Your Favorite Book Sucks: 'Naked Lunch'
'Your Favorite Book Sucks' is an ongoing column, written by different people, that takes a classic or popular book and argues why it isn't really all that great. Confrontational, to be sure, but it's all in good fun, so please play nice.
Imagine sitting down at a classy restaurant and the waiter slides a juicy steak in front of you. Several of your friends had recommended this place, so you can hardly cut the meat fast enough to get that medium-rare beauty into your mouth. But as soon at it hits your tongue, it’s bitter. And tough. Stringy with tendons. Dirt crunches between your molars as your gag reflex makes your stomach heave.
Sweat beads on your forehead, but you keep chewing because you remember that several food critics have described this as one of the most important steaks of the twentieth century. But after a few minutes of hopeless chomping, you lean over your plate and spit out the slimy wad of flesh. You cut off pieces from different ends of the steak hoping for something palatable, but it’s all the same—maybe even a little worse. Hours later, as you look down at a plate of chewed-up meat, you realize you should’ve bought the steak second-hand off Amazon and saved a few bucks.
That was my experience reading Naked Lunch. Rarely do I need to psyche myself up to read, but I consistently frowned at the prospect of having to slog through another chapter of self-indulgent tripe. As an author, Burroughs reminds me of a deranged vagrant shouting at pigeons in the park—while his slurred diatribe might make sense to himself, everyone else should just keep walking and try not to make eye contact.
Never have I felt so violated after reading a book—and I pride myself on being open-minded. Creepy, prostitute sex? Sure. Shooting heroin into your eyeballs and killing people who turn into insects? Why not. As long as there's some tangible point to what you're trying to say, then say it. There's not a lot that'll shock me, but even my warped mind started to beg for mercy after just a few chapters of Burroughs's aimless, drug-fueled nightmares. And still, having reached its 50th anniversary a few years back, Naked Lunch is still lauded by critics as a masterpiece. (Interestingly, some of the highest-ranked reviews on Amazon admitted things like, "I didn't get some of it," or "You'll have to read it 6-8 times and you still might not understand it," which makes me wonder: if someone tells a joke and nobody but the person who told it gets the punchline, it is still a joke?)
But I’ll give credit where it’s due—this book created a landmark obscenity case that helped to abolish literary censorship in America. (In fact, the “restored text” edition of this book has a chapter on the sordid legal history of the work, and that was easily my favorite chapter to read.) When Naked Lunch was first published, the Judicial Officer for the United States Postal Service deemed it “undisciplined prose, far more akin to the early work of experimental adolescents than to anything of literary merit," judged it as non-mailable under certain legal provisions, and locked away thousands of copies of the book. But this historical and cultural significance doesn’t mean the book is anything more than 300 pages of drug abuse.
I won't complain about the lack of narrative thread or stream-of-consciousness writing style either, as I feel the book warns you about those problems from the start. Characters appear out of nowhere, transform into other characters, and then disappear entirely. The author can go pages where each sentence has nothing to do with the last, habitually punctuating with ellipses (which, as an indication of trailing off, is the perfect fit for Burroughs). Since nothing is linear, this is closer to a collection of short stories than a proper novel, and you can hop around through the chapters with no net loss of understanding—and again, that's not my problem either. These hurdles are right on the warning label, so they aren't damnable offenses. Experiment with styles till you go blind, for all I care.
My beef is with nearly the entire Beat Generation as a movement. As a genre of writing, it feels like a rationalization for the indulgent, hedonistic lifestyle adopted by a few literate drug addicts. Almost 99% of what Burroughs describes in this book would land him in federal prison, but once it was written down it somehow qualified as praisable. It seems like Beat Lit gained traction largely for its gonzo, obscene-for-the-sake-of-itself reputation that rubbed the law the wrong way, and then, with this "bad boy" persona, wormed its way into the American literary canon. Again, you can be gonzo and obscene, but your drug-filled rants have to mean something.
