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The Making and Meaning of Naked Lunch

By Egil Skallagrimson in Culture
Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 12:00:00 PM EST
Tags: Literary Criticism, Pure Genius (all tags)

If William S. Burroughs truly feared a word virus, an idea he often made reference to in his later Nova Trilogy, then Naked Lunch was the ultimate inoculation against that verbal disease. Though it was written before the three books that would comprise the Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express), Naked Lunch was the cure that came before the illness. It was his version of the needle to cure all literary lesions and stem the tide of evils that language has the ability to produce through its constantly changing, adapting, regrouping control systems.


Burroughs' war against language was ironic, though, as he used the very language he sought to destroy in his attempt to develop his arsenal. Only through his use of language could he disentangle the web that all words have the ability to create. It was fighting fire with fire, and through the medium that culminated to become Naked Lunch, he launched a career of constant battle against words and their constraints. Naked Lunch, a collection of old stories turned on their ear and hilarious routines at one time devised as tools to romantically entrap Allen Ginsberg, became Burroughs' expression system.

An expression system is the vehicle used by a pharmaceutical company to deliver the drug that has been developed to combat against an identified disease or ailment. It can come in the form of a pill or a liquid, a powder, even a gas.  Either way, it is the vehicle used to deliver the drug product itself. But, no drug is ever delivered in its pure form. All drugs are delivered in a form that encapsulates the active ingredient that is intended to cure the stated problem, watering down and diluting the drug to make it safe for human consumption. In Burroughs work, Naked Lunch is the initial inoculation, a less concentrated form of what was to follow immediately after in the Nova Trilogy.

Because Naked Lunch is an expression system, the vehicle designed to deliver the message that will become an ongoing mantra, a continuous death knell for language and words, it introduced a new way of telling stories meant to be guideposts for the reader. At the end of Naked Lunch is the famous line that Burroughs wrote about releasing his Word Hoard, virtually unleashing a legion of his Words designed to kill the Word Virus that had invaded and taken over the minds of all humans everywhere. In much the same way a pharmaceutical is designed to combat an enemy virus, Naked Lunch was designed to combat the conservative Western ideas that proliferated throughout the Western world at the time of the book's writing.

The vaccination that Naked Lunch proposes is the forerunner to all of Burroughs later novels, and specifically the novels of the 1960's and 1970's. The race to eliminate language, and then take it back form those who would use it for nefarious purposes is still an idea in its infancy in Naked Lunch, drawing on his earlier work and realized in the letters he wrote home during his exile in Tangiers, but quickly evolving into a realized attack against morals that appear outmoded and literature that, in Burroughs estimation, could have been written by anyone. A totally different work form the writing he had done up until that point, Naked Lunch became the model for the rest of his career's work.

However, the extreme graphic nature of the work, as well as its ambiguous take on accepted morals of the time caused much controversy, and has often lead, even in the present, to readers looking more to the life of the writer than to the content of the novel. How could anyone write such things and not live the life described in the book himself? For many writers, this would be a case of mistaken fantasy. Writers often observe and record the lives of others instead of actually experiencing something for themselves, being a relatively conservative lot, on the whole. What caused many to question, and eventually confront in court, was that Naked Lunch and its writer, Burroughs, never really denied his lifestyle to the outside world.

He certainly didn't apologize for it. Often in early interviews he could be found side-stepping more complicated issues such as homosexuality and its reality below the surface of society in the early 1960's. Yet, this was never an admittance of guilt or criminality (especially in regards to drugs), but a cautious approach to his new found interest from the media.

This ambiguous feeling towards what many consider "wrong" has both hurt and helped the book. As will be discussed, this is often the real naked Lunch for the first time reader: the life of the author, Burroughs, which many readers know about and assume the book is an accurate description of.

This is not exactly true.

Naked Lunch is fantasy, for the most part. It is a description of many real events that have been stretched and twisted even farther along than thought possible, making them part of a world beyond real, but somehow still mocking ours.  Often, upon reading Naked Lunch for the first time, readers do not understand this.

