Holloway House’s decision to delay publication of Donald Goines’ first manuscript Whoreson until after Dopefiend frustrated the just-out-of-prison writer then, but viewing Dopefiend as Goines’ debut is ideal when looking at his oeuvre. Whoreson is best viewed like a popular writer’s early, usually unpublished works: It’s soaked in its influences (Iceberg Slim and presumably, confessional works like Soul on Ice) and is really only of interest for the half-formed ideas that would later come out whole.
The strange thing is, Goines wrote them within a year or so of one another–Whoreson was written in prison, Dopefiend was already outlined by the time of his release—and they were published only a year apart, Dopefiend in 1971, Whoreson (as well as Black Gangster ) in 1972. It’s conceivable that Whoreson got caught up in edits and revisions over at Holloway House. Though it was accepted for publication before Goines was even out of jail—the contract is dated October 19,1970—it was probably in no condition to be sent out to the masses.
Dopefiend was typed-up by Goines’ sister and as Eddie Allen notes, Goines’ sister found “her brother’s spelling and sentence structure [to be] quite the horror” (115). And so, early on Goines essentially had two people drastically reworking his books. One book is really good, one book isn’t that good. The not-so-good one was edited by Holloway House, the good one was edited by sister first and then, Holloway House. You figure it out.
Authorship is a non-issue when it comes to Goines. Primarily because there’s just no specifics out there, no manuscripts, or existing correspondence between Goines and Holloway House. But also because Goines is a means-to-an-end writer, hardly a prose stylist, and the best aspects of his books are apparent in how things occur, in narrative structure and character arcs (or lack thereof) and so, mulling over his syntax—which early on, may not have been his syntax at all—is essentially a waste of time.
Still, there’s something fascinating about the discrepancies in quality between Goines’ first manuscript and second, and it’s an excellent aid in investigating what makes Goines so great. When you take a writer that’s not taken seriously very seriously, it’s an uphill critical battle, and being able to point out their lesser work helps a lot. Whoreson is basically the kind of reckless pulp many associate with Goines, while Dopefiend is something much more.
In terms of publishing order, it’s very possible Holloway House was aware that one book was better than the other and it could explain why Dopefiend came out before Whoreson. Interestingly, a noted author following up a telling, defining debut with an underwhelming sophomore effort puts Goines in the company of many great authors.
It’s also worth pointing out that the differences in quality between his first two books hardly mattered to the buying public: The sales figures for Dopefiend were 88,276 books sold and Whoreson, 80,753 books sold, if a letter circa 1972 quoted in Allen’s book is to be believed (142).
Dopefiend hits the ground running. There isn’t a better introduction to the gritty world of Goines than the first chapter of Dopefiend. It’s all right there, starting with drug-dealer Porky and his dogs and quickly moving to the sensory details of a his apartment—the smell of blood, the mix of garbage and bodily fluids on the floor, Jean’s pus-filled abscess. It’s a gleefully sensationalistic introduction but it also leaves the book nowhere to go, which is a good thing.
Goines will pay-off our more lurid expectations–to paraphrase Chekhov, if you promise dogs that fuck women in the beginning, it better happen by the end of the book—but the ugly details of the next nearly three-hundred pages is essentially more of the same. What’ll change is the context, he’ll introduce us to these characters, they’re all given some kind of backstory and page-by-page their addictions will become both singular and one big lump of dependence.
That the book begins at the bottom introduces the palpable sense of inevitability in every Goines book, but one that’s especially notable in Dopefiend because it defies so many of the “story of addiction” narrative conventions. This is perhaps, Dopefiend’s most impressive feat: That it takes the same trajectory every drug addict novel and memoir takes (because addiction is predictable) but doesn’t feel that way. It doesn’t feel that way because Goines focuses on a group of characters, who are of varying degrees of addiction. There’s Smokey and the many inhabitants of Porky’s heroin house, then there’s Teddy, an addict well on his way to the bottom, and there’s his girlfriend, Terry, an innocent. And there’s also all the regular-ass friends and family that suffer from their loved ones’ addictions.
The structural brilliance of Dopefiend comes in the way these these differing trajectories all interact. There’s no conventional “fall”, there’s no inescapable plunge because that’s where the book begins. Even Teddy and Terry aren’t pure, Teddy’s a full-fledged addict at the book’s beginning and Terry’s imminent addiction will not bring them together, but separate them. Heroin is not fun or cool in Dopefiend.
This point can’t be overstated. Joy doesn’t exist in Dopefiend and Goines, perhaps because he was so close to the drug he was writing about, hardly even dwells on the awesome euphoria of the drug. Nearly everyone in the book is just trying to not get sick. Nearly every interaction is financial: How much money is needed to stave off sickness, how much something can be sold for once its stolen etc. It adds a strange, in-quotes reality even to every “friendly” relationship in the book.
We understand and accept Porky’s motivations for getting Terry strung-out, but every interaction is that cynical. The night after yelling at Terry, Teddy’s regret is phrased this way: “He silently cursed the night he had been so high he’d forgotten how nice it was to have the use of Terry’s car.” (93). One hundred pages later, Terry is finally brought to hooking and the pregnant Minnie can barely “hide the pleasure she felt”–Terry’s good looks would bring in enough money to support both habits (193).