Hunter S. Thompson did something similar with drug abuse and excess in his work, but the main difference between the two is that Thompson had a tangible thesis tying his work together. Both authors seem to yell, "Fuck the system," but Burroughs is so full of heroin that you can't understand what he's saying. I'm not advocating that work be dumbed down so everyone can easily understand it, but if you're the only one laughing at your jokes... you might need to modify your routine.
So there you have it. I love to be proven wrong, so if you have an explanation as to why Naked Lunch doesn't suck, I'd be happy to hear about it in the comments section.
Column by Dave Reuss
Dave Reuss manages Outside Bozeman Magazine. He showcases his work and prostitutes himself to freelance clients at reusswriting.com.
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Ah, to look over the dune and see the ocean while those at your side complain of the sand.
Rich junkies excel at everything.
But really, I've always thought the Beats were overrated. Nevertheless, I think he was the most interesting of that group. I've only read excerpts from this particular book.
WSb was a better icon than writer.
It's not your cup of tea. That's understandable. For those of us that were swept up by the Beats at some point, Burroughs was following the same vein as Rimbaud. His path to poetic enlightenment involved a "long, intimidating, immense and rational derangement of all the senses."
Nowadays nothing is shocking.
To offer a second opinion:
While I ultimately agree that "Naked Lunch" is an overrated novel and one guaranteed to induce episodes of eye-rolling for any reader over, say, twenty — I think a more careful examination of this book is deserved, at the very least for its historical worth (which you mention), but even more so for its armory of literary devices, which I must (somewhat begrudgingly) admit not only warrant merit but epitomized groundbreaking at the time in which the book was released.
Norman Mailer referred to "Naked Lunch" as a “vision of how mankind would act if man was totally divorced from eternity.” I think that’s something worth discussing here. It’s no coincidence that the chapters of "Naked Lunch" work like a television. You can pick up the story wherever you’d like; missing a section or reading the sections outside its presented chronology will not alter the reader’s perceptions at all. Moreover, it’s no accident that the characters depicted inside this hardbound “television” are noticeably, grossly, deliberately inhuman. They seem less than the insects in the scene you mention: they're practically inanimate objects. So the question is: why? Why is the human body repeatedly reduced to primordial sacks of blood and shit, something akin to a mass-produced product in a modern marketplace fueled on the empty promises of advertising hype? I’m begging an obvious question here: Burroughs is offering a parable of the great, modern anesthetic.
In case you still don't see where I'm going with this: I don’t know about you, but "Naked Lunch" didn’t disturb me nearly as much as, say, "Blood Meridian," or even "American Psycho." And the reason why it didn’t shake me was because the book engenders a deliberately removed relationship between the reader and its host of characters: people in the book are assembled to be immediately discarded. The world of the grotesque ala Burroughs is a markedly different one than say, Flannery O’Connor’s. The latter author illustrates classically awful people doing harm to real, good people with whom we have a vested emotional stake. Burroughs’ grotesque is like watching a colony of ants devour another colony of ants. We see the violence in great detail, but we are somehow able to walk away relatively unscathed because we’ve been conditioned by the medium to feel nothing. You know, just like TV.
Burroughs’ "consumers" (nee, the reader) remain safely harbored from the images vis-à-vis the constructs of a narrative where our fleeting needs to be entertained supercede our deepest emotions: we don’t flinch when the characters’ necks are broken, when they burned, cut up, hanged and sodomized, surgeries performed with toilet plungers, etc. Burroughs says this best himself (in my copy, on page 22) when he states that “Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.” If there is one area in this book Burroughs took great pains to expound upon it was his cunning ability to remove all characters from the human experience when our proclivities want desperately to place them there. And it’s for this reason that ‘Naked Lunch’ is actually a lot "safer" than the everyday Burroughs fan might like to admit. Contrary to what has to be a wearingly common criticism for the last fifty years, this book is not demoralizing at all. It’s not “shocking." In fact, it’s actually quite a moralistic undertaking. This book is a warning: ‘Naked Lunch’ is what it would be like to live in a world devoid of human feeling or emotion — and the modern world is well on its way to manifesting that dangerous reality.
