriptions are almost comical in their extremity sometimes, although the tone of the book is not comedic. Still, it fits into the dry, sometimes humorous but mostly just very honest and brash, sometimes informal tone that the rest of the book has, and the dehumanizing or surreal details of the people adds to the atmosphere of the drug-riddled experiences that the narrator is describing.
2. The most obvious and surface level example, perhaps, of love being a driving force in Last Exit to Brooklyn is seen in Georgette’s story and her complete and utter devotion to Vinnie regardless of how he or his friends treat her. They practically torture her and she still seems to love Vinnie desperately. Almost all of her actions seem to be motivated by her obsessive love for him, down to what seems to be her dying breath at the end of her story: “O yes my darling, I do I do. I love you. Love you. O Vinnie. Vincennti. Your mouth, lips, are so warm. d’Amore. O see how the stars soften the sky. Yes, like jewels. O Vinnie, im so cold.” However, I would argue that there’s more of a complexity to Georgette’s character than her simply being blinded by her love for Vinnie. Georgette clearly deals with a great deal of homophobia (and perhaps transphobia? certainly numerous types of bigoted violence), including within her own home and family, and her struggle with drug addiction is no secret at all either, and Georgette’s obsession with Vinnie reads to me almost as an attempt at escapism, using the fantasy of love between them similar to how she uses drugs to rid herself of her own feelings and try to escape the trauma of the real world. The question I’m most interested in, then, although I don’t know the answer to, is how exactly Selby would define “love,” and if love must be something “deeper” than what Georgette experiences in the artificial, fantastical world she creates between her and Vinnie, or if that alone, and the power it has to keep her clinging to it until the end, is true “love.”
LikeLike
Throughout the novel, the reader does not learn what Bill looks like until he becomes an alcoholic, and even then the description is very vague. Compared to everyone else’s description, Bills lack of description highlights how he does not see himself on the same level as the others. Burrough describes Doolie a junkie, “The envelope of personality was gone, dissolved by his junk-hungry cells… galvanized into a loathsome insect-like activity… (60). Burroughs description showcases the ways in which the user becomes nothing without the drugs. His entire person crawled like an insect in search for his next hit. The description reflects Bill and how his lack of description shows his own lack of personality. Through the description Burroughs highlights the dependency on drugs, which is repeated throughout the entire novel by Bill. Neat the end Bill says,“When you quit junk everything seems flat” (127). Bill understand what junk does and through this understanding he describes the victims that fall to addiction.
Georgette looks for love in the wrong places with Vinnie. Georgette’s obsession with Vinnie and their happily ever after seems to paint the picture that their love is just a dream that will never come true. Throughout the chapter Vinnie hints at allowing him and Georgette to have sex but only if she’ll pay him after. One of the main reasons that Georgette refuses is because she wants Vinnie to want to do it with her out of love or even lust, not money. In the chapter Georgette does not seem to win over Vinnie and they do not run away together, the way she envisions. However, love survives and is present in Georgettes relationship with her mother. After Vinnie and Harry harass Georgette and injure her, she is forced to go home and face her family. Her brother who does not accept Georgette and abuses her is present and as he is bashing her; Georgette’s mother steps in. Selby writes Georgette and her mothers interactions, “Her mother gripped tighter trying to absorb her son’s pain… I love him and you should love him” (**). Selby’s use of Georgette’s mother showcases how love is present and taken for granted. Though, Georgette’s mother does not understand or approve of her lifestyle, she still loves her. By calling Georgette her son versus daughter shows her hesitancy to accept her for who she is. Yet, she still does not want to see her child in pain or in danger. Especially at the cause of Georgette’s brother. Selby places Georgette’s mother love in the background. Selby uses a distracted Georgette to highlight that despite all the problems that Georgette may have, whether it be drugs or being accepted by her brother or Vinnie, her mother still loves her. Though Georgette may be oblivious or take advantage of her mother’s love; Selby’s use of motherly love highlights how love exists not when you want it but need it.
**I read “Last Exit to Brooklyn” on Kindle and it does not have accurate page numbers**
LikeLike
1. While Burrough describes various drug addicts as animals and viruses by integrating the description of Matty he exposes a normal man’s capability of deceiving others and becoming addicted to junk. In doing so, he suggests that these addicts all begin in the same position as an individual who does not look capable of becoming a junkie. However, as he intertwines a description of junkies as viruses he reveals an individual’s true internal toxicity despite holding an innocent exterior such as Matty’s. As Burrough describes Matty he states:” He looked completely unlike a drug addict. If a drugstore refused to sell him a needle he would say”(68). By depicting Matty as an individual who is viewed as being “completely unlike a drug addict”, Burroughs suggests that an individual’s exterior holds no connotation to their capabilities in becoming a drug addict. As he implements diction such as “completely”, the author affirms that externally Matty falls short in every characteristic of becoming a junkie or looking like a junkie.
Furthermore, as the author exposes the capacity for a man such as Matty to become a junkie he reveals the exterior of junkies. Through Matty fitting a stereotypical description, Burrough paints an image of most addicts. As Burrough labels Mike as a junkie by voicing: “ He looked like some specialized kind of underground animal that preys on the animal that preys”(16). The author’s portrayal of Mike through painting him as an “animal” indicates that Mike holds not only the exterior qualities of an animal yet interior. By integrating an animal as the description of a junkie, Burrough indicates a junkie is violent, careless, and moves similar to a predator. As a junkie becomes a predator he becomes desperate internally finds any possible loophole in search of drugs. These characteristics become the interior traits of a junkie which characters such as Matty may not possess externally yet hold internally such as Mike.
2. While a cursory look at Last Exit to Brooklynn reveals traumatizing events which occur within differing personal relations, a closer examination suggests that despite abusive relationships love prevails as an individual remains desperate. Selby’s inclusion of the character Georgette pinpoints a forceful love as desirable. As Georgette pleads for love from Vinne she states:” Holds me Vincennti. Love me. Just love me”(78). Despite Vinne’s distaste for Georgette, the character continuously pleads for a life with Vinne. As she voices “Just”, Georgette paints her love for Vinne as morally correct. Additionally, her plea for love from Vinne hints at her desperation and continuous fight for his love. Georgette’s repetitive “love” suggests that she remains faithful in her pursuit of Vinne’s love. By implementing Georgette’s character as persistent, Selby insinuates that even within a toxic and one-sided relationship love prevails out of desperation and desire.
LikeLike
1. A particularly captivating description from Junkie that stood out to me is: “I have learned the cellular stoicism that junk teaches the user. I have seen a cell full of sick junkies silent and immobile in separate misery. They knew the pointlessness of complaining or moving. They knew that basically no one can help anyone else. There is no key, no secret someone else has that he can give you”(153). The main principle that is reiterated throughout the novel is obviously the distaste towards heroin, and this shines in this quote. His descriptions put into light just how much drug use has affected their lives. By providing a description of strung out junkies he attempts to paint a picture for readers that may have never seen the use and effects in real life. Additionally, his reference to outside forces is reflective of partial consciousness. The fiends are typically so far gone that they are no longer mentally present. Burroughs uses this method periodically throughout the text, though mainly focuses on the “shock factor,” created by the use of metaphor, reducing the attributes of the junkies into that of an animal– ultimately commenting on human regression into a primal state.
