Drugs: A Novel

by J.R. Helton

Overview

A modern homage to William S. Burrough’s classic Junky, the new novel Drugs is the sparse, beautifully unassuming account of one man’s life of drug use.

As Robert Crumb, who illustrated the book jacket, says,
“J. R. Helton really speaks to me—starkly honest, darkly funny, acutely observant, and captures the tragic absurdity of human life. . . . [H]e’s right up there with the best of them.”

This fictionalized memoir is told in masterfully wry, Spartan prose with no apologies for a drug-user’s lifestyle, and instead looks back on it with clever insight and an appreciation for everything felt and observed. With self-awareness and conviction, Helton avoids the sensationalist commentary so common to drug memoirs and instead favors the honest details, the effects of each drug on his body and on his soul. The result is a sincerely told tale of adventure, debauchery, and absurdity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609804015
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	05/22/2012
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.56(w) x 8.02(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

J. R. HELTON's first novel Drugs, a modern homage to William S. Burroughs’s classic Junky, introduced the world to his wry writing and unique genre of fictionalized memoir. A professor of writing at the collegiate level, Helton has also published two memoirs and a number of short stories—for one of which he won an Honorable Mention Pushcart Prize—and poems in such literary magazines as the Sun, the Missouri Review, and Mineshaft. He lives, writes, and teaches in Texas.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This guy Helton could be the next Bukowski.”
—Terry Zwigoff, director of Crumb and Ghost World
 
“J. R. Helton really speaks to me—starkly honest, darkly funny, acutely observant,
and captures the tragic absurdity of human life. . . . [H]e’s right up there with the best of them.” —Robert Crumb
 
“Helton . . . writes with passion, clarity, and fairness.”
—Harvey Pekar, author of American Splendor
 
“Just when you think there’s nothing to new to say about drugs, Drugs marches out whole new ways to fuck up your brain, your life, and basically anyone insane or unlucky enough to cross your path. This is a truly riveting, mind-altering read,
not to be missed.”
—Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

“Appearances can be deceiving—JR Helton’s wonderful book is not so much about “Drugs” as it is about growing up in America as viewed through the prism of our national past-time. Funny and poignant, Helton has delivered a book that would make Mark Twain proud—it’s hilarious, true and subversive—a perfect piece of modern American writing.”—Tony O'Neill author of Down and Out on Murder Mile and Sick City

“For three days straight, I did Drugs. The straightforward matter-of-fact prose — reminiscent of William S. Burroughs’ classic memoir Junky — latched onto my brain and wouldn’t let go until the final page.”
— Broken Pencil 

Editorial Reviews

Helton fails to follow the creative writing 101 admonishment to "show, don't tell" in this part faux-memoir, part social critique. Mundane details of drug acquisition are endlessly recounted with the timbre of a shopping list: "I spent thousands of dollars on this drug which cost then about 100 dollars a gram, or three hundred bucks for an eightball." As a teenager, the narrator and protagonist, Jake, begins with the requisite gateway joints, while avoiding landscaping work and driving around 1980s Texas subdivisions. By chapter 2, he's onto coke; chapter 3, methadone; chapter 11, Oxycontin, and so on down the road for several decades. Girls come and go and the drugs evolve with the times, but Jake's life and Helton's prose remains flat and exhausting. In an entire book dedicated to drug use, one would hope for some urgency, surreal tenderness, compelling danger or-at the very least-the cheap thrill of superficial glamour. Unfortunately, readers won't find any of that here; R. Crumb's illustrated cover is the best part.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

"J. R. Helton really speaks to me—starkly honest, darkly funny, acutely observant, and captures the tragic absurdity of human life ... [H]e’s right up there with the best of them." —Robert Crumb
 
"Helton ... writes with passion, clarity, and fairness." —Harvey Pekar, author of American Splendor
 
"Just when you think there’s nothing to new to say about drugs, Drugs marches out whole new ways to fuck up your brain, your life, and basically anyone insane or unlucky enough to cross your path. This is a truly riveting, mind-altering read, not to be missed." —Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

"Appearances can be deceiving—JR Helton’s wonderful book is not so much about 'Drugs' as it is about growing up in America as viewed through the prism of our national past-time. Funny and poignant, Helton has delivered a book that would make Mark Twain proud—it’s hilarious, true and subversive—a perfect piece of modern American writing." —Tony O'Neill author of Down and Out on Murder Mile and Sick City

"For three days straight, I did Drugs. The straightforward matter-of-fact prose—reminiscent of William S. Burroughs’ classic memoir Junky—latched onto my brain and wouldn’t let go until the final page." —Broken Pencil 

From the Publisher

This is your book. This is your book on drugs. Our daily lives, as Aldous Huxley--duly quoted in the epigraph to short story writer and memoirist Helton's newest (Man and Beast, 2001, etc.)--once observed, range from the tortured to the tedious. Either extreme begs to be escaped from, and lo, whence drugs. We take Helton's "Jake" to be an alter ego for the author; if he is not, then this book, categorized as fiction but with matter-of-factness that suggests extensive, em, field research, as well as narrative flatness, is a masterwork of close observation, a new rejoinder to S. E. Hinton's work half a century ago. Helton has been likened to Bukowski, but there was an exuberance to Bukowski; so far as we know, he has not been likened to the Denis Johnson of Jesus' Son, whose characters had some small measure of self-awareness and enough oomph for us to be interested in them. Alas, Helton's tone is as affectless as the Texas plains, where Jake does a little poking about, earning a few bucks in construction here and bumming there, just enough to land a score. He starts off a cipher toking a little boo--"I was extremely curious about drugs as they were so verboten in my own home"--and progresses, via methadone and crystal meth, to the mad-pimp lifestyle and thence collapse without much emotional freight, as if it were all happening to someone else. Perhaps this is intentional; perhaps not. In defense of the narrative, however, the author does serve up a good recipe for how not to live one's life: "two twenty-four canister boxes [of nitrous oxide] at Planet K or restaurant supply stores every day," followed by a little weed and "only three Vicodin and two Flexeril." Kids, don't try it at home. The takeaway: Drugs are boring. Find something interesting to do--and something interesting to read.

Kirkus Reviews