My principle complaint with this book is that it suffers from its own deliberately debilitating design. Just like TV, “Naked Lunch" relies on a presupposed mentality and moral set of its readers to which it can engage, revolve around and predictably "shock." It presumes the predictable prudishness of its audience so it can react to it with, essentially, with equally predictable, high-fallootin' fart jokes. In the course of doing so, my principle concern is that this tactic loses more than it gains: by orbiting the narrative around a presumed axis of pre-enlightenment prudes, you're delivering all the expected 180-degree reactions to it, and expected content, of course, is cliché.
Having said that, if you didn't laugh during that chapter with the racist cop, or in that section with the guy whose talking asshole snakes into the bar so it can score a quick fuck — there's something wrong with you.
Oh, and just to be clear: I absolutely hate the beats. Also: I do think Burroughs was a gifted writer, and while I think “Naked Lunch” is sort of a failed experiment, it is an experiment nonetheless of noted historical significance, both in what it did to expand the “constraints” of the novel and what it said about the age in which it was written. If I were to recommend a Burroughs story worth reading, I’d offer up short stories like “The Finger” or later novels like “Cities of the Red Night”. Just my two cents.
God Bless You, Dave Reuss. As far as I'm concerned, Naked Lunch is the worst "novel" EVER written.
***** to JonG. (Stars, not expletive.)
Eww, "Naked Lunch." At least on p. 281 (or whenever) in "American Psycho," you discover it has a point-- a fairly brilliant satiric point, even.
What? "Hipsters" trying to understand a classic? Give me a break. You probably think like Tom Wolfe that On the Road is just typing. There is more on the page than just words...think of the context of the times. Or are you too busy looking for the "right" skinny jeans and spending $7.00 for a PBR because it's the "cool" beer.
Where I live, there aren't any bars cool enough to charge more than $3 for a PBR.
To respond to the assumptions expressed above about anyone with the temerity and bad taste to agree with Mr. Reuss: I'm no hipster, I'm too old and fat for skinny jeans, I love Kerouac, and I think "Naked Lunch" is just self-indulgent bad writing. I can't speak for the rest of the people you hope will give you a break.
Personally, I enjoy the book as a sensory experience, getting lost in the flow of words, which can be very poetic, if not inscrutable. But I don't think it's the greatest thing ever and I can see the point of detractors.
Also, a real hipster would be singing the book's praises, not putting it down, so nice try undercover hipster troll.
Josh, "undercover hipster troll" is perfect for my everyday needs and I plan to borrow it for my own personal use. That tells you a lot about the world I live in.
And JonGingrich's comment pretty much sums up why any writer here who hasn't taken his LR class would be a fool to miss it next time it's offered (I'm saying this as a former student, not somebody who contributes to LitReactor). The man's just spewing genius all over the place.
Where I'm from, PBR is the "redneck" drink.
Also, Capote called 'On the Road' "typing." If Wolfe did as well, I am unaware of it.
And a novel is just words on a page. Plus, if a work is only good within a narrowly defined context, is it much good at all?
I think its also fair to say that Naked Lunch was not just writen by Burroughs: it was edited together by Kerouac and somebody else.
Also I don't think that the novel's being a self-indulgent mess makes it a bad novel, that is part of the point of the novel.
Naked Lunch is a window into what life was like for a group of people during a certain time and it does a good job of describing what that was like.
I thought Naked Lunch awful and admirable. Picked it up used, tried to read it because of its historical reputation, had to put it down. Then pick it up again, only to put it aside again. Then, since it's nonlinear, just picked it up every once in a while to flip through.
A few laughs, if you just throw out the idea that it's a novel. A few insights, and not the sort to make Burroughs and/or his *lifestyle* seem admirable. But, the thing still compels...but it's no novel in any regard.
To me, it's a series of sketches. Or, a compilation of testaments from a "way of life" I have no desire to know. And, without the testaments from Naked Lunch, I wouldn't know how f*cked up and morally removed a man like Burroughs could become, living the way he did in the times that he did...
(definitely not a favorite book of mine - more like an ordeal I went through...)
