The white lady

At the Observer Review, some of Andrew Hussey's thoughts on art and heroin, the subject of his new documentary. This is Will Self:

"I think the relationship between heroin and cities, or cityspace, is very interesting," he says. "It has more to do with spatiality, how the inner world of the user connects with the outside word of reality. And what we're really talking about is the psychogeography of heroin. William Burroughs knew this when he wrote The Naked Lunch, the great heroin novel set in the Interzone of Tangier, and Lou Reed knew this. The first Velvet Underground album is essentially a day in the life of a heroin addict in New York City, and a map of where he goes and what he sees and what he feels. And the music sounds like heroin, with its drones and impatient feedback and stuttering words. It's the perfect soundtrack to the junkie life. There is a heroin psychogeography – where to find it, where to buy it, where you can smell it." He goes on: "The point is that heroin users occupy a certain negative space in the world, in society. Burroughs writes in The Naked Lunch how, strung out in Tangier, he could sit and look at his shoe for eight hours. Heroin users don't need to do anything or go anywhere: they just are."

On a related note, I am a huge fan of Let's Get Lost, which I saw because of my friend Phil Nugent's description of Baker in the film as a "junkie vampire".

Closing tabs

Edward St. Aubyn interviewed at the Times (via):

In the English education system, the last two years before university are spent intensively studying a small number of “set books.” Few people — even as slow a reader as I am — are likely to spend longer in the company of a book than an A-level student. The works I studied over those two years were Racine’s “Phèdre” and Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary” for French A-level. “The Portrait of a Lady,” by Henry James; Joyce’s “Ulysses”; poetry by Yeats and T. S. Eliot; and “King Lear” were my set books for English. James’s idea of a “center of consciousness” presiding over a scene, Flaubert’s slogan “le style est tout,” Joyce’s claim that “imagination is memory,” Racine’s austere adhesion to the classical unities and many other aspects of those works became part of the foundations of my sense of taste and, even if I wanted to question them, continued to influence me when I became a writer myself.

Also: the daily routine of Hunter S. Thompson; the career of a human cannonball (FT site registration required).

Closing tabs

Kathryn Schulz on Andrew Solomon's new book. (With bonus citation for "hair-splitters and lumpers," which I was talking about the other day in class - Darwin!)

Cousin George Pringle: featured track of the day.

Marina Harss on flood damage to properties of the Martha Graham Company.

Erik Davis on psychedelic drugs.

Rachel Adams on contemplating the results of a child's IQ test.

Ben Anastas on how to rack up debt and ruin your life.

Wonky webs

At the LRB blog, Nick Richardson on a Wellcome exhibit on the history and culture of mind-altering drugs. No pictures at that site of the webs spiders build on drugs, alas, but I am intrigued by the image galleries. Below: a wonderfully grotesque 1881 image of a "morphinomaniac" with abscesses resulting from subcutaneous injection (close your eyes if you are squeamish!)...

Significant objects

Meerkats and Michael Phelps.

"It's not a narcissistic bath"

Johann Hari interviews Hanif Kureishi at the Independent. A strange and long and interesting piece...