What can you say about Uncle Bill that hasn't already been said? I know that there was an obscenity trial over this book back in the day, but it still amazes me that he wasn't killed by an angry mob in the streets. Remember this was published in an America that didn't allow married couples on television shows to sleep in the same bed or use the word "pregnant". The text is obviously extremely disturbing. Make no mistake, reading this book is an endurance test. If you make it through you will feel like you have tainted your soul forever. It reads as if the author had a Harvard education and a severe drug problem, which was the reality for Burroughs at this point in time. However, I am of the opinion that almost every sub-genre of fiction since can be traced back to Burroughs. What the Beatles are to rock music, he is to literature. He is one of those bad news guys for aspiring writers. The reason for this is that any crazy scenario or plot twist that we can think of, he has already weighed, tested, and shotgunned sometime between the 1960's to mid-1990's. Additionally, for those interested, I would recommend the film "Naked Lunch" by David Cronenberg. I usually hate movies based on books that I have read, but this movie can almost be seen as a supplement to the book. It hits the major points of the book, but also fills in the background of what was going on in Burroughs life during the writing of the book in a very Surrealistic fashion.

I made it just a little bit past the passage mentioning Steely Dan the dildo (actually, it's three generations of dildos all thriving under the Steely Dan name). And then, at the request of my old man who was sick of hearing me complain and puzzle over this book, I put it down for good. I don't like to leave books unfinished, but a girl can only swallow so many reiterations of the same tired orgiastic death-by-hanging scenario before she puts her foot down and says NO MORE!
I almost liked the book for this over-the-top ghastliness alone. Complex, acrobatic sex scenes abound, and there's something charming about the way it just gets nastier and nastier until the outlandishness of the unending orgies becomes laughable. But the redundancy of the themes and prose eventually became cloying. For example, Burroughs used the phrase "cancelled eyes" conspicuously often. While it's an apt enough way to describe the expression of someone floating through a drug haze, his overuse of the term struck me as a little too self-congratulatory, as if he was thinking, "Burroughs, you magnificent bastard! What a clever turn of phrase! Do it again!" And that sort of characterized the whole half of the book I finished--it seemed like Burroughs' critical abilities were blinded by his love for his own shock-value-saturated meanderings.
On the whole (or, rather, on the half, since that's all I finished), reading Naked Lunch was like listening to someone tell you their weird dream from last night. Vaguely interesting, especially when it makes narrative sense, but, as it drones on, too zanily bizarre to keep my attention.

Me suele encantar el realismo sucio y la generación Beat, pero este lo abandono, demasiado denso, demasiado abstracto, no es para mí.

Ugh. I'm sure this is very brilliant and all, but it's extremely unpleasant to read. Physically repulsive, it's enough to scare anyone away from heroin, and yet, in some ways, it glorifies the experience in a self-indulgent way. Mind you, the book has no plot, and is just one drug-induced hallucination after another. It gets pretty boring after a while. Even extreme disgust gets old after about 50 pages. You're so numb after a few pages that Burrough's attempts to get nastier and nastier and shock more and more are mostly lost.

I'm still trying to figure out the literary value of stuff like this. Any English profs out there care to explain why this made it into the canon? I ask this in all seriousness - I really can't figure it out. Maybe it does belong on the list - in which case, I want to know the purpose of such lists.

I don't feel like I read this so much as survived it. You can bet I will not be reading the other two Burroughs novels on the 1001 books list. What do they take me for, some kind of masochist? So that means I only have to read 999 books, which is fine by me. Though I have a feeling that a couple of others on the list are going to turn me off in the same way.

I guess this is one you're supposed to read in the interests of being engaged in pop and drug culture, but my rec? Stay away. You don't want to be this engaged.

From the 20 pages I've read so far, it seems like starting a heroin habit is a bad idea.

Found this file I started on my computer June 9, 2007:

Hypertext Reading of Naked Lunch

Reading Naked Lunch as it was intended: open the book at any page and just read what is there. Keeping track of pages read, so that there is no duplication and each page is given its consideration. Am a bit anal about these things, so I'm not going to cut in the middle of a chapter...going to read nearest chapter from where I pry open the book. The book is never meant to end, because it's an immortal junky's nightmare. Read, read, read and then, finally, the ultimate nightmare: ultimate boredom with horrors. Purgatory in a carnival funhouse, and the electricity's been cut off.

