Will: A Memoir

Self (Phone) charges his first-ever memoir with harrowing—and, occasionally, humorous—accounts of drug addiction, primarily to heroin and cocaine. While the author readily name-checks Big Bill Burroughs (Junky), his adventures and suffering crackle with absurdity absent from that Beat Generation bible. That’s not a swipe at Burroughs: his first book was written under far darker circumstances—the accidental shooting of his common-law wife, Joan. Much to his credit, Self shows us everything (emphasis on every), thus defusing any chance of readers romanticizing his buying-and-selling days as an extended hedonistic vacation. The facts of addiction are ugly; guilt and shame as present as needles and opioid nirvana. The horrors of withdrawal cannot be understood by the uninitiated, but Self conveys their affect with existential brutality. From a North London childhood to Oxford, Morocco, to the great Australian outback, to hypocrises—moral and ethical—he explores the complicated relationship between intoxication, risk, desire, and the creative artist. A comparison of heroin’s erasure of fear and tension to that of the author as a child, safe in his warm bed, reminds readers that loss plays a profound role here.