Back Shelf Review: William S. “Billy” Burroughs Jr.

William S. Burroughs, in looking back on his life, would often comment that the defining moment in his career was the tragic moment when he shot his wife Joan Vollmer in the head during a drunken game of William Tell. Being one of the rare times that his master aim failed him, as well as the impetus that sent him into Tangiers and to the realizations that led to “Naked Lunch” and the Nova Trilogy, saw it as a telepathic event. As he said in the introduction to “Queer,” “The death of Joan brought me into contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I had no choice except to write my way out.”

But if the death maneuvered him into a lifelong struggle, it also had vicious repercussions on the child he had with Joan, a son who bore his name. William S. Burroughs Jr. (known as Billy to friends and family) was four years old at the time, and the shooting not only drove him away from his father but also inflicted the same psychic aftershock of drug use and violent thoughts. He too sought to use writing as a way to escape the Ugly Spirit, with the autobiographical novels 1971’s “Speed” and 1973’s “Kentucky Ham” putting his addictions down on paper. Like his father, he too could write with uncommon skill – but unlike his father, he couldn’t write himself out of it.

David Ohle’s biography of Burroughs Jr. was titled “Cursed From Birth,” and looking at his roots it comes across as darkly appropriate. Joan used benzedrine constantly while pregnant and Billy was born addicted, and Burroughs was at the time going through a series of opium habits that would later fuel his book “Junky.” Shuttled from Texas to Mexico as a child he was sent to live with his grandparents in St. Louis after his mother’s death, having little contact with his father and stifled in suburbia. Predictably, he acted out, skipping school and experimenting with drugs on random road trips.

Burroughs Jr.’s first novel “Speed” follows the most extensive of these trips with a look into the “speed freak” culture of 1960s New York City. Heading into the city with friends, Burroughs Jr. found himself exposed on a constant basis to methamphetamines and booze, seeking a fix and dodging the police cracking down on his friends. His devil-may-care nature leads him to try whatever he can get his hands on, but it also means he is constantly fighting off the vicious paranoia and physical breakdown of drug use to the point where his mind seems ready to break.

The original works of the Beat Generation seemed to portray their world as a sort of setting free of real danger, where there was always a bar willing to seat you or a way to scrape together drug money, but Burroughs Jr. isn’t going to have any of that. This isn’t the mad bar-hoppings of Jack Kerouac or Jan Kerouac’s free-flowing Southwest parties, these are flea-ridden flophouses and darkened streets at New York’s most dangerous hours. More than once he winds up in jail, and it’s regularly implied that without the generosity of his father’s friend Allen Ginsberg he would have been left there to rot.

Burroughs Jr.’s voice has a lot in common with his father’s, ranging from the sardonic off-the-cuff remarks (“He and Vinnie, another charmer, poured acid on the kid’s legs and he never walked again. But you can never tell, medical science is making great strides these days”) to the frightening visions that strike out in drug sickness (“The skyscrapers in the mist writhed like monster cobras, of course”). But unlike Burroughs the elder, whose autobiographical efforts come across as detached – owing to the anthropological view he took of his subject – Burroughs Jr. never stops being native, and his narrative reflects the rapid degenerating thought process that amphetamines wreak on the mind.

In many ways, “Speed” is reminiscent less of Burroughs the elder’s efforts and more of Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange,” and its young narrator Alex DeLarge. Like “Clockwork Orange” the sentences have a cynical lilt and rarely seem to pause, mired in reaction than reflection, as if the mix of youth and stimulants won’t permit the narrator to take any more time. Burroughs Jr. seems aware of this but seems either afraid or unable to stop, observing at one point “I’d been running in overdrive for so long that I was leery of really stopping to take notice of myself.” It’s a struggle that seems much more real than the original Beats, free of mystique and overwhelming visions.

While “Speed” evokes more comparisons to Burgess and “A Clockwork Orange,” Burroughs Jr.’s second novel is more reminiscent of Ken Kesey and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” In this installment, his lifestyle of drug abuse has finally caught up with him and he has been arrested, forced to a rehabilitation facility in Kentucky and the almost anarchic system for dealing with him and legions of addicts. After being forced to exist in the hospital setting, he sets out for Alaska as part of a work release program, a cold and unflinching wilderness on par with “Speed’s” slums in terms of comfort.

Cut off from the addicts and city life of his first work, Burroughs Jr. goes deeper into himself, and his work takes on more of a novelistic observatory quality. He presents the inmates of the asylum – many half-crazy or locked up for years – as a cast of characters, and paints their exploits as such: starting a newspaper, eying the female visitors, scheming for an early release. Later in the book when sent to Alaska, his work takes on a journal format, presenting events in order and often sliding into stream-of-consciousness as if it was lifted from the pages.

“Kentucky Ham” also brings in Burroughs Jr.’s father as a cast member – flying in from London to assist with the trial, nursing his own junk habit and seeing his son for the first time in years. Showing him in Florida and memories of visiting him in Tangier, Burroughs (usually referred to as “Bill” or “the Old Man”) comes across as distant, spending less time looking after him and more staring at the sunset or an orgone box for hours before dashing back to the typewriter to “transcribe” his Word Hoard. Jan Kerouac’s novels were peppered with evidence of how she longed to connect with her father, but Burroughs Jr. has few of these feelings, seemingly assuming such a connection would never happen.

