Thursday, May 8, 2014
Drugs and Pills and Shit and Culture and Art and Drugs and Stuff
After having read the Burroughs piece and the Bruce piece, are there any unifying elements to the drug culture that the two men write about and describe? Are there values, qualities, morals that the culture emphasizes? Are there ways in which the two pieces reveal discord and disagreement within the culture? Please make sure to site examples from each piece in your response.
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Bruce approaches the drug culture in a more personal way, embellishing his work with so many different monologues. "condemning voice, guilty voice...etc." Bruce's use of the monologues so may be seen as the result of drug use or as a literary device to show the confusing thoughts within one person, when under the influence. The monologues definitely keeps the readers more connected with Bruce himself, and opens up a new perspective about drugs and narcotics. On the other hand, Burroughs uses first person narrative voice and dialogues in between paragraphs. For me, this piece was definitely harder to follow and understand. Both works make fun of and comment on the strict system and stereotypes involved with the use of drugs. Each of the writers strive to show his use of drugs and to make possible for the reader to vicariously experience their acts.
ReplyDeleteDuring this era drugs were seen as a blinding substance that would force people to do horrible crimes such as murder. I believe that Burroughs and Bruce are suggesting that drugs aren't as black and white as people think they are but the drugs offer some experience that is unlike any other trip. Rather than punishing the people that do drugs these two men are suggesting that it should be an mind opening experience rather than a filthy high. Both laugh at the foolish rules and efforts that the "man" does to keep people from doing these drugs and it is amusing to them that the man thinks these drugs are so harmful to the people when the misconception of what drugs should be used for is which is really the problem behind it all... yeah i couldn't understand what the hell Burroughs was saying but i gave it my best shot...
ReplyDeleteBoth Burroughs and Bruce attempt to tackle the generalizations and misconceptions that the public had towards drugs. These pieces were written during a time when drugs were blamed for everything wrong with society. Man shoots three people, must be drugs. However, the two authors attempt to contradict this, and support the fact that drugs are in fact not as black in white as people make them out to be. Sure there are some hardcore drugs that will mess you up, but there are also drugs that can cause a near harmless, light high. I feel like Bruce really points this out during the dialogue about the young boy who is trying to build an airplane and gets high on the glue. Burroughs' piece is a lot less focused and organized, making it more difficult to understand or locate specific examples. Nevertheless, I think an underlying point in his piece is very similar to the message that Bruce is trying to get across.
ReplyDeleteBoth Bruce’s and Burrough’s pieces are similar in that they try to share with the reader the high that results from drug usage. In Bruce’s case, there’s a clear element of humor that he incorporates to describe the harmless hilarity that ensues from a hit of weed: “He takes the marijuana, throws it in the toilet, rushes to the door—there’s no one there! It’s gone, it’s too late! Beads of perspiration are breaking out on his forehead. Ralph: It’s gone! There’s only one thing left to do—smoke the toilet!” Headaches, the munchies—some descriptions of the actual drug experience are sprinkled throughout the piece, but compared to Burroughs’s, “Pills and Shit” makes a much more concerted effort to offer a thesis, which is that many people who criticize drug usage blow the dangers of drugs out of proportion (and are, in fact, pretty harmless), and that some people are just simply ignorant of the existence of drug usage happening right in front of them. The “message” from Burroughs’s piece, on the other hand, seems to be mainly to share the effect of a trip, and how the mind is altered under the influence. There are some recurring topics—syndicate boards, suppression under the rule of these boards and perhaps corporate America, aliens/far-off planets—but, as we discussed in class, not much is coherent or makes sense at the end. The discordance and disorganization end up revealing his state of mind while using drugs, and his tone in the piece certainly has a dark and edgy feel to it, which also reveals the nature of Burroughs’s trip. While Bruce’s piece has a much more playful tone on the surface, there’s still the underlying mockery that he injects—“Ancient Jews” who work at local grocery stores, for example, have absolutely no clue that the zig-zag cigarette papers that they’re selling so much of are being used for more than just rolling up tobacco: “You heard dot? Marijuana. All dese years I never knew dot. Marijuana. Sig-sag papuhs, marijuana, roll the marijuana.”