1. The Black Meat (pgs. 47-51)
2. Interzone (pgs.161-168)
3. Have You Seen Pantopon Rose (pgs. 179-181)
4. Quick... (pgs. 212-213)



3 47 48 49 50 51 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 179 180 181 212 213

This was freakishly amazing, simultaneously making me wish I was on a full H binge with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Infinite Jest, and a whole slew of Stephen King books to cap off this horrific tome of pure poetry.

1959. And still absolutely harrowing today.

I thought movies like Requiem For A Dream or tv shows like The Wire were the most absolutely effective anti-drug memoir ever created by richly immersing us in the addict's life... but no.

Naked Lunch tips the reader right off a cliff into the deep end of an Heroin Dream, starting us right at the gross end of bodies breaking down, moving on to 1984-like Reconditioning Centers for total mental reprogramming, thank you very much, and then moving into the skull of a paranoid delusional fever dream of homosexuality and then alien societies.

If I could pick all of the heaviest hot-topics of the day and cram them all together into the heaviest fever pitch of a "normal's" fear, paranoia, misconceptions, and conspiracy theories, making the prose into a Beat-Poetry slam, and then fearlessly drowning the reader in jizz, then this is the book I'd point to as the poster child of all the books that would come after.

Seriously. The impact of this book on mainstream druggie fiction CANNOT be underestimated. Whole horror genres have spawned off of this book in the 80's. Talking assholes? A man who stole an opium suppository from his own grandmother's ass? Spontaneous liquefaction of bodies as a bug's-eye view of our modern society?

This stuff is RICH. It's also disgusting.

Hell, I'm a huge fan of Chuck Palahniuk and Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, and even these guys didn't quite go off the deep end as far as William S. Burroughs.

Hats off. Total Respect. Even if it's an enormously wild button-pusher, it's not like it's un-factual. The drugs are real. The lives of homosexuals were probably quite real for the day and age. The explosion of the importance and the wild revelry makes these things into a realm of All-Importance in this novel, though, making it at first horrifying, then surreal, and then almost pure science fiction. :) Truly a delight. :)

It's also a perfect piece to prepare for Halloween. Perfect for the feels, NOT the camp. I got scared. :)

Скъпи читатели. Може би ви е направило впечатление, че по принцип ревютата ми са позитивни и съм способен да намеря нещо хубаво дори и в книги, които не струват хартията, на която са отпечатани. Сега се пригответе за едно наистина гадно представяне на още по-гаден роман, който без съмнение е в личния ми топ 5 за най-скапани заглавия евър. Ако не ви се четат подобни неща - моля, сменете страницата.

Уилям Бъроуз е постмодернист, един от бащите на бийт-поколението в Америка, редом с Алън Гинсбърг и Джак Керуак. Тази книга също е основоположник на това движение в литературата и гордо стои закопана в темелите му, редом с "Вопъл" на Алън и "По пътя" на Керуак. Що е то бийт-поколение ли? Отваряме Уикипедия и четем, че това е тесен литературен кръг от група писатели, чиито основни елементи са опитите с наркотици, нетрадиционните форми на секс, повлияли са хипитата. Съвсем нелошо определение.

Бъроуз има едно дете - син, кръстен на него, който се ражда от втория му брак с Джоан Волмър. Дръжте се да не паднете - Джоан умира, когато Бъроуз я застрелва в главата при опит да повтори популярната сцена с ябълката от "Вилхелм Тел" в нетрезво състояние. Писателят е бисексуален, впоследствие става открит хомосексуалист.

Защо този роман е боклук? Корицата е ултрасмотана, но много пасва на съдържанието - чист crap. Според някои почитатели на този тип литература аз едва ли разбирам нещо и авторът умело е вплел своите социално-критични възгледи и е подронил моралните, политически и икономически канони на тогавашното американско общество. Според мен обаче се състои от записването на наркоманските бълнувания на автора, смесени с хомосексуалните му желания и всичко това гарнирано с високото му самочувствие и неподправена убеденост в собствената му значимост. С една дума - надувка. Съжалявам, че не успях да разровя достатъчно добре литературните лайна на повърхността на романа, за да достигна до гениалните повърни, които се крият отдолу.