Where he does share more similarity with his father is in an openness of thought, which takes over in the final chapter as Burroughs Jr. goes into an impassioned plea for the legalization of drugs. Waxing on the harmless nature of most stoned addicts, the culture of distrust and the reality of how prevalent heroin was at the time, he has the veteran’s voice seen at the end of “Junky.” Our narrator has come the storm of drug use and seen the reality of its treatment, and as such sees the world in a different light.

Burroughs Jr. did manage to make his way out of the street and drug world he chronicled, but unfortunately his addictive nature wouldn’t allow him to move to full-time professional writer status. Replacing drugs with alcohol he shredded his liver, surviving only due a series of coincidences that put a gifted doctor and donor liver in his hospital. He worked on a third novel about the experience, “Prakriti Junction,” but never finished it as he kept drinking and stopped taking his anti-rejection meds. He eventually died in 1981 in Florida at the age of 33, passed out in a ditch and estranged from all his loved ones.

Perhaps Burroughs Jr. was never able to be saved, caught in the mood he had seen on his father’s face after Joan’s shooting: “Over the yearning and pain that he felt for me I felt something heavier. Like lead, but molten and smelling of gunpowder and burnt copper. The Burroughs Curse.” That curse may have claimed his life, but it gave him the drive to send back reports from the trenches – works that earned their place in the best of drug memoirs, and worthy heirs of the Beat energy.

Back Shelf Review: Jan Kerouac

As much as Jack Kerouac disliked being called the “Father of the Beat Generation” (he once famously said “I’m not a beatnik, I’m a Catholic”) he had even more distaste for simply being called a father. His wife Joan Haverty left him while she was pregnant – and he was deep into typing the scroll that would become “On the Road” – and when asked he would regularly claim the child was the result of extramarital affairs. He met this child only twice, once to take a court-ordered blood test to prove she was really his, and once again when she was heading for Mexico and he was drunk in a rocking chair.

But for all his denials, it was impossible to deny the truth that Jan Michelle Kerouac deserved the name for more than who her mother married. For one thing, her appearance – intense blue eyes, tan skin and firm jaw – came so close to her father’s that family members and old friends saw it right away, and even Jack had to hesitate when shown a photo. For another, like her father, Jan was a person of impulse and wanderlust, not content to stay in one place and driven to chase after interesting people.

And for a hat trick of similarities, Jan was driven to write about these experiences, turning out two novels that followed the same themes of exploration and expansion. 1981’s “Baby Driver” and 1988’s “Trainsong” are both genetic and spiritual successors to the themes of the Beat Generation, but somehow possessed of a more personal and emotional touch. This mood comes from two forces working within Jan Kerouac: a talent she may have gotten from her father, and a sense of alienation and rejection she certainly did.

“Baby Driver” follows the first decades of Jan’s complicated life, written in an alternating chapter format that switches between domestic family life in New York City and a series of wanderings around the Southwest and South America. It’s a novel that focuses on what it was like growing up a rebellious and troubled child, with an early exposure to drugs and sex that eventually led to a stint in a psychiatric ward as an adolescent.

Jan Kerouac’s style is as full of life as her father’s, but it’s a different kind of life than the amped-up adrenaline flow of works like “On the Road.” Rather, her experiences lean towards a more poetic consideration, carefully considering the relationships between people and things and finding just the right words. Her writing is very vivid and original: at one point she is in a Santa Fe bar consuming “crystal-licorice ice clouds” of ouzo in a bar while the bartender is occupied “playing expert Ping-Pong with the alcohol-soaked souls,” walking out to be bowled over by a sunset of “scarlet-fuchsia gashes.”

The quality of the writing can measure up against any of the Beat writers or their successors, but what makes it so startling in many places is the detached nature she takes with herself. Even during the darker times in her life, of which there are many – working as a prostitute in New Mexico, birthing a stillborn child in Mexico at fifteen, attached to a deranged lover in Central America – there’s never a strong feeling of grief or remorse, but rather the feeling of going with the flow. It might seem a bit insensitive on first read, but the perspectives are so well-realized the tragedy isn’t as pronounced.

Of course, her deeper introspection also can be attributed to the world she is interacting with. While Jack Kerouac had to deal mostly with benzedrine and beer, his daughter grew up in the early days of the hippie movement, which meant a whole new cocktail of drugs she had no qualms against trying. She relives the rushes of peyote and LSD and heroin without regrets, caught up in the communal spirit of the Sixties and the pursuit of some deeper meaning.

For the most part, Jan keeps away from capitalizing on her famous name, referring to her father offhand as “the famous wino” in the first chapter, but she does talk in detail about the two occasions that they met. Viewed through her young eyes, the first meeting in particular comes across as deeply touching as the two speak shyly to each other and she holds his hand in front of other children to prove she has a father. There’s something very touching in these scenes, more so than any of Jack Kerouac’s bonding moments with Neal Cassady or Gary Snyder – a young girl longing for something she can’t have and won’t be able to understand why not until at least a decade later.

While “Baby Driver” shows how Jan grows up and begins to find herself, her second book shows that not only does the journey continue but it’s begun to take its toll. Published seven years after her first effort, “Trainsong” is written in much the same style, focusing on another series of continent-spanning travels, wild descriptive visits and poorly advised relationships. This time the travel takes her up and down the West Coast, through the foreign cities of Tangier, London, Paris and Berlin, and through writing conferences and book tours that cross paths with Ken Kesey and Richard Brautigan.