I see Naked Lunch as work of surrealism in the form of a 'novel'- It's experimental- i don't believe it was meant to be regarded as a work for the masses. some get it, some don't- neither are right, neither are wrong. it's like Burroughs filtered his brain into words and then ?vomitted? them onto paper for those that might be interested in connecting to some of the images/voices/thoughts in his head- but the way he sees them- on his terms.
Naked Lunch doesn't float everyone's boat. Fair enough. But there's more going on here than drug addled- self indulgent tripes. And i believe it accomplished a little more than just creating "a landmark obscenity case that helped to abolish literary censorship in America." Yes, the grotesqueness of some of the routines were written for this purpose. But what about the issues of addiction??
Addiction is an obvious issue in Naked Lunch. Addiction to drugs/sex/money/power- addiction was a problem then and it's even more apparent now. How many people died last year from an overdose to pharmaceutical drugs?? How many soldiers are coming home now mentally/physically fucked from the Iraqui/Afghanistan wars? Soldiers using/becoming addicted to pharmaceutical drugs (in particular, OPIATES, developed in labs funded by corporations) to help them ?rehabilitate? - ?adjust? a war, by the way, that could be argued has some grounding in a nation's dependency on another countries natural resource?? Addiction- whatever the cause or 'drug' of choice- is a horror- so i think he amped it up to communicate this.
What about all the depictions of gay sex? wasn't this taboo then?? Burroughs was homosexual
yet never identified himself as a 'gay' writer or activist. But he pushed the boundaries of what society thought about sex by depicting it in a graphic over the top manner.- Wait, it's been 60 years and this country still has a problem with homosexuality?? Young men labeled 'queer' are strung up to the back of a truck and dragged along a gravel road until they hang to death??? and I'm not even going to get into how other countries feel about it.
What about the language or the way words are handled in Naked Lunch?? Jesus, i can't think of anyone who wants to be a writer that couldn't get something beneficial out the word play in Naked Lunch- or any of Burroughs' works for that matter- Soft Machine? The Ticket That Exploded?? Soft. Machine. Just say it out loud- I dare you not to find it alluring. Or look at that scene where the 3 boys are fucking/ejaculating/hanging themselves- it's a routine that allegedly rallies against the death penalty- i don't recall necessarily "getting" that- but it can be argued for by some. Or others, like myself, who thought it was an amped up routine on sex addiction. How far will you go to get off??
And yes, the book doesn't always make sense- but isn't that like a central trait of surrealism? Or even life itself? fuck, i'll even go so far as to say Naked Lunch was actually an accurate/twisted caricature- a look into the doomed future of america- or even the world. It might've been surrealism then- sure as shit could be considered a little more hyperrealist today. have you turned on the TV recently? A Drug Zombie chewing up the face of a homeless man in Miami? A comic book villain wannabe shooting up innocent bystanders in a movie theater showing a comic book film?? Michael Jackson married Elvis' daughter??? Here comes Honey Boo Boo???? Shit even Honey Boo Boo is like 15 years after the surrealist film GUMMO.
I don't know, dude,I think there's definitely a little more going on here than the rants of a heroin soaked mental patient. I understand if someone doesn't enjoy the book- felt it wasn't their cup of tea- feels maybe that they were burned by their book dealer- but i do feel some of your criticisms against Naked Lunch and in particular Burroughs are a little weak and naive. I mean your main beef with this book was the beat movement?? ok, not ALL the beats were great- but c'mon Burroughs himself never really identified with the beats. his closest friend was Ginsberg- who i think was a substantial poet whether beat or yeats. So you're kinda finding him guilty by association. also, HST and WSB are 2 very different writers. And they both used drugs for different reasons. HST never advocated the use of drugs- but they worked for him. WSB proclaimed drugs as junk.
i don't feel your article was written to Troll. Naked Lunch is a book that tends to polarize- and it should be discussed. And that's all peachy and shit- but i don't think it would hurt to give it a little more thought or maybe a second look. It shouldn't just be... dismissed. i think it's just as relevant now as it was when it was first published.
one last thing- burroughs was self indulgent? Shouldn't artists (whether painters/musicians/writers/filmmakers) be a little self indulgent? Sometimes that can lead to some serious breakthroughs. but thats a whole other discussion.
