Permanent Midnight

by Jerry Stahl

His byline appeared everywhere, from L.A. Style to the Village Voice, from Esquire to Hustler. He penned scripts for twisted cult classics like Cafe Flesh and Dr. Caligari. He banged out shows for TV mega-hits like Moonlighting, Twin Peaks, and thirtysomething. But even when Jerry Stahl was making five grand a week, he was shooting six. Careening from his luxury home to L.A.'s more hellacious neighborhoods, he financed a heroin habit that brought on the soothing hiss of oblivion, while it stole his health and smashed his career. Until in a private apocalypse straight out of Day of the Locust, Jerry Stahl kicked smack and emerged clean.

A searing, strung-out confessional in the lineage of Lenny Bruce, William S. Burroughs, and Hubert Selby Jr., PERMANENT MIDNIGHT chronicles one man's slide into the opiated abyss and his claw-marked ascent back into the light--heralding the return of the Urban Hipster to contemporary literature, infused with savage humor and relentless intensity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Addiction, Biography, Drugs, Biography Memoir, Humor

371 pages, Trade Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Jerry Stahl (born September 28, 1953) is an American novelist and screenwriter, He is best known for the darkly comedic tale of addiction, Permanent Midnight, which was revered by critics and an ever-growing cult of devoted readers, as one of the most compelling, contemporary memoirs. A film adaptation soon followed with Ben Stiller in the lead role, which is widely considered to be Mr. Stiller’s breakthrough performance. Since their initial paring, the two have become lifelong friends and collaborators.

One of Stahl’s mentors and greatest influences, the late American Novelist, Hubert Selby, Jr. had this to say about Permanent Midnight, “Absolutely compelling... Permanent Midnight is an extraordinary accomplishment... A remarkable book that will be of great value to people who feel isolated, alienated, and overwhelmed by the circumstances of their lives.”

Jerry Stahl has worked extensively in film and television.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Permanent Midnight sets its tone in the first few pages, beginning with its author - Jerry Stahl - wearing a diaper to soak up the blood from his bleeding, post-op testicles. From there it descends into a story of debasement and self-loathing that is one of the finest and most enjoyable memoirs I’ve read.

Permanent Midnight is a crazy, strung-out taxi ride though a life where a near unquenchable addiction met a salary almost big enough to slake it. This is no rock’n’roll I-took-lots-of-drugs-and-went-a-bit-far memoir. This is a dirty, life ruining, career ruining story where the profoundly negative impact of Stahl’s substance use on his life is never far from the reader’s mind.

This is a fascinating tale of a motivated man who combined a powerful work ethic with self-hatred and drug abuse. Jerry Stahl is a guy who would go for regular jogs, but would blast himself with a dose of speed beforehand so he could run faster. He regularly got into work early so he could prepare an intravenous breakfast speedball and sterilise his needle with the office bottle of photocopier cleaner. This is a guy who started out writing for adult magazines and on porn films and became a successful screenwriter in the eighties, pulling down five large a week at his peak. Remember ALF? Stahl wrote for that show. Moonlighting? That one too. And he hated all of it, with a self-loathing passion that fueled his habit.

We see Stahl (who is Jewish) befriending a neo-nazi drug dealer (complete with Swastika tattoos), taking his baby daughter along to heroin deals, flaking out in a toilet during an important production meeting, and explaining the strange, perma-long-sleeved life of the injecting drug user. He lives a tightrope double life of public success and secret squalor, blowing his relationships and opportunities for genuine, meaningful work while he pumps out dross for the shows that employ him. There’s no happy ending here. Stahl doesn’t cheat his readers with false redemption, rather he records his descent in full, and gives us the full trajectory of his dissolution.

The bestselling story of a drug addict’s fall from the top to rock bottom (and back up again after the publication of said bestseller) is a publishing cliché, but Stahl’s story transcends the genre. What separates Permanent Midnight from the masses of such stories is Stahl’s ever-present dark humour. Stahl possesses a sharp wit, an eye for his own absurdities and the writing chops to bring seriously funny moments into an otherwise grim tale - I was genuinely appalled by his story almost as often as I laughed aloud, and I laughed aloud a lot.