“Trainsong” continues the high quality of writing that “Baby Driver” created, but the tone has changed in some ways with quite a few subtle hints that Jan is beginning to wear out. At more than one occasion in the book she seems to spiral off into a stream of consciousness, which may be partly influenced by spending time in Boulder, Colorado and the School of Disembodied Poetics, but in context could be attributed to too many pubescent acid trips. These bits range in tone, from rapid details on the railroads of Dogtown, California to a burst of anger as she swipes all possessions off the dresser “scanning… for something else to demolish.”

Emotions do seem to be running higher in Jan’s second book, and a good part of that could be due to the fact that she’s becoming more and more conscious of her father’s ghost haunting her. Regularly throughout the course of the book she invokes his memory: erupting in screams at a photo in Allen Ginsberg’s house, feeling oddly fulfilled when she acts as an extra in a movie about her father and teaches John Heard to curl his lip, lighting a candle in his memory in a Paris cathedral and blinking back tears. As a result, there is something much sadder about “Trainsong” in comparison, right on to her last rambles on time and smoke and the lines “Daddy don’t live nowhere, no more.”

In one last sad comparison to her father, Jan’s lifestyle eventually caught up with her. While working on her third novel “Parrot Fever” in Puerto Rico her kidneys gave out and she wound up spending the rest of her life on dialysis, eventually dying in 1996. Her final years were mostly spent feuding with her stepmother Stella Sampas Kerouac over her father’s estate, a debate that has continued even in recent months. During this time she would speak of creating a writers’ sanctuary in her father’s memory, and occasionally muse what fun it would have been to drink and go on the road with him.

And as the books attest, it would have been one hell of a trip, because Jan was clearly one of those “mad ones” that her father extolled in his works  who shared the same view of everything and nothing at once, as she attests in “Baby Driver”: “But now I could really sense a page turning – even remember looking out in my mind’s eye toward Santa Fe and the rest of the general direction south, and seeing things laid out in the future – nothing in particular, but an immensely inviting vacuum waiting to be filled.” Jan Kerouac dove head-first into that inviting vacuum, and while she never completely came back the brace of books she delivered can hold their own against any Beat-inspired work.

Coming Soon: The Beat (Second) Generation

“I think the Beats were extremely dysfunctional people who basically had no business raising children.” – Christina Mitchell, daughter of John Mitchell, entrepreneur who ran several Greenwich Village coffeehouses in the 1950s

This quote might seem a rather harsh criticism of a group of people widely considered among the most influential writers of the century, but when you look at their personal lives – frequently their subject matter – it makes a sad amount of sense. Men like Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady and Gregory Corso were in no way Ward Cleaver types, but were independents, wanderers and frequent substance abusers, pursuing their own enlightenment and freedom over the stability of a normal life. Certainly they managed to raise a legion of spiritual children by inspiring thousands of youths to follow in their footsteps, but when it came to the very involved process of bringing a child to maturity they preferred to be somewhere else.

But despite the fact that so few of the Beats were equipped to be fathers, several of them managed to pass their genes onto the next generation – and in the cases of Kerouac and Burroughs, also managed to pass on the gift that made them famous. Like their fathers, Jan Kerouac and William S. “Billy” Burroughs Jr. possessed a grasp of language and an interest in using their lives as subject material. However, they also wound up inheriting their addictive personalities and an energy level that would convert into self-destruction.

These next two installments of Back Shelf Review will fall into a subcategory dubbed “The Beat (Second) Generation,” examining the writings of the younger Kerouac and Burroughs. In addition to the obvious evaluation as to the pros and cons of their work, I’ll take a look at just how much of their fathers’ style they seem to have inherited and see where they differ for better or worse.

So, check back on August 18 for “Back Shelf Review: Jan Kerouac” and on August 25 for “Back Shelf Review: William S. (Billy) Burroughs Jr.”

Back Shelf Review: The Year of Living Biblically

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

By A.J. Jacobs

Published October 1, 2007

Simon and Schuster

392 pp.

ISBN 0-743-291476

Reviewed July 20, 2009

While the concept of gonzo journalism is most regularly associated with excessive drug use and acts of mayhem while reporting, the founding ideas are a bit more serious. Hunter S. Thompson defined his creation as the pinnacle of engagement, comparable to “a film director who writes his own script, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action.” The driving principal is that in this deep level of engagement, the author cannot remove himself from the story and as such greater depth can be attained than through straight reporting.

From this technical perspective, it’s easy to consider A.J. Jacobs as some form of gonzo practitioner. Jacobs’ writing career regularly involves chronicling a series of social experiments he subjects himself to, ranging from outsourcing his daily life to India to striving for honesty in all cases to studying every last piece of information in an encyclopedia. Not content with these lengths though, he moved from the collected knowledge of man to the collected knowledge of God in his book “The Year of Living Biblically” – and the journey proves to be entertaining and surprisingly poignant.

The book’s title summarizes its intent perfectly: for one year, Jacobs strove to follow the Bible to the letter, ranging from its most basic commandments to the most obscure proverbs. Visibly, this meant donning all-white single-fiber garments and growing a beard resembling the brush outside a haunted house; and behaviorally it meant regular prayer, never lying and giving away 10 percent of his salary. He presents his findings in a journal format, tackling a new issue each day and recording his results.

Of course, the issue with following these rules is that many of them aren’t truly applicable in modern life, and therein lies the real humor of “Living Biblically.” Not eating fruit unless the tree is five years old, not wearing any garments that have more than one fiber, not touching any woman for a week after her period (his wife Julie is not amused) – Jacobs tries to keep to all of these and more, often going to great lengths and annoying those around him. He never betrays any frustration at the limitations, only an increasing curiosity at their origins and how he can work them into his daily life.

