Call me unhip, but...
When Burroughs was living in Tangiers, Allen Ginsberg went to visit him, and found the former so gone on heroin he (Burroughs) was just lying in a heap on the floor of a dingy, purulent apartment. Ginsberg spent an hour at his friend's side, without getting any response, or ever bearing witness to Burroughs even knowing he (Ginsberg (or, hell, Burroughs himself)) was there, and then left. Burroughs' life in Tangiers was evidently lived this way: only moving when he was out of junk, and then only so far as was necessary to resupply the aforementioned diacetylmorphine. This book was written as notes scrawled during this period of extended high of W. Burroughs (the latter day W. Tell), and, in my opinion, it shows.

I kind of detest Burroughs for his abuse of boys in Morocco, but his writing was influential and quite a trip to read. This particular book - one of his most famous - is a druggy trip from the US to Mexico. It is sort of On the Road but taking about 10x more mescaline and cocaine and acid than Kerouac and his friends did. If you want to get a feeling for the crazy off the rails atmosphere of the 60s, this is the book for you.

“THIS IS NOT A NOVEL”, capitalized emphatically Burroughs in a letter to his editor, mimicking the horrified denial of any respectable 16th century writer suspected to have embraced such a minor genre. And he's right, Naked Lunch is definitely not a novel – not even in a post-modern, experimentalist or nouveau roman sense – it’s at its best a series of short stories or rather vignettes, kept together by some narrative hooks, which are sometimes a narrator, William Lee, and sometimes other characters migrating from a story to another and of course, by the main theme, which is addiction. The result? Some deliberately frightening, hilariously incoherent, sarcastically irritating and ultimately carelessly annoying, nonsensical tales depicting a world where in the absence of reason, monsters happily break free, where the mixture between fantastic and reality is not some clever technique to create magic realism but a faithful description of an astute, even if drug-clouded, mind. Similar to that old surrealist technique ("automatic writing" I think it is called), only this time the narrative is not the description of a dream – or not really.

Two main ideas seem to develop in this weird book: firstly, that we are more or less a world of addicts of some sort, and sometimes the drug addicts are not the worst of all, since “The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell… Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus.”

Secondly, that the human being can be redeemed even after a complete and apparently irreversible harrowing of hell: “The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated.” But this redemption, watch this, happens only if the Man’s insignificant, ridiculous place in the Universe is duly assumed, since even Art expresses only his decaying flesh:

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…

Between this two ideas oscillate the unconventional tales of the volume, building a hallucinating world, where absurd discussions pretend to deliver some profound hidden sense, like in Campus of Interzone University, a mixture of Ionesco’s Lesson and Orwell’s Animal Farm on a (why the hell not?) Romantic subject: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Coleridge.

You'll often find some absurd or simply untrue information delivered in a serious, erudite tone, like the description of the simopaths:

A simopath – the technical name for this disorder escapes me – is a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army, and discharge cures it.

Often you’ll come across some deliciously licentious images:

There’s a boy across the river with an ass like a peach; alas I was no swimmer and lost my Clementine”

but sometimes, in the middle of all this sarcasm and cynicism, you can be surprised by a tremendously delicate one:

When he smiled the fear flew away in little pieces of light, lurked enigmatically in the high cool corners of the room.

The most impressive are, in my opinion, his comparisons, from subtle oxymoronic (“The air is cloyed with a sweet evil substance like decayed honey.”) to forceful plastic (“Time jump like a broken typewriter…”) or just discriminating, politically incorrect, but oh-so-funny ones (“This foul crime shrieks like a wounded faggot for justice at least!”)

However, do not expect an easy lecture, not even a pleasant one. David Lodge, I recall, seriously questioned the novel's merit, doubting the writer's talent. As for me, I was sometimes pissed off, sometimes fascinated, sometimes it irritated the hell out of me. It is not easy a lecture to follow, but who cares? Definitely not the author, who declared: “Naked Lunch demands Silence from The Reader. Otherwise he is taking his own pulse…”

-Un trabajo creador de tendencias y derivas, no solo literarias.-

Género. Novela.

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro El almuerzo desnudo (publicación original: The Naked Lunch, 1959) ofrece distintas escenas de la vida del narrador, un politoxicómano adicto que, como buen yonqui, siempre está pendiente de la próxima dosis de aquello que pueda consumir. Los diferentes momentos de su desordenada existencia nos llevarán a varios países y tiempos, incluso a lugares poco reales en lo político o geográfico, pero muy auténticos en lo identitario.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs is a corrosive mash-up of Hunter S. Thompson, George Carlin and a hoarse whisper of Jim Morrison, (and the good doctor Thompson no doubt kept a volume of Burroughs on his desk between the dictionary and the thesaurus).