This book is a real ride, and I’ve not read a more memorable story of addiction and its consequences. Permanent Midnight, is an important work in the drugs-ruined-my-life genre, right up there with Burroughs’ Junky.

[Ryan Leone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago, I had a great job working as a media broker for a major television network. I was also heavily addicted to heroin and crack. So here I am going to network meetings in L.A, nodding in and out, and trying to balance both lives simultaneously. One of my best friends told me that my life was remiscent of a guy named Jerry Stahl and reccomended the Ben Stiller film, Permanant Midnight. I really identified with it.

Fast forward a few years later and I am jobless, scoring in East L.A, and selling large quantities of heroin. I got busted and was hauled off to federal prison for four years. I rememebered the movie and knew that it was a also a book. So I had my dad order it.

Jerry Stahl is one of the genuine talents of his generation. The book blew me away. I'd classify it as a literary memoir, Stahl really flexes his writing muscles and tells his story in a refreshingly honest way. It wasn't self-indulgant as some reviewers have lamented. This was an indictment on the materialistic, ego-driven, who-do-you-know, world of Hollywood. This guy knows what he's talking about and it seems that some readers have mistaken his sincerity for something they don't understand because they haven't inhabited the world he desribes.

Another complaint that reviewers seem to have is that his story somehow lacks validity because he was given so many opportunities for success. The fact of the matter is that he is a great writer. He attended Colombia University and worked his way from a seedy Hustler magazine job to writing for various television programs. He earned the opportunities presented to him. And heroin addiction doesn't discriminate... It can sink its claws into you no matter what socioeconomic class you are part of. Addiction is still just as horrific and the struggles are just as arresting.

Humor really makes this memoir standout as the masterpiece that it is. Humor is the last coping mechanism that an addict has, after all of their other emotional responses have been stripped away. When I was an addict I made everything a joke, no matter the degree of damage I was inflicting on myself. When I was arrested, when I contracted hepatitis c, when I had to get a puss-filled abcess lanced; it was all something to laugh off. The majority of memoirs about drug addiction are overly morose. They talk about the misery and never make light of it. Consequently, they lack emotional honesty. This memoir examined addiction and was sure to point out its absurdity when it was needed, all done so in this dark satirical way, that any true junkie will find humor, truth, and comfort in.

[Ann M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book captures the love affair an addict has with drugs. This book oozes love -- no matter what Stahl says about how ugly it was, he was in love with it and you can hear how lovingly he describes his awful behavior. He remembers every last detail as if he kept a scrapbook. As if he loves it still, the glamor (in the old-fashioned sense of having a spell put on you) of the powerlessness and the high. He was making a lot of money, which lessened the dangerous aspects of being a junkie. He was treated with respect by his suppliers because he was such a good customer. He didn't have to mug anybody. I think the love affair is something that non-addicts don't grasp, how much devotion an addict has to his addiction -- somewhere between love and religion. Maybe that's why 12 step programs emphasize trust in higher powers -- because addicts are already devotees. Lacking a stable personal center, they make the switch to something positive, spirit. Anyway, I see a few middle-class addict friends in him. It's sad.

It's also a good look at how Hollywood works for writers. I admit I skipped some of the personal laments to look for more on the industry. Interesting. His addiction was mostly ignored as long as he produced work, and one surmises addiction was not that uncommon, although coke might have been more popular than heroin. (I have an inside source for this info.) An enabling culture. He says "real writers" get a great deal of respect in Hollywood. The sangfroid of his agent made me laugh, telling him to turn the phone around -- the agent called while Stahl was so wasted he was talking into the wrong end. So, nobody was exactly surprised by drugs. And we wonder why Hollywood entertainment has gotten so bad.

[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

10/2019

I always wanted to read this, because Stahl wrote for Moonlighting and that is my all time favorite TV show (the way probably only a show you loved when you were 10 can be). And it turns out that he worked on multiple shows I was familiar with because of my young age in the late 1980s. This is actually a well written memoir, but very much about drugs. You know, shooting heroin on the set of Alf and Moonlighting and everywhere. I am not generally horrified by drug use, but injecting heroin multiple times a day until your veins collapse is so disgusting. Jerry Stahl got over it and is alive now.