The real problem – from his perspective at least – comes up in the variety of instances where the Bible seems to contradict itself, especially when moving from Old to New Testament.  A key instance comes in what should be one of the simplest rules, the Sabbath: “A friend of mine once told me that even observing the Sabbath might be breaking the Sabbath, since my job is to follow the Bible. That gave me a two-hour headache.” Jacobs come across as neurotic and yet likable, determined to find an answer no matter what crazy direction it takes him.

Jacobs doesn’t try to work these issues out alone, consulting with a wide variety of scholars and professors to seek interpretations of the Bible and interpretations of those interpretations. He runs the gamut from a sect of snake handlers to openly gay Christian fundamentalists, and even makes a pilgrimage to Israel where he herds sheep and speaks with his “spiritual omnivore” guru Uncle Gil. As with the proverbs he judges none of them beforehand, but simply admires and comments on the strength of their faith.

His neutrality is helped by his own lack of religious background – raised in a secular family and a self-defined agnostic – but as the year goes on he finds that immersion in faith is starting to rub off on him, creating an alter ego dubbed Jacob. Jacob scolds him for paying attention to Rosario Dawson’s sex life, puts olive oil in his hair and pays attention to every little moral choice made during the day. With every prayer or simple “God willing” he inserts into conversation, it’s clear as the book goes on that his journey has changed him, not dramatically but in very subtle ways of thought and appreciation.

At one point in the book, as Jacobs begins to show some frustration at why the Bible can be so contradictory or hard to understand, one of his spiritual advisers offers him a key piece of wisdom: “Life is a jigsaw puzzle. The joy and challenge of life – and the Bible – is figuring things out.” In many ways, “Living Biblically” is defined by this wisdom – a book that confronts hundreds of challenges, and winds up being a joy for the sheer fact that the journey is being undertaken.

Back Shelf Review: A Bit of Fry and Laurie

While Great Britain’s stature as an international power has declined over recent decades with the collapse of their colonial empire, no other country in the world can challenge them when it comes to humor. Britain has a long-standing tradition of delivering clever and consistently funny content, ranging from surrealism and class warfare to expert wordplay and everyday absurdity. P.G. Wodehouse novels, Oscar Wilde plays, Monty Python sketch comedy, Eddie Izzard stand-up comedy, the original “Office” – even a brief scan turns up material that makes our Yankee content seem grossly inferior.

In recent years, the most recognizable ambassadors of British humor to American audiences have been its most famous comic duo: Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Shooting to fame through their sketch show “A Bit of Fry and Laurie,” the two have been mainstays of British television through programs such as “Blackadder” and “Jeeves and Wooster,” capturing that perfect blend of social commentary and absurdity. Both men have also secured a place in American culture through FOX television shows, starred in feature films and contributed distinctive voice acting performances.

As such clever and versatile performers, it should also come as no surprise that both Fry and Laurie are also adept writers. In the same vein as their performances they pay homage to the British traditions, but create a more modern story that updates the conventions for a new audience. For an example, one need look no further than their debut novels, Fry’s 1991 “The Liar” and Laurie’s 1996 “The Gun Seller” – a pair of well-written, entertaining books with clear ties to British literary greats.

Fry’s “The Liar” is a portrait of Adrian Healey, a young man growing up in British public schools and going onto Cambridge chiefly on the strength of his wit and lies. After a series of youthful dalliances, ranging from seducing half the students in his class to falsifying an undiscovered Charles Dickens erotic novel, he meets his verbal match in the eccentric professor Donald Trefusis. Brought along as a research assistant, he soon learns Trefusis’s misleading speeches may well be hiding a genuine government conspiracy.

From Adrian’s very first appearance – bursting into a boy’s locker room with a top hat, orchid in the buttonhole, ebony cane and lavender gloves – comparisons to Oscar Wilde are inevitable. Fry, a known Wilde fan who portrayed the playwright in a 1997 film, has a perfect grip on that sardonic, foppish style of speech and the dialogue manages to emulate it without being derivative. Fry’s narrative is a bit more direct and raunchy, mentioning a variety of underage sex acts or scatological humor directly whereas Wilde would cloud it with sexual innuendo.

But it’s the interior dialogue that really makes it stand out. When not entertaining or lying Adrian is adrift – unable to feel a sense of connection to reality, pining for another boy’s love and frustrated with boredom, he has gone the Jay Gatsby route and lives exactly the sort of persona a fifteen-year-old boy would be likely to invent. When circumstances challenge him he breaks, or falls on even more lies to keep things going. Adrian reaches a far more humanizing role than any of Wilde’s characters reach, glaringly aware of how his “Ernest” persona is all he really has.

The disjoint Adrian feels in life is expressed also in Fry’s writing style, where chapters are presented out of chronological order going between public school, college and student reaching. It can be a frustrating makeup, particularly due to cryptic interludes between chapters that relate to the later conspiracy angle, but Fry uses the format cunningly to dismiss large parts of the previous section as Adrian’s exaggerations. He presents Adrian as an unreliable narrator without even needing first-person, pulling a prank on the reader themselves.

