Drug Themes in Fiction/Annotated Bibliography-The Disillusionment of the 1970's

1305971Drug Themes in Fiction — The Disillusionment of the 1970'sDigby Diehl

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF THE 1970's


Author: Anonymous
Title: Go Ask Alice
Publisher: Avon Books, New York
Pages: 187 pp.
Date: 1973
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Social problems
Annotation:Based on the diary of a 15-year-old drug user, this novel chronicles her bizarre drug encounters and her struggle to escape the pull of the drug culture which feeds both her need for drugs and her anxieties.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.




Author: Burroughs, William, Jr.
Title: Kentucky Ham
Publisher: Button, New York
Pages: 194 pp.
Date: 1973
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Social problems
Annotation:A fictionalized autobiographical account of experiences with heroin, speed, paregoric, Desoxyn, and Dilaudid by the son of the author of Naked Lunch.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.





Author: Corley, Edwin
Title: Acapulco Gold
Publisher: Dodd, Mead, New York
Pages: 329 pp.
Date: 1972
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Escapism
Annotation:Based on the hypothesis that the government is about to legalize marijuana, this novel follows the steps a major tobacco company and an advertising agency go through to prepare for the sale Of their new product: "Acapulco Gold".
Viewpoint towards drugs: positive.




Author: Didion, Joan
Title: Play It as It Lays
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York
Pages: 214 pp.
Date: 1970
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Escapism
Annotation:The actress heroine of this Hollywood novel struggles through a bizarre life on uppers and downers, eventually watching her best friend die of barbiturate overdose in her arms.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.





Author: Douglas, Michael
Title: Dealing or the Berkeley-to-Boston-Forty-Brick-Lost-Bag Blues
Publisher: Knopf, New York
Pages: 222 pp.
Date: 1971
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Escapism
Annotation:A student at Harvard flies to Berkeley to score marijuana for a Boston dealer. This turns into a comic chase with a funny cast of collegiate characters getting caught in a narcotics raid with 40 bricks of marijuana.
Viewpoint towards drugs: positive.




Author: Farina, Richard
Title: Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
Publisher: Random House, New York
Pages: 329 pp.
Date: 1966
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Experiential mode
Annotation:The story of a student's picaresque travels across the United States and into Cuba, where marijuana and peyote experiences play a regular role in the life of the hip sub-cultures he visits.
Viewpoint towards drugs: positive.





Author: Gent, Peter
Title: North Dallas Forty
Publisher: Morrow, New York
Pages: 314 pp.
Date: 1973
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Escapism
Annotation:The story of the last eight days in a professional football player's career details the use of drugs by the team as stimulating and pain-killing agents as well as drug use by the players for escape from the harsh life of physical punishment that they live.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.




Author: Norman, Gurney
Title: Divine Right's Trip: A Folk Tale
Publisher: Dial Press, New York
Pages: 302 pp.
Date: 1972
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Hallucinogenic experience
Annotation:A latter-day Kerouac tale of a hash-inspired vision which sets off a hallucinogenic trip across the U.S.A. in a "day-glow" painted VW van which ends with a "return to the earth" on a Kentucky farm.
Viewpoint towards drugs: positive.





Author: Herlihy, James Leo
Title: The Season of the Witch
Publisher: Simon and Schuster, New York
Pages: 384 pp.
Date: 1971
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Escapism; Social problems
Annotation:Told as the diary of a 17-year-old runaway searching for her father, this novel explores the use of drugs in the counterculture as escape from painful realities and social surroundings found untenable.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.




Author: MacDonald, John
Title: Dress Her in Indigo
Publisher: Lippincott, New York
Pages: 255 pp.
Date: 1971
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Social problems
Annotation:Travis McGee, "salvage artist", follows a dead girl's tracks to the drug freak scene in Mexico, where she spent the last months of her life.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.





Author: McCune, Ned
Title: The Gateway
Publisher: Dell Publishing Company, New York
Pages: 203 pp.
Date: 1973
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Social problems
Annotation:A novel about a banker who goes on a methedrine bender on the weekend and slips over the edge of reality into paranoid hallucinations which end up in a violent finish in which he dies.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.




Author: Michener, James
Title: The Drifters
Publisher: Random House, New York
Pages: 751 pp.
Date: 1971
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Social problems
Annotation:A 60-year-old financier follows six young people around the world; one of them is Monica, the drug-addict daughter of a British ex-colonel. A survey of the youth scene, including, inevitably, drugs.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.





Author: Steward, Ramona
Title: The Possession of Joel Delaney
Publisher: Little, Brown, Boston, Massachusetts
Pages: 279 pp.
Date: 1970
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Hallucinogenic experience
Annotation:The witchcraft possession of Joel Delaney by a spirit, Tonio, after an LSD experience, criss-crosses social and drug themes in a story of psychological complexity.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.




Author: Thompson, Hunter
Title: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Publisher: Random House, New York
Pages: 231 pp.
Date: 1971
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Reality
Annotation:This fictionalized story of a journalist's trip to Las Vegas on a variety of uppers, downers, and hallucinogenics provides a distortion screen on which the bizarre world of gamblers and tourists is projected with impressively vivid literary technique.
Viewpoint towards drugs: neutral.





Author: Tidyman, Ernest
Title: Shaft
Publisher: Macmillan, New York
Pages: 188 pp.
Date: 1970
Format: Novel
Descriptor: Social problems
Annotation:A black superhero private detective grapples with heroin traffic, black militants, the Mafia, and the evils of a white world in general.
Viewpoint towards drugs: negative.