[Andrew]

I like this a lot. I do not like it as much as I would have 20 years ago, but I do like it more than I would have liked it 10 years ago.

At 16, I would have placed Jerry Stahl alongside my heroes of the time, Kerouac and Burroughs and Hunter Thompson and all the rest of the edgelord druggy boy writers. I aspired to me an edgelord druggy boy writer, but I was just stuck smoking schwag out of Pepsi cans in the rural Midwest. But god would I have found Jerry Stahl to be fucking cool.

At 26, I would have deemed Jerry Stahl to be an embarrassing boomer from an impeccably upper middle class background, a successful screenwriter who was liable to still throw around words like “hepcat,” who glamorized his own traumas and consequent bad decisions. Someone barely above the guy who can’t shut the fuck up about seeing Quicksilver Messenger Service at the Cow Palace in ’67.

At 36, I deem Jerry Stahl to be both of those things and neither of those things, a guy who has been through the ringer – and I’ve had enough people close to me go through the same ringer at this point – someone who can occasionally trigger an eyeroll but who seems fundamentally kind and decent and empathetic, and a damn good writer, and often viciously funny.

[Jennifer Nelson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Received from FirstReads giveaway...
Every memoir of substance abuse seems to be described as stark and harrowing, and this is no exception. It's also no exception in that it was numbingly repetitive. If there had been a few more interesting anecdotes and a few less almost identical accounts of actual drug use, it would have held my interest better. I get it's a book about drug addiction, but it begins to feel more like the author is trying to relive that part of his life, one high at a time. Either that or he's using the "shock the reader and they'll think it's genius" technique.

[Hudson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another disturbing tale about drug abuse along the lines of Requiem for a Dream and Trainspotting. This was a fun read for such a dark subject, the author had a pretty good sense of humor and it comes through in his writing. Plus it was interesting to read about heroin addiction in someone who was a quasi celebrity and had tons of money.

Heroin, don't do it!

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, brilliant and I'm not one for flattery.

I have an incurable chronic illness that has taken me to hell (many times) and heaven (once...it was nice). Over the last few years, the only people I've found I can relate to in any way, in literature and life, so far, are: heroin addicts, those who have fought in wars and victims of the AIDS crisis.

My favourite writers by far are the ones who can write about the depths of human suffering with a self-awareness and as much sense of humour as you can lend the situation without belittling pain or making it one-dimensional. To me, the ability of a writer to do this is the sign they have truly been there - when you've lost everything, not just once but over and over and over - everything life gives you from then on feels absurd and well...just too weird to get pure maudlin over. If you don't laugh, well, you...

I think a person has to go through some version of total Buddhist ego-death to be able to write like this. Many books I've read featuring passages of human pain and suffering ring so hollow and whiney. Sure, addiction itself is one of the most selfish things a person can spend their time on, and Stahl's writing is hardly far from narcissistic - but he's also not so attractive when he's telling us about shitting bile in his friend's broken-into garden, or remembering to buy an aerosol of Right Guard on the way to babysit his infant daughter to mask the smell of cooking up in the bathroom.
Once you been there, it doesn't take a lot to be honest - because let's face it, now you've faced your demons and them win, showing them to the rest of the world is a piece of pie. But it does take a lot to get there.
A LOT.

If you enjoyed this, I would wholeheartedly recommend User by Bruce Benderson - darker, yes, and fiction, yes, but there are some passages about drug use and AIDS that are so eloquent and cutting it's hard to imagine that Benderson hasn't been there in some form.
Cookie Mueller's (of John Waters' fame) essays and short stories are also brilliant examples of what I'm trying to get at - try the one about the birth of her son, Max, in Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black.
Another book that shows the absurdity of suffering, for me, is The Living End by Stanley Elkin. At the time of reading, I did not know the novel was in part written about his own experience with MS but I couldn't read it without relating Elkin's tableau of Hell to my own personal hell.

