Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

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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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

huh?, 2008-10-28
this has nothing to do with lunch or nakedness.

i'm very dissapointed. is there no literature on folks who like to eat their lunch in the nude?


1 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

NOT LITERATURE!!!! (ZERO STARS!!!!!), 2008-09-16
This is not literature so much as a LIBERAL ATHEIST'S heroin laced premonition in the 1950's of all books having (sadly) been approved by the authorities here in the present, and my opinion of the author's own serious problems is way beyond me. And it is just like some JESUS HATING BABY KILLING SCUM like a "BEAT" or a "HIPPY" or a "PUNK ROCKER" or people reading this book and giving it to their children to read and read again which is like some kind of cult, reading literature, and trying not to be READING THE BIBLE AGAIN AND PUTTING THE BIBLE ASIDE FOR EVERY OTHER BOOK OF OUR OWN CULTURE'S SO-CALLED DEFICIENCES!!! It is absurd, or the FUTURE. WHO reads this and resonates with this such that it is "naked" truth, or the "Naked lunch" to them?!!! Only a LIBERAL, or a "UNITARIAN" or a "DEMOCRAT FEMINEST" (Rotting Goddess: The Origins of the Witch in Classical Antiquity)!!!! I mean, who are these people putting it in the schools' tap-water and in the public libraries for other people's children to try to DESTROY AMERICA? PEOPLE NEED TO STOP THINKING AND REALIZE THAT THE BIBLE IS ALL WE NEED NOT SOME HOMOSEXUALIST-ATHEIST TRASH!!!

I mean

This is not literature so much as an LIBERAL ATHEIST'S heroin laced interpretation of our culture's so-called deficiëncies. It is absurd that this book has been approved in by the authorities here in the present, or the future. WHO reads this and resonates with the opinion of the author's own serious problems is beyond me. And it is this that is "naked" truth, or the "Naked lunch"? Only to a LIBERAL JESUS HATING BABY EATING SCUM like a "BEAT" or a "HIPPY" or a "PUNK ROCKER" or a "LIBERAL" or a "UNITARIAN" (Blood on the Altar: The Secret History of the World's Most Dangerous Secret Society)!!!! I mean, who are these people reading this book and giving it to their children to read and putting it in the schools/public libraries for other people's children to read?!!! It is like some kind of cult which is reading literature, thus trying to DESTROY AMERICA. PEOPLE NEED TO START THINKING AND READING THE BIBLE AGAIN AND PUT ASIDE EVERY OTHER BOOK!!!! THE BIBLE IS ALL WE NEED NOT SOME HOMOSEXUALATHEIST TRASH!!!


I mean

This is not literature so much as a LIBERAL ATHEIST'S deficiëncies. It is absurd that this book has been approved. WHO reads this and resonates with the opinion of the author's that it is the "naked" truth, or the "Naked lunch"? Only to a LIBERAL "PUNK ROCKER" or a so-called "UNITARIAN" or a "LIBERAL"!!!! I mean, who are these people reading and putting it in the schools/public libraries for other people's children. They are people who are only interested in reading literature, thus trying to DESTROY AMERICA AGAIN WHILE PUTTING ASIDE EVERY OTHER BOOK LIKE THE BIBLE!!!! It is an ATHEIST'S heroin laced interpretation of our so-called culture's authorities here in the present. Our countries own future serious problems are beyond belife (Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian). It is these LIBERAL JESUS HATING SCUM, KILLING AND EATING BABIES like some "BEATS" or "HIPPYS" who are reading this book and giving it to their children to read. It is like some kind of cult which is reading literature. PEOPLE NEED TO STOP THINKING AND START READING THE BIBLE AGAIN INSTEAD!! THE BIBLE IS ALL WE NEED NOT SOME HOMOSEXUALISTATHEIST TRASH!!!

And what is it with this so-called "CUT-UP" business? That is not allowed. That is not good writing. Ask any ENGLISH teacher (as opposed to any gobbeldy-gook teacher) and he will tell you that it is not legitimate. You cant do that!!! I cant write a paper and then tear it up into bits and then rearrange the bits and then tape them back together and then turn it in and then expect that the teacher will then accept it!!!


1 of 2 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".


1 of 2 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


1 of 2 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.

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