"So much of what we know of ourselves is a lousy God Damn lie", maintains the narrator of
The Farm
(1968), the audacious and supercharged final novel by a writer of both prodigal gifts and tendencies toward self-destruction.
is a Dante-esque tour of the levels of hell to be found in a federal drug rehabilitation center and a powerful story of love growing in the most unnatural conditions. It is a stylistic tour de force and one of the most honest and unrelenting novels dealing with drug addiction ever written.