I normally take my books to charity shop the second I've finished them, but I think this one will hang around a little longer.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure why I'm continuously drawn to books by and about junkies but here's another one to add to the list. Jerry Stahl's memoir "Permanent Midnight" is a tragicomic tale of addiction. His story takes place in Hollywood in the 1980's and 90's. His career has gone from writing pornography for Hustler magazine to writing episodes of ALF, Moonlighting and thirtysomething. It seems that the more out-of-control his heroin habit becomes, the more he is in demand. Until it all crashes down around him. Sarcasm, snarkiness and self-loathing abound.

Among the laughs and misery, there are plenty of squeamish moments, some of which were a bit too much for me. Repetitive descriptions of the rituals of shooting up tend to go on too long, too often. While I can openly laugh at Hunter S. Thompson's description of stumbling around Las Vegas in the depths of an ether binge. Mr. Stahl's lurching down the sidewalks of L.A., though played for laughs, seems more deserving of revulsion. I did sympathize enough to get engrossed in the story, but would have appreciated fewer gross-out scenes. I'll be interested to see the movie, starring Ben Stiller, to see how it is interpreted for the screen.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listen, this book might be brilliant (thus the three stars), but I won't know anytime soon, because the audio edition is a trash fire. For some reason I will never understand, the producers decided to layer the spoken text with the constant whining drone of an electric guitar, occasional feedback and all. Sometimes it's mixed so poorly all you can hear is the guitar. I made it 12% through before remembering that I was going to die someday, and straining to pick the words out of guitar soup was not how I wanted to spend my few and precious days on earth. Maybe I'll eventually pick this one up in paper.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aquí hay mucha tela que cortar. Jerry Stahl partía la pana en Los Ángeles de los ochenta. Publicaba artículos en las revistas más importantes del momento (Esquire, Playboy, Hustler), escribía guiones para películas de culto o conocidísimas series de televisión como ALF, Luz de Luna y Twin Peaks. Aparentemente, no podía ser un tío de mayor éxito pero la millonada que ganaba iba directamente a sus venas en forma de drogas. Todas las imaginables. Era un adicto. Estas son las memorias de una adicción y mucho más. Hay muchos chutes y muchos camellos y mucho mono pero también hay mucha humanidad. Stahl describe muy bien el abismo de las drogas, la espiral de escritura, toxicidad, sexo, traición y locura en que convirtió su vida. Pero también es un acercamiento a su infancia y a la gente que le rodeaba. Y es en estas lides donde su narración maestra por precisión y belleza y por un sentido del humor brutal alcanza el zénit. En la preciosa edición de Malas Tierras destaca la excelentísima traducción de CE SANTIAGO (así, en mayúsculas). Sin su oficio y documentación, los lectores en castellano no nos habríamos enterado de la misa la mitad. Honestidad brutal.

[Benedict Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

Passages of this book were amazing. Funny, Sad, brainless and thoughtful, all at the same time.
But...
This book didn't go anywhere. I really had no idea where Jerry had got to by the end of it. I suspected that he hadn't really got anywhere. It felt like it was written as a step on his journey towards recovery. But we weren't told that.
Instead we get description of trip after trip. Often lovingly described. It reminded me of William S. Burroughs book Junk, in that it was full of self-delusion dressed up as confession.
And it's sameness stopped being entertaining. I found myself preferring to read documents from work rather than returning to Jerry's book. Yet everytime I did return to the book I was amazed a how much I enjoyed every page. Then I realised, I would enjoy any one page... but 40 pages in a row and I'd get bored of the cycle. Take drugs, get into funny situation, realise what a stupid position he was in, try to clean up, fail, repeat... for pages and pages.
No wonder it took two months to read. I kept putting it down and not want to pick it up again.

[Jennie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hail Jerry as the next William Burroughs.

I wanted to place a few quotes here but found that I would pretty much be listing most of the novel!

Jerry's book Bad Sex on Speed led me to this memoir. He talked of being a junkie too well and was kind of relieved to find out he had been one. I held onto this book; dragged it out like the perfect night or last beer.