Though it’s doubtful that it was Goines’ intention, Terry’s absurd psychological regression (really, the only problematic thing in the book) at the book’s end is especially silly given the insincerity of everybody in the book. The doctor describes Terry’s “guilt” for playing a part in the suicide of “a friend” (279), but Goines has spent hundreds of pages calling attention to the double and triple talk and backwards bending motivations behind nearly every interaction. One could stretch it into an example of Terry’s innocence, but it seems more like a thread Goines just didn’t weave into the rest of the book.
Still, the final scene with Terry, childlike, her parents devastated, nearly succeeds because Goines totally sells it. And he’s able to sell it because unlike most drug tales, Goines never sets-up a “square”/”hip” dichotomy. There’s a moment, after Terry’s fired from her job for stealing, when her mom even “laugh[s] self-consciously at her own ignorance” about drugs and when the truth’s revealed, it’s rooted in a parental denial (127). This is contrasted by an earlier scene with Teddy’s family, who are well-aware that he’s, in the words of his sister, “nothing but another dopefiend” (61). These are people with a stake in their children’s lives–not clueless, unhip squares.
The other “square” treated not only with respect, but as essentially, the only truthful character in the book, is Terry’s ex-schoolmate Billy. Billy’s almost too perfect, his dialogue’s written like he’s from Leave it to Beaver or something (“That sarcasm doesn’t become you, Terry. You really have changed in the past few months.”) but his perspective’s dead-on and he’s revealed to be hip to addiction because of his own brother’s descent (76). Given the nature of the book, the established nihilism even this early on, one expects Billy to try to molest Terry or something—instead, he’s just disgusted.
Interestingly though, Goines doesn’t entirely let the “squares” off-the-hook. Particularly fascinating is the scene late in the book where Teddy’s sister has him arrested for stealing her check from the mailman (whose naivete is also exploited) and Teddy’s mother gets her to drop the charges. She cries out, with the same “logic” as nearly every mother of an addict/enabler: “Dear God, Jesus. I’d rather see him dead than in here like this. I can’t stand it, Jesus. I just can’t stand it.” (233). Even here though, there’s a kindness to Goines’ implication—she’s only described as “stubborn”–because we see where she’s coming from and because heroin isn’t a bad-ass ride or anything, Teddy’s immediate tumble back into the routine of drugging is pathetic (233).
There’s also a subtle implication of white society throughout Dopefiend as Goines often highlights the small, but notable ways society benefits from the actions of addicts. All the stolen stuff in the book is sold to local businesses or even to one’s neighbors for cheap. When Terry begins hooking, both of her johns are whites, the second of which, is a stereotypical nerd who lies about how much money he has in his wallet (202-203). Teddy and Snake’s lawyer is an aged, white shlockmeister who tries to hustle them out of an extra two-hundred bucks (213). Porky is jumped as he’s delivering his monthly payola to the police and after he’s stabbed, one officer asks if the money’s there before checking on the wailing bloated dealer (258). Goines continues this in many of his books, as often white people are shown to be particularly brutal and lecherous. Unfortunately, too much has been made of this by critics eager to connected Goines to the deeply politicized black literature of the time.
What is much more revolutionary about Goines’ work is his incorporation of a black middle class into a narrative that doesn’t need it. That his investigation into social strata doesn’t stop at “poor blacks” and “rich whites”. Terry exists not only as the cliched “Good girl” necessary in every harrowing account of addiction, but also as a comment on how inextricably tied, due to institutionalized racism, the black middle-class is to the black under-class and underworld. How it is much more conceivable that Terry could easily meet a Teddy because she is black. This is as much Goines injecting autobiography into his book as all of those ugly details of addiction.
But, these tangent are the byproducts of a focused, non-Romanticized drug narrative. Rather than rope in bigger ideas or over-arching comments on this or that, they leak out of a multi-character addiction tale. Nobody’s a symbol and heroin’s never turned into a means to some bigger, end. Of all the patterns to pull out of Dopefiend, the one that occurs the most is references to characters’ bowels and farting and that’s kinda perfect. Early on, the reality that Terry’s hanging out with “that dopefiend-ass bitch” Minnie make the constipated-from-addiction Teddy unable to focus on “trying to have a bowel movement” (56). Terry farts at the sight of heroin on page 118, and Porky’s associate Dave does the same in the middle of a rather tense drug deal on page 186.
This focus on the body is about as down-to-earth and simple as a writer can get. Though it sounds strange, it’s the perfect example of what Dopefiend does so well: Break addiction down to the ugliest, least ideal functions and leave it at that. This ability to turn small details into big ideas while not reducing them to symbols may be specific to Goines and only Goines. Heroin isn’t a symbol for anything, as it so often is in other tales of the drug. It isn’t a metaphor for innocence lost—Terry and Teddy aren’t some urban Adam and Eve—or a way to investigate friendship and it most certainly isn’t transgressive or “hip” as it was and continues to be in so many works of art.