О, не, не казвам, че няма и положителни работи вътре. Авторът споделя немалко интересни факти, предимно за наркотиците, така че ако сте наркозависим или обичате да четете книги, от които да научите нещо може и да ви хареса. Ако пък и си падате по еднополовата любов, то пък може да издигнете романа в култ и да си го закачите в рамка на стената. Понеже аз не спадам към нито една от двете групи обаче и чета книги основно за да си доставя удоволствие ще се постарая да се отърва от този роман по най-бързия възможен начин.

Книгата няма логическа подредба, ясно изразени герои, образи, не притежава сюжет, обстановка, атмосфера, авторът скача от едно на друго като луда маймуна от клон на клон, съдържа натуралистични хомосексуални сцени, преплетени със садо-мазо, снъф и наркобълнувания. Съдържа типични описания на видовете наркотици, как действат, какъв е трипът от тях, абстиненцията, халюцинациите, срещите с пласьори, лежането по арести, сблъсъците с ченгета. Има словоизлияния на доктори, които ако ги чуе дори на Менгеле ще му настръхне косата. Но няма история и докато четеш, буквално те заболява главата от несвързаното бърборене и безсмислените диалози, въобще не е ясно къде е границата между реалност и делириум, започва да ти се драйфа и ти иде да удушиш автора със струна за пиано.

Спомних си един епизод от "Жени" на Буковски, в който авторът е на литературно четене и в хотела който отсяда е и Уилям Бъроуз. Казват на Буковски, че са известили Бъроуз - все пак две литературни величия случайно се озовават под един покрив, но Уилям не е пожелал да се срещне с него. Чарлз маха с ръка и казва ами добре, и аз не искам да се виждаме. И двамата пишат доста автобиографично в книгите си, та съм склонен да мисля, че случката е истинска. Но Буковски е ултимативно прав - за какво могат да си говорят те двамата?

Бук��вски е пияница, Бъроуз е наркоман. Буковски е женкар, Уилям хомо. Буковски е гений, Уилям ге(ни)й. Чарлз е честен до смърт, Бъроуз е престорен. Буковски е човек от народа, Уилям е превзет и надут псевдоинтелектуалец. Последното може да е и от детството им - Буковски израства в бедно семейство, Бъроуз в богато. Буковски пише романи, както и да го погледнеш - Бъроуз пльоква на белия лист литературни мастурбации. Буковски е писател, Бъроуз е автор. Има разлика, огромна.

Мислех да цитирам пасажи от книгата, за да видите на практика за какво иде реч, но се отказах. Не искам да ви го причинявам, не искам и да го причинявам на себе си. Извинявам се ако съм бил прекалено хейтърски настроен, но както казва колегата Блажев - има книги, които по-добре да не попадат в ръцете ви и трябва да бъдете предпазени от тях.

‏يتناول هذا الكتاب هذه المشكلة الصحية( إدمان المخدرات) فمن الضرورة أن يكون الكتاب وحشياً ، فاحشاً ومثيراً للاشمئزاز.
‏⁧‫هذا ما سوف يصدمك به الكاتب في بداية كتابه ولنا أن نتخيل كمية الازدراء التي سوف تحل بنا عندما نمضي قدماً ضمن طيات هذه الرواية التي هي جزء من سيرة إدمانه الذي يصف فيها رحلته المضنية مع عالم المخدرات
عمل فني مهم يتحدث عن حالة مهمة كان من الممكن ان يكون مكتملاً لو لا تلك الجريمة التي اقترفتها دار الجمل بترجمة رديئة فاشلة للمترجمة أفسدت روح العمل وشوهته وأردت حروفه قتيلة .. للأسف عمل جميل شوه بمهزلة الترجمة

”The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED lunch--a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of the fork.” The book title was suggested by Jack Kerouac.

n  n

If not for the intervention of William S. Burroughs friends, Naked Lunch would have never seen the light of day. Peter Orlovsky, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac decided to visit Burroughs in Tangiers and see if they could salvage any of the fragmented writing that had been dripping from the mind of Burroughs while he was nursing addictions to heroin and young male prostitutes. This is not a novel and if you venture into it thinking it is going to be a novel, with a linear plot line, you will be disappointed from the get go. This is a collection of horrors, fears built upon a wicket of paranoia, fantasies shared with brutal honesty, and demented, unhinged sex. Love does not tread through the shadows of this delusional; and yet, dare I say brilliant work of writing.

