«Американці жахливо бояться втратити контроль та дозволити речам відбуватися самим по собі без їхнього безпосереднього втручання. Вони б раді були залізти навіть у свої шлунки, щоб самим перетравлювати їжу та викидати лопатами лайно»

У свій час достатньо скандальний текст, з яким варто ознайомитися хоча б для того, щоб потім подумати: «Ого, це виходить можна і так писати». Автор ділиться досвідом споживання наркотичних речовин та знайомить читача з американською культурою. Зараз мабуть складно шокувати когось сценами жорстокості або безсюжетними мареннями, але цікаво подивитись на цей текст як дослідження залежностей та засобів впливу на особистість.

n
"Nothing is true; everything is permitted,"

- Vladimir Bartol
n

Chinese translation: 萬事皆虛 諸事可為

This book is purely crazy (tons of crazy shit have gone on in this story), that's all I can tell you after I finished reading the Chinese translation (published in Taiwan). I also admit I don't think I fully understand what William S. Burroughs tried to tell us, and some parts of the story really tend to drag on and on for no good reason.



The whole story reads like a series of junkie's nightmarish, incoherent drug trips or a really messed up hard-boiled thriller, a lot of sex, violence, drug and even murder and sexual abuse. A lot of dark fantasies concerning gay men and boys. Some parts of the story even read like cyberpunk, but I admit not everyone will like this book. Still I strongly suggest you to try it out, or at least WATCH THE MOVIE WHICH IS BASED ON THIS NOVEL!!

In my opinion, the movie really does the nearly-impossible by giving a story and a context to a text which has no story and nearly no context.



A wonderful review for this book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

PS: so aside from drugs and homosexuality, the story is also about conspiracy and mind control? Wow, my mind is blown!

PSS: in recent weeks there are a handful of people liking this review! For that I'm thankful~

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS knygą NUOGAS KĄSNIS turiu nuo neatmenamų laikų. Tuomet turėjau fazę pirkti viską, kas buvo kiek populiaru tarp nepopuliarios literatūros. Anuomet maniau, kad galėsiu įsipaišyti į „neformato“ gretas, bet kad niekas į tai iš tikrųjų nekreipė dėmesio. O kad knyga tikrai „neformatas“, įsitikau tik dabar.

Užbėgsiu įvykiams už akių – ji nėra bloga. Tik, suprantama, ji ne mano literatūrinis kąsnis. Pirma mintis, ką skaitant pagalvojau, kad reikia būti gerai „pavartojus“, jog kūrinys atskleistų savo „grožį“. O tuomet pasidžiaugčiau, kad, prieš skaitant, akimis permečiau kino filmo anonsą. Be jo, matyt, būtų man kiek sudėtingiau visko nepriimti kaip už gryną pinigą.

Pasakojimas sudėliotas iš daugybės trumpų skyrių, rodos, vienas su kitu nėra susiję, bet – ar tikrai? Pasirodė, kaip atskiros istorijos, be jokios siužetinės linijos, tik vienijantis griežtas tonas, garsus aštrumas, atvirumas, vietomis netgi brutalumas. Joje (knygoje) nebijoma nieko. Ji – kaip ledlaužis, daugeliui būtų nepatogi, o gal ir amorali. Įsivaizduoju, kad jaunimo tarpe ji buvo „populiari“, vyresniųjų – „įvairi“, o pripratusių tarpe – „nieko ypatingo“. Bet kam tos mano mintys apie suskirstytus skaitytojus reikalingos, ši knyga turi savo skaitytoją ir ją supratusius (ir suprasiančius).

Netgi už(si)daviau klausimą, kiek ilgai (ir labai) galiu pakęsti tokią kūrybą ir to laikmečio rašytojus. Bet greit nusiraminau, kadangi to paties autoriaus NARKAŠAS kančios man nesuteikė, o Kafkos METAMORFOZĖ atminty išliko kaip vienas įdomesnių mokyklos laikų atradimų. Tuomet supratau – galbūt reikėjo pavartoti...