SOURCES CITED:
-Allen Jr, Eddie B. Low Road: The Life & Legacy of Donald Goines. St Martin’s Press: New York, 2004.
-Goines, Donald. Dopefiend. Holloway House: Los Angeles, 2005.
Okay. Finally. Sorry about the delays. Whoreson essay will still go up on Friday, February, 26th. There’s plenty here I missed, so feel free to send the conversation in a direction different than my essay’s…-b
Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader?
OK, I can see how Terry's break down was a bit silly but kind of believable. That image was pretty horrible. Can you imagine if some one attempted to re-create Minnie's suicide in film or even a graphic novel? I love that Dopefiend is visually loaded. All stories do not need to be packaged and wrapped in a happy ending but this story could have used a moral victory. This reminds of the novel City of God, where you hope some one gets a W because the tragedies are continuous.
You hit the nail in head about the relationships around drug use in this book. They're interdependent, quick, convenient and also a huge drag. The way Terry eventually despised Minnie is something many people often experience once they outlive their usefulness. Porky relished the power in his position but often appeared to be dependent on the users, his drug connections, and the cops. In a sense he was really powerless despite his size and status. You quickly got the sense that Terry, Snake and the other guys were aware of the dynamics of their interdependence. Even in death they used each other to get a hit.
Btw, Billy isn't too perfect. I know him, grew up with him. He was the main character in Large Professor's "Watch Roger Do His Thing."
Vee (Scratch)
16 Feb 10 at 7:27 pm
Yeah, Terry's reversion to a childlike state at the end was a little melodramatic. But if I walked in and saw a woman had hung herself, forcing her unborn child's head out of her, and I slipped and fell in her afterbirth, I might, at least, have a little PTSD.
I agree with you that Goines' depiction of heroin use,probably based on his own familiarity, is very ordinary and unromanticized. We get to experience a little of the initial euphoria through Terry, but it doesn't last long. And there's none of that Velvet Underground-ish feeling "just like Jesus' son" here. It's difficult imagining someone like Charlie Parker's habit being hip and transgressive when you picture him farting because he needs a hit.
In spite of all the degradation brought on by its subject matter, I think the book has a lot of heart. Goines explores the lives of all of these characters empathetically. I even kinda felt for Porky when the junkies beat his ass and took his payoff money. He's short of breath, his knees are giving out, the cops don't give a fuck about him; they're just looking for the money. But when Porky gets his revenge, I just hated him all over again.
Anyway, you touched on a lot of interesting things but I'm getting long-winded here. Great essay, though. It's great digging into Dopefiend like this.
brad
16 Feb 10 at 9:33 pm
brad, at NO point did I feel sorry for Porky, even when he got his a** beat.
PTSD yeah and a whole bunch of nightmares.
Vee (Scratch)
16 Feb 10 at 11:46 pm
Vee-
Again, I think it's the lack of *real* editing but the conceit is as much she feels guilt for it, for her friend. I think her character would buy into all this, etc. but it's just a bit too much in a novel that somehow has ahold of itself even when a girl is making it with a dog.
(Imagining this too graphic, weird, Paul Pope illustration of Minnie's suicide)
Totally on-point about Porky. He's co-dependent too. He found a way to get respect and like, occupy himself. There's a cool part that I wish I could've found some space for in my essay where one chapter ends with Teddy, etc needing dope and the next chapter begins with Porky needing dope.
Also note, and it's a weird thing really, that Goines doesn't let any of the characters except for Porky keep doing their thing. Like, so easily, Terry couldve just ended up in the web of addiction, but he has to in his own fucked up way, redeem her. Teddy gets shot, etc.
Goines' genius I think though, comes in his ability to do/say so much with simple things like parallelism, etc. He doesn't employ symbols or other kinds of even vaguely high brow literary things, he just uses like point and counterpoint.
Not sure the Roger comparison is apt though, ha.
Brad-
As Vee suggested too, Goines sells the Terry regression enough that it doesn't derail the novel and apparently, it works for others.
There's so many legendary/hilarious/sad stories of Parker and heroin, often recounted by the same people who took up the drug because of him–yeah, I know what you mean.
Goines isn't a bohemian and though he was middle-class, he didn't see the world through these trangressive lenses that the Beats or Parker or Lou Reed did and it showed. He probably knew a lot more heroin addicts, for lack of a better way of putting it, "real" heroin addicts–quite different from Burroughs, etc. basically trustfund kids.
I think Goines cares for sure. He's very empathetic, he sees how and why peopel take this road and it bums him out. He's also something of a sentimentalist.
I agree with you that Porky's robbery is really well-done. Note how it's the same tone Goines takes describing Teddy's last moments and Minnie's suicide. The text sorta slows down, gets kinder, sadder.
Porky wailing like a bitch is especially horrifying. It also is an affecting moment because it pulls you out of the junkie world where cops have power over guys like Porky.
Maybe it's a difference of perspective, but to me, Porky's revenge just makes sense.
I do think he's loathsome for the way he slowly kills off his henchmen though.
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