12-07-05
I haven't told anybody. It would be absolutely self-defeating for me to do so. After six weeks, the average day is both thrilling and terrifying. It's all very precarious. I like how Algren puts it in The Neon Wilderness: " The mulatto with the heroin still wandering curiously about the corners of his brain stood silently before the mike, his eyes on that unpossessed twilit shore." I've read four short stories by Algren now and I'm convinced that no other writer writes addiction so well as he. Algren tells it like it is, but also doesn't assign blame. Quite the contrary, he paints these desperate souls into their corners and let's us know exactly how it feels like to be holding the paint brush. Of course some of us knew long ago, before ever picking up a book like this.