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Title: Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs ISBN: 0-8021-3295-2 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: February, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.03 (192 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A True Masterpiece Of 20th Century Literature
Comment: It's been almost three years now since Uncle Bill scored the Immaculate Fix, but his spirit still lives on. This novel, Burroughs' greatest work was written in the late 1950's, a time when American pop culture reached untold heights of banality. Enter Naked Lunch - a double-barreled assault on truth, justice, and the American Way. No institution is safe, nothing is sacred, and the taboo is made holy, as capitalists, racists, fascists, homophobes, doctors, cops, Christians, and hypocrites of all sorts get their just desserts. Burroughs, a fortunate son born into wealth and power, dissects and destroys proper society in his prose, exploding mind bombs of words throughout. Veering somewhere between a bad acid trip and exact Swiftian satire, Naked Lunch remains the most original work of fiction ever written. A must-read for all serious students of literature, this is one of those books that you just can't "like" - you either love it, or you hate it. I absolutely loved it! This book also begs for re-reads as new insights are revealed with each reading. And please, PLEASE be sure to listen to Burroughs read the abridged version on tape! After completing this novel, Burroughs went on to invent the cyberpunk sub-genre of science fiction with his Nova Trilogy of novels. As Norman Mailer once opined, "Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may concievably be possessed by genius." Squares need not apply. A word to the Wise Guy.
Rating: 5
Summary: Funny and intelligent.
Comment: As other reviewers have complained, this book is lacking a plot and doesn't have much of a structure. A reader looking for a a more clear and simplistic Burroughs should try out his pulpish but entertaining _Junkie_ and _Queer_. These books use an autobiographical format to show the author falling into a life of drugs and homosexual dependence, which the author clearly viewed as entrapping and morally wrong, even as he fell into them and maintained a objective viewpoint.
Naked Lunch takes these themes and greatly improves them. After starting with a scene of the protaganist fleeing the law, it's broken into vaguely related scenes of several pages each. These scenes are often bizarre or disgusting, but are always intriguing. Taken together, they give an impressionistic look into the life of an addict. They are often extremely funny, and the writing is very impressive. I enjoy pulp fiction, and Burrough's take at pulp fiction at the end, with Hauser & O'Brien, is perhaps the strongest piece of hard-boiled detective writing I've ever read.
Drugs are central to Burrough's vision, but this isn't really a drug book, either, and is more about Burrough's compelling if slightly twisted philosophies. Heroin is used as a central metaphor for systems of control that Burroughs sees elsewhere - in domineering characters, in 50's politics, in modern science, in patriarchies. If the reader can get past the initial shock of the book, it's extremely readable and I'd recommend it highly
Rating: 5
Summary: Knowing the score
Comment: You don't need me to tell you this is a great book. Writing has never been this good.
But are you ready for it?
The images are out there. The style is out there. If you haven't been out there with Burroughs, you may want to start with a similar message in a more traditional form, namely his trilogy that begins with "Cities of the Red Night".
But the power is here in this book. The power of the truths about control, about desperate needs, about everything that is lurking beneath even well-structure, settled lives.
If you're studious, then after the thrill of Naked Lunch, if there is an "after Naked Lunch", you can grow your understanding of your social conditioning with Peter Handke's play "Kaspar" and with B.F.Skinner's study "Verbal Behavior" (read Skinner's "Science and Human Behavior" before "Verbal Behavior"). These are all you need to be able to stand on your own two feet. But start with Naked Lunch to get the jolt you'll need to start understanding how the control systems have you pinned down.
Heroin addiction and gay sex are only small adornments in "Naked Lunch", the escapes could have been instead workaholism and fundamentalism, or reading books and writing Amazon reviews. But you probably wouldn't be drawn to a book about Amazon book reviewers. Still, Naked Lunch isn't describing anything far away. It's not "out there" after all but right in our guts. Enjoy.
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Title: On the Road by Jack Kerouac ISBN: 0140042598 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Junky: The Definitive Text of "Junk" by William S. Burroughs, Oliver Harris ISBN: 0142003166 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe ISBN: 0553380648 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 05 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams ISBN: 0872860175 Publisher: City Lights Books Pub. Date: July, 1991 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas : A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by HUNTER S. THOMPSON, Ralph Steadman ISBN: 0679785892 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 12 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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