And perhaps it is not a book that can be readily understood. It has been widely read (though not nearly as other books by Burroughs), but it is not always taken seriously. It is known to be a powerful work of satire and the perfect indictment of conservative social morals, but somehow it is too extreme for many college or university curriculums. Somehow, in the present day, it is still often considered to be distasteful, or irresponsible to put it on the reading list. This is as likely due to its structure and accessibility, which are deemed low or difficult by many, as it is due to its sexual content or rampant drug use.

So, quite often, though it is a valuable antidote to the typical class syllabus, it is passed over for more conventional novels that are both easier to teach and require less background work on behalf of the teacher to make the initial, difficult reading more sensible to the class. Truthfully, to get anything valuable from a reading of Naked Lunch, a fairly large amount of time and discussion is needed.

Readability is probably the major factor in making Naked Lunch a book that is often a novelty item, rather than a distinct part of the canon of English. Part of this is due to the very slow changes that come to the written language and the human consciousness' ability to accept new forms of telling stories and relating fictional ideas. It takes time to go from one convention to another, as the move from poetry to the novel in the 17th century shows. However, it is inevitable that English always changes and adapts to reflect the way the world around it is changing, sometimes being the impetus, sometimes being the reflection.

Naked Lunch and its influence lay clearly on the side of impetus. Its influence is fairly astounding if one traces the roots of its influence back from the present to 1959. If one wants to take into account the work of Ginsberg and Kerouac, an argument can be made that it began seriously influencing other writers long before it was published.

However, it is an often overlooked, as well as often misunderstood, as has been mentioned. The goal of this book is to try and illuminate the fact that Naked Lunch is a very readable book, designed to engage the reader. It was written through the medium of letters in its earliest stages, and so the intention was always to try and draw out the reader and evoke a reaction of some kind.

Without the outlet of Ginsberg as a `receiver', Burroughs could not have formed the book. His letters to Ginsberg throughout the mid-1950's are a continuous appeal for response and reaction, as well as leaving much of the editing to him. In a sense, though Burroughs was very detailed in when it came to his published, or soon to be published work, he was open to Ginsberg using only the portions he felt were useful in the formation of the novel. While he often wrote things on the fly, leaving previously admired protions out atfer a re-read of the manuscript, or spontaniously including something new, when it came to the finished product, Burroughs became exacting. Nonetheless, and to the benefit of the novel, Ginsberg changed very little and made sure to edit out what he felt was irrelevant rather than demanding rewrites of sections. Much of the novel's immediacy comes through because of this, leaving the complicated structure and difficult language intact, even though Burroughs did not edit the early portions as much as Ginsberg did.

Naked Lunch tends to confuse many readers, as they are unused to having to tackle difficult language. However, there is no question that a book of its nature would not have the basic purpose of instruction and methods for better living. As Burroughs writes near the end of the book, Naked Lunch "is a how-to book." The very real moral purpose behind many of the routines, grotesques though they might be, is clear: this is a book designed to point the reader in a direction, offering a way of living and seeing the world, which was certainly a part of the character of Burroughs himself.

The very nature of the book is to involve the reader at a level beyond that of the common novel, forcing them to choose between simply continuing to read on, or putting down the novel because they object to the idea of its ambiguous message on issues that were generally considered controversial at the time of its publishing. It should be noted that the issues at hand, homosexuality, drug addiction and the power of governments to do with common people as they will, are still very controversial and complicated subjects for most writers to adequately confront. Burroughs made this kind of confrontation his prized possession. With the added element of difficult format and brutally succinct language, couched within a specifically satirical structure, Naked Lunch stills maintains its place in the early 21st century as a "difficult" novel for many to read.

The purpose of this book is to discuss the various aspects of Naked Lunch in a close reading that shows the book as an accessible, but cacophonous novel. The reader is forced to participate in the fantasy world that emerges from the pages of the book. Through examinations of Burroughs' own personal myth, and the way it takes away from the book at times, the use of drugs, the use of sex, irony, satire and the use of the book as a tool for social criticism (especially of the powers that control the world as we know it), we are able to show that Naked Lunch is a very relevant book even nearly fifty years after its publishing.