While Fry’s style emulates the classic absurdist British humor, Laurie’s book – fittingly for the straight man in their routine – is more conventional in both subject and format. “The Gun Seller” is presented as straight-up first-person spy novel, following the adventures of unemployed ex-military vagabond Thomas Lang. Approached to kill an American factory owner, he decides to do the right thing and warn him of an attempt on his life. After a series of assaults and gunshots, he finds himself an unwilling pawn in a CIA-level conspiracy to boost arms sales at the expense of innocent lives.

:“The Gun Seller” is also a character study, but the character Laurie is exploring follows a different British tradition, this one in the vein of Douglas Adams and Bill Bryson: the befuddled Englishman who finds himself in a series of circumstances beyond his control. Lang isn’t presented as anything even approaching a dramatic hero but rather a “literary loser,” trying to find enough money to keep in alcohol and rent rather than achieve the greater good at first. Laurie uses this to create an almost redemptive story, and as such manages to make Lang more complex than other spy protagonists.

Lang’s other perk over James Bond is the fact that he actually feels like a real human being. Laurie claimed in an interview he was inspired to write the novel based on “the banality of his own life,” and certainly Lang’s concerns reflect a more civilian worldview. One scene will have him rambling into a tape recorder he has never used and comment on how tax-efficient it is, and then a few hours later walk through the perks of a Glock handgun and how to use it in clearing a hostile building.

This mix of topics often makes classifying the book a curious task. At some points the book can be seen as a parody of the spy genre, but in the second half of the book things become much more serious, with Lang’s circumstances putting him straight in the middle of terrorist plots and hostage situations. Laurie manages to introduce a plot twist almost every chapter in a way that approaches absurd, and but the wit behind the dialogue is so sharp you can’t help but think he planned it that way. You can read it as serious satire or Robert Ludlum with a sense of humor, and it translates well in both forms.

While Fry and Laurie have not collaborated on any major projects in the last few years, both men have expressed a desire to work together again – and I would suggest writing a book together would be the best use of their time. Both men have an uncanny gift with words and an appreciation of the finest English humor, and enough new ideas to keep its traditions fresh. “Liar” and “Gun Seller” are stellar first novels, and worthy heirs to the British tradition.

Back Shelf Review: Novel with Cocaine

(Editor’s note: After a reread I decided this book could use a more professional review, so it’s now been completely retooled from an earlier post. I don’t usually do this, but I like this book enough I wanted the review to measure up.)

Novel with Cocaine

By M. Ageyev

Published 1934, reprinted October 1998

Northwestern University Press

204 pp.

ISBN 0-810-11709-6

Reviewed May 13, 200

“Novel with Cocaine” (also translated as “Cocaine Romance”) is a book that is very much a historical curiosity. It is the only novel from mysterious author M. Ageyev, first published in the early 1930s in Paris and only rediscovered by chance 50 years later in a second-hand bookstore. Despite its obscure nature, it enjoys several distinctions: it was a favorite of John Updike, an influence on William S. Burroughs and it was even alleged to be the work of Vladimir Nabokov writing under a pen name (a notion Nabokov’s son has dismissed).

The accolades and comparisons are varied, but the novel justifies all of them. “Cocaine” is a startlingly well-done book, not overly long or convoluted in the manner of more well-known Russian novels, and also not as surreal and off-putting as some drug memoirs. After reading, it’s actually surprising that the book has not seen wider publication, as it fits easily into both of the previous canons with little difficulty holding its own.

“Cocaine” is the coming-of-age story of Vadim Maslennikov, a young man growing up in World War I Russia. As the war wages on and hints of what would become the Russian Revolution stir in the country, Vadim is fixated only on his personal development and the easiest way for him to reach what he sees as his rightful place in the world. Reflecting the title’s dual meaning, he seeks fulfillment in a serious relationship and, when his darker side drives her away, runs to the electric power of cocaine.

Vadim is an unlikable character from the start, a self-centered adolescent reminiscent of Alec from “A Clockwork Orange.” The first half of the book is filled with his own indulgences, desperate attempts to polish his image and maintain his sense of superiority. He shoves his impoverished mother away in public, looks for casual sex while recovering from syphilis and takes more pride in insulting classmates rather than speaking to them. Ageyev makes it impossible to like Vadim but never impossible to pay attention to him, exposing the insecurities and self-loathing beneath his preening.

Vadim’s faults are regularly on display, but they never ruin the novel chiefly because the quality of the writing outweighs them. From an almost ornamental description of Russia in winter to the almost foppish nature of Vadim’s cohorts, Ageyev displays himself as a craftsman in constructing his sentences. The novel’s descriptive passages are evocative without being overblown, and many of the passages border on brilliant (a particular favorite is Vadim’s trolling for sex, where “A woman who smiled at a look like mine could only be a virgin or a prostitute”). We also see a picture of the revolutionary Russian mindset, its educational and political reforms shown in the vicious intellectual character of Vadim’s classmate Burkewitz.

The chief place where the writing skill comes into play though is in the book’s titular narcotic, as one melancholy evening Vadim comes into contact with drugs and loses his “nasal virginity.” At this point, the book turns from a story of growing up to a drug-centric tale, and as such gains a new series of responsibilities. Whether the topic is heroin or mescaline or LSD or some cocktail of the above, an drug author needs to fill the same role as a pusher: gradually reel them in by showing the benefits of the drug, and then once they get comfortable let the horror of withdrawal sink in.