Burroughs explains:

You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point...I have written many prefaces. They atrophy and amputate spontaneous like the little toe amputates in a West African disease confined to the Negro race and the passing blonde shows her brass ankle as a manicured toe bounces across the club terrace, retrieved and laid at her feet by her Afghan hound...
Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To-Book...Abstract concepts, bare as algebra, narrow down to a black turd or a pair of aging conjones...

n  n

Naked Lunch influenced music, most famously: Kurt Cobain, Bob Dylan, and Lou Reed. Band names emerged from characters in the book including Steely Dan. References to Burroughs spring up in literature and his influence is apparent in the works of Martin Amis and Will Self. Norman Mailer once referred to Burroughs as, “possibly the only living American writer of genius.” Essayists speculate that Mailer may have only said that to irritate the trio of Roth, Updike, and Bellow. Mailer was always the guy on the outside looking in.

So the Beat Generation ambassadors that sat down and tried to make sense out of the ramblings of the haphazardly collected writings, found among this mess of a manuscript something fresh and scary. The publishers they took it to saw the mess more than they saw the brilliance. Only after a few bits were published in a magazine called Big Table in 1959 and the writing was declared obscene and prosecuted did Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press, always spoiling for a fight on censorship, decided to publish. Ahhhh nothing like banning books to generate sales.

Edith Sitwell loftily rejected this “filth”. ”I do not wish to spend the rest of my life with my nose nailed to other people’s lavatories. I prefer Chanel No 5.”

Can’t you just see Burroughs laughing gleefully, rubbing his hands together, at all the press: good, bad, and indifferent? He must have been thrilled that Sitwell even deigned to crack the cover of his book.

You might be still a babe in the woods who has not armchaired travelled down the stench filled alley of a Naked Lunch inspired nightmare. You might be thinking at this point in the review that you might want to read this book. I can assure you that you may NOT want to read this book. If you are a person who intends to be a serious writer then... yes... you really should read this book. It does open up vistas of thought if you can relax your moral compass for about 215 pages. Burroughs was riding fifteen years of addiction and self-indulgence. These writings, to me, were merely an outlet to get some of the muttering ideas out of his head. The process may have curbed the ragged edge of insanity.

I suppose some titillation can be gleaned from these writings. Perversity and obscenity has appeal. Pain has a following. ”She seized a safety pin caked with blood and rust, gouged a great hole in her leg which seemed to hang open like an obscene, festering mouth waiting for unspeakable congress with the dropper which she now plunged out of sight into the gaping wound. But her hideous galvanized need (hunger of insects in dry places) has broken the dropper off deep in the flesh of her ravaged thigh (looking rather like a poster on soil erosion).”

Writing about sex and desire is always of interest.

”I was young myself once and heard the siren call of easy money and women and tight boy-ass and land’s sake don’t get my blood up I am subject to tell a tale make your cock stand up and yip the pink pearly way of young cunt or the lovely brown mucus-covered palpitating tune of the young boy-ass play your cock like a recorder...and when you hit the prostate pearl sharp diamonds gather in the golden lad balls inexorable as a kidney stone.”

At times Burroughs is whimsical.

”The nostalgia fit is on me boys and will out willy silly...boys walk down the carny midway eating pink spun sugar...goose each other at the peep show...jack off in the Ferris wheel...throw sperm at the moon rising red and smoky over the foundries across the river.”

He shares his junky dreams.

”Cooking smells of all countries hang over the City, a haze of opium, hashish, the resinous red smoke of yage, smell of the jungle and salt water and the rotting river and dried excrement and sweat and genitals.”

His terror.

The scream shot out of his flesh through empty locker rooms and barracks, musty resort hotels, and spectral, coughing corridors of T.B. sanitariums, the muttering, hawking, grey fishwater smell of flophouses and Old Men’s Homes, great, dusty customs sheds and warehouses, through broken porticoes and smeared arabesques, iron urinals worn paper thin by the urine of a million fairies, deserted weed-grown privies with a musty smell of shit turning back to the soil, erect wooden phallus on the grave of dying peoples plaintive as leaves in the wind, across the great brown river where whole trees float with green snakes in the branches and sad-eyed lemurs watch the shore out over a vast plain (vulture wings husk in the dry air). The way is strewn with broken condoms and empty H caps and K.Y. tubes squeezed dry as bone meal in the summer sun.”

Anybody want a hit of H?

