So, basically, the meaningless drivel of the very first circuit boi? Seriously? Maybe I would have liked it better if I weren't already sick to death of all the hallucinatory narratives this book spawned. This is a structure that needed to be created only once to get the bastard over with and properly buried.

Drug narratives are always only autobiographies obsessed with the author's secret obscene wishes and (inevitably) Neanderthal politics. They are the literary equivalent of a frotteur on the subway recounting an especially long and boring dream.

As a dear friend once told me, "Shut the fuck up, you stupid stoner."

I tried this one on for size when I was but a downy-cheeked lad in highschool, in love with Beat writing. It didn't take.

Years later, I poked back into it and was astounded by how CLEAR it actually is. As in, language-wise. Obviously the episodes are totally beyond rationality and even good sense, but as he sets his scenes you can actually get into this book.

I just read about the ultra hygenic Recondition laboratory and found myself laughing out loud. Its stunning how Burroughs actually made sense, in a humid, feverish, sci-fi/film noir kind of way, of a lot of what's at stake in the contemporary world....state control, corporate control, sexual and scientific control....you name it, the nightmare's on Bill.

It's funny how the narrator and the characters almost treat you with this gruff, snide familiarity. I heard once Burroughs being compared with Twain, in that misanthropic cracker barrel philosopher kind of way, and that's exactly what I'm getting at.

More to come, hopefully....

This book makes no sense, not that it matters. Burroughs wrote it over the course of a year in a one-room apartment over a Moroccan male brothel, strung out on heroin. What resulted is a disturbing, satirical, bitter flood of images. To call it a meditation or a portrait doesn't do it justice: "Naked Lunch" is the lifeblood of a dying mind. It is a collection of vaguely-linked scenes, images, and flash pieces some humor, some horror, some pornography. As you might expect, it drags in places, but some of the imagery is so dementedly brilliant that it deserves to be read. Besides, if you get too tired of it, you can always mark your place and come back to it in a year. Don't worry--it'll make as little sense as it did before.

insane, random, surreal, no-holds-barred gutter poetry (and I mean that in a good way). If you are easily offended, this book will offend you. If you need structure or plot, you will throw this book across the room. If you can give yourself over to Buroughs' drug-fueled madness, however, you will find a lot of beauty hidden underneath all of the filth that Burroughs shovels at you.

A merry-go-round of grotesqueries & infinite pain. The life of the junky means nothing and so the experience is circular-- a self-(or is it?)punishment, an act of extreme nihilism--this is a cry from the very depths of hell, and the last time I checked the most successful account of it was by a man named Dante Alighieri.

Burroughs out-writes those terribly true duds of literary fame, mainly Henry Miller, Kerouac, et al. This is incendiary, fantastic, simply put, a bonafide WORK OF ART. In my mind "On the Road" is but a dull Norman Rockwell, "Naked Lunch" an overpowering "Guernica."

Experience this hell-on-page & immediately go out to the world to enjoy your heaven!

P.S. What a difference ten years makes! I tried to read this right after high school & failed. I feel better for my innocence.

you remember that one tweet that was like “wow! i love donnie darko! i hope one day i’ll know what it’s about” this is my donnie darko

Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.

Burroughs’ collection of schizophrenic tales (barely) follows the chaotic adventures of his alter ego, Lee, through the Interzone. Simultaneously combining the grotesque vision of a heroin addict, in which the character’s surroundings suddenly adopt the aura of his need-infested mind, and instances of sharp Orwellesque sociopolitical satire depicting the extreme parody of a welfare state, Naked Lunch is decidedly disorienting and diverse in its diametric literary breadth.

But, Naked Lunch — what to say? I could say that this novel is a masterpiece of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and 60s — except, of course, it isn’t a novel; or I could tell you that it is the longest, most drawn-out, incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness gibberish that I have read and ever will read. I could highlight Burroughs’ emotively revolting passages as aesthetic wonders of the caliber of Bosch; or I could instead characterise them as the disturbing images lingering in the mind of a drug-addicted, sadistic, sexually-perverted writer who would not be able to tell himself apart from a figure fashioned from his beloved ‘rotten ectoplasm.’

Frankly, I’m at a loss, and I cannot rate this book. It could be 5 stars, it could be 1; it could be anything in between. There are times at which Naked Lunch appalled me — a 30 page orgy turned mass-murder: horrifying, absurd — and others at which Burroughs left me to contemplate today’s social structure, one that is invariably evolving into pointless control. More prevalently, I abhorred the author and his pretentious and idiotic blabbering.

