Drugs
A Novel
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Drugs is a story about Jake Stewart, a middle-class American from Texas who uses drugs and likes them. More importantly, he lives with them.
In author J. R. Helton's hilarious prose, Jake inimitably narrates the ups and downs of being a functional user of marijuana, cocaine, MDMA, alcohol, nicotine, brand name hydrocodone, and countless other drugs readily available and commonly partaken of in modern America. We follow Jake on car rides with his coke dealer to menace connections in supermarket parking lots, buying prescription opiates from a megacorporate health and beauty clinic, falling in love with his wife while on a series of mushroom trips through San Antonio and Austin, binging on nitrous oxide canisters to spectral visions of Julianne Moore whispering his name. Along the way, Jake explains the effects of the drugs he's done--not only on his body but on his soul--and at the same time lampoons an America that pretends, against all reason, that drug use is the province of the weak and the socially outcast, while simultaneously getting high and profiting off of it: an America in which drug use is not just a part of the American mainstream, but may be one of the only sane responses to the American mainstream.
The contemporary heir of William S. Burroughs's classic Junky, J. R. Helton's novel Drugs shows us--through sly wit, deceptively powerful prose, and the unmistakable ring of truth--a side of America that most of us allow to remain hidden in plain sight.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Completely disappointed
Basically this book is a very surface account of the drugs he did and what they did to him. That's it. No revelations. No connection to the reader. No insight. Nothing. I'm not sure how I made it through the whole thing.
Drugs
This book is awful. It is so cliche and provides nothing original or thought provoking.