This was a challenging read (for me) and unless you’re familiar with addiction with opioids and/or heroin, I’m not sure how much you can really understand. I struggled. A lot. BUT the afterword explained some of the background and the conception of the book which I found interesting. William Burroughs letters and early biography give context to this. I WISH I would have read that first. Essential reading if you’re into the beats-era.

I've just seen that there is a David Cronenburg film of this book. It's the perfect pairing. The only other person who could have filmed this is perhaps John Waters, and he's maybe a bit friendly.

If you've read the book and ever watched a Cronenburg film, you're eyes just bugged out and jaw dropped at the idea of it, right? If not, why not? Explain.

The book is sparklingly brilliant, awful, nasty, wicked and beautiful. The work of a genius. There are a lot of good reviews out there, I'm not up to it. But a recommendation - if you like Burroughs, try Jean Genet, especially Our Lady of the Flowers. Burroughs and Genet, felons and addicts both, Genet the more lyrical of the two, both soared to the highest heights of twentieth century experimental fiction.

well...nothing is true and everything is permitted. that is the lesson, isn't it? cut up the words, more words come. cut up the book, get a new book. cut up your life, get a new life. however, shoot heroin for years and accidentally kill your wife and you could end up writing one of the greatest literary achievements of all time.

Yes Burroughs' Naked Lunch is vile and obscene and utterly disgusting, but so is the terminal opioid addiction it conveys. Reading this novel was, at times, like trudging through a swamp filled with raw sewage and rancid medical waste ~ in my bare feet. It's as though the author made a list of the most repugnant things in the universe, things like racism and pedophilia and festering boils of green pus. Then he endeavored to see how many ways he could eloquently insert those things into a sentence. And then how many of those sentences he could coherently cram into a paragraph. And then how many of those paragraphs he could string together to form vignettes.

If good art elicits a visceral and emotional response, then Naked Lunch is good art. 'Just don't read it aloud with children in the room, and don't recommend it to your mother, and don't eat for at least 30 minutes prior.