PBR is the drink of choice for discerning psychopaths everywhere:
"Heineken? Fuck Heineken! PABST BLUE RIBBON!!!
If anything I think this was too kind to Naked Lunch, but good for you for coming out and saying what most people don't have the guts too.
"Shouldn't artists (whether painters/musicians/writers/filmmakers) be a little self indulgent? Sometimes that can lead to some serious breakthroughs. but thats a whole other discussion."
I agree with that. Calling something self-indulgent is usually just another way of saying you didn't like it. If the artist indulged himself yet produced something you like, you probably won't call it "self-indulgent." EG - That Yes album is totally self-indulgent, while that Can album is just sick.
Also, the idea of there being one particular "redneck" beer strikes me as funny; it'd be like saying one particular brand of coffee (or whiskey) is "the writer's drink."
Ha. I live in Montana, and our cold winters have killed off most of the hipsters. And PBR costs $1.50, just like all the other "sex in a canoe" beers (i.e. fucking near water).
I dunno, I liked it. It wasn't boring, at least. I see where people are feeling like it's pretentious or stupid, but I overall thought it was worth the time, and really not that hard to get through.... Some scenes were more interesting that others, I guess, but the ones that were good really made up for the rest of it. I mean, it has at least enough value that it shouldn't just be brushed off because people think the approach is stupid.
I think it's getting treated like anything else that's really well known or gets talked about a lot, where everyone feels like they need to either love it so they can feel arty or cool, or hate it because they realize that the people squealing about how much they love it are idiots, but somehow not that they're doing the same thing... people react to it in a way that is just as pretentious or stupid as the work in question is supposed to be. There shouldn't really be a mandatory passionate opinion, but there is....I think there's more good to it than bad, but I definitely understand why a lot of people don't like it at all.
My biggest problem with the beat generation is that they all weren't as drugged up or addicted as advertised. I haven't read Naked Lunch, but it sounds like it's a look into a different world, or a look at the world through someone else's eyes, which I always find enjoyable. However, I understand that sometimes it can be difficult to get passed a certain style of writing.
Well done, Dave! Once again you've gotten me to laugh out loud. (NOT "lol" - the worst invention since "keen".)
But I reject the joke theory you propose. Just because nobody laughs doesn't mean a joke's not funny.
It means that the joke teller is a superior being.
--Ed
Didn't Ginsberg help edit that thing? Well, I guess it's not totally without redeeming social value. Anyone who can take a word like "slunk" and give me nightmares with it is not a total turd. Close, though. And I guess I do like how the vultures' wings sound. That's about it.
I believe Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly is a much better critique of society through the eyes of a junkie, his dealer, and his nemesis, not to mention a much better piece of writing.
The chapters are intended to be read in any order as small "routines" or vignettes of stories. It's non-linear. Burroughs loved the cut up method, so is it suprising that it's nonsensical?
Also, this author isn't the first to be critical of the novel. I googled "How to read Naked Lunch" and it came up with many articles who percieve the novel as "awful."
I hate reading the book but I love it at the same time.
I think it should go without saying that Burroughs isnt the only one laughing at his jokes...
What a shame that people are so closed minded. Without Burroughs, Acker and Brite where would Selby Jr and Easton Ellis be today? Footnotes in their supervisor's thesis.
This is the same logic many of Andy Kaufman's audience has had. People for years had questioned ''What?'' ,clueless as to whz some people considered him a comedian. To those people i say : Just because you don't understand a joke (or book ;) ) doesnt mean it's not a joke. Many proffesional critics have called this book a masterpiece, and there IS a reason to why they are proffesionals. They have read and expirienced a wide range of many books. This book has had many ...different reviews . Some call it garbage and others call it gold. THAT, my friend, is how you know a book is great. Think about it. And, also, think about what you have read in this life of a book in a different perspective. Maybe the problem here is that you have tried to filter and disect it. Maybe it was meant to be soaked up? Try experiencing it instead of trying to understand it.
