What was it that Anna Kavan [author of “Julia and the Bazooka”] liked about heroin? It was the blunting of her own awareness…I have never read a better account of this blunting, deemed desirable by her, than in her short story “Fog.” Told in the first person, it describes how she drives a car under the influence of heroin: “I felt calmly contented and peaceful, and there was no need to rush. The feeling was injected, of course . . . helping me to feel not quite there, as if I was driving the car in my sleep.”