If I hadn’t seen and adored the film, I’m not sure I’d like this the same way. This novel is completely entangled with the strange and enigmatic life of Burroughs himself, inextricable from the murder of his wife and life long addiction. The film, I think, does an excellent job of taking the emotional core of this quite indecipherable text and allowing it to robustly stand alone, whereas the novel, written by Burroughs as though he had no other choice, could never do such. It is brilliant, though, capturing Lee’s fracturing soul and desperate clamours for connection with an unsettling honesty the reader cannot turn away from.  

Lee watched the thin hands, the beautiful violet eyes, the flush of excitement on the boy's face. An imaginary hand projected with such force it seemed Allerton must feel the touch of ectoplasmic fingers caressing his ear, phantom thumbs smoothing his eyebrows, pushing the hair back from his face. Now Lee's hands were running down over the ribs, the stomach. Lee felt the aching pain of desire in his lungs. His mouth was a little open, showing his teeth in the half snarl of a baffled animal. He licked his lips.