2. Georgette’s story, “The Queen is Dead,” follows her life through the underground party and sex scene in the city, and explores the facilitation of love to persevere through life’s cruelest moments. As a drag queen, the majority of her career has been defined by an interest that left her disillusioned. After meeting at a bar several times, Vinnie, a city gangster, built a foundation with her and went on to use her to entertain himself. Despite her clear interest for him, he physically harms her as a sort of joke that he and his friends could laugh at. Even after stabbing her with a knife, she refused to think of him as anything less than a lover. Her yearn extends beyond mere internal satisfaction, and she attempts to prove to others that this “love” between them is legitimate. The narrator mentions in the story, “[Georgette] wanted them to think he was her lover, but more than that she wanted him as a lover. Even if only once. If only that” (Selby 50). As the quote proves, her love is unrequited, though she holds onto the possibility of a future between them. In truth, her life is quite empty, roaming around the worst parts of the city and consuming as many drugs as possible to lessen the emotional burden. Love has never existed in their relationship, but she refuses to let go of the sense of fulfillment that rushes over her when she is with Vinnie. Having witnessed the depravity of the city and spent time amongst some of the most sordid people, Georgette believes that this relationship can save her. Not just relief from herself, but also from the frightening world she lives in. In Last Exit to Brooklyn, love does not seem to survive, but the aspirations remain alive, as each character sees that their search for love drives them forward.
LikeLike
1. William Burroughs’ introduction of Bill Gains encompasses many of the descriptive techniques that make up his general approach. With the sentence “Gains had a malicious childlike smile that formed a shocking contrast to his eyes which were pale blue, lifeless and old” (Burroughs 45), he distinguishes Gains’ eyes from the rest of his face. He takes a similar approach in earlier descriptions, those of Jack – “His face was lined with suffering in which his eyes did not participate” (9) – and Joe the Mex – “Things had happened to his face, but … His eyes were bright and young” (34). Considering eyes are often called “windows to the soul” i.e. the closest thing to an external manifestation of one’s interiority, it seems that, with these descriptions, Burroughs brings out the disconnect between interior and exterior that shooting heroin emphasizes. The disconnect is furthered in this particular example when Gains is described as “listening down into himself, as if attending to something there that pleased him” (45). With a dose, a junky’s physical exterior suffers further, while something deep inside them thrives – and more literally, a dose seems to calm their raging insides. Both these internal responses to heroin – deep-seated pleasure and combating the sickness – are in stark contrast to the physical description of Gains shooting heroin that follows, which brings out how painful and often time-consuming the process is. Despite the grisly details, Burroughs writes this description in a neutral, nonchalant way that is characteristic of the novel’s general tone.
2. In “Tralala,” it is the eponymous protagonist’s rejection of love that Selby frames as a reason for her downfall. It is evident from the very beginning of the story that Tralala’s life is loveless: “There was no real passion. Just diversion” (Selby 93) may well describe her life. Readers are given little to no backstory on Tralala, making it impossible to understand why she is so unreceptive to and incapable of feeling love. Nonetheless, she seems in control of the life she leads – callous and hyper focused on money though she is – until after her affair with the sailor, which ends with him professing his love for her in a letter. Through the time they spend together, she is so preoccupied with potentially receiving money from the sailor that she does not appreciate all his sweet gestures, least of all the letter. Following this affair, Tralala’s life distinctly takes a turn for the worse; she finds it harder and harder to pick up men, does not take care of her physical appearance and grows so alienated from her own body through constantly commodifying it that toward the story’s end, she parades her breasts like they are a trophy, an object wholly separate from her being. Tralala’s rejection of the sailor’s love for her is a rejection of the notion that she is a person worthy of being loved, as well as a rejection of a potential way out of her hand-to-mouth existence; in this way, it is the negation of love that is Tralala’s driving force, and ultimately, a contributor to her downfall.
LikeLike
1. One of the first people Burroughs describes is Subway Mike. He compares his face to that of an animal. “He looked like some specialized kind of underground animal that preys on the animals of the surface” (Burroughs 9). The description of Mike is more about his character than his physical appearance. Burroughs describes Mike this way because as a lush worker Mike preys on his own kind- drunks and those removed from society- just like animals prey on animals of the surface. For most of the story Lee describes junkies and excludes himself, focusing on a “them versus us” theme. Saying things like “They were of various nationalities and physical types, but they all somehow looked alike. They all looked like junk” (25). Or making generalizations about “them”. “Junkies all wear hats, if they have hats” (101). Burroughs has Lee reflect on his own physical appearance and mental state near the end when Lee realizes that he is part of “them” and can no longer exclude himself from the classification of junkie. Throughout the novel, Lee saw the physical attributes that marked a junkie in others, but did not realize or reflect on the changes in himself. Towards the end, after Lee has been in Mexico City for some time, he realizes what a wretch he has become. Lee understands that he is no longer in control of his life. “It gave me a terrible feeling of helplessness to watch myself break every schedule I set up as though I did not have control over my actions” (105). At this point, he was cognizant of the fact that he “had deteriorate shockingly” (107). Once he notices what an aberration he has become due to junk, he tries quit. “I had been off junk two months”(117). Although he is unsuccessful in quitting, he moves on to a different drug because he has realized the changes in himself and can no longer exclude himself from his own classification of “them”- junkies. “Maybe I will find what I was looking for in junk and weed and coke. Yage may be my final fix” (128).
2.Georgette loves Vinnie no matter how badly he treats her and continues to return to Vinnie’s side. Vinnie does not love Georgette and only keeps her around for the pleasure he derives from torturing her. “Vinnie got kicks from refusing Georgette when she tried to get him to take a walk with her”(Selby 28). Vinnie uses Georgette and even worse abuses her “Vinnie threw the knife yelling think fast”( 30). Georgette’s love for Vinnie is so strong that she endures the abuse. Selby makes it clear to the audience that Vinnie’s conduct toward Georgette is appalling. Selby wants to show that despite the obvious mistreatment Georgette is the only one who cannot clearly see the exploitation, because her love clouds her judgement. Even while both Harry and Vinnie torture Georgette by throwing a knife at her, she mainly blames Harry calling him a f*uk. Georgette’s love for Vinnie survives till the end. All she wants is for Vinnie to show her a small sign of love. “Hold me Vincennti. Love me. Just love me”( 78). She is waiting for him to love her, but does not realize she will be waiting for eternity.
LikeLike
1. In describing Jack, a “setup man” and addict met through Roy and Herman, Burroughs uses great detail in describing Jack’s face, namely his eyes, and also his body. Burroughs describes “…there was something curiously diseased about him. He was subject to sudden fluctuations in weight, like a diabetic or a sufferer from liver trouble… a week or so later he would turn up so thin, sallow and old-looking you would have to look twice to recognize him” (12). We see Burroughs’ description of Jack’s body contains mostly diction that references sickness. Rather than stating plainly that Jack’s weight fluctuates, he compares Jack’s aesthetic to that of something diseased, a diabetic, a “sufferer of liver trouble.” He connotes that Jack physically looks sick when deprived of his fix; his body suffers in the same way a sick man’s would. Physically, Jack essentially is sick. Yet in regards to Jack’s face, especially his eyes, this sick, diseased diction falls away: “His face was lined with suffering in which his eyes did not participate. It was a suffering of his cells alone. He himself — the conscious ego that looked out of the glazed, alert-calm hoodlum eyes — would have nothing to do with the suffering of his rejected other self, a suffering of the nervous system, of flesh and viscera and cells” (12). Jack’s face, unlike that of a truly sick person, does not reflect the sickliness of the body. Though Burroughs admits Jack’s face his “lined with suffering,” it is not colored with the sickness which infests the body; rather, Jack’s face, like any face, is defined by his eyes, which hold a certain self-awareness and strength as he rejects his “other self.” Burroughs separates the physical and corporeal, the body, from the real self, the face and the eyes in his description. This dichotomy in diction and description reinforces the idea that drugs are a physical means, that addiction and withdrawal are physical processes. This description of the addict seems to be one that recurs in other descriptions Burroughs composes. Throughout Junky, addicts are described in large amounts of detail, but Burroughs continues to focus on the eyes as “windows to the soul,” a way for the reader to connect with the addict and see them as human beings, with real depth. Though their faces and bodies may be victims of addiction, the eyes are always described carefully as still containing the strength and self-awareness that parallel Jack’s.