Did I ever tell you about the man
who taught his asshole to talk?

I finally read Naked Lunch, which regularly appears on lists of the 100 greatest novels. Upon its publication in America in the early 1960s, this book faced numerous legal challenges that sought to ban it as obscene. The challenges were ultimately unsuccessful, and I’m glad for that. In its hallucinogenic descriptions, Mr. Burroughs demonstrated that he can be a talented writer. And forcing every drug addict to read this book cover to cover might end illegal drug use. But I will wonder for the rest of my life why Naked Lunch regularly appears on lists of the 100 greatest novels.

First of all, Naked Lunch is not a novel; it’s a series of loosely connected vignettes. But don’t take my word for it. Mr. Burroughs himself stated that, with a few exceptions, he simply ordered the chapters in same order he received the galleys from his publisher. It’s hard to argue there’s a coherent story within these pages when the author makes such a concession.

Far more importantly, Naked Lunch is somehow both completely disgusting and utterly boring. Characters are endlessly searching for drugs, using drugs, and addicted to drugs. Characters are endlessly searching for sex, having sex, and that sex is usually violent, even fatal. I don’t think there’s a single female character who isn’t simply used for sex. The stories are full of racist, sexist, and homophobic characters. There are elements of body horror that are somewhere between icky and genuinely gross. The book’s depravity—the drugs and sex and violence—is so repetitive that the shock value soon fades into tedium.

It goes without saying that I do not recommend Naked Lunch. But that sentiment is not nearly strong enough. I’ve read about 65 books on the Pop Chart Lab 100 Essential Novels list, and before today I’d only given 1 star to two of them  Ragtime and  Wide Sargasso Sea. I feel like I owe those two books an apology. Their 1-star ratings were earned. My 1-star rating for Naked Lunch is an undeserved gift; I’d give this book 0 stars if I could.

WARNING: nasty language ahead, including the use of some of my favorite phrases from the novel; these include such choice nuggets as mugwump jism and to turn a massacre into a sex orgy and a bubbly thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell and the subject will come at his whistle, shit on the floor if he but say Open Sesame. anyway,

n  n

I’ll be honest, mugwump jism, it took me a while to get into Naked Lunch, to turn a massacre into a sex orgy. Three attempts, to be exact, a bubbly thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell. I don’t mind stream-of-conscious writing, I don’t mind the Beats, I don’t mind postmodernism, I don’t mind graphic sexual and violent imagery, I don’t mind experimental narratives, the subject will come at his whistle, shit on the floor if he but say Open Sesame. But a work that combines all of those things in one fetid stew, in such an in-your-face way that could care less about creating any kind of empathy, and has such a complete disinterest in establishing easily-digestible form or meaning... well, it was off-putting mugwump jism. In a way it made me angry at Burroughs, to turn a massacre into a sex orgy. Who the fuck did he think he was, grinding my face in the muck and telling me that this foul nonsense was the new Now, a bubbly thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell? I didn’t like how every fourth phrase seemed to be about shit or jism or asses or toothless mouths, the subject will come at his whistle, shit on the floor if he but say Open Sesame. I thought the extreme homoeroticism was gruesome and not very erotic, and it actually made me feel rather homophobic – and this is coming from a bonafide cocksucker, mugwump jism.

