Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Dopefiend is a phenomenal, devastating book. It's far better than the three novels by Donald Goines that I've read up to this point. Never Die Alone was OK, but was too short and sketchy to have much of an impact, and the first two Kenyatta novels--which Goines wrote under his "Al C. Clark" pseudonym--read more like black-oriented versions of the "men's adventure" pulps that littered newsstands throughout the '70s than they did ghetto realism. Dopefiend seems more autobiographical, and there's a compassion for his characters that I felt was missing in his other books. That's not to say that Goines spares his characters any suffering--this is one of the most miserable narratives you will ever read--but I got the sense that he knew these people and cared for them, even if there was no hope for any of them.