2.In the chapter “Tralala” of “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” it is Tralala’s rejection of love that leads to her horrific downfall. From the start of the chapter, we get a glimpse of Tralala’s loveless and cold life with her initial description being “Tralala was 15 when she first got laid. There was no real passion. Just diversion” (136). Selby seems to purposefully use a protagonist who is a prostitute to highlight the character’s lack of any love in her life. The description “There was no real passion. Just diversion.” for any other kind of protagonist, say a tired office worker or a college student or a restaurant waiter, does not really say much about the protagonist. It is relatively common to see disgruntled, tired, disillusioned protagonists in the business of practically any other kind of work. However, the act of sex itself holds intense connotations of love, or at least passion. Thus, because of the prostitute’s close connection to the act, Tralala’s lack of passion seems all the more to allude to a lack of any kind of love in her life. To be engaging in something so heavily related to passion and love yet not feel any of it, to think of it as a diversion, shows right off the bat something very loveless about the protagonist. Later, Tralala goes engages with a man who seems to have taken a liking to her; they go on multiple dates, he buys her things she likes, and when it is time for him to leave, he asks her to come with him to the dock. Yet, the entire time, the only thing Tralala thinks about is money. She goes with the sailor to the dock only because she expects to get paid there, and when he gives her his parting gift, “She felt the envelope as she lifted her face slightly so he could kiss her. It was thin and she figured it might be a check” (156). However, she opens it and finds instead a love letter, which she drops angrily, annoyed she wasn’t paid. So calloused and hyper-focused on money, Tralala is incapable of receiving the love of the sailor and is even annoyed by it. Selby seems to highlight that Tralala is not only incapable of giving love, which seems obvious right off the bat, but also receiving it from others. She is cut off from love in both directions, instead allowing herself to drift solely in the realm of money. After the sailor, Tralala’s life goes increasingly downhill. She seems to dissociate herself from her body, thinking of her breasts as other from herself. We see Tralala parade her breasts around as if they were not part of her, devoid of any self-love but rather using her body as a means to get money, a tool. Eventually, her body becomes the very weapon of her downfall as she submits herself to corporeal destruction. So unfeeling and callous, she uses her own body as a tool for money and, perhaps, to feel something. Her lack of any love at all, her inability to give love to others, receive love from others, and even love herself and her body, is what ultimately leads to her gruesome end.
LikeLike
1.
In “Junky,” William S. Burroughs describes faces and bodies as decomposing vessels that do not affect the soul inside. This phenomena of degradation is crucial to understanding the descriptions Burroughs employs. As described, one “does not intend to become an addict”(Burroughs 4), and the process of addiction takes three months’ shooting twice a day. Becoming a narcotics addict instead comes from lacking motivation in any direction other than “Junk.” In the New York of this story, people drift along, “taking shots,” until they become hooked.
The first addict, Jack, is first described as a robust man, with a “clean-cut, healthy country face,” although with some kind of implacable problem, as though something is off. Only a week later he turns up “so thin, sallow and old-looking, you would have to look twice to recognize him” (9). Yet his “conscious ego” remains intact, and his physical body is not a reflection of the destruction of what lies underneath. Another man, Roy, has a slack jaw and an asymmetrical skull, yet sharp and attentive eyes, imbued with an alert brilliance. Joe the Mex has a “down-curving, toothless mouth” (34) but has bright young eyes that makes him stand out from the crowd. The eyes are the windows into the soul. A common thread in these descriptions is that the body’s destruction does not destroy the person’s soul, rather imprisons them in a damaged vessel.
Burroughs also describes that when a frequent junky looks at his face in the mirror, there are no immediately visible differences. This is because the junky develops a “blind spot,” a way of not acknowledging his own growing habit. Eventually, it becomes something that you need to stay alive, and kicking the habit involves the “death of junk-dependent cells.” Similar to the addiction itself, curbing the addiction is self-destructive for the body. The actual soul of the person remains intact, healthy as it was before, incognizant of its own downward spiral.
2.
In “Last Exit to Brookyln,” Hubert Selby writes love as an emotion that only lives among the morally pure and cannot be comprehended by the deeply broken people that inhabit New York. The vignettes “And Baby Makes it Three,” “Tralala,” and “Strike” exemplify this concept. These three short stories deal with surface intimacy in different ways, and each ends in its own form of tragedy.
“And Baby Makes it Three” is a short story that effectively establishes the concept of intimate incognizance. Tommy marries Suzy, and though Suzy’s father initially disapproves, he sees that Tommy is genuine and has a good job. Tommy has an amicable relationship with Spook, another kid, who is inspired by Tommy to ride bikes and eventually saves up to buy a motorcycle. During the wedding Suzy gives birth, and Tommy rides off on a motorcycle with another girl shortly after. Here someone feigns love and then abandons it, resulting in loss for all except Tommy, too morally corrupt to recognize its impact.
“Tralala” focuses on a prostitute who gets sailors drunk enough to rob blind with her friends. She does this often until Tralala decides to rob a sailor by herself, which gets and her cohorts arrested. This point of the story gives way to a thesis on love, and the people who can appreciate it. When an officer who seems to be well-off has an encounter with Tralala, he asks her to see him off at the port, but instead of giving her money he gives her a love letter. Tralala does not understand this: “I hope you understand what I mean and am unable to say-she looked at the words-if you feel as I hope you do…I don’t know if I’ll live through this war, but-Shit. Not vehemently buy factually” (Selby 104). The concept of intimacy beyond sex for immediate monetary gain is alien to Tralala, and her frustration at this letter leads her to act out against her society and those she deals with, eventually leading to her destruction at the hands of a group of sailors in a gang rape. In this story, the ‘no surprises’ nature of pure love is unfathomable to a morally insincere person and this leads to tragedy.
“Strike” examines the mundanity of existence of Harry, a factory worker who lives an ‘ideal life’ with a loving wife, son, and a stable job. Yet Harry is distant from his wife and exists in a perpetual purgatory, disliked by his coworkers and finding no nourishment from his home life: thus, a similar character to the other stories that is broken and cannot understand love. When he finds excitement after being placed in charge of pickets and receiving his own office, he spirals out of control after indulging in transvestite prostitutes, gay clubs, and eventually falling in love with transvestite Regina. However, when the pickets conclude, Regina has no use for him or his money and leaves. He is driven to self-destruction by forcing himself onto a young boy, who escapes and gets help from Harry’s co-workers, who beat him. Here, a character acts on his impulse to break out of mundanity, resulting in him nearly finding and understanding love, yet the cessation of picketing depletes his income and leads to his demise.
LikeLike
In order to address to the problem whether love survives in Last Exit to Brooklyn, I would like to choose Tralala’s case to state my opinion: love indeed survives in this text despite the hellish settings of the story; yet through a dehumanize perception of the world, Tralala, together with all the other individuals involved in the story settings suppress and distort a more traditional human love with the denotation of human dignity, including self-preservation, as well as demand for liberty, for property and for social acceptance, etc.
Human love indeed exists in the story, which, to be more specific, is a target against which the story is launched. The first soldier Tralala encounters irritates the girl who wants nothing but a “liveone” (95), so she doesn’t care at all the sentiments of the first soldier, “cursed him and his goddamn mother.” After the incident, a profile of a girl emerges, who care nothing but money and sexual fulfilment, who deliberately on the other hand objectify her physical feelings (93), and who get involved into a hideous group of junkies and drunkard, eventually gives no response to the narration, lying on the street like a piece of carrion. Even the police, according to the narrator, cannot understand how in the end these people can literally feel nothing about the violence they have committed (99).
