Digby Diehl

“ As the Romantic attempted to transcend the Industrial Revolution so our contemporary writer, particularly those from the counter culture—Ken Kesey, Hunter Thompson, Theodore Roszak—are reaching for an ecological paradise outside of our polluted world of capitalism and technology. And after two decades of literature celebrating the junkie or drug-user life-styles, we are returned to an understanding of drug experience which is virtually as "magical" as that of the medieval exorcist. ”

“ Like characters in the developing Theatre of the Absurd, the junkies in this play and in the books of the era live a life of no exit; they exist in tight, self-contained worlds of their own creation, existential men carving a separate reality out of nothingness with the hypodermic needle. Or to put it in Burroughs' own words, from Junkie, "Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means to increased enjoyment of life. ”

“ Literature, in all of its myriad forms, has historically performed as a mirror of mainstream culture, with only periodic nods toward the ghettos, hidden byways, and subcultures of civilization. Drug-related literature is no exception to this rule, for the literary references to drug use closely parallel popular attitudes toward drugs, from the earliest writings of man up to the present. ”

“ Although the mid-1960's saw the most concentrated use of drugs in the American culture recorded in our history, it was not until the present decade that writers began to deal with spiritual and psychological explorations of drug experience as a way of continuing that Romantic visionary quest through the interior flights of chemically-stimulated fantasy. ”

“ This "aesthetic possibility" takes shape in the existential life of the addict. Here we must differentiate between literature in which addicts serve simply as exotica or representatives of social problems and the true "literature of addiction" which immerses the reader in the drug experience through story and prose technique. The Man with the Golden Arm, with its naturalistic study of the addict as anti-hero, fits into the former mode, as does even Burroughs' first book, Junkie. ”

“ These symbols of exoticism hinted particularly to the 19th century French writers at a bizarre way of life, much as the "exotic Negro subculture" has titillated 20th century American intellectuals. And, much as our drug culture of the American fifties was accompanied by Zen Buddhism, late 19th century France was inundated by various esoteric philosophies that sought the Greater Reality and universal correspondences. The Romantic era saw drugs flourishing in a world of semi-mystics, occultists, magnetists, and spiritualists. ”

“ The Diary of a Drug Fiend is allegedly based upon an actual situation in which Crowley took a group of drug addicts to an abbey in Sicily where they were allowed to indulge their drug needs to the fullest. Crowley's Romantic attitude is evident in the following passage from the Diary:
Man has a right to spiritual ambition. He has evolved to what he is, through making dangerous experiments. Heroin certainly helps me to obtain a new spiritual outlook on the world. I have no right to assume that the ruin of bodily health is injurious ”

“ The nineteenth century Romantics in France—particularly Baudelaire and his literary circle—provided the first concentration of drug-related literature which was not only a curiosity of Eastern exoticism, but an aesthetic mode. For reasons which will be made clear within this study, traditional drug literature in England and America from 1900 to 1945 was a faded continuation of Romantic literary notions inherited from the 19th century French tradition. ”

“ The creative projections of technology—blacklight, lasers, holographs, multi-image projection, and stroboscopic spotlights—became commonplace adjuncts to the drug culture. "Trip films" such as Space Odyssey: 2001, Performance, Chappaqua, A Dream Of Wild Horses, and Mad Dogs and Englishmen filled theaters with zonked-out marijuana-smoking long-haired kids. And rock and roll music, both in performance and in recordings, utilized drug-influenced distortions of sound which have had great impact upon both popular and classical music. ”

“ The prevalent drug is heroin; the central figure is the junkie; and the literary emphasis is upon a life style of existential alienation—a Romantic submergence in the drug subculture.
2. The Rock 'n Roll Flower Children of the 1960's. The prevalent drugs are marijuana and LSD; the central figure is the youthful student hippie; and the literary emphasis is upon experiential politics and social philosophy—the emergence of a "counter-culture" which challenges the dominant culture. ”

“ Despite the abundance of scientific and sociological data relating to drug use, there appears to be an implicit taboo about drug data in the arts and in the mainstream culture. (I have received more helpful information about juvenile drug literature from high school teachers than from any of the sophisticated library sources.) ”

“ French interest in the Orient played a significant role in the development of drug literature, After the opening of trade relations with the Far East under Louis XIV, French aristocrats and intellectuals became fascinated with Oriental furnishings, clothing, curiosities, and various spices and perfumes—interest which continued to emerge periodically in later centuries. ”

“ Life styles Annotation:A fictionalized autobiography of a drug addict living on a houseboat in New York, whose addiction is a way of life—one that becomes more manageable for him than marriage, which he abandons for heroin. ”

“ The 1950's in America brought about a curious shift in the literary mainstream, placing sudden emphasis on the previously-ignored subcultural themes of sex, drugs, and race—a shift instigated by World War II experiences. ”

“ Social problems Annotation:A small group of acquaintances, white and black, roam the subcultures of Harlem, Greenwich Village and France in a series of social and sexual encounters which include drug experiences as a mode of normalcy. ”

“ Social problems Annotation:A 60-year-old financier follows six young people around the world; one of them is Monica, the drug-addict daughter of a British ex-colonel. A survey of the youth scene, including, inevitably, drugs. ”

“ Social problems Annotation:A realistic story of the Mexican-American drug culture told through two men and a woman on the run from a narcotics raid in San Francisco in which a federal narcotics agent was killed. ”

“ Reality Annotation:This fictionalized story of a journalist's trip to Las Vegas on a variety of uppers, downers, and hallucinogenics provides a distortion screen on which the bizarre world of gamblers and tourists is projected with impressively vivid literary technique. ”

“ One simply is."—Trocchi. "Running out of veins and out of money."—Burroughs) ; how to live (a man has his freedom; you can be very cool man; you don't have to live) . And these matters are important. In a time of confusions and staggering possibilities of treachery, of engineered ideas and disillusion in the areas of volition and purpose, these metaphysical matters are imperative. ”

“ Opium Annotation:Opium-smoking appears to give an English doctor a psychological and philosophical detachment from life which allows him to leave his practice to treat a wealthy patient in the Malay Archipelago—a "narrow corner" of the earth. ”

“ It was after this war, which prompted sophisticated medical research, mixed fighting men interracially, and took American fighting men into Japan and the culture of the East, that interest increased in such works as Baudelaire's Paradis Artificiel. ”

“ Social problems Annotation:A novel about a banker who goes on a methedrine bender on the weekend and slips over the edge of reality into paranoid hallucinations which end up in a violent finish in which he dies. ”

“ Social problems Annotation:A study in the black subcultures and in the psychology of a black man from a small Southern town who rejects white culture after a Harlem race riot. Scenes of the black drug culture are vivid. ”

“ Life styles Annotation:The Nova Mob appears in this novel, as Burroughs develops his metaphor of everyone in society as a junkie for something. This futuristic society shows many elements at war, all obeying the "Algebra of Need." ”

“ Escapism Annotation:A student at Harvard flies to Berkeley to score marijuana for a Boston dealer. This turns into a comic chase with a funny cast of collegiate characters getting caught in a narcotics raid with 40 bricks of marijuana. Viewpoint towards drugs: positive. ”

“ The Artificial Paradises in French Literature; The Influence of Opium and Hashish on the Literature of French Romanticism and Les Fleurs du Mal. University of North Carolina Studies in Romantic Languages and Literatures, No. ”

“ Social problems Annotation:This fictionalized autobiography, divided into four segments, follows the life of a young man and his encounters, which include a series of debaucheries, including drugs. Viewpoint towards drugs: negative. ”