The shortest so far from the 5 other Sandman volumes that i've read. This volume is a collection of four stand alone stories that explains some aspects about the Endless namely Dream and Death. Although not a continuation of the Sandman storyline, still it offers readers a lot in regards to the over all scope of this monumental Sandman series.

Calliope - a short story about a struggling one hit writer Ric Madoc and his obsession to reach top form again, doing so he receives a present from cult filmmaker Erasmus Fry, in the form of a muse, whom he abuses and rapes after drawing inspiration from her and writing bestsellers, directing movies and unto the peak of success. Until Dream, who is the muse's former flame, escapes from his captor and decided to free up his muse and gives Madoc a lesson or two about not having any ideas at all.

A Dream of a Thousand Cats - an imaginative tale that shows a gathering of cats and their dream of a world where cats are the masters and human as its servants, a frightening possibility that one feline speaks of, if only all the cats in the world will believe that it is the case ever since the beginning of time.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - won the World Fantasy award for best short story, tells the story of William Shakespeare and his wandering theater troupe and it's performance in front of an audience that looks like not any audiences they have played for in the past.

Facade - is a short story related to another Sandman volume, the Kindly Ones. Former superhero known as the Fury, Lyta Hall now lives in almost seclusion. In the end with the help of "Death" her powers becomes the solution to how she will be freed.

Although i really want to read this volume because i was so curious about Midsummer Night's Dream, although it turned out quite well, i can say my favorite is "Dream a Thousand Cats", the artwork is creepy, the theme so dark and the message frighteningly chilling.

While Calliope reminds me of people who would sell their soul, in exchange for a burst of creativity, makes me wonder who among us right now has a muse somewhere hidden in their bedroom whom they keep imprisoned and abused. Yes another creepy tale.

Plus the inclusion of the sample script by Neil Gaiman will teach you a thing or two about how to write and imagine a story that is ought to be written as a comic book.

All the more makes this a must read for everybody.

William S. Burroughs' first novel "Junky" (originally titled "Junk") is a fictional narrative, but was heavily based on facts of Burroughs' real life experiences with junk addiction, junk being (opium or any derivatives of opium, morphine, heroin, marijuana etc.).

One can say "Junky" follows the path of the normal "autobiographical fiction that characterized the Beat Generation writing". But unlike Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" , "The Town and the City" and "The Dharma Bums", Burroughs' "Junky" narratives was concentrated heavily on one aspect of his life, which was his own drug addiction.

It's not really what you can call autobiographical, but sort of early day "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" i can imagine Hunter S. Thompson having "Junky" in his mind while writing his legendary book with regards to the effects of Drugs into having hallucinatory dreams.

"Almost worse than the sickness is the depression that goes with it. One afternoon, i closed my eyes and saw New York in ruins. Huge centipedes and scorpions crawled in and out of empty bars and cafeterias and drugstores on 42nd street. Weeds were growing up through cracks and holes in the pavement. There was no one in sight".

It's a book about a particular phase in William Burroughs' life, an accurate portrayal of the junk world and all the characters that got involved in it, the most candid, eye popping account of an underworld that is a taboo to Americans back then, it is an honest assessment of a man's relationship with Junk as Allen Ginsberg wrote in the afterword.

"no attempt at self-exculpation but the most candid, no romaticization of the circumstances, the dreariness, the horror, the mechanical beatness and evil of the junk life as lived".

*****
Junky opens with the first person narrative of William Lee ( Lee being Burroughs' mother's maiden name ) of the very first time that he got introduced to junk just about the latter part of the war ( 1944 or 1945 ). It then goes on with the usual telling of getting used to injecting junk in his system, meeting underworld characters like drug peddlers, hustlers, thieves, pimps and other form of "lowlifes".

To his experiences as a drug peddler himself, in this way Lee get to earn money to support his junk addiction, hustling drunks on trains ( which they refer to as "lush" ) where they will sit beside a sleeping lush target with Lee reading a newspaper and his cohort Roy would put his hand behind Lee's back and reach for the pocket of the "sleeping lush".

"The car was almost empty and there we were wedged up against the mooch with twenty feet of empty seats available"

To summarize it all up it was as Ginsberg wrote "a systematic history of the events of a habit, the cravings, the jailings, the night errands, the day boredoms"...

From hustling croakers ( term for doctors ) to write scripts ( drug prescription ) for morphines, picking lush pockets along different avenues and train stations of New York, William Lee's junky phase will take him to Texas, New Orleans and eventualy running away from the law unto Mexico.

It's more of a window to the persona and soul of a person with a drug habit,
Burroughs at the same time insists that Drugs is not a habit forming drugs, that virgin drug users will take at least 4 months to develop withdrawal symptoms, nonetheless all the characters he wrote tells us that Junk is Junk, it either leaves you lifeless and lost forever depending on substance and chemicals to bring life to your tormented cells.

