Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

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May 18 & 19: Naked Lunch". landmarkafterdark.com. 2007-04-16. Archived from the original on 2011-10-07 . Retrieved 2012-05-27. As a witness to the trial put it in The New Yorker, over the course of the proceedings, “practically every description of lovemaking in the book must have been read out by Mr. Griffith-Jones, with awful emphasis and the air of imparting some reprehensible rite that would be news to all his listeners, and it was interesting how well the writing stood up to the treatment.”

So here goes. I will read Naked Lunch from cover to cover, and finally figure out how I feel about it. Doctor Benway - A Variant Passage from The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs broadside announcement Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs is a corrosive mash-up of Hunter S. Thompson, George Carlin and a hoarse whisper of Jim Morrison, (and the good doctor Thompson no doubt kept a volume of Burroughs on his desk between the dictionary and the thesaurus).Murphy, Timothy S. (2009). "Random Insect Doom: The Pulp Science Fiction of Naked Lunch". In Harris, Oliver; MacFadyen, Ian (eds.). Naked Lunch @ 50: Anniversary Essays. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. pp.223–232. ISBN 978-0-8093-2915-1.

Well as, one judge said to the other, 'Be just and if you can't be just be arbitrary.' Regret cannot observe customary obscenities.” The present case is rather ironical. We are being prosecuted for printing the thoughts in a young girl’s mind. Her thoughts and actions and the meditations which they produced in the mind of the sensitive Mr. Bloom. If the young girl corrupts, can she also be corrupted? Mr. Joyce’s young girl is an innocent, simple, childish girl who tends children . . . she hasn’t had the advantage of the dances, cabarets, motor trips open to the young girls of this more pure and free country. If there is anything I really fear it is the mind of the young girl. Eventually he gets to Mexico where he is assigned to Dr. Benway; for what, he is not told. Benway appears and he tells about his previous doings in Annexia as a "Total Demoralizator". The story then moves to a state called Freeland, a form of limbo, where we learn of Islam Inc. Here, some new characters are introduced, such as Clem, Carl, and Joselito.That p In May 1991, rather than attempting a straight adaptation, Canadian director David Cronenberg took a few elements from the book and combined them with elements of Burroughs' life, creating a hybrid film about the writing of the book rather than the book itself. Peter Weller starred as William Lee, the pseudonym Burroughs used when he wrote Junkie. Naked Lunch influenced music, most famously: Kurt Cobain, Bob Dylan, and Lou Reed. Band names emerged from characters in the book including Steely Dan. References to Burroughs spring up in literature and his influence is apparent in the works of Martin Amis and Will Self. Norman Mailer once referred to Burroughs as, “possibly the only living American writer of genius.” Essayists speculate that Mailer may have only said that to irritate the trio of Roth, Updike, and Bellow. Mailer was always the guy on the outside looking in.

The beat generation has been recast in recent years as a wandering band of literary minstrels, but their achievements are inseparable from death and derangement, which stalked the leading members ("I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness ...") Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs had all seen the insides of prisons and mental hospitals by the age of 30. In 1951, while living in Mexico City, where he had gone to avoid a drugs charge, Burroughs shot his wife Joan in the head during a game of William Tell. After two weeks in custody, with the help of bribes paid out of Adding Machine profits, he was released, whereupon he resumed the life of a fugitive addict, first returning to New York, then travelling to Central America in search of hallucinogenic vegetable drugs, before settling in Tangier, Morocco. The Ugly Spirit moved in, too. For a time his regular companion was a teenage boy called Kiki. When Burroughs left Tangier temporarily in 1957, Kiki took up with a Cuban singer, who killed him after catching him in bed with a woman. Burroughs gave the news three sentences near the end of a letter to Ginsberg, which dealt mainly with the organisation of Naked Lunch. 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. Ranaldo, Lee (2012). "Interview with William S. Burroughs". In Colin Fallows & Synne Genzmer (Eds.), Cut-ups, cut-ins, cut-outs, p. 48. Vienna: Kunsthalle Wien. ISBN 3869843152.

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There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.” 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