But the third try worked like a charm to turn a massacre into a sex orgy. Maybe I just needed to grow into the novel, and not take its challenging ways so personally, a bubbly thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell. The writing became amazing to me – overindulgent (obviously) but also masterful, profound even, in its hair-raising descriptive passages, its deadpan dialogue, its drooling emphasis on bodily functions, decay, death, degradation, the subject will come at his whistle, shit on the floor if he but say Open Sesame. Its paranoia was no longer oppressive – if anything, it was freeing, mugwump jism. Naked Lunch’s ability to convey not just the darkness but the strangeness and black humor at the heart of both addiction and the various possible and existing forms of societal control became fascinating, to turn a massacre into a sex orgy. The radical changes in perspective, the decentralized plot and oblique narrative, all the grotesque, taboo fantasias suddenly felt mordantly playful and, well, “naked” in their need to convey a state of mind, a world view, a way of looking at the systems of the world... all of that actually became inspirational, in both the challenge of its intent and the radical nature of its result; and so the subject will come at his whistle, shit on the floor if he but say Open Sesame.

n  n

Colorful. Spastic. An ejaculate burst of prose. You don't need to know what "hallucinating" means, just sink your head in Burrough's words and let them get you high. Human mosaic. Hard cocks and pink tender asses. Junkies, hustlers, prostitutes. You can read this book from any page, really. It'll dazzle you, or piss you off, or make you giggle to luxurious death by satire from hell.

I think people take this book much more seriously than they are supposed to. If you treat it as a sketch comedy then it's much more fun. You can open it to any page and find something either funny, profound or both.

I have read a great deal of William Burroughs. He is a writer who consistently impresses me. Nonetheless, Naked Lunch sat on my shelves for several decades unread. I always knew I would get around to reading it one day, but I was in no rush. I was almost half-familiar with it anyway, for I occasionally skimmed through it and read certain sections.

But I suspected that the book taken in its entirety would be a disappointment. I had the idea that Burroughs' later efforts (such as Cities of the Red Night) was his best work. And having read the 'cut up trilogy' I assumed that Naked Lunch would be generally a cruder version of such experiments but lightened by irregular straightforward passages.

But I was wrong. I finally took the plunge and read all of Naked Lunch and I am glad I did. I obtained the Penguin 'restored text' edition and threw out my old edition. The work is outstanding in every way... in terms of language, imagination, invention, satire, structure, the willingness to probe the darkness of life, the insights and experimental boldness, the timing and choreography of the 'routines' that replace the chapters of a more conventional novel.... It is undoubtedly a work of genius and it astounds me to remember that it was written in the 1950s.

Call me a slacker, but why bother jotting down a critique for this surreal gem when the author has already nailed it in these very pages? Here you go...

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 … (p. 184)

The Word is divided into units which be all in one piece and should be so taken, but the pieces can be had in any order being tied up back and forth in and out fore and aft like an innaresting sex arrangement. This book spill off the page in all directions, kaleidoscope of vistas, medley of tunes and street noises, farts and riot yips and the slamming steel shutters of commerce, screams of pain and pathos and screams plain pathic, copulating cats and outraged squawk of the displaced bullhead, prophetic mutterings of brujo in nutmeg trance, snapping necks and screaming mandrakes, sigh of orgasm, heroin silent as dawn in the thirsty cells, Radio Cairo screaming like a berserk tobacco auction, and flutes of Ramadan fanning the sick junky like a gentle lush worker in the grey subway dawn feeling with delicate fingers for the green folding crackle … This is Revelation and Prophecy of what I can pick up without FM on my 1920 crystal set with antennae of jissom … Gentle reader, we see God through our assholes in the flash bulb of orgasm … Through these orifices transmute your body … The way OUT is the way IN … (p. 191)

You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point … Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To Book … Black insect lusts open into vast other-planet landscapes … Abstract concepts, bare as algebra, narrow down to a black turd or a pair of aging cojones … How-To extend levels of experience by opening the door at the end of a long hall … Doors that only open in Silence … Naked Lunch demands Silence from The Reader. Otherwise he is taking his own pulse … (p. 187)

Like I say The Reader will frequently find the same thing said in the same words. This is not carelessness nor is it for The Infatuation With Sound Of Own Words Dept…. It indicates space-time juxtaposition … a folding in and back (the universe is curved, feller say) … point of intersection between levels of experience where parallel lines meet … (p. 287)

Nuff said.

