This book wasn't at all what I expected. Junkie lit, no matter how good, can't help being formulaic. Those Mission Impossible episodes where Barnie play-acts the sweat-soaked terrors of withdrawal represents one end of the continuum. French Connection 2, Panic in Needle Park, Trainspotting, the dirty cottons of William Burroughs' oeuvre, and so on, nod off along various parts of this continuum and we know every station of this cross. It's part of our folklore.
I don't know exactly what the junkie is in our folklore-literature but I do know he is a very important archetype. I say 'he' because though the female of the species exists, she has a different meaning that I haven't quite worked out. Girls getting their own are rare in literature, though in real life they are far more efficient. All this to say that junkie lit has certain elements in it that are as predictable as a Betty and Veronica comic. And we want these elements. We wait for them as surely as we wait for the crucifixion in a passion play.
Trocchi's book subverts all of this. He cops, he shoots, he scores. But Pilate never comes and neither does the great withdrawal, which for this kind of epic serves as the journey to the underworld. Nope. He keeps himself in dope and replaces the crucifixion with the work on the scows where he is is towed out to the sea to sit adrift with just enough until the he is returned to the harbour. His job is to maintain the scow without toiling to tow it, unload it, or anything of that sort. He drifts, and these parts of the book bracketed by the onshore world of copping, shooting, negotiating, copping, shooting, become strangely beautiful. Hence the underworld is a beautiful sea-borne limbo wilderness wherein Cain makes an imperfect peace with the realities of what have him living by the dropper.
Though I never got the impression he could leave this world, the whole thing left me with an odd sense of hope. ( )

If you ever want to dissuade a teenager from heroin, give them this book. Said teen will wander back later, hand back the book, and ask,

"Are junkies really this boring?"

Yes. Yes, they are. ( )