Jerry was a script writer for the famous 80s tv shows Moonlighting and Alf. He did drugs so he could cope with work; a first for me in a memoir dealing with substance abuse. I was both fascinated and pitied his struggle.

Fabulous journey, addictive in itself. His description of himself, his surroundings and emotions caused me to lose a few hours sleep hitting the next chapter. Brave, raw, dirty, sexy, sexual and desperate. Must read!

[Guillermo · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Aquello era Hollywood Boulevard. Aquello era los Estados Unidos de Reagan. Había legiones de deficientes mentales espasmódicos y con las perneras meadas que bajaban la calle colocados y despotricaban para sí. La diferencia estaba en que... yo era uno de ellos. La gente me miraba y yo devolvía la mirada, las caras eran tan irreales como la de un muñeco de plastilina»

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book left me cold a number of times. I know exactly why. I know what the pain point is. I had a father with terminal alcoholism (that's what I call it now. Like terminal cancer. But not. Terminal addiction, instead). And the passages about loving his daughter was when my attitude to the book took a turn. Gasoline on embers. The persistent problem of an unwillingness to understand, or an inability to; empathizing instead with grimaces, set jaws, gritted teeth, the psychological brace position of loved ones.

This next comment is going to sound shallow, but I was mulling this book over in a shopping centre. A monolithic shrine to the new fucking religion that exists in every major region. And it is now becoming common for me to have what I term an "existential crisis" in them, but could probably be more accurately referred to as heightened anxiety. Sometimes it blossoms into more, but not often. And I am standing there in a store going through fucking racks of discounted shit and jingle bell rock or similar is playing over the store audio and stampeding through my brain and there are people fucking everywhere and they are so fucking LOUD and everything is LOUD and why do people keep running into me and a quiet voice in my brain says "None of us were made for this. Where the fuck is the opt out button?" And I look around, look for a reassuring set of eyes, someone who will smile ruefully, who will give an indication that anyone else finds this WHOLE THING incredibly ridiculous. That I'm not insane. I catch sight of myself in a store mirror, my face looks pale and doughy. I slip my sunglasses over my eyes. A woman asks her boyfriend if she looks too old to wear the plastic bangles by the counter. The quiet voice in my brain is shrieking now, "Don't you get it? These are just shiny things to distract us from the fact that we are all fucking dying." My skin is prickly. I've contained it for maybe only five minutes, but maybe more. I walk out. I keep walking. I start to feel embarrassment at my own reaction, giggle nervously at myself. And the voice returns, "Maybe I should buy a bottle of wine. It's been a long week." And the inner stillness is there to meet me and it says, "If you felt like that - like you couldn't stand your skin - every second, could you become like Jerry?" Maybe this book helped me past my pain point. That's all I'm saying.

[Martin Brezina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book felt like the work of a mad genius—at times convoluted, but never boring. While addiction autobiographies often focus on childhood, this was mostly about his inability to stop, despite hitting a new low every 25 pages. The style was excellent; I even caught myself narrating my own day in Stahl's voice.

[Marti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This certainly has a deserving place in the canon of cautionary heroin literature (Junkie,Songs They Play On The Radio, Wonderland Avenue etc.). There are many cringe-worthy scenes that had me grimacing on the train. However, I think those are necessary because I cannot imagine anyone reading this and thinking: "Gee, heroin sounds fun!"

Beginning his writing career with artistic pretensions, Stahl finds himself making $5,000 a week writing dialogue for shows like Alf, Thirtysomething, Moonlighting and Booker (stuff he considered "schlock" and which came about via a marriage of convenience arranged by a British woman producer who wanted to become an American citizen). For a while he is able to pull off his dual life ie. morning meetup with a scary looking ex-con at 5:00 am in a seedy McDonalds for some dilaudids; then, off to a writers meeting in Century City.

And yes, it gets much worse before it gets better. But through it all, you can't help but laugh out loud. Stahl is a great writer with a gallows sense of humor to which most people born before 1990 will relate (he has a pretty funny desciption of a lunch party Cybil Shepard threw for the writers of Moonlighting to which he made the horrible mistake of wearing white socks with a lime green suit. A mistake because he injected himself in the foot during the party and spent the rest of it trying to hide the blood stain).