It can be said that to an startlingly large extent, we readers’ traditional conception of human love, which for me can be viewed in a general sense of personal self-respect and interpersonal connections, is trampled into the soil by Tralala and her surroundings. Indeed, the girl’s name folds already a middle finger to the happiness or conviviality in mainstream discourse. However, the astonishing violence happening here is not a denunciation of that human love; or if it is, it can be only a part of the narration’s attitude towards this subject, which is of course more complex than a simple pro or con. First, among the sea of abuses, violence and incomprehensible interpersonal reactions, readers may feel thankful when we grasp the feel soft and bright highlight within the story. The second soldier Tralala encounters may stand out at this moment. It is remarkable that after their night spent together, the two young persons go out to eat a breakfast, an activity exposed to the sunlight and familial or amical emotions, and continue to shopping (102). Surprisingly, the over-sexual heroine rejects cosmetic products in favor of sweaters, paints and books which betrays more or less her innocence that exists other than an illusion in the soldier’s eyes (101). The free indirect discourse, which has always been indifferent and garrulous from the beginning of the story suddenly retreats into an ambivalent silence in this episode. Yet unfortunately, the sweaters soon become witnesses of Tralala’s downfall, and the free indirect discourse ceases again, yet this time it is because of the decease of the speaker herself.
The soft highlight in the narration invites us readers to reread the blasphemy the narration pretends to stand wholly for. In other words, at the same time we see that the individuals involved in this story distance radically themselves from any possibilities of self-consolidation, we should also ask whether it is because Tralala cares too much about love and linkage with the others that she conducts such outrageous and exaggerated violence against the solider, who articulates her narcissist love and fear for self. The love can be seen as suppressed, as we see that there is only one huge paragraph in the writing of Tralala’s story. The narrator emphasizes on the overwhelmingness of the narration, yet more we emphasize, more we can perceive by ourselves that something is deliberately ruled out or fundamentally lacks. The narration loses its punctuation 4 pages before the final collapse of the girl, all creating a breathtaking orgasm of the narration, with its unique flows of breath and beats of rhyme, yet we readers become fundamentally isolated from the beer drinking girl and the Bacchean mob to which she finally yields her existence. All left to us is an experience, perhaps similar to the one of Tralala at this moment, of a sadomasochist jouissance and a desperate yet dumb heart.
LikeLike
1. William Burrough’s Junkie definitely has a unique and distinct way in describing the appearances of the characters in the novel. Moreover the author’s general approach as seen through his many literary devices fall best under the category of bizarre and unique. With that said, this isn’t necessarily the most surprising as the novel is centered around the perspectives of a drug addict with a series addiction problem. In other words, readers view the world from a “junkie’s” point of view. Overally, I believe the author’s best tool in aiding the reader in understanding the appearances of characters both internally and externally are through one of a kind and relatively “strange” metaphors he employs. One example of these more external descriptions is when Bill visits Jack’s apartment only to be greeted with Mary, “a tall red-haired girl.” The significant matter of this meeting is that Mary has a rare condition in which her bones are literally “dissolving”. Bill proceeds to imagine her as a “protoplasmic boneless mass”, just “undulating about”. This is the first instance of such a metaphor in which Bill is comparing Mary to a grotesque and extremely abstract being. The strange metaphors also underscore and build upon the narrative of drug use and its effect on the internal human bodies–as seen through the experiences felt by many of the novel’s characters. Furthermore, Burrough’s usage of the plant metaphor in describing a junkie is further indication and a great example of his employment of unique and bizarre metaphors. Specifically, it is through his quote: “Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a painkiller. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding. Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.” Here, the author even brings in the animalistic aspects, for he is essentially arguing how drugs strip away the user’s ability to feel, thus turning them into plants and losing “animal” or primal wants.
2. Georgette is a character in Huber Selby Jr.’s novel who I believe embodies the characters of having love not survive in their story. From the very chapter’s title, “The Queen is Dead”, there is some form of foreshadowing that tragedy is approaching. It can be easily argued that she is trapped in some form of Hell as she desires Vinnie in a seemingly unconditional manner despite getting tortured by him and his friend Harry. Her devotion is so great that it literally blinds her into having sexual intercourse with a man she assumed to be Vinnie. Again, even after getting shot down, she remains adamant that things will get better and tells herself that “it will be different next time.” With that said, this love ultimately brings her to her downfall for the realization that her one night stand was not with Vinnie absolutely tears her apart. Selby even concludes by stating that the last word to go through Georgette’s head is “shit”.
LikeLike
1 . Borroughs tends to describe people in a way that makes them seem non-human and almost dead. He uses metaphors and analogies that take away from that individual’s humanity and paints a picture of a corpse nearing the tomb; however, seems to make an exception when it comes to their eyes. For instance, “Joe the Mex had a thin face with a long, sharp, twitchy nose and a down-curving, toothless mouth. Joe’s face was lined and ravaged, but not old. Things had happened to his face, but Joe was not touched. His eves were bright and young.” Burroughs makes an obvious contradiction between an individual’s exterior and interior effects of being a junkie. Joe seemed physically ill and different from his usual complexion, but his eyes did not change as he was still the same human being on the inside despite his addiction problems. This general approach allows Burroughs to describe the negative effects of being a junkie without completely invalidating the true humanity of junkies when you disregard the drugs, or if perhaps they had never become addicted in the first place, which can be reinforced by the following statement: “There was a gentleness about him common to many oldtime junkies.” Being a junkie does not erase the person that you are nor does it disregard the good traits that you possess, it simply makes it harder for them to shine through the exterior corpse.
2. When it comes to Georgette, the love she claims to feel for Vinnie seems to be more illusionary than anything else, “She would give him money if he wanted it, but not at that time; if she did it would not only kill, or at least blur, the dream.” She continuously disregards his violence and offensive behavior towards her because in her dream Vinnie loves her and takes her away from the destructive environment she continuously finds herself in. When Georgette is stabbed and forced to go home to her mother and abusive brother, she yells, “For christs sake. Im down. DOWN! I cant stay in this room. This dirty room. Let Vinnie in. Let him take me away. Vinnie. O Vinnie, my darling. Take me away. Its ugly in here.” Vinnie is an escape from the physical and emotional torture that her own home brings her, she is in love with the dream that Vinnie will show her the freedom and affection she so desperately craves. Georgette’s driving force is her love for the dream; however, it leads to her downfall when in the ends she mistakenly has sex with Harry instead of the person she believed she was sleeping with — Vinnie.
LikeLike
For Burroughs, the heroin becomes a connection to another world. The junk fills up the cells of the characters and turns them into specific creatures, with the characterization following the transformation. Louie, one of the old-time junkies, “wore long, shabby, black overcoats that gave him all the looks of a furtive buzzard” emphasizing his scavenging appearance with the rumor that he was a stool pigeon (35). The effect of the heroin then is a mutagen, transforming people not just in appearance, but also in behavior, become twisted and dehumanized. Louie comes to represent the threat of death that comes with heroin, but instead of fearing it, he embodies it, and even sustains what image he has left through this relationship with death, nonchalantly called a habit. The junkies inhabit a liminal space between life and death they are not immediately aware of. The narrator observes that “the addict himself has a special blind spot so far as the progress of his habit is concerned,” the addicts trying to imagine that they are in control and not able to cope with the fact that they are losing their subjectivity (26). Use of the heroin on one hand restores humanity; it restores color to the flesh and provides relief to the ails of the world, but in the novel it does that by separating their characters from reality, dehumanizing them and subjecting serious harm to their psyche.
Strike is a very sympathetic portrayal of a troubled and cloistered individual, and Harry’s tragedy is an especially hard fall. His relationship with his sexuality is fraught with danger and violence. From his first homoerotic experience with Ginger, where she seduced him by “stamping heavily on his feet and lifting her knee up to his groin from time to time” (180). He is unable to confront his sexuality or get into a loving relationship with any of the patrons at Mary’s. Harry begins by staring at his son’s genitals, a dark foreshadowing of his demons that consume him by the end of the chapter. There is a troubling connection the author draws between pedophilia and homosexuality, and none of the other queer characters in the novel really challenge this stereotype. Harry’s love dies with his molestation of Joey, and the loss of sight becomes an oedipal, Freudian punishment for his transgression of social norms, corrected by the ultimate persona of internalized homophobia, Vinnie. Vinnie acts as a kind of homosocial gatekeeper in Last Exit to Brooklyn, determining what behaviors are okay and which are not.