The view that is taken of the novel in this book is that much of it relates exclusively back to Burroughs first, and then has a wider significance for the rest of the world after. This is due to its being formed initially in the letters between Burroughs and Ginsberg throughout the 1950's, making it a very personal book, though very much set in a satirical fantasy world.

The expression system Burroughs developed with Naked Lunch would go on and continue with varying degrees of success for the rest of his career. Naked Lunch is clearly his most famous book, though probably not his most read book. That honor is reserved for Junky, an obviously important document, but one that lacks the complicated structure and language which allows Naked Lunch to have such a deep reservoir to draw from. Though Junky is widely read, and it showcases the talent Burroughs had for straight narrative, it was never considered by Burroughs to really demonstrate what he wanted to in writing. Naked Lunch was his first attempt to truly convey ideas in what he considered to be an original form.  Through the vehicle of his routines and extended grotesques, he was able to formulate a way of telling a story that has been literally impossible for anyone else to emulate with a credible voice.






Previous Articles about Naked Lunch:







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Poll
I Have Read Naked Lunch
o 1 Time 23%
o 2 Times 13%
o 3 Times 0%
o 4 Times 0%
o 5 Times 3%
o 6 Times 0%
o 7 Times 13%
o My Mom Only Let's Me Read About Jesus 46%

Votes: 30
Results | Other Polls

Related Links
o The Sad, But Interesting Truth About Naked Lunch and William S. Burroughs
o Concerning Naked Lunch: Part 2 - Nausea and Irony
o Concerning Naked Lunch: Part 3 - Social Criticism
o Concerning Naked Lunch Part 4: Drugs and Addicts
o Part 5: Naked Lunch and Sex and Relationships
o Also by Egil Skallagrimson


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The Making and Meaning of Naked Lunch | 164 comments (144 topical, 20 editorial, 0 hidden)
i actually read this many years ago..and.. (none / 1) (#1)
by dakini on Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 11:36:59 AM EST

you are right, i did not truly understand it..i will have to dig it out again and reread it..thanks for a well done story...+FP from me..

" May your vision be clear, your heart strong, and may you always follow your dreams."
this is an elitist's argument (1.85 / 7) (#5)
by circletimessquare on Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 12:58:03 PM EST

if a work is not immediately understandable to the common man, as you say so a number of times above, it isn't valuable

to make an argument otherwise, as you do, is simply elitism, arrogance, an argument for a kind of aristocracy. classism is never right, despite what many people thinks makes them "better" than the "average" person. nobody is better than the common man. if you think you are, then this is a character weakness on your part. humility should be your guide, and if it isn't, you're arrogant and vain. you embrace the common man and what is important to him, or you yourself are guilty of many the evils you say you dislike

for example, there is an argument here against governmental intrusion. authoritarianism is a form of aristocracy where They rule Us. and yet here you are, asserting this book as something the common man cannot appreciate. therefore, you are asserting it as a artifact of not the same aristocracy you rail against, but a different form of aristocracy. no. the only aristocracy better than any aristocracy is no aristocracy. and yet here you are, building an aristocracy

populism rules all, it is the beginning and end of all valid comments on culture, period. and burroughs is not a work appreciable to the common man

therefore, burroughs is unimportant

to say otherwise yourself is to assert your special brand of arrogant vain classism. i deny it


The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

the meaning of egil's elitist bullshit (1.25 / 4) (#33)
by circletimessquare on Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 05:36:59 PM EST

Because Naked Lunch is an expression system, the vehicle designed to deliver the message that will become an ongoing mantra, a continuous death knell for language and words, it introduced a new way of telling stories meant to be guideposts for the reader. At the end of Naked Lunch is the famous line that Burroughs wrote about releasing his Word Hoard, virtually unleashing a legion of his Words designed to kill the Word Virus that had invaded and taken over the minds of all humans everywhere. In much the same way a pharmaceutical is designed to combat an enemy virus, Naked Lunch was designed to combat the conservative Western ideas that proliferated throughout the Western world at the time of the book's writing.

what? what the fuck is this bullshit?

her'es an alternative view: burroughs vomitted on a manuscript, and egil thought it was gold. this sort of elitist gullibility happens all the time, and we even have a fable about it:

The Emperor's New Clothes

"Your Majesty," the prime minister said, "we have a request for you. The people have found out about this extraordinary fabric and they are anxious to see you in your new suit." The Emperor was doubtful showing himself naked to the people, but then he abandoned his fears. After all, no one would know about it except the ignorant and the incompetent.

