Naked Lunch

The Title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch --a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."

 --  William S. Burroughs

What's on the end of Burroughs' fork is not pretty. Not too many people are going to be able to look at it without getting queasy. Burroughs created the pages of notes that ultimately became Naked Lunch  during the 15 year period (age 30-45) he was a junkie. He doesn't recall writing them. After rehab, he rewrote the notes into short vignettes and with Alan Ginsberg's help, organized them first into a European (Grove Press) edition, and then the American (Olympia Press) edition.

The book is political and social satire from the view of a debauched gay junkie genius. It took about half of the book for me to be able to get past the debauchery and see the "naked" social satire. There was one multi-page segment,  "Atrophied Preface", that was fairly incomprehensible. There were other parts in which the genius shone through clearly. There is a 20 page section, "A.J.'s Party", that is indescribably horrendous.

There is no plot and no linear story, but I'm okay with that. The satire is excellent. Burroughs takes on good-old-boys, racism, child molestation and slavery, pornography, corporate greed, medical research, etc., using addiction and sex as metaphors. As I said, it's not pretty, but he makes his points.

Would I recommend this book. No. Not that way. But it begs to be read in the context of the "best books of the 20th century". As I mentioned in my last post, it holds a critical place in literature. There is a "before" and an "after" Burroughs.