Junkie (novel) Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Timothy S. Murphy

Critical Essay by Timothy S. Murphy

SOURCE: Murphy, Timothy S. “No Final Glossary: Fugitive Words in Junky and Queer.” In Wising Up the Mark: The Amodern William Burroughs, pp. 46-66. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Murphy argues that Queer and Junkie contain no “abstract structure of rules,” such as linguistic rules, and that the only approach to understanding these texts is by following their textual “cartography.”

“I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness” (Naked Lunch xxxvii [hereafter abbreviated as NL]).¹ So begins the introduction to Naked Lunch, the book that established William S. Burroughs's literary notoriety and that still dominates it almost half a century and twenty books later. For most readers, Burroughs's career begins (and ends) with Naked Lunch, and even...
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