Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch is an incredible work of literature. It is unlike anything I have read (except subsequent Burroughs books). Although nowadays homosexuality, drug use, and obscenity don't of themselves raise an eyelid, this book was first published in 1959, almost 50 years ago.

As a picture is worth a thousand words let me quote a couple of passages before I go any further with my review:

Gentle reader, the ugliness of that spectacle buggers description. Who can be a cringing pissing coward, yet vicious as a purple-assed mandril, alternating these deplorable conditions like vaudeville skits? Who can shit on a fallen adversary who, dying, eats the shit and screams with joy? Who can hang a weak passive and catch his sperm in mouth like a vicious dog? Gentle reader, I fain would spare you this, but my pen hath its will like the Ancient Mariner. Oh Christ what a scene is this! Can tongue or pen accommodate these scandals? A beastly young hooligan has gouged out the eye of his confrere and fuck him in the brain. "This brain atrophy already, and dry as grandmother's cunt."

or

And his blank, periscope eyes swept the world's surface.... In his wake of addicts, translucent grey monkeys flashed like fish spears to the junk Mark, and hung there sucking and it all drained back into "Fats" so his substance grew and grew filling plazas, restaurants and waiting rooms of the world with grey junk ooze.

Images often follow images in a dream-like way. There is no linear narrative, but certain characters, such as Dr Benway, "Fats" Terminal, The Sailor recur, as well as William Lee, Burroughs himself (Lee is his mother's maiden name). There are descriptions of "unspeakable" trades, addictions (even to drugs not yet synthesized!), operations performed with rusty sardine-tin openers and lavatory plungers. Sex acts, mostly homosexual are often centred around death. Burroughs has a real thing about hanged men dying in orgasm. I, and I think I have a fairly hardened stomach, find it difficult at times to look at this lunch fully unrobed without flinching.

It is not as opaque as Joyce's Finnigans Wake but whenever I read it, it swims in and out of focus. I think I'm "understanding" the narrative (whatever that means) and then all of a sudden I'm in another place, another time. I imagine that most of the descriptions are loosely based on Burroughs' own experience seen through grotesque distorting goggles, magnified to surreality and vileness.

Interestingly the "dream" of the novel is contained within two prosaic sections. First there is an introduction talking about opiate addiction, and the correlated "algebra of need". Burroughs also explains the graphic nature of the work; the lunch is naked. The title was suggested by Kerouac, and Burroughs takes it to be "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork". The appendix provides a copy of a letter sent by Burroughs in 1956 to The British Journal of Addiction. I seem to remember that this letter was never published in the intended place. It is a description of opiate addiction, and the different withdrawal methodologies and how he found them personally. He then goes on to talk about his experiences with other drugs. We have his usual overblown enthusiasm for the apomorphine cure, as advocated by Dr Dent, a method Burroughs used to quit once. For those that don't know Burroughs died a methadone addict, and so this "miracle cure" is no such thing. Sorry.

Burroughs is lucidly deranged when writing Naked Lunch; it is confusing and disturbing yet also praeternaturally clear. If you are not put off by the quotations above it's worth a read. There is a little cut-up and fold-in where paragraphs are chopped up into short segments and put back together in random order. It may be argued that this sometimes adds something (an unexpected idea formed by random juxtaposition?) , but I'm not a fan myself. Luckily this book uses the technique sparingly unlike some subsequent works so isn't simply a semi-meaningless "word-melt". It's a short book, only about 120 pages of actual text, so the 208 pages listed above must be for a version with lots of prefaces and appendices. A "restored text" edition has recently come out, with new material and alternative versions for certain sections of the text. I do not have a copy. If and when I get one, I'll add details.

Once again, wiki provides a very good factual review, and even attempts a plot summary. If you like literal sense avoid this book, but if you like grotesque dream-narrative it's a real classic, and laugh-out-loud funny in places. I cannot stress enough that Burroughs has a very powerful and insightful mind, and the books is worth reading for his unique creative moments alone.

Dickon

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Excellent book review
	Good review. You seem to do it justice.