I felt when reading Naked Lunch that I was force-feeding myself with just enough hip swill to satisfy the desire to keep up with the times. I did not enjoy it and did not find it enlightening.

¡Peligro! ¡Peligro!
Este libro contiene fuertes dosis de relatos sobre: drogas,degradación, sadomasoquismo, coprofagia, sodomía, locura y situaciones grotescas.
Lo mejor y lo más provechoso para mí fue la introducción del libro, que nos habla sobre todo lo referente a este mundo de las drogas, desde los distintos tipos y como se genera la adicción hasta como combatirla.

Lo demás del libro son situaciones que en su mayoría versan sobre los temas antes mencionados (Vale que también se burla de las instituciones, la religión, etc. Pero no es algo que impresione).El verdadero problema no es lo grotesco y asqueroso que puedan resultar estas escenas, sino que al final realmente no importan ya que no existe una trama en el libro. Es cierto que de la mitad para adelante encuentras cierto sentido a las narraciones y personajes mencionados, pero como dije no interesa ya que no existe ningún argumento ni desarrollo de la historia.

¿Lo recomiendo? No, pero si vas a leerlo. ¡Estas advertido querido lector!

Naked Lunch is the most realistic novel ever written. It's true realism. Not the realism of our fantasies where we imagine everything happening for a reason, where motives make sense and where actions lead to completely logical conclusions. No. That shit never actually happens in the real world.

Naked Lunch is exactly what it describes: the naked reality of what we consume.

Where overly strange people become colourful mandrills and take a dump on bureaucrats, where sexual obsession leads to redefining everything as sexuality, where fart jokes become sentient and devour our brains, where everything is screwed and consequently wants to screw us. Where surgery is the new art and where David Cronenberg gets all his ideas.

This book is actual reality. And it has inspired more of our world than you can even measure. David Cronenberg adapted Naked Lunch into a movie, but every movie since Naked Lunch is really an adaptation of Naked Lunch. Especially all of Cronenberg's films. But all films, really. Film itself as a medium is now just an adaptation of Naked Lunch.

Just another hit. Just another fix. If you smell what the rock is cooking?

"This isn't realistic" enough we exclaim while pointing at the shoulders of the giant upon which we stand.

We are not separate from Naked Lunch. We never were. Even before it was written, it was always waiting to be written. It is our roach motel. We are stuck in it.

Like that attractive weightlifter in that Freddy Krueger movie. Although I preferred Toy Newkirk.

Also contrary to what you've heard a million times by now, Naked Lunch is not incoherent. It is perhaps the most coherent novel ever written by a human being.

Of course we do not count the novels written by the bugs. They are a different species and their perception of identity developed in a different evolutionary circumstance. Who can forget that seminal insect rebuttal to War and Peace: War and War and War and War and More War and Even More War and God I love War, and Don't Stop the Wars Please I Need the Wars by that noted fire ant queen Henry Kissinger.

I would say Naked Lunch's coherence is absolute. It is a thick coherence. A membrane of coherence, a physical oozing growth that has developed over the head of the novel. A literature birth caul. You have to peel it back to play with its sensitive glands. Otherwise the book won't respond to you. It will go limp and sad and soft. The book must be hard and bulbous and full of thick throbbing veins, like Joe Rogan's head. That's the only way to get that most out of it.

Do you get what I'm saying?

Me neither.

It's bigger than me. It's bigger than us. It's too large, too serpentine, it's got too many legs. I can't count all those legs. But it sure can dance.

That wonderful, all-consuming, gay junkie centipede we call art.

We love it so! Even when it gets all that stuff in our hair. Comes with the territory! Right? But it's good for the skin. Or so I'm told. I heard that once from a woman who slept with me.

How could she possibly be wrong?

And that is the problem. Isn't it?

The coherence of Naked Lunch is so threatening. SO COHERENT. It makes us feel inadequate.

Because most people (myself included) are so incredibly incoherent. We simply assume we make sense, when in reality, we're raving, frothing, dribbling, lunatics.