While it’s impossible to know just how much of “Novel with Cocaine” is based on the truth, Ageyev’s descriptions of the effects and aftereffects of cocaine are so frighteningly vivid it’s hard to imagine he wasn’t at least a casual user. Vadim’s first night captures the awkwardness of learning the ritual, the terrifying icy feeling of the first snort quickly turning into joy, the manic urges and periods of catatonia and fixation on rituals such as smoking cigarettes. It’s taut writing that pulls the reader into a nightmarish state, and is easily the book’s best section.

As Vadim falls into the inevitable madness of excessive cocaine use, Ageyev uses him to philosophize in much the same way he used Burkewitz earlier in the book to explore the Russian mindset. He speculates on the nature of pleasure and how it is tied to external elements, using it as a rationale for his continued drug use – a rationale that evaporates as soon as the drug wears off, leading him to delirious reflections on mankind’s bestial nature. It’s a starkly intellectual way to depict the highs and lows Vadim goes through, though it does nothing to make a reader feel sorry for him as the symptoms get worse.

It may be hard to pity Vadim as he is destroyed by faults entirely his own, but it is even harder to quit following the story to the bitter end. At varying turns frightening, evocative, romantic and deplorable, “Novel With Cocaine” is a well-constructed novel that will interest readers of various genres. While the identity of Ageyev may forever be a mystery, “Cocaine” keeps his name alive – as well as the hope that in some Paris attic exists a chest of his unpublished works.

Back Shelf Review: Interzone

Interzone

By William S. Burroughs

Published February 1, 1990

Penguin Books

224 pp.

ISBN 0-140-09451-2

Reviewed April 16, 2009

It’s a writer’s curse that out of everything they write and devise and concoct, they will be lucky if even a quarter of it sees publication. Stories and essays can be rejected by dozens of publishers before they finally give up trying, a first novel sits in a desk drawer for years, and projects will be raised and rejected before something finally sees acceptance. Past that, there are first and second and third drafts, letters to friends floating ideas, and countless notebooks and scraps of paper filled with notes that are sometimes not even legible to the writer.

Every so often though, an author’s thoughts and drafts are the audience for a complete revolution of style, finding something new and experimenting with it in a variety of curious ways. Few writers have undergone such a revolution as William S. Burroughs, who went from drug novelist to visionary in only a few years, and whose transitional work has been collected in “Interzone.” Essentially the bridge between “Junky” and “Naked Lunch,” “Interzone” is a truly energetic piece of work that shows an evolution (or possibly mutation) of thought.

Fittingly for an author who pioneered the “cut-up” technique, “Interzone” is more a loose scrapbook than a proper collection, consisting of journals and stories Burroughs wrote from 1954 to 1956. At this time, he was living in Tangier, indulging his opium addiction and trying to sell short stories through his friend Allen Ginsberg. As time went on he began to go deeper into his subconscious, using his writing to fracture and rebuild the world in his own surreal image.

What makes “Interzone” such a fascinating part of the Burroughs canon is it reflects all sides of his brilliant persona. His first books “Junky” and “Queer” were straightforward, almost deadpan novels that took a historical view to drugs and homosexuality in 1940s New York; while “Naked Lunch” and successive novels ripped apart those topics into sci-fi depravity. “Interzone” is a work that maps the process of coming to that viewpoint, as well as seeing the hints of literary theory and spiritualism that marked much of his later works.

Fans of Burroughs’ more conventional style will be rewarded by the early short stories and articles, pitched to Ginsberg in the hope he could sell them. “The Finger” has an almost Kafkaesque humor to it, relating a real-life anecdote wherein he cuts off a finger joint to impress a girl and finds himself committed as a result. “International Zone,” written as a magazine feature on Tangier’s strange situation (split up between four countries) has “Junky’s” anthropological eye for a place, while “In the Café Central” captures the cast which populates it.

Use of opiates and the withdrawal symptoms began to alter Burroughs’ viewpoint, and the style change gradually makes itself clear in the journals and later stories – a move that builds a terrific energy as the book progresses. Characters begin to take on a more inhuman angle, resembling insects and growing “auxiliary assholes” in their foreheads (“Spare Ass Annie”). The borders between dreams and reality gradually break down, with “The City” gradually turning into a living thing and paranoia an everyday occurrence. Burroughs himself acknowledges the shift, speaking of an abstract novel constructed as a mosaic, a work that has a life of its own, a guide for the future.

Even with this gradual evolution, the tonal shift was so extreme that a breakthrough effort was needed, and “Interzone” contains this in the section “WORD.” Essentially a rough draft of “Naked Lunch,” the section is a rapid profane stream-of-consciousness effort mixing all the images of sex, drugs and control that would come to dominate his later work. This section isn’t for the faint of heart – or for anyone who thought “Naked Lunch” was too nonsensical or garbled to enjoy – but it continues the build of energy the journals started and is fascinating from an aesthetic standpoint, seeing the castoff embryonic thoughts that led him to reach his conclusions.

“Interzone” is chiefly a historical curiosity and a book for Burroughs devotees who want to track their hero’s evolution, but it’s also a useful primer for anyone who wants to experience his thought process in smaller doses. It’s a book that is at varying times dryly humorous, intentionally shocking and borderline illegible, but never able to hide the crackling energy of the voice that was finding itself.

Back Shelf Review: The Colossus of Maroussi

The Colossus of Maroussi

By Henry Miller

Published 1941, reprinted June 1975

New Directions

244 pp.