Wake up Charles Bukowski at noon, scrape him off the floor of an Oakland flophouse, feed him, sober him cold, clean him up with a shower and shave and tailor a nice suit around him and you APPROACH the simmering rage of Burroughs, the feral, haunted shot of moral depravity that he summons up from the locked up basements of our collective soul.

But then consider that this was published in 1959 and the depth of the virulent impact on our literary culture begins to take shape. If Burroughs was not the original anti-hero, he was at least its dark robed disciple and if not a voice crying out in the wilderness, he was a raspy wheeze coughing up a bawdy limerick in a back alley. The rancid, pugilistic stream of consciousness diatribe will lose many readers early on, but I waded through Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam? so I could not be scared away by some junkie ramblings.

Glad I did, because looking back on the rubbish heap climbed reveals a depth of thought and a sensitive, tortured beauty, like a wildflower sprouting up from amidst the bones of a carcass. All that said, it is still a profane, ugly book. Not for the squeamish.

Πόσο αξιολογώ την ευχαρίστηση και την πληρότητα που αισθάνθηκα διαβάζοντας το "γυμνό γεύμα"
2/5.
Πόσο αξιολογώ την αξία του βιβλίου ως απευθείας διεργασία σε περιοχές του ψυχισμού επιτελώντας συγκεκριμένη λειτουργία.
5/5

Θεωρώ πως δεν πρέπει να πιάσει κανείς στα χέρια του το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο εαν πρώτα δεν μάθει τα πάντα για την θρυλικά δραματική ζωή του Γουίλιαμ Μπάροουζ.

Είναι ένα φρικαλέο,απαίσιο, σιχαμερό,προσβλητικό,σκανδαλώδες,χυδαίο,ανήθικο,
διεφθαρμένο,hardcore πορνογράφημα,μυθικά σατιρικό και θρυλικά ώμο. Όπως ακριβώς και η ζωή του Μπάροουζ. Και εδώ είναι το σημείο αναφοράς. Αν νιώσεις τη βιογραφία του συγγραφέα,αυτομάτως κατανοείς την αξία του βιβλίου.

Το "γυμνό γεύμα" δεν γράφτηκε για να διασκεδάσει ή να κερδίσει εντυπώσεις. Είναι ένα ανορθόδοξο,βιωματικό και σοκαριστικό βιβλίο αφιερωμένο στην αρρώστεια και την αντικουλτούρα της λογοτεχνίας και της κοινωνίας του κόσμου.

Ο συγγραφέας είναι ένας μποέμ παρείσακτος ψυχασθενής, απόφοιτος του Χάρβαρντ, γόνος εύπορης οικογένειας και περιθωριακά αντισυμβατικός.
Εθισμένος σε σκληρές ναρκωτικές ουσίες,περιπλανητής του κόσμου, ομοφυλόφιλος,τυχοδιώκτης,συζυγοκτόνος και προφητική μορφή στην εξέλιξη της λογοτεχνίας.

Μια σιχαμένη ιδιοφυΐα,ένα απαίσιο μεγαλοφυές μυαλό που πιστεύει πως η γλώσσα είναι ένας ιός απο το διάστημα.
Μια διεστραμμένη φιγούρα της κοινωνίας που γράφει στη δεκαετία του '50 στην Ταγγέρη το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο σε μορφή επιστολών-σκέψεων-σημειώσεων χωρίς αρχή-μέση-τέλος,αναμειγνύοντας τη μυθοπλασία με φοβερές δόσεις πραγματικότητας.

Εκείνη την εποχή εθισμένος σε παραισθησιογόνες ουσίες προσπαθεί παράλληλα να αποκτήσει το χάρισμα της τηλεπάθειας.
Πριν και μετά,αυτό το διανοητικά άρρωστο και εθισμένο ... Μέλος της Αμερικανικής Ακαδημίας και Ινστιτούτου Τεχνών και Γραμμάτων - επικεφαλής του Τάγματος Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών της Γαλλίας, αναμειγνύεται με τις σκιές του πλανήτη μας και προκαλεί.

Το "γυμνό γεύμα" είναι μια έκρηξη απόγνωσης. Μια σχιζοφρενική και αρχικά ακαταλαβίστικη περιγραφή ενός φρικτού μαγικό-ναρκωτικού σύμπαντος σε αδιευκρίνιστο χωροχρόνο.