LikeLike
1. One of the first characters Burroughs describes in the book is Jack, a “set-up man” who Bill meets with at a bar. Jack is described as being “very successful from time to time” turning up in “new clothes and new cars” (Burroughs 8). His success is equated with material possessions and he tries to cultivate a put-together image. Yet as the description of this character continues, it becomes increasingly dark as there is “something curiously diseased” about Jack (9). His weight is “subject to sudden fluctuations” which are “accompanied by an uncontrollable fit of restlessness”(9). Burroughs then describes dramatic shifts in Jack’s appearance from week to week. One day Jack is “a fresh-faced kid” and the next week he “would turn up so thin, sallow and old-looking, you would have to look twice to recognize him” (9). In this paragraph, Jack is in a war with himself, and Burroughs seems to create a separation between the mind and the body when Jack’s “face was lined with suffering” but “his eyes did not participate”. Instead, it is “a suffering of his cells alone” (9). Burroughs describes junkies in this book in gruesome and sickly ways. At one point he says that “…they all looked alike somehow. They all looked like junk” as if they were already dead, and their personhood was gone (33). This idea of rejecting the suffering of the “other self” is woven throughout the book through characters who ignore their own addiction and the damage it causes on internal and external levels and in doing so, destroy what makes them human until they are nothing but “junk” (33).
2. In the beginning of “Strike”, Harry is a sexually frustrated character who isn’t aware of his true desires. He is emotionally and mentally closed off and suppresses so much of his feelings through drinking that lead to violent outbursts in which his wife, Mary, is beaten. There is a gradual shift in Harry throughout this story as he begins to step outside of his self-made constraints and follow his sexual curiosity. He begins to frequent gay bars, and as he becomes a more sexually open person, “the fears and confusion” are “overshadowed by his feelings of happiness” (196). When Harry meets Regina, this hell he has been living seems to go away briefly. His emotional capacity develops as he begins to lean into feelings and desires he denied for a long time. The love he is experiencing is freeing him. However, this period is short-lived, and when Harry realizes that Regina’s interest in him doesn’t extend beyond his monetary value, his anger and despair comes back stronger than before. After experiencing love, Harry longs for that connection and when he cannot find it, he forces himself on a young boy which results in a brutal beating. Love was the driving force for Harry and while it survived for a while, it is love that leads him to his ultimate downfall.
LikeLike
1. I found in this novel that Burroughs often described the people as bodies; there is very little empathy for the people inside of the bodies. This is particularly seen in the narrator’s description of the patrons frequenting a “queer bar” (73) in New Orleans. The narrator comments about the people that “The live human being [had] moved out of these bodies long ago” (73). Many of the narrator’s following descriptions in this section and the rest of the book treat the characters with this view. Furthermore, many of the descriptions of experiences focus on the corporeal rather than the experiential. For example, the way that the narrator describes himself as “lobotomized drunk” (73) or the way that blood is frequently mentioned in his descriptions of drug use (for example, 124). By focusing on the physical and material rather than the emotional and experiential, Burroughs’ approach is one of apathy; he describes the characters and events largely with indifference by focusing on their physical aspects. For example, the narrator’s sexual encounters are described very physically and honestly. His drug experiences are often described simply, such as when, after taking a shot of morphine, the narrator described himself “[laying] back on the bed like [he] was in a warm bath” (134). These descriptions create an attitude of indifference and moral ambiguity. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of these bleak, vulgar stories and their unemotional, apathetic presentation contributes to a certain “weirdness” that is present throughout the book. By adopting an apathetic tone and describing people and experiences through their corporeal parts, Burroughs creates a unique blend of the vulgar and the familiar that feels very off putting.
2. I decided to write about “And Baby Makes Three”, because the story is, unlike others in the novel, not entirely pessimistic. I find it interesting that Selby, Jr. would include a story like this among so many bleak stories, especially considering the content of “Tralala”, which immediately follows. I believe that Selby, Jr. shows a form of love through the narrator’s perception of the characters. Although this story has many positive elements that demonstrate how love survives (Tommy and Suzy, Suzy and her father, Spook and his friends), I believe that the narration shows how love survives through the way that we build stories together. Through this story, the narrator simply describes the characters’ relationships with one another, largely surrounding the christening of Tommy and Suzy’s baby. There is very little dramatic tension or character development; rather, it feels like a snapshot of “everyday life”. However, by closely examining the narrator’s descriptions, one can see the affection that he or she holds for the rest of the characters in the story. Although the narrator points out flaws and weird characteristics, the tone is always one of acceptance. By considering this story in the frame of the novel, love is able to survive in the midst of tragedy by the story’s that we share about one another. In simply describing his or her relationships, the narrator is able to perpetuate their love through art.
LikeLike
1. William Burroughs unique ways in which he describes people on junk is introduced in the very first parts of his book. He describes a character named Jack as such, “His face was lined in suffering in which his eyes did not participate. It was the suffering of his cells alone… a suffering of the nervous system, of flesh and viscera and cells”. Burroughs doesn’t exactly sugarcoat the idea of being a junky, and he clearly lays of the ways in which the lifestyle takes a toll on these characters. He mainly talked about being able to see the internal suffering of these characters, as they seem to wear that on the outside, be it on their faces or their bodies. He focuses more on the internal, the virus that is the junk, and how that takes hold of the user, and how even though he describes using the stuff as pleasant, the decaying personalities paint a picture of the internal suffering he describes in this section.
2. During the story “And Baby Makes Three”, love is the only surviving factor of their lives. In fact, this story contrasts the others by not having any horrible atrocities happen or prevent the characters from being anything but good people. Love survives because, even the most dire circumstances, which is when Suzy’s father suspects Suzy is pregnant in the hospital, he sees beyond his initial “slobberin”, and holds onto the idea that he will have a grandson. Tommy was also a good person, he did not beat Suzy or treat her horribly, so he was able to hang onto what he loved. Which is the biggest contrast I feel lie between him and a lot of the other characters. Many of the characters were unable to hold onto love because they didn’t feel that urgency, whereas Tommy knew he had a good thing, he loved Suzy and they could build a nice little life together. “But Tommy was alright. He never bothered nobody and he’d never beaterup or anythin so I guess she wanted to get married… So actually it worked out pretty good”. So ultimately love was able to prevail, and things worked out because they were decent people.