******
I enjoyed reading this book, the book gives me an accurate portrayal of a person deeply hooked in drugs, it has a serious overtone especially its about someone who wasn't born to be a loser, Burroughs' background is superb, he went to Harvard, studied and lived in Europe and came from a decent family, it shows how vices or drug dependency can hit almost anyone. And William Lee's narratives gives us with all honesty and a brutal characterization of what life is about when you put yourself in such seemingly un-escapable situation.

This is my first Chuck Klosterman book, I've read it a few months ago and I'm just making the review right now. Don't know what to write whether I enjoyed it or what. It definitely shows some promises and I heard "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto" is the book to read if you really want to discover Chuck's writing talent.

nyway here's a bit of the rundown about his book "Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story".

It was conceived as a sort of documentary book about death with emphasis on the deaths of rock and roll icons. With this path Chuck Klosterman embarks on a road trip across the United States visiting the places of famous death sites of rock and roll stars. Suffice to say he at least visited some sites particularly the NY hotel where Sid Vicious stabbed and killed Nancy Spungen and Sid Himself died, the highway where Duane Allman died in a motorcycle crash, the site where the plane carrying members of Lynard Skynard crashes, Kurt Cobain's Seattle home, the lake where Jeff Buckley drowned, the club that burned killing a hundred people at a Great White show and of course Graceland where the King died.

Apart from tackling what he perceives as death being more advantageous to these figures, thus citing Jeff Buckley's death made his debut album "Grace" from average to something of a "must have" album. Buckley's drowning made him a rock icon from an ordinary good musician.

But the twist if ever there's one is when Chuck Klosterman becomes sort of Charlie Kauffman in "Adaptation" wherein he incorporated himself to the book, the supposed to be death documentary now becomes a sort of memoir of Chuck's experiences with his present and ex-girlfriends. A development that gets annoying sometimes but to his credit he wrote at the first part of the book

"“Well, the larger thesis is somewhat underdeveloped” and by the end, I had my co-worker telling me, “Please don’t write a book about women you used to be in love with,” and when I asks why not, she replies by saying, “Because that’s exploitative. And narcissistic. And a bit desperate.”

Which is what the book became...Chuck Kloster man at his narcissistic stage, can be very well be humorous at a number of occasions and I think that is the only thing why this book belongs on my shelf. I admire his sense of humor and his writing style is something to envy about.

But still, Klosterman wasted a great opportunity here, I mean road trip, death sites of famous rock and roll stars...too bad all of this ended up in the background as Klosterman ended up writing about himself.

After an injury that he suffered while cutting trees in Boston. Sebastian Junger, a journalist in profession thought about writing a book about the different dangerous occupations in the United States. Living in a nearby fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts writing a non fiction book about the events that transpired during the great storm that hit North America in 1991 become the obvious choice.

And the result is "The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea". A narrative account about the preceding moments and the days that followed after the doomed sword fishing boat "Andrea Gail" set out on its fishing journey.

With veteran fishermen who spends more than 10 months on the high seas each year, coming home only to unwind at the local favorite watering destination the Crow's Nest. Junger introduces us to the characters led by Billy Tyne, the captain of the Andrea Gail along with the ship's five other crew members who would suffer a mysterious fate at the very eye of the Hurricane Grace.

Sebastian Junger captured every details about what is life as a fisherman, the rich maritime history of the industry in Gloucester, thematics about fishing and sailing and even the last thoughts that crowds the head of a person about to die by drowning.

Readers will learn to care for the doomed characters to the point that you'll hope for their eventual safety even though its common knowledge that the Andrea Gail was never found and presumed to be swallowed by the sea.

A feeling of abruptness comes while Junger is narrating the events after the Andrea Gail's last radio message, the possibilities of what happened makes it more poignant as it leaves the readers a mystery of the unknown only the real life crew of the Andrea Gail have experienced minutes before their impending death.

The way Sebastian Junger wrote and researched for his material is well applauded, by countless interviews with family members and friends of the crew of the Andrea Gail, he was able to clearly write a narrative that describes each character's life previous to the tragic event and each motivation in risking their life for such a voyage towards the end of the fishing season.

The book also details other close brush with death of other ships and carriers in the region where the Perfect Storm hit. Which involves a heroic cost guard's successful rescue of three crew members from a sailboat.

Over-all, The Perfect Storm is a story that grips the readers about the real life horrors that fishermen encounters each day on their job. The characters are well portrayed without exploiting or sensationalizing each motives and memories of what transpired.

With this book, Sebastian Junger was hailed as the new coming of a writer in the molds of a Hemingway and help usher in a zest for a genre called the "macho non fiction".