ReplyDeleteI think both Bruce and Burroughs, being part of drug culture, advocate drug use. Not for everyone, you know, not like little kids or people like that, but they are definitely presenting drug use as a valid and valuable experience. They both seem to view drug use as a way to fight against conformity, although Bruce definitely has more of a sense of humour and light-heartedness than Burroughs, characterizing drugs as "friendly," or crafting his tone with sentences like "And you're only ten, you bugger!" I mean, even the title, "Pills and Shit," demonstrate a sense of irreverence and nonchalance. With Bruce, there is perhaps a bit of cockiness, or a sense of "What are you going to do about it?" kind of rebellion to the "Man." Perhaps it's because I associate Burroughs with heroin, which is seen as more hard-core/dangerous, and because he accidentally killed his wife, but Burroughs is definitely harder. As we discussed in class, one of the biggest stigmas against drug addicts is that we view them as non-functioning members of society, people who are either completely high out of their minds or suffering from withdrawal. Either way, they spend their time under the effect of their drug use. So I suppose drug culture questions how and why productiveness and human worth is linked. Is the worth of human beings dependent on how productive they are? If someone spends all their time doing nothing, or nothing productive, however we may define that, then is that person worse than someone who works? I may be straying a bit from the two readings, though.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what Burroughs is saying in terms of his content. But as we said in class, I think he tries to create some type of delirium effect with his prose. It's disconnected and disjointed. At one point he talks about Hassan i Sabbah and at the next he mentions the Garden of Delight and the love in slop buckets. Rather than capture the experience of being high, Bruce summarizes the why part. I especially liked the part involving the glue. The kid doesn't get high because he's trying to escape some unfortunate reality, to step away from common culture and rebel, he does it for the physical stimulus. Although this piece may be more coherent, I think both reach the same conclusion. The drug culture does not have one single goal. You can be a part of it so long as you make it your own.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kevan in that both authors try to share the experience of the high one gets from using drugs. I think Bruce does so more explicitly with each specific drug or category of drugs as he moves from one to the next (from marijuana to "dangerous drugs" and so on). On the other hand, the way that I read Burrough's piece led me to surmise that he was quite probably under the influence while writing it. His disjointed sentences and frequent changes in subject matter made it seem that this was all possibly coming from an entirely different physical state of mind. Bruce's seemed more like a stream of consciousness that analyzed and described the drug culture. He commented more on society's view of the drug culture while Burrough was more interested in what the drug culture did for an individual - it could break them free from The Man, it gave them an escape from the mainstream, etc. Bruce also pushes back against the societal conception that all drugs are bad, bad, bad. He does this several times with the use of humor: The drugs aren't dangerous..."They're not, they're friendly."
ReplyDeleteBruce makes me want to do drugs while Burroughs makes me hate drug users. Bruce presents his thesis in a much more clear manner: weed isn't that bad. People won't get addicted, unlike alcoholics who struggle to quit cold turkey. He says that the only argument against weed is that it is a stepping stone to other drugs. Burroughs, on the other hand, writes like a typical druggie and is fixed on toppling "the man." He his thesis is hard to decipher out of the scattered ideas. He's the hallucinogenic, transformed, third-eye possessing, cosmically conscious type. He's much more invested in the drug culture while Bruce is just a level-headed (perhaps more functional) drug user. I would rather show Bruce to my parents than Burroughs. The two pieces definitely show the wide spectrum of drug users. To classify a group of people as "druggies" is a huge generalization, and the two pieces emphasize just how much of a generalization it is.
ReplyDeleteThe 14-year-old Me kind of likes the cut-up form of writing though.