LikeLike
1. In “Junky,” written by William Burroughs, Bill uses his environment as a motivation to look for junk, and his condition as a scapegoat to use. As he enters Mexico City, his addictive nature strives to find a high, and a community that will except him. His internal description of the world unregulated, as he bluntly states “as soon as I hit Mexico City, I started looking for junk” (108). His honesty lets the reader understand his journey without questioning his reliability. Yet, his erratic, drug driven personality makes the reader question Bill’s perspective, but they are able to rationalize his thoughts, if they contextualize his drug use. For example, he generalize and assumes information about the Chinese and Arab citizens of Mexico City, which I believe reflects his transition into embodying a narcissistic personality. I acknowledge his outdated, politically incorrect perception of foreigners, but still believe that his character is erratic towards the end of the novel, especially with descriptions. He compares his ability to find junk to that of a man finding oil in the Middle East. Then he explains his knowledge of the underground “transitional districts,” and claims there is a universal geography of junkie neighborhoods and it’s people (108). He dissociates from space to parallel his journey of finding junk to “a geologist looking for oil is guided by certain outcrop-pings of rocks,” and then compares these rocks to soulless Arabs, who all look the same (108). Bill dehumanizes and generalizes “near east” man that he claims is the trigger to finding any junk in the city. He gives the archetype a lack of death, and states that they are “pale ghost of junk sickness” (108). In turn, their bodies lacks a stability or recognition in their own terrain, as their environments have consumed them; yet, this has also happened to Bill. Bill describes this emptiness through their eyes, and states that they are “black with an insects unseeing calm,” therefore saying these drifters lack the lack of love, passion, or a soul, as these are qualities represented through the eyes. I see this description of the environment and it’s people as narcissistic because I believe that his description reflects his mental state, as well as him. His erratic behavior allows him to lie to himself and not understand that his knowledge of these conditions stems from his perceptual and cyclical exposure to his ever-changing environment. I believe this reflects Burroughs’ general approach to the junkie character because the audiences’ journey is witnessing the deterioration of his brain. At the start of the novel Bill makes quick judgments about the junkies environment and its people. During his first encounter with Joey, he states “the door was open by a large, flabby, middle-aged queer, with tattooing on his forearms and even on the back of his hands” (9). And, I see that his opinions of his environment changes as he does more drugs. Slowly, his mind reflect the distorted reality of the underground and its unregulated culture of drugs and crime. His mind slips into a fantasy of metaphors, and he starts to lie to himself about reality. In all, the reader experiences his mental deterioration through his perceptual shifts of his environment and its people.
2. In “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” Selby right about how the low class lifestyle is based on survival and that nature, ultimately, defeats man. It appears that the loneliness of each character drives them to foolishly pursue love, over survival, inevitably allowing their faults to consume them. For Georgette, her love survives on a fantasy. After repeatedly being physically violated and mistreated, she continues to beg for his love. She experiences extreme suffering from society and family, so she escapes reality to assimilate her pain. Yet these conditions become mundane to her psyche, and she excepts abuse by dissociating. For example when Vinnie, her love interest, assists in stabbing her in the leg with a switchblade, Selby just describes her as just “leaning down and gently holding the handle in her fingertips and closing her eyes she tugged tentatively, then slowly pulled a knife out from her leg.” What strikes me here, is the fact that she closes her eyes, as I believe this connotes to her strategy of escaping from the pain. Vinnie’s erratic behavior is represented through his uninterrupted stream of consciousness, which reflects his desire to kill her. She risks her well-being for love, which leads to her death. Her unhappiness is a byproduct of the pain she experiences from wanting love, and this makes her want to escape reality through drugs. All of her actions are fueled by the want for love; yet, when she dies from an overdose, she has a fantasy of fulfillment with Vinnie, but once reality hits, she realizes she hooked up with the wrong man that night, and this kills her. Inevitably, her reality becomes unsustainable and she becomes a part of the abyss.
LikeLike
1. On pages 18 through 21 Burroughs describes a young woman named Mary that he met at his friend Jacks house. He describes her as having a “blank, cold smile” and “boneless… like a deep-sea creature.” This description reminded me of the shapeless blobfishes that swim on the ocean floor, especially when he said he “could see [her] eyes in a shapeless, protoplasmic mass undulating over the dark sea floor.” He ascribes different animals to characters not only to dehumanize them but to illustrate the simple, animalistic tendencies that drive their need for drugs to survive. This particular character not only has a medical condition in which her bones slowly dissolve, but he shows how the drugs are doing this in a more emotional way. The “blank, cold smile” furthers this idea that although she seems to be lively as she quickly moves around the room, her internal consciousness is somewhat empty. Later, Burroughs says that her face turns “monkey-like” when she is talking about men who accosted her. These different animals show that these people are truly starting to lack normal humanity. Most of these comments don’t appear to be meant in a negative way, but more matter of factly as if it is simply just what they have become. Burroughs is using this to show how the drugs are taking these people away from who they are, and they are now out of control of their self-will, only being guided by the need to sustain life. These illustrations allow the reader to understand the way that the drugs change people, and become the guiding factor in their lives.
2. Selby’s character Georgette is in a constant battle with drugs and her love for Vinnie. In one scene, Georgette is so messed up from the drugs that she participates in sexual relations with Harry because she thought he was Vinnie. This is a perfect example of a person who is incapable of being in control of themselves because the drugs have taken over consciousness. However, most of the decisions that Georgette makes is based on her love for Vinnie. She subjects herself to giving a blowjob in public thinking that it will satisfy Vinnie. Furthermore, the last thoughts that we hear from her before her overdose are her overwhelming feelings of love for Vinnie. She thinks about how they are going to go out and she “won’t have to go in drag” and “[they] will be loved. And [she] will be loved.” In her highest state of ecstasy on the morphine, she is thinking about how great of a future she will have with Vinnie. She finishes her thoughts before she dies with “Vinnie loves me.” Although Georgette didn’t survive, her love for Vinnie lived until the very end. Although she had an addiction to drugs, love was her true driving force throughout the whole chapter. The drugs did consume her to an extent, but she would do the drugs to spend time with Vinnie, making her true “drug” the love she had for him.
LikeLike
1. Within “Junky”, Burroughs uses physical descriptions as solely a means to identify the effects of junk within a person’s system. Throughout the novel Burroughs introduces characters as either one of the following: current junkies, people who’ve never had a habit, or people who have had a habit but are currently not on junk. Burroughs has set identification tactics that can determine these factors not only with his closest friends, but with strangers (in order to identify whether or not they push junk or know someone who does). Mostly, I see the effects of these drugs less like a virus, and more like indicators. Similar to the fashion of the “right earring rule” within the gay community. It is easier to see the drugs as a virus when speaking in terms of whether or not a human has a habit, but I see the effects of heroine most upon the social aspect of Burroughs’ life rather than the physical actuality of the junk. He never discusses the detriment that Junk is doing to his body, solely his ability to function within everyday society through monetary terms. The presence of junk within others is always described differently than when he himself is on junk. When he’s talking about Bill he states “After Bill got his shot, a little color crept into his face and he would become almost coy. It was a gruesome sight…Bill twitched his fleshless hips…he said. ‘I’m really cute”. Through the term “fleshless” he describes Bill as almost inhuman, a species different from him. Through these “alien” features of Jim and the rest of the people he encounters, I have a feeling that Burroughs felt as though he never truly was a part of their society. Almost as if he was merely a “pigeon” of his own special operative. We get so much detail from Burroughs on the likeness of others; however, we don’t get to see him for what he truly is. Even though we know he is addicted to junk, that seems to be his descriptor of himself. We don’t get the reasons why he starts using again, why he quits, why he cheats on his wife, why he isn’t coming to terms with the fluidity of his sexuality. I wish we had the lens on Burroughs because I feel like he cheated us of what being a junky really is about inside.
2. Through my reading of “Last Exit to Brooklyn”, I kept becoming frustrated with The New York Times’ review of it being “hellish”. I prefer the words on the back of the book, “jagged, raw strength, glittering and cutting”. The pain within the novel is not meant to scare, or to warn against life within the large cities. I don’t see the stories in the novel to be negative, I see them representing real life in a very honest way. Even though the characters are described as being incapable of “achieving anything”, I feel as though that is not the truth. For instance, within Georgette’s story, despite the tribulations of the knife and her brother’s prejudice towards her sexuality, her ability to derive love and belonging from her mother, the women at Goldies, and Vinnie is an absolute. These stories were stepping stones for future works like “Kids” or “Pose”. These pieces project the necessity of humanity and compassion within a changing climate. The Brooklyn is not hellish, the socio-political landscape is. These characters are pioneers to the changes occurring, and of course they’re going to be facing new adversites bred from bigotry. However, I don’t want readers to be afraid of this landscape, I want them to embrace its ability to foster change.
