Naked Lunch is considered a key influence on the cyberpunk genre. [44] William Gibson has cited it as one of the novels that most influenced his own writing. [45] Obscenity and censorship [ edit ] Of course we do not count the novels written by the bugs. They are a different species and their perception of identity developed in a different evolutionary circumstance. Who can forget that seminal insect rebuttal to War and Peace: War and War and War and War and More War and Even More War and God I love War, and Don't Stop the Wars Please I Need the Wars by that noted fire ant queen Henry Kissinger. AVEC: A Journal of Writing Premiere Issue Volume One, Number 1 Featuring an Excerpt from the Lost Chapter of Naked Lunch By William S. Burroughs Burroughs wrote in his introduction that "The title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."

Wain, John (December 1, 1962). "The Great Burroughs Affair". The New Republic . Retrieved 2 July 2023. This book is purely crazy (tons of crazy shit have gone on in this story), that's all I can tell you after I finished reading the Chinese translation (published in Taiwan). I also admit I don't think I fully understand what William S. Burroughs tried to tell us, and some parts of the story really tend to drag on and on for no good reason. Naked Lunch – Special Edition Double Disc DVD, Disc Two: The Supplements, "Naked Making Lunch" (1991), interview with David Cronenberg, 2003, ISBN 1-55940-947-9

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In that way every work is a part of Naked Lunch. It never ends. And never shall end. That's the nature of art and reality. Which is why this book is so coherent. Oh, and homosexuality - to which I have similarly remained a green stranger - and for which fact Burroughs was forced to wage a battle all the way to the US Supreme Court. Lodge, David (1971). "Objections to William Burroughs". The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays in Fiction and Criticism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd. pp.161–171. Also contrary to what you've heard a million times by now, Naked Lunch is not incoherent. It is perhaps the most coherent novel ever written by a human being.

John Sutherland, Offensive literature: decensorship in Britain, 1960–1982. Rowman & Littlefield, 1983, p. 57f. Girodias got an 80-year publishing ban, a 4-6 year sentence and a 29,000-pound fine. Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. In a sudden return to what seems to be Lee's reality, two police officers, Hauser and O'Brien, catch up with Lee, who kills both of them. Lee then goes out to a street phone booth and calls the Narcotics Squad, saying he wants to speak to O'Brien. A Lieutenant Gonzales on the other end of the line claims there's no one in their records called O'Brien. When Lee asks for Hauser instead, the reply is identical; Lee hangs up, and goes on the run once again. The book then becomes increasingly disjointed and impressionistic, and finally simply stops. Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films. Harris, Oliver (2003). William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-2484-9.The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.” In her book about J.D. Salinger and his most famous novel, Raychel Haugrud Reiff identifies “four main reasons” for the constant censoring of The Catcher in the Rye: bad language, “‘scandalous episodes,'” bad role modeling on the part of Holden, and Holden’s disavowal of “American values.” She notes that “from 1966 to 1975, forty-one attempts were made to keep The Catcher in the Rye out of public education institutions, making it ‘the most frequently banned book in schools’ during these years.” Some examples:

I suppose there is a sense in which Swift’s “Modest Proposal” may be regarded as obscene, or perhaps the final book of “Gulliver’s Travels.” But only a corrupt world will be disgusted by saeva indignatio. Swift’s starting-point was a sense of outrage with the world that the corrupt may still regard as insane. Burroughs’s vision is that of a man who has escaped from the agony of drug-addiction and regards the inferno with the cleansed eyes of the remembering artist. His introduction is autobiographical and clinical; he appends a long article from “The British Journal of Addiction.” Some of his more charitable readers, too weak-stomached to take the art, may wish to look on the whole work as a snakepit record, a terrible but necessary thesis on the nature of the life of the damned, a piece of unusually frank didacticism. They will be wrong, since Burroughs is demonstrating that his difficult subject can only be expressed through the static (that is, neither didactic nor pornographic) shaping of the artistic imagination. May 18 & 19: Naked Lunch". landmarkafterdark.com. 2007-04-16. Archived from the original on 2011-10-07 . Retrieved 2012-05-27. I'm still trying to figure out the literary value of stuff like this. Any English profs out there care to explain why this made it into the canon? I ask this in all seriousness - I really can't figure it out. Maybe it does belong on the list - in which case, I want to know the purpose of such lists.My first exposure to Burroughs was the novel Junky - a trashy pulp book with a thin plot. Even at 19, a period when starring at my tennis shoes for multiple hours at a time entertained me, I found no enjoyment from this man's prose. A true genius and first mythographer of the mid-twentieth century, William Burroughs is the lineal successor to James Joyce. Naked Lunch is a banquet you will never forget.’ JG Ballard I don't know, but it sounds ominous. We better put a telepathic direction finder on Benway. The man's not to be trusted. Might do almost anything...Turn a massacre into a sex orgy..." Were there even true characters in this book? Evil things happen within and I found it to be an unrealistic fantasy. I read to see what crazy or disgusting thing would happen next. Burroughs’s avant-garde novel Naked Lunch, he wrote and directed a surreal 1991 film of the same name that was based on the novel as well as on Burroughs’s life. With the romantic drama M. Butterfly (1993), starring Irons and set primarily in 1960s Beijing, Cronenberg brought to… Read More