Αποτελεί σίγουρα προφητική περιγραφή μελλοντικών εξελίξεων και ως πραγματική ουσία του μυθιστορήματος περιγράφεται « η Αποκαθήλωση και η Βεβήλωση της Ανθρώπινης εικόνας απο τους ελεγχομανείς που διασπείρουν τον ιό του εθισμού».

Για να φτάσουμε σε αυτό το συμπέρασμα όμως περνάμε απο ένα καταδικασμένο και χυδαίο πορνογράφημα με σκληρές σκηνές παιδοφιλικού σεξ,φόνους ανηλίκων,φρικαλέων σοδομιστικών και σαδιστικών περιγραφών και κανιβαλισμού. Βουτάμε στην ταπείνωση και την εξαθλίωση. Πνιγόμαστε απο δυσφορία και μιζέρια άρρωστης κατάντιας και εξαχρείωσης. Υποφέρουμε απο όλες τις μορφές εθισμού τοξικών και κοινωνικών εθισμών.

Το «γυμνό γεύμα» ανεξαρτήτως υποκειμενικών εντυπώσεων ή συμπερασμάτων,αποτελεί σίγουρα ένα συνεχές αναθεωρούμενο,άσεμνο και εύστοχο χειρόγραφο τοξικού ρεαλισμού.

Ίσως να συστήνεται με λιγότερη επιφύλαξη το κινηματογραφικό "γυμνό γεύμα" απο τον Ντέιβιντ Κρόνενμπεργκ που ομολογουμένως επιχείρησε το ασύλληπτο.

Καλή ανάγνωση (προαιρετική παραίνεση)

Πολλούς ασπασμούς!!

* Η κινηματογραφική εκτέλεση έκανε τους παράγοντες να ορκιστούν πως δεν θα  ξαναγυρίσουν τέτοια ταινία.

I'm not an uber beat generation guru, but I'm fairly certain that Naked Lunch is the final destination to the journey started by Jack Kerouac in n  On the Roadn. It is very rhythmic (try reading it out loud) but also incredibly stream-of-conscious, much more so than Kerouac's novel (and he can get pretty damn stream-of-conscious).

This novel depicts the life (if you want to call it that) of a junkie in the '60s who travels from America to Mexico and finally lands [halfway across the globe] in Tangier. He is helplessly (and carelessly) addicted to several drugs, notably heroin and morphine. He will rip off just about anyone just to score. And he's reckless. Shamelessly reckless.

So why did I give this novel four stars? Because, through all the craziness and chaos of the novel's narration, there is a lucidly clear depiction of alienation and loneliness in the modern world. The novel's main character, William Lee (though we might as well call him William S. Burroughs), is chased by the police, drug dealers, and even a "notorious liquifactionist" from the Interzone (you know where that is, right?) named Hassan. He is not safe or sound anywhere, not even alone with himself. He is literally apart from society.

And what is the root of his painful alienation? Well he is, of course.

Who else was the cause of their own alienation? Oh, that's right: Holden Caulfield, Jay Gatsby, Stephen Dedalus, Odysseus, Aeneas, Ralph (if you've read the novel he's in, you'll know him), Randall Patrick McMurphy...hell, let's even throw Grendel on this list. Like "William Lee," each of these characters shows us just how human it is to paradoxically crave acceptance into society while we simultaneously push ourselves away.

Being a human can sometimes suck big time, and Naked Lunch depicts this unabashedly.

And nakedly.

The flaw of the 5-star rating system is in trying figure out whether you should award stars based on how much you liked a book, or based on how "good" you think a book is. These two criteria are often distinct from each other, and Naked Lunch, at least for me, is a perfect example of this. I think that Naked Lunch is a brilliant book, an that Burroughs is one of our century's great literary geniuses. So, that makes it a five star book. But did I enjoy reading it? Sometimes very much, sometimes not at all. Burroughs's slang is simultaneously grotesque and sparkling. He is often very funny and sometimes prone to accidental fits of beauty. But he's an experimentalist at heart, which, for me at least, makes him challenging to read. This sounds really fussy school-marmy (because it is), but I sometimes long for him to just use punctuation like a normal person. In a way, reading Burroughs is like reading the Bible... (God, I loved making that comparison.) You can't really just plow through it like a regular novel, because it's too winding and strange. It follows only a vague timeline that it adheres to only when the mood takes it. Plotwise, all bets are off. You kind of have to read it in spurts and fits, which is probably how it was written.
That said, I've read Naked Lunch at least four times, but never read it all the way through, from front to back. There are certain things that you do this with in your life...for instance, it took me years before I could rent either Time Bandits or Brazil before I could manage to stay awake to watch the whole film. What I finally discovered was that I'd never been old enough to appreciate Brazil before. Now it's one of my favorite movies. And Time Bandits is just really boring.