LikeLike
Burroughs has many examples on describing the physical effects of drug use or having sex with other men. And him regretting taking heroin is one of the examples. Burroughs’s descriptions of junk has distinctive thoughts when he states, “I knew that I no longer wanted to take junk. If I could have made one decision, it would have been no more junk, ever, but when it came to the process of quitting I did not have the drive. It gave me a terrible feeling of helplessness to watch myself break every schedule I set up, as though I did not have control over my actions.” It renders the idea that he externally desires to quit junk for his benefits but internally he is not able to quit junk because he keeps going back to taking junk when he faces boredom in his life. One of the other example of Burroughs’s descriptions about the bodies and sex is one of the other examples. “Junk replaces the sex drive … Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.” The narrator’s life is in circle where he tries to quit junk, quits junk, gets bored, have sex with other men, then craves for more in his life. This repetition in the narrator’s life reflects his general approach to describing the difference in craving for more extreme stimulus in his life versus the reality. He seems to be bored with his reality and that is why he tries to look for something else to excite him from the real life. It seems like taking junk is the escape room from his reality and that is why he keeps going back to taking junk even though he tries to quit.
The most obvious example of love being a driving force in Last Exit to Brooklyn is Georgette’s love towards Vinnie. Last Exit to Brooklyn is a violent and brutal novel and Georgette and Vinnie’s relationship also has brutality in it. Her love toward Vinnie seems to grow more and more even though Vinnie and his friends have been harassing Georgette. It almost seems like Selby’s intention of the love from Georgette and Vinnie is that even brutal love can be desirable in some way. Georgette in the novel states, “Hold me Vincennti, Love me. Just love me” begging for Vinnie’s attention and love. Even though Vinnie does not want the relationship, Georgette still desires for the relationship with Vinnie and to live a happy life with him. For me, I felt like Georgette’s desire for the relationship and love with Vinnie was kind of an escape from her life being a transgender; and the hatred toward her (she being transgender) even from her family especially her brother.
LikeLike
1) The greatest thing that I observed in Junky was the sense of isolation and separation from self, both physically and psychologically/emotionally, that Burroughs highlighted. In one instance, when talking about the effect of junk on Jack, Burroughs wrote “The effect was uncanny. You would see him one time a fresh-faced kid. A week or so later he would turn up so thin, sallow and old-looking, you would have to look twice to recognize him. His face was lined enough suffering in which his eyes did not participate. It was suffering of his cells alone.” This physical description of Jack underlines how the use of junk changes an individual’s physical appearance to make them age without even aging. The separation of his eyes from the rest of his face indicates to the readers how the use of junk breaks the body apart. Additionally, I think the description on the eyes not participating in the “suffering” demonstrates how the junk affects the eyes, where they don’t function normally. I also think that Burroughs underlines the hallucinations that a junky experiences as he personifies the eyes this way. In terms of emotional detachment, he writes “He himself – the conscious ego that looked out of the glazed alert-calm hoodlum eyes would have nothing to do with this suffering of his rejected other self, a suffering of the nervous system, of flesh and viscera and cells.” The mention of the “rejected other self” emphasizes the otherness a junky feels psychologically. They don’t just become unrecognizable to the rest of the world but also to themselves in every aspect. By breaking down the body into “the nervous system,” “flesh,” and specifying the junk’s effects on a junky’s “cells,” Burroughs dives deep into how its effects reach the most fundamental thing of a person. To me, he implies that the aspect that makes us humans is taken away by the junk, making them nothing “body parts” that are hungry for junk.
2) In “The Queen is dead,” Selby uses love as the main driving force for Georgette. Although she was focused on getting it from Vinnie, I think she desired the love from everyone around her – her mother, her brother, and her friends.However, narrowing on her desire to be with Vinnie, Selby wrote “I will wear a smart print dress. Something simple. Something trim and neat. Vinnie? It was Harry…No. No, I won’t have to go in drag. We will defy them all, and love… Love. And we will be loved. And I will be loved. And the Bird will come in high blowing love and we will fly… O that evil bitch.” Georgette saying “I will be loved” perfectly encapsulates who she is as a character and what she wants. Whether her love for Vinnie was nothing but her attempting to get rid of her loneliness or true love wasn’t made entirely clear, which adds on to enhancing the story’s effect on the readers. Selby very effectively communicates that at the core, humans are the same as we all desire love from those around us.
LikeLike
It’s interesting the ways in which junk gives Bill a versatile security. Although he is precarious, the junk allows him an interchangeability across time and place. No matter where he is junk sustains both his lively-hood and his desires in a symbiotic codependency. This viral relationship is largely characteristic of Burroughs view on how heroin, desire and, control operated within his contemporary american society. While he depicts junk as it is trafficked through hands, bloodstreams, national borders he maps out flows of commerce and exchange that extend beyond and into the body. While charting these junk economies the sites of exchange; bodies, border towns, and conversation, take on a fuzzy figuration. Bodies themselves take on a particularly vulnerable and porous subjectivity as they are always at the will of the state power (from the outside) or the presence/lack of drug (from within). A dopesick Doolie is characterized by “Viscera and Cells galvanized into loathsome insect like activity…his face was blurred, unrecognizable, at the same time his head was shrunken and tumescent” (pg 60) The body breaks but when it breaks, it’s pieces accumulate their own indifference but more so take on their own desires. This can be thought of as disintegration, while both control and desire itself becomes fragmented into various locales, zones, or even the cells of the body, that through fragmentation, lose influence over another. This depiction, among others in the book, draws heavily on surrealist motifs like Bunuel’s ants that crawl from the cracked hand of a woman or Kafka’s agonizing metamorphosis into beatledum.
Selby’s novel is composed by cycles of orgiastic violence, crescendos of dispute, and their subsequent fallouts. Love has been swallowed whole by something in this world. Whenever Selby lets you think love, or even mercy, is about to take hold, it is sucked away. In Last Exit to Brooklyn, love seems to exist insofar as Selby’s characters are searching for it, but it is never found. It takes on a spectral quality like a shadow of loves possibility. Selby’s queer characters, Harry and Georgette, meet early ends in their inability to exist in a world which relentlessly rejects the slivers of love they project. Just like love, their absence is never explained or eulogized, rather their exit is left open so weight of their lack accumulates. Last Exit to Brooklyn is occupied by hordes of these shadows that haunt the present moment and surface in outbreaks of displaced violence. In these bursts you see characters searching for an exit from the pain of daily life, but their actions don’t make it clear if it is an exit into love or oblivion, or if the two are the same.
LikeLike
1. In Junkie, Burroughs has a distinct way of describing the appearances of people, namely their faces but also bodies, and of describing the physical effects of drugs as if there were other elements playing a role, be these viruses, animals or even aliens, Pick an example of Burroughs’s physical descriptions (both internal and external) and write a bit about how this reflects his general approach.
Burroughs’s bases his whole book on the ruling of drugs (junk) in his life. Junk has played a key role in his day to day life and as a result has affected the way he views the people around him and his environment. In order to show the strong influence Junk has made in his life, the manner in which he narrates his day to day lifestyle models that of a trip on drugs. There seems to be no end or beginning and he is just floating on air with the goal of just trying to score Junk. The dozens of people he meets every day are all a part of that Junky movement and as a result have been affected by the after effects of Junk as well. “The kick of junk is that you have to have it. Junkies run on junktime and junk metabolism. They are subject to junk climate.” There is no escaping the clutches of Junk to the point where his written descriptions of people in sound as if he were on the drugs himself. There is one such description of a Mexican man he encounters in Mexico City, “He has a large straight nose. His lips are thin and purple blue like the lips of a penis. The skin is tight and smooth over his face. He is basically obscene beyond any possible vile act or practice…His eyes are black with an insect’s unseeing calm. He looks as if he nourished himself on honey and Levantine syrups that he sucks up through a sort of proboscis…Perhaps he stores something in his body – a substance to prolong life – of which he is periodically milked by his masters. He is specialized as an insect, for the performance of some inconceivably vile function.” His description of the man is both internal and external as he compares the different features of the man’s face to of an animal and an alien. He dehumanizes the man and limits him to a form that is monstrous to imagine. The physical details he describes could mirror his own feelings about what Junk is doing to his own life, a substance that is prolonging his life in a “vile” manner. The man had no emotion but rather was described as a hollow shell through his “unseeing calm” eyes and has the “lips of a penis” contemplating his own sexuality and probably seeing himself as a creature that shouldn’t exist because of his sexual desires.