You guys all seem to think we don't get it. We get it. It was innovative stream of whatever blah blah blah. We just didn't like it.
Naked Lunch reminds me of a bad punk band: if they swear enough and are vulgar enough, maybe they'll get noticed. It's mostly shtick and gimmicks. What is more interesting than the content is that there was a whole network around the novel that published it, distributed it, bought it, and eventually made it a "classic." Like most "indispensable masterpieces" I'm betting there were a hundred other similar "novels" of the same caliber waiting in the wing and Naked Lunch just happened to be the one selected. Being that it published in 1959 and became popular during the 60's, I think it speaks more of the hippies who embraced it than the beatnik who wrote it.
If it weren't for the obscenity ban, I think this book would have gone nowhere. Remember, those passages celebrating pedophilia? Yeah. That was the chapter where I spiked this piece of garbage in the trash can.
@Joe - I didn't even make it far enough to realize that was in there.
Naked Lunch isn't my "favorite book," but it's right up there with Pale Fire, The Trial, and Burroughs' own most overlooked work, Queer. I first read it nearly 20 years ago, and unlike many others, I couldn't put it down. I'd never seen anything quite like it, and, to this day, I still haven't, and I'm not talking about the vulgarity. There's no denying that the book is gleefully vulgar, but if that were all that it was, it wouldn't have "created a landmark obscenity case that helped to abolish literary censorship in America." The reason Naked Lunch helped to demolish literary censorship in the United States was because it demonstrated that a work could be as vulgar as it was possible to be and still be of incredible literary merit.
I'll get to why I love this book in a moment, but I want to address the critic's comments about the Beats in general. Yes, you could say they were self-indulgent. That was part of the point. The 40's were all about self-sacrifice, and the 50's were all about conformity. People were expected to "get with the picture," and there were often serious consequences for those who didn't (e.g. McCarthyism, Emmet Till). The Beats rebelled against the prevailing stagnation by embracing everything it opposed: drugs, the underworld, frank sexuality (especially homosexuality), introspection, everything that set the majority's teeth on edge. This was the birth of the counterculture movement in America which would transform the nation. Hunter S. Thompson? He would have been the first to tell you that he owed a great debt to Burroughs, whom he praised in the older writer's Rolling Stone obituary: "William was a Shootist. He shot like he wrote- with extreme precision and no fear."
Now back to the book in question. There are dozens of reasons why I love Naked Lunch, but they all really come down to three things. First, as I said before, it's a very unique piece of work. Surrealist memoir, biting social satire, and experimental fiction, usually at the same time, Naked Lunch breaks every rule in the proverbial book of what a novel is supposed to be, and it does so in a way that feels completely effortless, as if the author were surprised that everyone else doesn't write like this. This is partly down to skillful editing, including the work of Ginsberg and Kerouac, but it's also due to the almost poetic flow of the prose. I've always been of the opinion that Naked Lunch, like much of Burroughs' work, is most enjoyable when read aloud, preferrably to an audience.
Second, as many people have already pointed out, the book is, at least in many places, extremely funny. Burroughs' style of humor is certainly not for everyone, of course. He enjoyed pushing a bit as far as it could possibly go (sometimes a little farther), regardless of where it took him. Hassan's Rumpus Room is a great example of that. He also had a great talent for populating his routines with outrageous personalities. I find the character of Dr. Benway, for example, to be one of the most amusing in the history of American literature.
Third, the book is, in my opinion, one of the most brutally honest examinations of our society ever published. As Burroughs explains in the introduction, this is what the title means: "NAKED lunch - a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork." For example, take Burroughs' exposure of capital punishment as the revolting, publicly sanctioned spectacle that it is at the end of A.J.'s Annual Party:
"SHERIFF: I'll lower his pants for a pound, folks. Step right up. A serious and scientific exhibit concerning the locality of the Life Center. This character has nine inches, ladies and gentlemen, measure them yourself inside. Only one pound, one queer three dollar bill to see a young boy come three times at least -- I never demean myself to process a eunuch - completely against his will. When his neck snaps sharp, this character will shit-sure come to rhythmic attention and spurt it out all over you."