Burroughs during a William Tell reenactment with his wife, after I’m sure copious amounts of alcohol and chemical assistance had been inhaled, attempted to shoot a drink off her head for the entertainment of their friends. He missed. She died. He called his lawyer.

n  n

The quotes I’ve selected to share in this review are nowhere near the worse or most perverse of the writing that will be experienced in this book. If anyone has been offended I am truly sorry, but I do not want people reading a book that is not a good fit for them. Consider these quotes to be a warning sign to decide if you want to avoid more of the same (only much more shocking) or that you are game to see what else Burroughs can fling on you, can etch into your skin, can smear in your hair, can wiggle into your brain, can “hot lick” your...

n  n

This book put me in mind of the first time I went to a strip club, which happened to be in Kansas City. At first I was looking around like a farm boy fresh off the back of the turnip truck, jaw dropped, eyeballs extended amazed at all the BOOBS just walking around everywhere. After about a half hour, my brain made adjustments, and it became... well... boring isn’t the right word but the shock value had worn off. I was ready to go somewhere else, do something else. My reaction to this book was similar, even though it was my second trip through it, still for about the first fifty pages I was uncomfortable and second guessing my decision to reread it and horrified at the thought of trying to review it. I hung in there mainly because I’d survived the experience once and had a feeling that I would adjust. As I advanced through the pages, Burroughs would continue to stick needles into my morality, but I was becoming more immune. In fact, at times the book started to feel repetitive. I even reached a point where I could say “hey Burroughs I got it, you can quit hitting me with the hammer now”.

I could have written a series of reviews espousing the reasons for giving this book one star up to five stars. It has had an impact on the literary and musical landscape (art as well if you count his shotgun splatter paintings), and not necessarily a negative one. I landed on four stars because Burroughs, in whatever level of hell he is residing in (if you believe in that stuff), will not get the satisfaction of yet another negative review. Bad press has been very, very good to him.

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This book needs plenty of warnings on the front. Possibly drive you crazy and scar you for life. He goes to the edge and over full laden with drugs, profanity, sex, grossness and sadism. I think he has gone a bit too extreme, it seems that was his purpose to hit a nerve and cause revulsion in the reader.
n  n

I actually gave it 1 1/2 stars.

Who Should Read This?
Honestly, no one. I genuinely can't think of a single person to whom I would recommend this. Not one. And yet, obviously there are people that enjoyed it. I don't know them, and, honestly, I can't even imagine them. If you're one of them, please tell me, WHAT about this book appealed to you?

What I Have to Say:
I can think of no way to describe this book other than "piece of trash." Normally, I would feel AWFUL about calling any book, no matter how terrible, a piece of trash. No matter what I think of it, a book is the author's life blood, their baby. And yet I have no qualms whatsoever saying just that about Naked Lunch. It's a piece of trash. And the fact that the author claims he doesn't actually even REMEMBER writing it makes me feel even less guilty about calling it such.

And honestly, all of the other girls in the book club thought so, too.

Naked Lunch SEEMS to be about a spy, though it's really hard to say, as the moments of coherency are few and far between. Written while he was on heroin, as well as a slew of other drugs, and it seems to be him TRYING to tell a story but actually spending more time describing the ludicrous and ludicrously trashy life of a drug addict who just may also be a sex addict. Sometimes, it felt like his entire purpose in writing was to shock, whether it be with the extreme descriptions of extreme sexual acts, or with what came out just by being lost on drugs. And then, every time he wrote something that actually did manage to shock, it felt like he loved himself a little bit more for it. Honestly, it felt very self-congratulatory. Like "oh, check out how AWESOME I am, I do lots of drugs and know all about the drug world!" or "Yo, check out how TOTALLY RAD I am! I have lots and lots of gay sex in ways and positions that you never even daydream about."

It literally manages to glorify something that should NOT be glorified while at the same time remaining COMPLETELY repulsive (and that's why it gets 1 1/2 stars from me and not just 1 star, because that's pretty impressive)!

Somewhere along the way, it also manages to STOP shocking. It gets to the point when you just expect next-to-non-stop "I love myself and am amazing for being able to write something that will shock you like this" "shocking" scenes about sex and drugs. And then, you're not shocked. You're just annoyed that there's still no coherency and that you can tell he's being totally self-indulgent.

Anyhow, so that's what I thought of Naked Lunch. I guess there's one thing, though - if I EVER had any thoughts of doing drugs (which I didn't), this book would have managed to turn me off. Maybe it should be mandatory reading for high schoolers. Right, well, I could go on about how much I DIDN'T like this book, but I imagine you get the point. In the mean time, if you read this book, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.