false 7437 39 "He was," as <I>Salon</I>'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." <P> 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 <I>Naked Lunch</I> 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. <P> 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 <I>Naked Lunch</I> 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 <I>Naked Lunch</I> is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol. Read it and see for yourself. 4055 book 1959 Naked Lunch: The Restored Text total:7743|5:1619|4:2284|3:2237|2:1018|1:585| 7743 26563 11558 642 0 10 false false Thu Sep 27 13:11:38 -0700 2007 Sat Mar 29 13:50:24 -0700 2008
Hypertext Reading of Naked Lunch

Reading Naked Lunch as it was intended: open the book at any page and just read what is there. Keeping track of pages read, so that there is no duplication and each page is given its consid...more...]]> 1 13 false false Thu Nov 29 07:33:20 -0800 2007 Thu Nov 29 07:49:28 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 7 false false Wed Mar 18 21:15:01 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 11 16:03:53 -0700 2008 Wed Mar 18 21:15:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 7 false false Thu Feb 21 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 14 15:24:39 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 22 06:04:04 -0800 2008 more...]]> 1 6 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Sat Apr 19 10:54:46 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 20 11:21:13 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 4 false false Wed Jan 23 14:13:40 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 19 10:26:46 -0800 2008
"I find TWO things wrong with that title".

All kidding aside, there are some books that I will dub way, WAY (did I say way?) too self-indulgent that others will brand 'genius' or 'groundbreaking'. This is probably one of them. I...more...]]> 4 4 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Fri Jul 04 09:30:38 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 25 19:14:45 -0700 2008 Naked Lunch is the final destination to the journey started by Jack Kerouac in On the Road. It is very rhythmic (try reading it out loud) but also incredibly stream-of-conscious, much more so than Kerouac's novel (and he can get prett...more...]]> 5 2 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 1992 Sat Mar 29 00:37:27 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 29 01:07:42 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 09 07:07:50 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 09 07:18:10 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Feb 19 15:01:05 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 02 01:30:53 -0800 2009 Naked Lunch RAW, dripping blood, other bodily fluids and sexual grease, for K-rist's sake.

as for the book, it's lovely-strange in a way that needs to be experienced by most adult reade...more...]]> 5 2 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1996 Tue Oct 30 15:25:39 -0700 2007 Tue Oct 30 15:28:20 -0700 2007 more...]]> 0 3 false false Mon Jul 02 10:23:23 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 02 10:23:28 -0700 2007 5 1 false false Thu Jul 31 19:04:11 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 31 19:04:11 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1977 Sat Jul 05 06:28:48 -0700 2008 Sat Jul 05 09:09:14 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri May 23 02:40:10 -0700 2008 Fri May 23 02:47:55 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false true Mon Mar 03 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Feb 17 15:39:59 -0800 2008 Sun Feb 17 15:39:59 -0800 2008
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 eve...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Sun Oct 07 09:44:48 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 07 09:52:23 -0700 2007
Wow. This book has a shock factor but once I got past that I began admiring it. It is intense and grotesque but the language is beautiffully insanely constructed. People tried to have it banned, unsuccessfully, after Ginsberg & Norman mailer argued its value in court. N...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1995 Mon Jul 30 07:46:27 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 31 05:11:37 -0700 2007 ...more...]]> 0 1 false false Mon Aug 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 27 15:44:44 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 12 07:10:22 -0700 2009 1 too many more...]]> 1 4 false false Wed Jun 25 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 10 01:22:18 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 10 01:28:12 -0700 2008
This book - what little I could stand reading of it - was a bewildering jumble of the undelineated thoughts and actions of the main character. Perhaps it is an accurate depiction of the mind under the influence of hallucinogenic ...more...]]>