All this being said, I completely understand why many people dislike or even loathe Naked Lunch. It's a brilliant book, but it's not a friendly one. It makes absolutely no compromises in an effort to cater to its audience. Like its famously acerbic author, it says what it wants to say, largely indifferent to others' opinions. It can take you or leave you.
Actually, that might be what I like most of all about it.
There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose “story” “plot” “continuity”... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer...
William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch
get it?
Hi. I just wanted to add my point of view. So, I read Naked Lunch in February, for school (we had free choice), and I am not yet finished writing about it. I've read it both like a regular novel (in the order of the pages) and in the order Burroughs intended it to be read in (no order whatsoever).
At first, I was disgusted. At first, I had to trudge through the pornographic parts of the book, dying to put it down and be finished with it. However, as I started reading and re-reading certain passages, things started to come into place.
As you have pointed out, maybe reading it 6-8 times is the only way one might ever understand Burroughs' point (or in depth analysis as I have done). That, in my eyes, is very much the beauty of the book. In 1960, he said it himself: "Since Naked Lunch treats (the junk virus), it is necessarily brutal, obscene and disgusting. Sickness is often repulsive details not for weak stomachs." This book HAS to be messy, for it to be a fair portrayal of human flaws (this is what I believe it really is about). If it were lyrical, singing about the tragedies of capital punishment, for example, would that really be fair? In addition, the parts that are "not for weak stomachs", in my eyes are a way to challenge the readers. There is nothing easy about craving change, and not knowing how to go about changing. This is a mental journey that Burroughs takes us on, we have to struggle through the book, to come out the other side with- hopefully- a better understanding of his world's problems (most of which still apply today). Honestly, that is a big part of the book's beauty...
And what is even MORE genius about this book, is that he uses satire to do this. It is not an ranting book about how shit everything is. He somehow manages to make the readers laugh (I find Dr Benway particularly amusing) whilst proving to us that this is not right; this is not the way the world should be. Is there really a better way to go about dealing with the bad things in the world?
We should challenge our views. Naked Lunch constantly does this for us, by making US feel uncomfortable, disgusted, revolted. Maybe it is only after we feel a tiny little bit of what the 'victims' of society feel that we could ever understand. And surely, this understanding will allow us to help?
Honestly, this book will never get old. Everybody has their own taste in books, but I do suggest one does not discard this book immediately. The more and more I read it, the more I enjoy it, the funnier his jokes get, and the more insight I get into what change William Burroughs wanted, and why.
I hope I did Naked Lunch justice, it truly deserves it.
I don't know how in the hell Cronenberg was able to polish that turd... but damn, David, your analysis is spot on.
I reshared this for the lulz, I hope to attract some hate!
https://plus.google.com/116117163771403619499/posts/BdE8XCTqeGz
Hi everyone. Having just read the book I thought I’d look around the internet and see what others had to say about it. I found this site which is dedicated to giving pedantic assholes a platform to cry like bitches. Wonderful job internet. Seriously, fuck yourselves in the ass with a splintered piece of kindling you self important pricks.
Naked lunch is one of the most engaging works of art I have ever immersed myself in. I've read it maybe six times throughout my life, and if I could find my copy I'd give it another read, but I'd have to make the time to do it because it's not just a dalliance. It's something that you really have to take a deep dive into, and be able to swim in those waters for a while.
You have to be able to find your rhythm, and be ready for any sudden tempo change while keeping the theme. It's not a work for lightweights, that's for sure.
Naked lunch is one of the most engaging works of art I have ever immersed myself in. I've read it maybe six times throughout my life, and if I could find my copy I'd give it another read, but I'd have to make the time to do it because it's not just a dalliance. It's something that you really have to take a deep dive into, and be able to swim in those waters for a while.
You have to be able to find your rhythm, and be ready for any sudden tempo change while keeping the theme. It's not a work for lightweights, that's for sure.