As might be expected, Stahl came from an unusually dysfunctional family. Though affluent, he was the only Jewish kid in a blue collar town outside of Pittsburgh. Then suddenly he was sent to the opposite extreme, a boarding school for the WASP elite (where he says he learned to do drugs). His father, a judge, ends up asphyxiating himself in the garage with the family car. 30 years later, the mother still insisted it was an accident.

All in all, I had a hard time putting this down, although toward the end, there were a few things I thought could have been shortened (a relationship with a girl he met at rehab in Phoenix and several more relapses). He reaches the end of his dope thanks to celestial intervention of the LA Riots (which he was too out-of-it to notice at first). And that's where the narrative ends with no denouement or any sort of afterword.

[Ruthiella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across this title in a magazine article about novels and books that encapsulate California – and in the case of Permanent Midnight, Hollywood and Los Angeles. Having lived L.A. adjacent for much of my life, I was curious to read it.

Jerry Stahl grew up in Pennsylvania, became a freelance writer, moved to NYC and then to Cincinnati to write for Hustler. The Hustler job led to relocating to L.A. and eventually to Stahl’s writing for T.V. shows. From his early teens he used drugs to self-medicate (probably depression - the book suggests that both his parents suffered from this as well) and this lead to a full blown heroin addiction supplemented by other drugs which he nursed through his career and in his role as a father to a small child. It is a harrowing story of both self-loathing and longing for the annihilation that heroin provides…until it doesn’t anymore.

I appreciated Stahl’s honest, vivid and often funny depiction of his messed-up life. I found structure was a little confusing, bouncing from one time in his life, then going back, then forward again and maybe it was a little overlong in parts. It is hard to tell because there is often a lot of repetition in this type of experience with quitting and relapsing and quitting and relapsing. The book ends abruptly but in a sense that works because addiction never ends. One might stop drinking, smoking, shooting up, [fill in the blank], but I don’t think the urge ever really goes away.

[K Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel slightly dishonest giving this a 2-star rating because I didn't actually finish the book. But that's the point. It's not often I start a book and don't give it the opportunity to be read completely before I judge it. However, this book was far too much like ≈my link text">The Night of the Gun. Do they hang out together? Did they hold swap notes? Hold hands? I couldn't take another self-satisfied writer too interested in their gonzo journalism style than the substance of the book.

The opening put me off in the first instance when he was moaning about being a hack for Alf and other TV shows. Oh, poor you. You landed a job many people would just about kill for - and because you married your way into it, so it was even easier than slaving away for years, like some people no doubt do, to get there - and you weren't happy.

I thought instead I'd watch the movie but I couldn't bring myself to waste another two hours of my life watching Ben Stiller pretend to be a junky.

[Mediaman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable. This guy thinks he's really cool and hip, writing for Village Voice and Hustler, doing a porn movie, then drinking, sleeping, and drugging his way through Hollywood sitcoms. It's a sad, sad story of the kind of people that produce pop culture crap we read and see.

It's so poorly written that I had to skip parts, it was just too frustrating to have a loser brag about his horrible lifestyle and think his glib comments were insightful. They're not. Some will defend this way-too-long rambling of 370 pages as being a cautious tale of what not to do. But to the end Stahl flaunts his disgusting choices, acting like being drunk, overdosed, arrested, violent, cheating and lying is a badge of honor. And sadly in Hollywood (or publishing circles) it probably is.

[Kel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me almost 200 pages to reach a point in which I wanted to finish this book, but once I did, I was all in. It took me almost 200 pages to become interested in the life of an self-deprecating, insecure, unlikable drug addict. But this addict, who addresses everything with a dose of dark humor and an overall air of “who gives a fuck”, eventually made me want to know where he ended up even if I didn’t really like him. Underneath it all, an intelligent, interesting man, who never really felt like a man, managed to piece his addiction together and present it with an incredible level honesty. An honesty that I can’t help but appreciate and, in a way, admire.