Perhaps it is this quality which makes Naked Lunch so special, the author so talented and the experience so unlike any other literature — if you can call it that — and perhaps not. On this uncertain ground I lie; what is certain, however, is that Naked Lunch contains something of the hauntingly unordinary, something which will inordinately haunt you.

Update: Finally went with the two-star.

Never before have I given a five star rating that so amazed and baffled me. Naked Lunch is a work that I have been unsuccessfully attempting to read, off and on, for the past thirty years. All my previous attempts ran aground either on the work's odd lack of familiar structure or the repulsiveness of the scenes described. I had concluded that, despite its importance as a seminal work of the Beat writers, it would remain one of those works that just wouldn't reach me. I gave up attempting it.

Then I discovered the power of audible books to unlocked the potential of difficult and non traditional writing. I gave Naked Lunch a final try, and the genius of this brilliant, transgressive work annihilated me. It is a nightmare, or a series of nightmares from which one despairs of ever waking. It is filth, decay, hopelessness, ugliness, blasphemous obscenity and pornography, lashed together by absolute brilliance, and always, always with a dark humor that refuses to face this horror show with anything but a defiant, croaking laugh. It is a hard stare into the ugliest underbelly that the structure of Western culture all but guarantees, a stare that refuses to look away, that cannot look away and be distracted by the pretty, surface bangles. And ultimately, because of this, because Burroughs does not look away, because he forces the reader's gaze there as well, and because he comes out laughing, it is a triumph.

This review would not be complete without praising the performance of Mark Bramhall, who narrated the audible book. He faultlessly creates mood, uses voices to animate the outrageous characters of the work, and even approaches, when reading the oft repeating voice of Dr. Benway, the signature croaking voice of William Burroughs himself. It was the strength of Bramhall's performance that finally opened the door to allow me entrance to this amazing but difficult classic.

Difícil, muy difícil decir algo sobre esta obra. Desde un punto de vista se puede decir que es un cóctel de locura, droga y sexo, pero, como dice la sinopsis, Burroughs dispara contra las religiones, el ejército, la universidad, la sexualidad, la justicia corrupta, los traficantes tramposos, el colonialismo, la burocracia y la psiquiatría... Todo esto, claro, como una bomba sin sentido de miseria humana. La única parte lúcida de esta obra, la encontramos al inicio y al final de esta, y esta no deja de ser más turbadora que el resto.

So I finally finished Naked Lunch. The (uh...) novel blew my mind. And he wrote this shit in the 50s! Holy Christ! I picture the average guy with a crew cut standing outside an aluminum-sided house (was aluminum-siding invented yet?) jumping up and down, looking for someone to punch, in black and white. But Naked Lunch is so much more than any obscenity controversy or Beat Generation (barf) pigeon-holing. Hipsters, junkies, New York art scenesters, whatever, they've all tried to claim this book as their own, exclusive landscape, but Naked Lunch kicks them in the face and shatters soft, easy categorization. Burroughs is so goddamn strong with words. He's like a really fucking smart guy making the entire country, including and perhaps especially literary types, uncomfortable in the best way way possible, like he's knocking down walls and leaving the reader blinking in the surprising, scary, honest moonlight. If there ever was a scathing indictment of tepid existence it's Naked Lunch, but in my eyes the book gathers up all subcultures, chew them up, and shits them out. Naked Lunch is raw need and verbalized catharsis. It's what we can't say in complete sentences. It's like ee cummings gone very, very insane. It's human. Fuckin' great book. Necessary book. Important book. Influential book. And a total mindfuck. Next time I'm supposed to sit at a dinner party or small town event that feels forced and inauthentic, I'm gonna think "Naked Lunch Naked Lunch Naked Lunch" over and over again and feel better.

Drug addict William Lee takes on various aliases has he tells across loosely connected vignettes of his experiences in locations in the US, Mexico and further afield. I often feel compelled to overrate a book, or give it more consideration because it's deemed a classic. Well despite this being a modern classic this book did nothing for me, and I really tried hard to find something engaging and/or classic about it. 2 out of 12!

what the actual fuck.
I was stalking this dude on facebook (yeaah don't judge)and found out he liked this author, and especially this book so I said why the hell not.
this is just something you can't unread
I can't explain how I feel right now
I like weird stuff and I wholeheartedly appreciate it but this is beyond weird. repulsive.
I'm so confused right now
I never had an opinion on drugs and people who do them but now I'll just think about this book. and shudder maybe

edit:
To be a good writer you have to be absolutely lucid at every moment of writing, and in good health. I’m very much against the romantic concept of writing which maintains that the act of writing is a sacrifice, and that the worse the economic conditions or the emotional state, the better the writing. I think you have to be in a very good emotional and physical state. - gabriel marquez
enough said.