Drug Themes in Fiction/Annotated Bibliography-Post World War II
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
POST WORLD WAR II
Works (not listed in original)
| Author: | Algren, Nelson |
| Title: | The Man with the Golden Arm |
| Publisher: | Doubleday, New York |
| Pages: | 343 pp. |
| Date: | 1949 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Heroin; Social problems |
| Annotation:Heroin addict Frankie Machine is a Purple Heart veteran who finds survival difficult in the drug subculture of post-war Chicago. Grim realism and stark descriptions of drug addiction. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: negative. | |
| Author: | Baldwin, James |
| Title: | Another Country |
| Publisher: | Dial Press, New York |
| Pages: | 436 pp. |
| Date: | 1962 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | 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. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: negative. | |
| Author: | Burroughs, William |
| Title: | Junkie |
| Publisher: | Ace Books, New York |
| Pages: | 157 pp. |
| Date: | 1953 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Heroin; Life styles |
| Annotation:A relentlessly realistic story of a heroin addict's life and the drug culture surrounding him. Although some information about addiction clearly departs from fact, this is written in a tough, objective style that places addiction under the jeweler's eye. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: neutral. | |
| Author: | Burroughs, William |
| Title: | Naked Lunch |
| Publisher: | Grove, New York |
| Pages: | 255 pp. |
| Date: | 1962 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Life styles |
| Annotation:A surrealistic novel about the underground culture of drug addiction and homosexuality, told with a fragmented style which approximates drug hallucinations and fantasies. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: neutral. | |
| Author: | Burroughs, William |
| Title: | Nova Express |
| Publisher: | Grove, New York |
| Pages: | 187 pp. |
| Date: | 1964 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Life styles |
| Annotation:Told in the manner of an hallucinatory interplanetary cops-and-robbers story with the Nova Police tracking down the Nova Mob in a futuristic drug-ridden society, this novel takes Burroughs' macabre humor about addiction and homosexuality into a dimension of social criticism and parody. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: neutral. | |
| Author: | Burroughs, William |
| Title: | The Soft Machine |
| Publisher: | Grove, New York |
| Pages: | 182 pp. |
| Date: | 1966 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Life styles |
| Annotation:Burroughs applies an even more surrealistic literary technique in this novel than in Naked Lunch the content is a series of drug hallucinations related not by content, but by style of narration. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: neutral. | |
| Author: | Burroughs, William |
| Title: | The Ticket That Exploded |
| Publisher: | Grove, New York |
| Pages: | 217 pp. |
| Date: | 1967 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | 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." | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: neutral. | |
| Author: | Ellison, Harlan |
| Title: | Gentleman Junkie |
| Publisher: | Regency Books, Evanston, Illinois |
| Pages: | 160 pp. |
| Date: | 1961 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Social problems |
| Annotation:A collection of short stories dealing with juvenile delinquency and street gangs, but incorporating the world of drug addiction, particularly in the title story, which vividly depicts the pain of addiction. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: negative. | |
| Author: | Ellison, Ralph |
| Title: | Invisible Man |
| Publisher: | Random House, New York |
| Pages: | 439 pp. |
| Date: | 1952 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | 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. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: negative. | |
| Author: | Isherwood, Christopher |
| Title: | Down There on a Visit |
| Publisher: | Simon and Schuster, New York |
| Pages: | 318 pp. |
| Date: | 1962 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | 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. | |
| Author: | Kerouac, Jack |
| Title: | The Dharma Bums |
| Publisher: | Viking, New York |
| Pages: | 244 pp. |
| Date: | 1958 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Experiential mode |
| Annotation:The story of two peripatetic denizens of the West Coast drug culture seeking enlightenment through Zen Buddhism captures the ambience of a social era in the '50's perfectly, including the drug culture. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: positive. | |
| Author: | Kerouac, Jack |
| Title: | On the Road |
| Publisher: | Viking, New York |
| Pages: | 310 pp. |
| Date: | 1957 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Experiential mode |
| Annotation:This picaresque novel moves across the U.S.A with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarity as they search jazz joints, crash pads, dope dens, and interstate highways for new ways—chemical or spiritual—to get high. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: positive. | |
| Author: | Kerouac, Jack |
| Title: | The Subterraneans |
| Publisher: | Grove, New York |
| Pages: | 111 pp. |
| Date: | 1958 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Experiential mode |
| Annotation:This story of a love affair between Les Percepied, the writer's persona, and a young black girl is punctuated by drug trips and sex experiences typical of Kerouac. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: positive. | |
| Author: | Kerouac, Jack |
| Title: | Vanity of Duluoz |
| Publisher: | Coward-McCann, New York |
| Pages: | 280 pp. |
| Date: | 1968 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Life styles |
| Annotation:This novel traces the "coming of age" of the author in the '30's and '40's—his initiation into the hip culture in New York, his casual introduction to drugs, and his passionate attachment to youth. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: positive. | |
| Author: | Mills, James |
| Title: | Panic in Needle Park |
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York |
| Pages: | 212 pp. |
| Date: | 1966 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Life styles |
| Annotation:When the supply of heroin in New York is drastically curtailed in 1964, two young junkies are caught in the "panic" and search the world of addicts for a fix. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: negative. | |
| Author: | Selby, Hubert, Jr. |
| Title: | Last Exit to Brooklyn |
| Publisher: | Grove, New York |
| Pages: | 304 pp. |
| Date: | 1964 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Life styles |
| Annotation:Although the book is principally about the sexual underworld of New York, it also explores the drug use and addiction prominent in that seamy life of violent survival. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: negative. | |
| Author: | Trocchi, Alexander |
| Title: | Cain's Book |
| Publisher: | Grove, New York |
| Pages: | 252 pp. |
| Date: | 1960 |
| Format: | Novel |
| Descriptor: | Heroin; 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. | |
| Viewpoint towards drugs: negative. | |