by William S. Burroughs
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Book Description
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the 20th century. Exerting its influence on the work of authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson, on the relationship of art and obscenity, and on the shape of music, film, and media generally, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. Now, nearly forty years after the book's first U.S. appearance, Burroughs scholar Barry Miles and Burroughs's longtime editor James Grauerholz have given us an edition of the book which includes many editorial corrections to errors present in the existing text, and incorporates Burroughs's notes on the text, several essays he wrote over the years about the book, and, most excitingly, an appendix of twenty percent new material and alternate drafts from the original manuscript, which predates the edition eventually was published by Olympia Press in Paris. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of perhaps his most enduring artistic legacy.
Amazon.com
"He was," as Salon's Gary Kamyia notes, "20th-century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of dread.... Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughly and obsessively rendered as Blake's." Why has this homosexual ex-junkie, whose claim to fame rests entirely on one book--the hallucinogenic ravings of a heroin addict--so seized the collective imagination? Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in a Tangier, Morocco, hotel room between 1954 and 1957. Allen Ginsberg and his beatnik cronies burst onto the scene, rescued the manuscript from the food-encrusted floor, and introduced some order to the pages. It was published in Paris in 1959 by the notorious Olympia Press and in the U.S. in 1962; the landmark obscenity trial that ensued served to end literary censorship in America. Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol. Read it and see for yourself.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Good Book, Terrible Edition / Should be: "The Ruined Text", 2008-06-21
Read Naked Lunch. Just DON'T BUY THIS VERSION of William Burrough's Naked Lunch.
The Editors as well as the Publishers have destroyed what would otherwise be an American classic.
The publisher have diminished Naked Lunch by printing it in the cheapest possible way. This book is considered an American Classic. Why then, is it printed only in one soft cover edition? Why does the paper look and feel like a Newspaper? I dont know. All I can tell you is that this sort of material is unfit for a great book. This quality of this book is what I'd call disposible at best.
Even if this book was a little sturdier; even if it was printed on quality paper, with quality ink; even then I wouldn't want this to be part of my library. The editors did a horendous job "Restoring" this book. I'm all for editorial notes. I just think they belong in the back of the book, as END-NOTES. Even foot-notes would have been OK, I guess. The editors of this text have taken far too much liberty with Burroughs text, they've insterted notes directly into the text. I've seen this done before, I've never seen it done so often. On nearly every page it seems there is at least one editorial note. (The notes are in parentheses like this).
An example. You tell me if this warents disrupting Burroughs artistic vision.
" 'I think I'll catnip the jerk' (Note:Catnip smells like marijuana when it burns. Frequently passed on the incautious or uninstructed.) "
" 'I can tell you in confidence he is due for a hot shot' (Note: This is a cap of poison junk sold to addict for liquidation purposes. Often given to informers. Usually the hot shot is strychnine since it tastes and looks like junk.) "
I'm assuming these are editorial notes, and were not part of the original Naked editions. If I'm wrong just let me know and I'll remove this complaint. Still, isn't it time the Library of America stood up and gave us an authoritative Burroughs?
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Beyond Good & Evil, 2008-06-04
Burroughs' work is a reaction to post -1945 cold war America in its radical deployment of tone, style and content. It endured bans, censorship and obscenity trials before hitting bookstores in the early nineteen sixties. But for all that, its continuing power is as spiritual work that makes it more than merely a insightful document of its times.
"Naked Lunch" is no "Ulysses" and yet it shares a kinship with that masterwork. Not so much the use of stream of consciousness but in other stylistic aspects; discontinuity of plot and ideas, in its unreliable narration and author's desire to shock the reader. But more than that, both works contain a transformative imagination.
In subject matter "Naked Lunch" is more extreme than "Ulysses". It repeatedly forces the viewer to see sexual acts, physical violence and self-destruction in a way that is more than shocking. It is about the act of seeing itself, about imagination itself not tied to character or story but to pure vision whether drug induced or not.
The style - anti-narrative and anti-story - Dadaism in American garb, deprives the reader of any fictive crutch that could ease and blur the power of what is written. Even though those mid-century social outcasts, the homosexual and the junky are no longer as outrageous as they were in 1959, how they are depicted, laying bare the human impulses of disgust and destruction, retains the power to shock because in the fifty years since, we've seen many, many drug abusers and homosexuals in literature and pop culture but none of those portrayals are more raw and cringe-worthy than what Burroughs shows us.
The insistence on the otherworldly vulgarity, on the repetition of debased acts has an incantatory, ritualistic quality that only starts to make sense when Burroughs' invokes the Sollubi, an untouchable caste known for their debased existence. He ponders that they might be a fallen priestly caste that take "on themselves all human vileness." The same could be said of "Naked Lunch".
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
"The man is never on time.", 2008-03-20
I picked up a copy of NAKED LUNCH at a local bookstore, because I'd recently rented the movie, which left me confused. I thought, well, the book probably sucks, but I'll try anything once. So I went home and thumbed through it, until I finally read the whole book in one sitting overnight.
This book is FASCINATING.
It's a study of addiction, insanity and sex. Without giving anything away, I can tell you that it's very different than the David Cronenberg movie, yet at the same time, it's all too similar. The book feels like "American Psycho," (another book) and it has a hint of Stephen King to it, but also, it feels completely new.
I don't want to give anything away, but I can tell you that if you like weird stories, you're probably going to like this book. It's full of all sorts of dark wonders.
~ Bronner
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Brilliant, 2008-03-10
Reading William S. Burroughs' drug-induced, hallucinatory nightmare that is Naked Lunch was, is, and always will be, a hard book to read. There is no real narrative of any sort to be found in a majority of Naked Lunch, as one reads of the graphic, frequently disgusting world of Interzone and its inhabitants. What has always made Naked Lunch so remarkable is Burroughs' startling imagery that is as fragmented as a drug addict's thoughts, as Burroughs pulls no punches in these pages. If you have never read Naked Lunch before, chances are you will not enjoy what you read here, like many reviews here already state. That aside, Naked Lunch remains not only one of the most important pieces of literature to emerge out of the beat generation, but one of the most important, genre-changing works to emerge in the past century. This "Restored Text" features essays and letters from Burroughs, as well as what one would call "deleted scenes" were this a film as supplemental features, but regardless of what edition of Naked Lunch you read, make no mistake that it is a stomach churning, emotionally draining, and above all thought provoking, look into the mind of an addict in a dangerous world. If you have any sort of hesitations, try to put them aside and give Naked Lunch a chance at the very least. You may be glad that you did. Maybe.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
 Burrough's Life More Interesting than this Book, 2008-01-06
I have read Ted Morgan's Bibliography about Burroughs - "Literary Outlaw" and Burroughs had an extraordinary life, and had fabulous insights based on his life and habits, and was blessed with awesome literary friends that came to his rescue when he most needed it. I highly recommend the Bibliography by Morgan, it was definitely a "five star" read. Based on this book I read Junky and the Yage Letters and find Burroughs's honesty in these books and letters to be an incredible description of happenings in his life. I highly recommend these books.
However, Naked Lunch, although obviously many think it has literary value, I have not found it. Enough of the psycho-sexual babble, on and on. The description of abuse of third world boys is more than I could handle, obviously demonstrating his inability to satisfy his real life desires. Dreams, hopes and hallucinations only the author, and obviously many others other than myself, find of incredible insight. I will give the man this - he did have a good perspective of the world from his travels and personal life, and he obviously had opinions and thoughts that ran contrary to the grain. However I really fought to finish this book, in hopes of finding the "meaning". I found Editor's notes and some of the outtakes much more interesting than the book itself. I do not recommend this book.
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