ISBN 0-811-20109-0

Reviewed March 19, 2009

To paraphrase Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, in his essay on Led Zeppelin and heavy metal: modern literature would not exist without Henry Miller, and if it did, it would suck. With novels such as “Tropic of Cancer” and “Tropic of Capricorn,” Miller was perhaps more than any other author responsible for the development of autobiographical work, mixing self-study and philosophy with surrealism and often graphically honest depictions of sex. His writing became a cornerstone of the censorship debate in America – copies actually had to be smuggled into the country until 1964 – and inspired authors from William S. Burroughs to Harvey Pekar.

“Cancer” and “Capricorn” are surely Miller’s most influential works, but also have the consequence of making Miller seem like a seedy character, dwelling on his poverty and random sexual encounters. He may have lived in such conditions, but as a writer he was capable of depicting so much more, as is evident in his novel “The Colossus of Maroussi.” Published in 1941 – seven years after “Cancer” and two after “Capricorn” – “Maroussui” is less a memoir than it is a celebration, both of the beauty of Greece and the personal revelations he undergoes.

At first glance, the book could be seen as a travel book on the Grecian experience. Unemployed and living off the kindness of a variety of friends, Miller crosses the Mediterranean nation with stops at historical sites such as the ruined city of Knossos and the purported burial site of Agamemnon at Mycenae. Along the way he meets a variety of expatriates and Greek writers, enjoying many nights of wine and conversation and determining his travel plans based on convenience and how long his travel visa will last.

But Miller quickly shatters any traditional travel format, characterizing Greece right away as a “sacred precinct” under God’s personal protection. The overall experience of Greece seems to be as much an awakening for him as mescaline was for Aldous Huxley in “The Doors of Perception,” as he feels he is tapping into a primordial mood and is determined to express all the feelings stirred in him by the location. Every section of the book praises Greece, from the late-night walks in little villages to the brilliant conversation inspired by the Greek writers Katsimbalis and Seferiades.

The tonal shift between these and the Tropics books is a noticeable one – no sex scenes, no dwelling on the dirtiness of his condition beyond passing words on his hotel room and no scraping for money to pay expenses. Miller himself characterizes the difference in settings as a motivation, with Athens “a violet-blue reality which envelops you with a caress” and New York “a trop-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness.” There is a constant sense of stopping to take a breath here, and in doing so the air is found cleaner and cheaper to breathe.

Miller is also helped along in his writing by current events. At the time of writing, World War II was wracking the majority of the European continent, but Greece was neither a battleground nor a major participant, filling it with expatriates and a sense of security. In this context Miller gets to view it as an oasis, visiting the ancient sites of Knossos and Mycenae and looking upon them as areas that will feel the same long after the war is over and all involved have turned to dust. He’s putting the country on a pedestal, an Ionic column that will keep the country stable through any man-made calamity.

His celebration and description are enough to motivate any traveler, but it is when he gets into a contemplative mood that there is a true soul to “Colossus.” Many of his revelations would work as philosophy essays, musing on human nature and how a visit to Greece would do all some good. When walking through a village and hearing radio news of the war from various points, he sees the folly of the industrial world bringing death where there should be celebration; and at Agamemnon’s tomb he touches the idea of becoming a spiritual nomad, free of the “spawn of cultured souls.” The best of these passages comes at the amphitheatre of Epidaurus, when he realizes what humanity is truly in need of is a revolution – not of government and war but a worldwide revolution of internal thought, realizing the inexhaustibility of the human spirit and eradicating its darker side.

The only real issue in the book comes up in that Miller’s love for Greece is so overwhelmingly positive, his feelings tend to overwhelm at times. He seems incapable of criticizing the country and its people, only marking against them when they keep expressing a desire to go to America he gently tries to dissuade them from. Quick to dismiss the other expatriates he meets as vulgar and unrefined, he even goes so far as to hope the Englishmen he met there will “consider me an enemy of their kind” after reading the book.

“Colossus” should certainly not be read as a guide to touring in Greece or Greek landmarks – there are plenty of locations mentioned, but a more formal guidebook would need to be paired with it to make sense of them. Instead, it is a book to read for the emotional side of the country, an example of just what can be experienced when you take a moment and take in exactly where you are. It is a well-crafted book filled with a sense of joy, and that sense makes it one of Miller’s most worthy efforts.

Back Shelf Review: Barack Obama

(Editor’s note: These reviews are written post-election, but I feel compelled to insert a qualifier. I voted for Barack Obama in both the primary and general election and volunteered for his campaign in the fall, but do not write these reviews in an effort to add more hero worship. What follows is a judgment of Obama the writer, not the politician or idealist.)

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States was a milestone for more reasons than we can count. Most obviously, he is the first African-America elected to the office, he is a first-term senator elected in a time of war and economic crisis, he comes from a background whose diversity is unmatched in American politics and is also the first candidate to obtain a following typically reserved for rock stars.

What makes it really remarkable, at least to some circles, is that Obama is the first man to be elected to the presidency who has two titles that were No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. An acclaimed author before he even declared his candidacy, Obama’s books have been praised by everyone from Jann Wenner to Michiko Kakutani to Christopher Buckley. And even separated from the mythos surrounding Obama, they deserve every bit of praise.

The first title, “Dreams from My Father,” was published in 1995 following another groundbreaking Obama presidential election, this one for the Harvard Law Review. A son born from two different worlds – a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas – Obama traces his journey to find out where he belongs. We see his childhood in Indonesia, rebellious youth in Hawaii and his work as a community organizer in Chicago, all culminating in a journey to Kenya to understand the man whose name he bears.