[Matt Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stahl was a heroin addict. He also wrote TV scripts for "Moonlighting" and "Alf". When you come off heroin, so says Jerry, everything (and he means everything) hurts: showering, breathing, etc. Alf deserved better than Jerry gave him, but Jerry has since cleaned up and recently wrote a thinly-fictionalized version of Fatty Arbuckle's life that I've been meaning to read forever.

[Zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best junkie memoirs ever written, style, Stahl has so much damn style..

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jerry Stahl is as unlikable as he is compelling. Early in the book, he describes his unique dating methodology of picking up a compulsive German performance artist, renting a hotel room with her, and taking black tar heroin like a dog would take its temperature…all of which leads to frenzied, narcotics-induced sex. Interestingly, somewhere between the hotel room and the final scene, the one where Stahl is cleaning himself of his own vomit with a stranger’s garden hose after kicking his habit cold-turkey, Stahl wins your affections. It’s no morality play, but Permanent Midnight is no flippant carnival ride with the living dead either. If you read carefully, Stahl’s memoir is grounded by a serious ethical subtext about suffering, adulthood, and self-possession. It’s less about addiction and more about the addict, or at least the rare addict capable of admitting that, “I never stopped to consider the morality, personal or otherwise, of what I was up to” (39).

I didn’t think I would care for Permanent Midnight, considering I’m not a fan of the guttersnipe cultural criticism found in Howl, Naked Lunch, and elsewhere. Maybe it’s because I’ve never lived in a big city, or maybe it’s because I can barely suffer through a sulfide hangover (let alone the corporeal onslaught of harder drugs), but I can’t psychically hang with the angelheaded hipsters or understand their Weltanschauung. Stahl undoubtedly descends from these writers, evidenced when he writes sentences like, “there are stories you don’t want to tell, and there are stories that scald your brainpan right down to the tongue at the mere thought of uttering. But you can’t NOT. Even if you wait until your skull is nothing but a charred and smoking husk, the truth will still be in there, squirming.” It’s all there in Permanent Midnight: the macabre, the drugs, the physical and psychic deformities, the angst. But that’s not all there is, which is why it’s worth the read.

Two themes and Stahl’s witty writing propel the reader through the book. The most important theme is Stahl’s emotion irreconcilability with his deceased father. He writes:

“I hadn’t intended to explore the link between my father’s exhaust-pipe passing and my own, more lugubrious stretch of suicide. But I see now, before I can get to the fruits of my toxic hobby, I’ve got to get down to the roots. This kind of self-exploration stands out as wholly antithetical to the life, or, more accurately, the life of the mind on drugs.”

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill postmodern navel-gazing. It’s honesty intelligently delivered. In one passage, Stahl addresses the schism between his intent and his behavior, his emotional distance travelled and the distance to come, and, most importantly, the impact of his father’s actions on his own life. Stahl suffers greatly because of his relationship with his parents, his deceased father and his depressive mother (another character for whom suicide is a variable in the calculus of life). He incorporates the parental theme early in the opening section of the book, empathizing with his mom, “now I don’t begrudge my mother her torment. It’s the one thing we have in common” (32), and addressing his father’s absence in the following manner:

“Our house, after his death, became a museum of Dad-dom. His gavel, the flag they wrapped his coffin in, folded up neat and triangular in the army style, pictures of him at various milestones of his career. City solicitor, attorney general, federal judge.” (32)

It doesn’t take Lacanian witchcraft to understand that a man of Jerry’s father’s stature casts a long shadow. Because of his father’s relevant public service positions, Stahl is constantly dismissive of his own career as a pulp writer in the Los Angeles magazine and television industry. He writes of the contempt he has for the ‘lubricious pap’ he grinds out (54). He adds later, “I just didn’t give a fuck…How could I? My father cared. He struggled. He believed in something. He had goals…and what did it do for him?” (66). The thematic richness of Stahl’s commentary on his father supersedes the shock value that comes with the wild choices Stahl makes in the throws of addiction. It invests the reader in Jerry Stahl and his message, which is important early on, considering he’s already wearing a diaper in the opening paragraph.

