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ISBN
novel, slipstream, postmodern, drugs, sex, homosexuality, banned, cult
Written in Tangiers and Paris while Burroughs was still a narcotics addict. Working titles: Word Hoard , Interzone , Ignorant Armies . Jack Kerouac gave the book its final title and Allen Ginsberg collated the loose pages into a manuscript. Part of this manuscript first appeared in the Chicago-based literary magazine Big Table . Maurice Girodias published the first edition of the novel in Paris. Excerpts from this novel were read by Burroughs on side A of the LP: Call Me Burroughs , 1965. David Cronenberg transformed the book into a film in 1991.
"His underground novel [The Naked Lunch --ed.]... is a quick-shifting pinwheel of the modern scene; has mad biting humor and sections of technological horror that out-Orwell Orwell." --Seymour Krim (in The Beats , 1960).
"It was banned in Boston and scraped through only on appeal in a censorship trial that established the obscenity standards in America for the following decades." --Barry Miles (in William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible , 1992).
"If The Naked Lunch is a cautionary tract against capital punishment as the author has often claimed, it is also a book that enables the reader to find in himself characteristics that he might never have suspected he possessed." --John Calder (in The Independent , Monday 4 August 1997).
"William Burroughs's Naked Lunch is one of the great boys' adventure stories of our time. All the ingredients of the traditional racy yarn are there: captive-takings, elaborate tortures, a hint of sexual slavery ('He pulls her brutally to her feet and pins her hands behind her...'), a capitalist criminal with a dubiously exotic name (Salvador Hassan O'Leary, alias 'The Afterbirth Tycoon'), even a high-speed chase at the end, climaxing in a cop-killing. Naked Lunch is also an autobiographical account of a trip to hell and back." --James Campbell (in The Guardian , Saturday 2 May 1998).
"...like a nightmare collage filled with de Sade obsessions, sodomy and necrophilia... Mr Burroughs writes well and is an excellent craftsman..." --Alan MacNeil (in the Connecticut Valley Times-Reporter ).
"In The Naked Lunch , Burroughs compares organized society with that of its most extreme opposite, the invisible society of drug addicts. His implicit conclusion is that the two are not very different, certainly at the points where they make the closest contact -- in prisons and psychiatric institutions..." --J.G.Ballard (in New Worlds , Issue 142, 1964).
"Burroughs is the greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift." --Jack Kerouac.
"The book that changed the course of literature. This is the original postmodern novel. More like a film projected directly into the brain. Seminal fiction." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1995).
Highly recommended.
"Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To book... How-To extend levels of experience by opening the door at the end of a long hall... doors that only open in silence... Naked Lunch demands silence from the reader. Otherwise he is taking his own pulse..." -- William S.Burroughs (quoted from the liner notes on the LP: Call Me Burroughs ).
Naked Lunch
(1991, feature film, US/Canada, 125 minutes... directed by David Cronenberg... starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Roy Scheider... based on the book by William S.Burroughs... beat scene)
The Unofficial William Burroughs Homepage
(another site worth a look-see)
The William S.Burroughs Files
(Malcolm Humes' excellent links to all things Burroughs at his InterNetWebZone)