Little of the story is likely new to readers, considering how inextricably Obama’s biography is bound to his popular image. The surprising part is just how much of his story he is willing to share, even considering he wrote this book before entering politics. “Dreams” is a very personal book, touching on of his sense of alienation in school, belonging to “the club of disaffection” as a young adult and the early disappointments of Chicago’s South Side. His background may be diverse, but the tradeoff is that he has nowhere he truly belongs, and for endless paragraphs he goes inside himself to try to figure that out.

In the hands of many writers this sort of consideration could get old, but Obama’s writing is something else: graceful prose, every word carefully chosen and reflecting a wide understanding of literature. His descriptions of Indonesia and Chicago are evocative but avoid dwelling too heavily on the topic, while the conversations he has had to fill in from memory never feel inauthentic. He also regularly uses the triptych (or rule-of-three) effect as expertly as he does in his speeches, creating a choral effect and examples that remain in the head.

The last third of the book where Obama travels to Kenya is marvelous prose: heartfelt conversations with family members, a sense of wonderment at the scope of the country and the final moment at his father’s grave that comes across as nothing short of rebirth. As he looks back over the tumult that marks his ancestors, realizing how his path is tied to theirs, the feeling is so real that you cannot help but be pulled fully in and forget whose name is on the cover.

Obama said in a revised introduction that the social and political implications of his story are meant for another book, and he kept that promise with the release of “The Audacity of Hope” in 2006. In “Audacity” Obama turns his critical eye from himself to the United States, discussing the structure of its government and the issues that shape its citizens. He tells the stories of the people he spoke to during campaigning, and also shows his own growth into a family man.

In the prologue to “Dreams” Obama quotes a reporter who after reading commented “I wonder if you can be that interesting in the next one you write.” It’s a valid question, especially when matched to the mastery of his first effort, and the 10-year gap between books. Certainly, “Audacity” is more of a politician’s book than his first effort, named after his speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and as a politician’s book, it naturally takes a different tone.

This book is a clear template of Obama’s political platform, and virtually all of his speeches from the campaign can be tied to some chapter in it, be they his landmark speech on race (“Audacity” is ripe with discussion on Chicago’s racial make-up) or his attacks on President Bush (discussion of the Constitution regularly brings up the Senate debate on conservative judges). Here he is writing to convey a message, rather than write to organize his thoughts, and while the voice is the same it carries a professorial, occasionally dull tone.

But Obama the senator has not obscured Obama the writer, and while “Audacity” doesn’t pull the heartstrings it does certainly make us empathize. In many ways it’s even cleverer than “Dreams,” using each personal example as a gateway to pull you in. A deeply heartfelt section on meeting his wife Michelle and raising two daughters is bound to his views on the American family and the pressures of a household, and his discussion on the Constitution recalls Senate legends like Robert Byrd he has felt privileged to learn from.

In comparing the distance between these two books, Obama unsurprisingly puts it the right way in “Audacity”: “If I am wiser, it is mainly because I have traveled a little further down the path I have chosen for myself, the path of politics, and have gotten a glimpse of where it may lead, for good and for ill.” What we see between the two books is maturation, Obama having come to enough comfort with himself that he wants to bring what he has learned to others. His writing is rooted in a sense of journey, and a sheer desire to bring us along on that travel.

Refreshingly, both books can be appreciated separately from the mythos of their author. “Dreams” is a masterwork, a poetic and honest tale of a man struggling to find his place; while “Audacity” is more refreshing than the ghost-written texts politicians usually turn out to add one more accomplishment to the list. Even if readers cannot dislodge Obama’s image from their minds while reading, they will not only learn that their commander-in-chief is truly emphatic and intelligent, but will be assured that after his term he will write the best memoir to ever come from an American president.

For more exhaustively researched articles on the relationship between Obama and literature, I recommend:
-    Barack by the books, by Laura Miller, Salon, July 7, 2008
-    From Books, New President Found Voice, by Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, January 18, 2009

Back Shelf Review: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

(Editor’s note: There’s a reason I’m reprinting this review at this time, even though it’s much shorter and older than my usual works. The reason for reprint is the post immediately following this one.)

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

By David Foster Wallace

Published April 2000

Back Bay Books

336 pp.

ISBN 0-316-92519-5

Reviewed September 17, 2007

Originally reviewed at: The Lesser of Two Equals

David Foster Wallace is a rare thing in modern writers – brilliant, incisive and hilarious. He is one of those genuinely gifted writers who is able to not only construct masterful sentences but is able to tell a story with them – or rather, many stories. “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” his collection of short stories, is more accessible than his mammoth novel “Infinite Jest” but with that same graceful skill.

Some favorites: “I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko” is easily the best story in the collection, a retelling of Greek myths with the world of telecommunications serving as the new setting. “The Depressed Person” is one of the most honest stories ever, and its use of footnotes (thankfully located on the same page as opposed to in the back like “Infinite Jest”) show Wallace has a better angle on his craft than most. The brief interviews, scattered through the book, are hilarious takes on the neuroses of men with different ideas on sex. Wallace’s voice permeates each story, even when he steps into each individual character.

With any great writer there are some flaws – his writing is almost too literate for the typical reader and every character in every story seems to have more neuroses than usual – but that doesn’t change the fact that Wallace is unquestionably a writer of rare skill. He has taken William Burroughs’ role (as Norman Mailer put it) as the only American novelist who may conceivably be possessed by genius, and these stories serve as an ideal introduction to his work.