2. Last Exit to Brooklyn seems at times to be a description of hell. Humans seem incapable of achieving anything or even knowing what their true desires are. Somehow (to my mind, at least), Selby still suggests that love is a driving force in people, even if it often leads to their downfall. Pick a character from the novel and write a bit about how love survives (or doesn’t survive) in this character’s story.
Georgette is one character that has always been hopeful that love will prevail in her life and bring her happiness. Her story is tragic as she is a transgender woman trying to make ends meet while hoping that the love of her life, Vinnie will accept her and love her back. The disrespect and hatred she receives from him and everyone else, does not stop her from losing hope that someday she will be with him forever. ”In the winter everyone’s hate was bare if you looked. She saw hate in the icicles that hung from her window; she saw it in the dirty slush on the streets; she heard it in the hail that scratched her window and bit her face; she could see it in the lowered heads hurrying to warm homes” She feels as though the whole world is against her and she loves a hoodlum like Vinnie because that’s the highest she can settle for. She has no self worth and believes in what people say about her. All she wants is to be loved and she uses the concept of love to keep herself alive because that is the only thing standing in the way between her and suicide. Even though her family tries to protect her, there is still a discomfort at home that acknowledges that they don’t accept her. Drugs are her escape and even though they ended in her demise, it was really the betrayal of finding out that she never ended up with Vinnie that truly took her life away and in a sense, she gave up on love completely.
LikeLike
1. Burroughs’ has a beautiful yet grotesque way of describing both the drug addicts and the drug’s effects, often comparing them to animals, insects, and viruses. One of the most arresting descriptions is early at the angle bar. When introduced to Subway Mike, the reader is confronted with an image of “had a large, pale face and long teeth. He looked like some specialized kind of underground animal that preys on the animals of the surface” (9). Burroughs expresses a devolution into this primitive state (id) fueled by desire resembling that of an animal. This parallel between an addict and an animal is present throughout the novel, rendering an addict nothing more than a slave to the craving for junk. Furthermore, Burroughs outlines how drugs don’t only change you physically, but mentally. Even “If junk were gone from the earth, there might still be junkies standing around in junk neighborhoods feeling the lack, vague and persistent, a pale ghost of junk sickness” (110). Burroughs depicts the lifelong struggle addicts face, always haunted by the “ghost of junk” even when clean.
2. The most obvious depiction of love in Exit to Brooklyn is Georgette. Love is the force that drives her story and ultimately leads to her untimely death. Throughout “The Queen is Dead”, Georgette seems desperate for a relationship. She fixates on Vinnie because he shows her the occasional tenderness she is not used to but craves more than anything. Vinnie, who likes the attention she gives him, keeps Georgette along for the amusement, not out of love. She was one of the only characters that wants genuine love, rather than money, sex, or status, which makes her come across as innocent and oblivious. Georgette wants to be taken care of, protected, and loved. This toxic relationship follows a cycle of abuse then care, further infantilizing Georgette in a way that is reminiscent of Stockholm Syndrome (at least to me). This cycle can be seen when Vinnie throws the knife at her, landing in her leg, then throwing her the handkerchief. The chapter ends with her dying words. a final plea for Vinnie and for love: “O yes my darling, I do I do. I love you. Love you. O Vinnie. Vincennti… O Vinnie, im so cold…Hold me Vincennti. Love me. Just love me.” Georgette’s longing for love survives to her last breath, where she dies cold and alone. Selby’s lovesick Georgette illustrates how love’s manipulation eventually leaves you alone in ruin.
LikeLike
1. Burroughs tends to explain people through their outward appearances, and draws inferences about their personalities based on those appearances. He has a way of demonstrating his characters’ personalities in lieu of giving his readers an inside look at their minds. Towards the end of the novel, Burroughs describes a man he got high with in Mexico, and draws connections between the man’s clothing and his personality. Burroughs describes how Cash “wore shoes with thick crepe leather soles, expensive camel-hair shirts, and a leather jacket you tie with a belt in front” (142). As soon as we are introduced to Cash, we see that he has a liking for expensive clothing, but soon learn that despite his rich outer appearance, Cash (a fitting name) seems in constant pursuit of someone else’s money, and someone else’s dope- a familiar character amongst junkies. Cash dresses in expensive clothing because he wants to appear rich, but it soon becomes clear that all he wants are handouts. His fancy clothes and cheap personality mirror his amicable front and fickle core. When Bill stops giving Cash dope, he sees no more of Cash.
2. In Last Exit to Brooklyn, Georgette is a character very obviously driven by love. Her romantic feelings toward Vinnie (which border on an unhealthy obsession) are both the most endearing aspect of her personality and what, coupled with an obvious drug addiction, ultimately lead to her downfall. Georgette consistently pursues Vinnie throughout her portion of the novel, but her feelings are rarely reciprocated, and her fantasies are never fulfilled. This fact, along with constant tormenting surrounding her gender identity from both her brother and from guys at the Greeks, cause Georgette to rely on drugs and alcohol to carry her through such anguish. Georgette’s unfailing love for Vinnie sighs its last breath as she does. One of the last thoughts to pass through Georgette’s mind moments before she presumably overdoses on the subway, is; “listen Vinnie. Bird. O yes my darling, I do I do. I love you. Love you. O Vinnie.” As these thoughts pass through Georgette’s mind, the reader cannot help but to pity her. Although Georgette’s love for Vinny survives until the very end of her life, it doesn’t survive in an endearing way that makes the reader hopeful for her future. Love hangs on for a pathetically long time, making the reader wish Georgette had the insight to just walk away and save herself an immense amount of pain and heartache.
LikeLike
1. Burroughs’ descriptions are concise but visceral, particularly when he’s talking about the effects of junk. He describes Doolie’s junk sickness on page 59:
“The envelope of personality was gone, dissolved by his junk-hungry cells. Viscera and cells, galvanized into a loathsome insect-like activity, seemed on the point of breaking through the surface. His face was blurred, unrecognizable, at the same time shrunken and tumescent.”
The mention of “junk-hungry cells” here goes back to Burroughs’ personal philosophy on junk, which is that in order to kick a habit, one must kill off all the cells in their body because they’re dependent, and then grow new ones. I noticed while reading that bodies and drugs often seemed to be separated in Burroughs’ approach. The addiction is not Doolie’s here; the addiction belongs instead to his cells. There is no ownership, and thus a separation from both the junk and his own body. Furthermore, the description of Doolie’s insides as insect-like, and breaking through (which, as a side note, sounds disturbingly like it could have inspired the famous scene from Aliens) marks it as his enemy, a foreign body inside of him.
I also noticed that faces are often inhuman in burroughs’ descriptions — here, Doolie looks impossibly lean and swollen at the same time. Elsewhere, he describes Marian, the lesbian who seems to hate him, as having “cold fish eyes full of stupid hate” (21). She’s animalistic here, brutish — her hatred is described as stupid, but another reason she’s stupid may be her similarity in his mind to a fish. Burroughs doesn’t often (or ever?) talk about people in a way that indicates a genuine connection to them. He talks about events, describes what he did with people, but not about his emotions. This talk of people as animals, and as separate from their bodies, might be a clue to his detachment from people in general.
LikeLike