The article is very sharp and biting, and to those trained to see the stylistic "tricks" obviously a sharp attack on the hypocrisy of those who control the system. After writing about how the media portray the drug scene: the tragedy of the junkie, the kid pusher, bombed-out houses, the plea- faced entourage of the junk-starved, the heroic social worker-he says, "But tragedy submitted to economics becomes comedy for anyone with a strategic and long-range outlook." Then he writes about the great advantages of the heroin trade and heroin addiction to those with this "strategic and long-run outlook." In periods of social crisis, he says, "How,then, to prevent the fabric of society from becoming completely unraveled, does one achieve a reintegration of confidence, a restoration of the faith to fight off internal threats to economic and ideological world goals?" Later he says, "Are there drawbacks to the growth of an addicted population? What about the deaths? To view the deaths of a few thousand children as alarming is to take the short-term view. The deaths are merely a function of the chaos of the market which is growing faster than it can be rationalized....A sort of industrial accident if you will....The deaths have to be written off as one of the social overhead of the New Economic Policy."
Of course, Yurick is speaking as if he were a member of the ruling class when he uses the word, "one." And the statement about the deaths is meant ironically. The trouble was that not all of the students saw it this way. One student said he couldn't be sure where the author stood and thought maybe he was a racist. Another said that he had shown it to two friends in the prison and they both thought the author was saying that drugs were good and so was the drug trade. ("Where else can the unskilled make quick killings?" Yurick says). Another said that people would have grasped the irony better in the early 1970s when it was written but a lot of younger inmates might not see that now.
Now I was there to explain the style to those who did not understand it and to explain that MR was a radical magazine and that Yurick was appalled by the drug business. But the writer does not know who will read what he or she has written or in what context or with what level of schooling and sophistication. So does the radical writer, one who desires a transformation of the social order, have any special obligation to write in manner which would make it difficult to be misunderstood, especially about a subject critical to those actually living in the ghettoes? Some students said yes and some no. What do you think?
michael yates