William Burroughs: Naked Lunch
WARNING: This is not for smooth digestion nor for the weak-hearted. This is by all means a gory and subversive book replete with obscene sex scenes, sadist practices, even pedophilia. But this is not just it. Burroughs takes us through the wild journey of a junkie, William Lee, who travels places, meets people. Non-linear plot, chaotic structure, the book almost looks like a collage of a junkie's diaries, whose mind errs in its own world of fantasy, where everything is redefined: sex, hygiene, society, judgment, etc. Going through Naked Lunch is accepting to enter this world with no preconceived ideas, and just allowing to be taken by the madness of it. What Burroughs depicts here is his own past as a drug addict in an American system that is fed with the junkie's needs. To break the system, the solution is not to break down the top, but the bottom, the very bottom, the junkie on the street. So what is Naked Lunch? As Allen Ginsberg beautifully put it, it is "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."
WARNING: This is not for smooth digestion nor for the weak-hearted. This is by all means a gory and subversive book replete with obscene sex scenes, sadist practices, even pedophilia. But this is not just it. Burroughs takes us through the wild journey of a junkie, William Lee, who travels places, meets people. Non-linear plot, chaotic structure, the book almost looks like a collage of a junkie's diaries, whose mind errs in its own world of fantasy, where everything is redefined: sex, hygiene, society, judgment, etc. Going through Naked Lunch is accepting to enter this world with no preconceived ideas, and just allowing to be taken by the madness of it. What Burroughs depicts here is his own past as a drug addict in an American system that is fed with the junkie's needs. To break the system, the solution is not to break down the top, but the bottom, the very bottom, the junkie on the street. So what is Naked Lunch? As Allen Ginsberg beautifully put it, it is "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."
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