So here goes. I will read Naked Lunch from cover to cover, and finally figure out how I feel about it.
The Bible is gonna have to wait its turn.

Pues sigo leyendo cosas de la Generación Beat porque al parecer ahora tengo 16 años otra vez. Si Kerouac me pareció bastante regu, he de decir que este señor (William S. Burroughs) sí me gusta cómo escribe. Cumple con aquello de la escritura natural, improvisada, descuidada... pero la densidad de ideas buenas por párrafo es mucho mayor, ya no solo que en Kerouac (lo cual es fácil), sino que en la media de libros que he leído (aunque también puede ser fácil, porque me encanta leer cada mierda).

Su estilo me recuerda a Chuck Palahniuk, aunque evidentemente es este el que bebe de aquel. Te habla de cosas absolutamente truculentas, como Palahniuk, con la diferencia de que Palahniuk se inventa esas cosas espeluznantes, mientras que Burroughs las rescata de su anecdotario personal. No voy a engañar a nadie: leerle ha sido incómodo y requiere cierta entereza en el ánimo, que yo no habría tenido en otros momentos. Incluso el propio acto de leer a este individuo, que asesinó a su mujer jugando a Guillermo Tell y no oculta su deseo sexual hacia los menores, es moralmente reprobable. En este caso no solo hay que separar al artista de su obra, sino de su mujer, de los niños y de toda la sociedad en general.

Me he leído «El almuerzo desnudo», «Marica» y «Yonqui» y los tres están al nivel, aunque seguramente «El almuerzo desnudo» es en el que más se le va la pinza (los otros son más lineales, más conservadores en lo narrativo) y se distancia más de otras cosas que he leído.

¿Lo recomendaría? Seguramente no. La mayor parte de la gente no lee para pasarlo mal. O no tan mal.

As with other Beat classics, the novels of Kerouac, Burroughs et al are path-breaking howls from the nascent drugged-up counterculture, visionary textual explorations from ravaged junk-sick minds that exploded on the scene with an astonishing menace and originality. Today, Naked Lunch is more interesting for its impact on the American avant-garde, the prose itself a frequent schlepp of nonsensical be-bop that rambles on with the tedium of a party bore explaining in excruciating detail that totally trippy dream they had while on acid.

I give up.

This book is beautiful in a sick-grotesque-wild-hilarious-creative-mind-bending-outlandish-drug-filled-dirty-brave kind of way. If I could use one word to describe it, it would be “bizarre”; although “hilarious” and “important” could work, too. In Naked Lunch you are taken into the mind of William S. Burroughs -- a twisted, drug addicted man, who also happens to be genius.

When considering its content, it’s no wonder Naked Lunch was banned and railed against when it was first released; it’s also no surprise that it was as popular as it was, given its creative brilliance. I can’t recommend Naked Luncht to anyone; it’s as graphic as the imagination allows. In fact, I would say that it’s the sickest book I’ve ever read, but I just happened to read Bataille’s Story of the Eye the other day, too. Between the two, there’s really no way of telling which pushes the limits more: Naked Lunch describes events such as young men being hung by nooses while they cum and shit on other young men. Story of the Eye contains scenes such as those involving a just-plucked eyeball, drenched in urine, being immersed in a young women’s vagina and asshole. So you see, it’s tough to decide which is more bizarre; which is sicker. Novels like these -- that stretch limitations -- are important, though, because they remind us of our baser instincts. Becoming aware of and familiarizing ourselves with the sicknesses that can exist in human beings can actually further our empathy and appreciation; it can increase the likelihood that we note everyday acts of generosity, and therefore increase the chances that we, in kind, continuously act in such a way.

But I know that Naked Lunch isn’t for everybody. If you can’t handle or don’t like this kind of thing, that’s fine with me: what you prefer and decide to read affects me very little; and it’s your right, really. Read a worthless, mind-numbing romance novel for all I care. But don’t you dare try to take a book -- no matter how graphic or nasty -- out of the hands of others. Sure there are gross books out there that have no deeper meaning; but even these, I believe, have every right to be read. After all, who are you -- in your blatant subjectivity -- to choose what defines worthwhile art for others?

But that’s beside the point, really, because Naked Lunch is powerfully imaginative and creative. If you can take its vile nature, waste no time in adding it to your “to read” list, because it can open-up some perceptual doorways.