      "All right," he said. "I will grant the people this privilege." He summoned his carriage and the ceremonial parade was formed. A group of dignitaries walked at the very front of the procession and anxiously scrutinized the faces of the people in the street. All the people had gathered in the main square, pushing and shoving to get a better look. An applause welcomed the regal procession. Everyone wanted to know how stupid or incompetent his or her neighbor was but, as the Emperor passed, a strange murmur rose from the crowd.

      Everyone said, loud enough for the others to hear: "Look at the Emperor's new clothes. They're beautiful!"

      "What a marvellous train!"

      "And the colors! The colors of that beautiful fabric! I have never seen anything like it in my life!" They all tried to conceal their disappointment at not being able to see the clothes, and since nobody was willing to admit his own stupidity and incompetence, they all behaved as the two scoundrels had predicted.

      A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.

      "The Emperor is naked," he said.

      "Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:

      "The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"

      The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.

circletimessquare: "egil is naked"

naked lunch indeed

(snicker)


The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Sorry (none / 0) (#75)
by kromagg on Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 07:11:52 PM EST

I tried to read your article, but apparently you need to have read (and be proud of having read) the book before you can read the article. So I'll just abstain.

interesting (none / 1) (#83)
by trane on Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 07:47:59 PM EST

"Naked Lunch was designed to combat the conservative Western ideas that proliferated throughout the Western world at the time of the book's writing."

And which won out in your own mind, eh?

To be honest (2.75 / 4) (#85)
by coillte on Fri Oct 20, 2006 at 08:04:45 PM EST

difficult to read doesn't even begin to cover it.

The novel is designed, insofar as it could be said to be designed, as a non-linear, randomised, magical innoculation against the corruption of language, whose sense of narrative and sentence structure is informed far more by a conscious and unconscious desire to entirely randomise than any conventional literary structures.

The circumstances it was written under only add to the difficulties. Its a partial recycling of a book Interzone, based upon the city of Tangiers, where he was staying. Working towards the final edition of the book, he tended to stumble around his apartment in a Kif haze, randomly placing typed pages on the floor,m on tables, on chairs, shelves, the floor, entirely disordering any plot structure the novel may have had.

The manuscript was physically ordered by Kerouac and Ginsberg who did their best to collect the manuscript pages from around their entirely unorganised disposition apartment and put them back into what they felt was the closest thing they could find to an authentic narrative structure. Theirs is not the entire final edit, or ordering, but they substantially determined the final structure of the printed edition.

The acutal trial involving the book was for obscenity. This is why I am going to vote your story down. To be blunt, many aspects of the book were not ambiguous about the morality of the time. Nor were they ambivalent. They were entirely antithetical to them, and avowedly so, almost anarchistically so. Concretely, definitively. EWvery single breath and word of the novel hates them. Its the viciousness of the satire, the almost unremmitting taunting of what he sees as an irredeemably corrupt, self deceiving and bankrupt social consencus. To call it ambiguous, or to mistake that for ambivalence, is, to put it bluntly, wrong.

Burroughs, for example, specifically pointed out the episodes of hanging in the book, arguing that any society which is unable to face up to the grotesqueness, and physical obscenity of the hangings which it practices (he includes accounts, for instance, of spontaneous ejaculation during hanging - an observed and verified phenomenon at hanging execution) is entirely too hypocritical to posit an authentic moral position.