So many people define the world (and most of fiction) through a vague interpretation of Platonic realism. Where everything we accept in the world is a universal truth. And anything that challenges what we accept is heresy. We mistake traditionalism for reality. Isn't that cute?

Which is the very height of delusional madness. If you can be honest with yourself. Which is impossible to do FYI, because nobody ever really is honest with themselves. To assume you are is to admit you value your own bias. Which means you can't know when you're lying. Which suggests that you are inherently dishonest.

It's a catch-22. Understand?

NO. You don't.

But I don't blame you. I don't understand me either.

How can I expect to connect with others when I can't even connect with myself? It's no wonder so many people online value pornography. It's the only time they're ever really in touch with themselves. Y'know?

Isolation from others is hard enough. Isolation from yourself? Oh baby. That's the rub.

Literally!

WHAT? I'm supposed to be doing a review? No I'm not. This is a think piece. It's thinking about being a piece of you. Maybe it already is. Maybe it always was.

In that way every work is a part of Naked Lunch. It never ends. And never shall end. That's the nature of art and reality. Which is why this book is so coherent.

Which is also why this book has been the target of censorship for so many years. Denial of reality is what humans do best. It is our raison d'être. We deny lust, we deny hunger, we deny pain, we deny jealousy, we even deny death.

And nobody denies reality quite as much as a censor. They are wonderfully strange cretins. Hilarious creatures wrapping their heads in cellophane and pretending it makes them invulnerable to bad ideas. Stumbling around like those nurses in Silent Hill. NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS. Everybody knows only the tin foil can protect you from Tom Cruise's thought signals.

Censors believe we are infected by the bad ideas. Like a tick bite. But somehow they can be exposed to those very same tick bites and remain JUST FINE. They get those bites all over their bodies and heads. They're covered in them from foot to scalp. And they're JUST FINE. They are like people who claim that they are the sensible middle ground in politics and that everybody to the right or left of them is a crazed extremist.

Of course, of course. "Everybody who disagrees with me is a madman" is something only a very sane and stable and self-aware person would say. Why it's the height of sanity and rationalism to see oneself as an inherently rational middle ground.

No delusion happening there, kids. No sir.

That person is standing on solid earth and hasn't obviously walked off a cliff and is about to plummet to their doom like an oblivious Wile E. Coyote.

That's all censors in a nutshell. Treading in the clouds on a platform of their own hot air and hubris.

Every one of them is a "Nice Guy" until they hit those rocks.

Which brings us back to Naked Lunch. You see? What I'm cooking? Our culture is all burnt spoons and addictions. We are constantly hallucinating. We are constantly diverting. Constantly needing our hit. Constantly grifting and conning ourselves more than anybody. Seeking out marks as we make ourselves into the ultimate mark. We are lusting for everything. We have been raised as junkies by junkies for the whims of junkies based on millions of years of addiction. We are all one podcast away from wearing the same t-shirt every day for six months and becoming a nest for pill bugs.

"You're next! YOU'RE NEXT." I scream into the void.

And the void calls the police and serves me a restraining order. Typical.

Anyways 10/10. Beware. This book is the actual Necronomicon. Written in blood. Printed on flesh. A gate for the old ones. And the new. A "How to Manual" for everybody! From body horror enthusiasts to stark-raving conspiracy theorists, counter culture revolutionaries, porn-empowered Decepticons and every other hive for brain worms on the planet. They all speak its tongue. Eternally. And forever. They have no language outside of it. All of the internet speaks fluent Naked Lunch and most have never even read it. They are simply its leaf-cut clones. Little Audrey 2s and 3s and 4s. Little Mean Green Mothers from Outer Space.

Naked Lunch is their singular voice. Even if they don't know it. They all sing its song and continue its story. And always shall continue it, until the end of all sentience in the universe. And the bugs take over.

We're all here together, forever. Caught in our sticky, sparkling Roach Motel.

Long live the new flesh.