The other theme found in Permanent Midnight is redemption. The book has a very straightforward plot: Jerry Stahl is addicted to heroin, and it gets worse before it gets better. The reason why it gets better is incredibly compelling, and Stahl is the first person to acknowledge that it was not because of some Herculean effort on his part. He says:

“You see, I already knew I’d never stop on my own. It would take an Act of Nature. An Act of God. Some Dope-us Ex Machina to blast out of Nowhere and pluck my ass from this dope-laden quotidian into some new way of life. Which, thank you Darryl Gates, turned out to be just what happened.”

Jerry Stahl kicks his habit in the middle of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The story’s conclusion doesn’t take long to transpire, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in beauty. Stahl, removed from society in the liminal space of some stranger’s garage, burns with the city. He describes the cramps and nausea and guilt, but, more importantly, he thinks:

“Maybe that’s all this was…All everything that led up to this moment in the dirt ever was, preparing for a meeting with the dead. Preparing to see my father. My father, who I have not let myself miss. Who I have never mourned. Who is, even now, I think, watching my every move, shaking his head, furrowing his brow at the sad dynamic that drives his boy to just get worse…” (383).

At any given time, Permanent Midnight is unpleasant, immoral, and graphic. But it does something that, in my opinion, other depictions of a similar lifestyle fail to do. The ending of the story rewards the reader like it rewarded Stahl, the mud-caked man who finds a hose to clean himself off. We can fail to pick up the mirror, we can succumb to the temptations of cleverness or unconsciousness, or we can wait it out, all the while trying to figure out who “we” are.

[Jim Pownall · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the author. I like the idea of this book. I like the film -- was something I watched regularly whilst drunk a few years back. I want to love the actual prose of PM. I just... I don't like how the author never stays on topic for what seems more than a paragraph. It jumps around so suddenly that sometimes I had to reread a page to figure out if I'd missed anything or not. Because of his comedic writing style, this jumping around can really throw you off and then often a plot point is completely lost. It seems an attempt to be funny was more important than story-telling. I love funny books, but the humour, in my opinion, needs to be a bonus of a great story. I feel like the story wasn't really there. (I know some fans of PM will disagree and that's OK. Different tastes, etc.)

I want to read this again someday. And maybe I will. I've got this huge hardback edition and it's quite uncomfortable to read, and the font is horrible. Maybe I'll grab a paperback and that'll be nice/will fix a problem or two for me. It pains me to not like this book because, during university, Stahl inspired me to write.

I will continue to buy Stahl's books, but this one (his most famous book) isn't for me.

[M.liss · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t love this book. It’s not the best-written thing I’ve ever read. Jerry Stahl says some kind of questionable shit about women and people of color. Surprise, he’s not, like, a super-great person. And I had a problem with the ending, leaving him standing there, bedraggled and triumphant, like some junkie Andy Dufresne.
But! I did kind of love this book. I find these memoirs of addiction so compelling. I’m captivated when someone looks back on the self-made hell they survived. I admit it – part of my fascination is just the utter depths of depravity and the absurd situations people get into when they are just addled with drugs. I can’t look away.

[Alberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

En la línea de escritores politoxicómanos como Burroughs o Hunter S Thompson o el "Corre rocker" de Sabino Méndez. Tiene adaptación al cine protagonizada por Ben Stiller (Doble vida: Permanent Midnight, 1998). Parece mentira que un yonki como este que se lleva a su bebé a pillar droga tenga la lucidez suficiente para escribir así de bien. Y la edición es perfecta, plagada de notas que explican las múltiples referencias de la cultura norteamericana desconocidas por estos lares.
Le falta redondear la historia, no se llega a cerrar del todo y tiene un final algo abrupto.
Un clásico ineludible para amantes de la literatura de las drogas duras.

[Beth York · Rating 3 out of 5]

honest, gritty and an authentic window into the exhausting dance between addiction, sobriety and the acts endured to experience the supreme, rock bottom and the beautiful.. in both worlds.

[Arianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

An honest and graphic addiction memoir, laced with dark humour. Very well written.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprised I didn't like it more, since I LOVE addict memoirs and this is supposedly King Shit of that genre. The jive talk was weird and it's overlong. Great shooting up stories, though!