I find Burroughs to be the most serious of the holy trinity of Beat Generation authors. Kerouac was the frenzied energy, Ginsberg the sensitive soul, and Burroughs perhaps the darkest and least romanticizable among them. Junky, like most stories in the "drug lit" genre, starts out exciting and fun but quickly twists into a grim, fallen-from-grace story that sinks further and further down with every page.

Do yourself a favor: get the 1977 edition, the one with Allen Ginsberg's introduction but without the deleted material edited back in. It really helps to give a historical context for the text, a means of transporting yourself into the most receptive frame of mind for this literary curiosity. 

3 stars out of 5. There is often a sort of beautiful poetry in the early sections of this voyeur's tale of a seedy underworld that's fascinating to hear of but terrifying to visit. But later on, maybe two-thirds through, it gives way to mostly journalistic writing, short "just the facts" sentences and descriptions as the plot grows repetitive.

(Read in 2017, the tenth book of my Alphabetical Reading Challenge)