It's a little bit ironic that Bruce, who seems to me the far more rational, sensible, normal person, is the one that died at forty, while Burroughs lived to a ripe old...wait, doing math here...83? It's ironic because, as Michael said above me, Burroughs posits drugs as THE way of life, the essential path that everyone should be traveling. He terrifies us with a picture of big government, a shadowy organization hellbent on stealing all our spirit and love and fun. At least, that's what I think he's saying. Because he also comes off as a complete cuckoo clock. But Bruce emphasizes drugs as recreation, drugs as an outlet for frustrations, drugs as something awesome. He doesn't seem to think the drug scene is the be all and end all that Burroughs (possibly) believes in. And maybe that's indicative of something bigger? The arguments of drug users within their community? About what drugs are really for? Honestly, who knows? Like I said, it seemed like Bruce knew what he was talking about and Burroughs was going off the deep end. But who lived to see the internet? Go figures.
ReplyDeleteLooking at these two articles, I could not stop thinking about the movie called the "Requiem For a Dream". Drugs as a way of leaving the world full of depression, is the common topic of these two writers. We talked a lot about the ways in which different ideas or cultural items were holding the non-comformist communities together, but in this case we have no sense of community and both Burroughs and Bruce agree that the way of live that they pursue is the lonely crusade, but the question is for that? As we sad in class, the "junkies" of sixties were trying to escape reality by creating their own communities in the country, but the people like Burroughs and Bruce see no salvation. Bruce died when he was 40. Burroughs when he was 83. But both of them could as well die at the age of 20 or 30, because they saw no point in the existence in the society, that does not makes any sense.
ReplyDeleteAlthough they discuss similar subject matter, Bruce and Burroughs have very stark differences in how the view the purpose of drug use in life. Both authors speak of the man or the hand and pressure of conformity, however, as Burroughs, describes drugs as a vehicle necessary for freedom where as Bruce describes it more as a way to say "fuck you" to the man. I feel as though without drugs, Burroughs would have died earlier because he would have thought that an unescapable life controlled by "the man" is no life at all. Without drugs as an escape Burroughs would have given up. Burroughs writes about drugs and how they take him to a dark place. Neither the real world of the drug would give him happiness, he makes it seem as though not being trapped if where freedom comes form. Bruce takes more of a light-hearted approach towards drug-culture and drug literature. He jokes in the opening of his piece that there is no dangerous or illegal use of drugs. He treats drugs as more of a small act of rebellion that we have talked about before in class, whereas Burroughs sees it as a necessity for life. Although they use drugs in very different ways, both authors try to break down the stereotype that drug use is dangerous, they are an outlet for frustrations of a way to make you smile.
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ReplyDeleteIf we can look past the delinquency and the detrimental effects of drugs then I suppose we can even appreciate the certain culture it forms around those that do it. Kerouac posits that the beat generation are a distinctly different kind of people and have even invented their own language that acts as some sort of conversational fence. The drugs , I might add , also exists as a fence of some sorts. Keeping the tranquil and civil part of reality and the drunk beepiedie bops on one side. Burroughs does a swell job of painting the portrait of what is going in a person in stupor. There's a feeling of melancholy that he has in that incoherent state but then perhaps the reality they were facing then (Possibility of being drafted to Vietnam was more bitter). Therefore they found this little haven of pills ,pot and some more pot. However , there is no denying that there's a sense of euphoria, fun and sometimes even some trendiness to what they're doing. Nonetheless ,despite the ugly beauty of the drug movement I wonder how it felt for them to come back to reality and realize the ground was still below and that true freedom was like smoke,once gone never to be recovered.I bet they lit one more and just gazed.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest difference between the Bruce and Burroughs pieces is the attitude towards the reader. It's interesting to me that the Bruce piece starts with an exclamatory word; it draws your attention, in that starkly devoted but usually temporary way that exclamations do. The Burroughs piece, on the other hand, makes it challenging even to continue reading. The cut-up nature of the poem is worthy of artistic applause, but not attractive to the attention span. The two poems are not entirely distinct, however. They are unified in the sense that they convey about drugs; in both poems, the words create some degree of an unstoppable swirl of intoxication. Upon finishing either one of them, I felt that drugs were something to be used as a tool of power; either something to submit your consciousness to, or to wield to impress others.
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