This is a central idea. Here is the idea of the Naked Lunch - the ability to see the entire truth of a thing and accept that it is so. It is an intimate and characteristic part part of the bankruptcy of the society that condemns him, his moral and biological choices, that it can only narrate itself hypocritically and selectively. Conventional morality in this context is a lie. He is also prosecuting his lifelong war in favour of persoanal freedom in the realm of what he termed victimless crime - drug use, homosexuality, any activity, really, between consenting adults.

The Naked Lunch hates the morality it impugns, and those who practice it, utterly, and with an iron and unswerving dedication.

Burroughs book also includes accounts of sex with teenage male prostitutes. A difficult moral position to endorse , or indeed tolerate, at any time in the last 100 years. Kiki, a favourite prostitute of Burroughs in Tangiers, makes a noteable impact on the novel. As does his graphically displayed sexual murder. Stick in the standard Burroughsian routines  mercilessly satirising almost everything about conventional American modern life, with an unremitting stream of sexual, violent, vicious and rabid imagery equal only in ugliness to the moral bankruptcy and corruption he seeks to illustrate.

Don't do the man a disservice. He was a vicious and cantankerous fucker, with no patience for the weak, the stupid or the hypocritical. A merciless cunt. A tyrant. A goddamned inveterate, recidivist, anarchistic undesireable with a firm grip on truth and hate, and an intimate knowledge that one idea inevitably involves the experience of the other.

He was a fine human being.

______________________
___________________
"XVI The Blasted Tower. Here is purification through fire,lightning, flames, war...the eye is the eye of Shiva... the serpent on the right is the symbol of the active will to live,the dove on the left is passive resignation to death"

I'm sure someone will find this interesting. (none / 0) (#111)
by rpresser on Sat Oct 21, 2006 at 01:02:26 AM EST

Alas, it is not me.  And I must vote -1, for the presence of such an article would tend to drive away others like me.

Egil must be stopped before it is too late.
------------
"In terms of both hyperbolic overreaching and eventual wrongness, the Permanent [Republican] Majority has set a new, and truly difficult to beat, standard." --rusty

Naked lunch does not look good (1.50 / 2) (#118)
by United Fools on Sat Oct 21, 2006 at 08:48:40 AM EST

Naked women are better
We are united, we are fools, and we are America!
-1, lamer than FDR (1.50 / 2) (#119)
by the spins on Sat Oct 21, 2006 at 11:08:29 AM EST


 _
( )
 X
/ \ SUPPORT THE DEL GRIFFITH MODBOMBING CAMPAIGN

Noe whun wontts tuu cee yuu nakid att lunch (2.33 / 3) (#130)
by Egil Skallagrimsons Mother on Sat Oct 21, 2006 at 04:38:57 PM EST

Annd, how in ye can doo, so mannie worden, whenns et makes sloe teh box for internets?? Howe cann yee finde teh waie for maken so mannie worden, when ye havv soch lazie bonies?

Helpps bettr yuu pot yuur mannie daies inntu harrd worrks, for tenden tuu teh fields, butt nooe: Ie no.

Wie, Eye remmembur et well, howw yuu wood mone wen Eye wuud beatt yuu weth teh rightingstick, for moven ur ass, Skørvic. Hesum guud mule, theen Skørvic, butt YUU WOONT PULL TEH PLOWWE O SKØRVIK WETH FIRRM BUTTOCK THRUU THEEN TUSSOCK! NOO PULLEN TEH DADDOCK, BUTT LYEN ENSTED ON THEE HAMMOCK ORR HASSOCK ANDDE READDEN YUUR PAPERRS WETH WORDEN ALL TEH DAYE, EATEN THRUU TEH BANNOCK ANND HADDOCK FOR SAVEN FORR DINNERS!!!

OE BUTT FOR IFFUM COOD REECH THRRU THEEN INTERNETS WETH THEEN RIGHTINGSTICK, EYE WOUDE SEE TUU ET YOOR BOTOM WOOD BEE BLAK ANND BLUU ANND YUU WOOD WALK FUNNIE FORR EVERMOOR!!

Theis is whatt happenns to thoos who aske abøt mie anachronism.

you guys get all worked up about some... (none / 1) (#140)
by mikelist on Sun Oct 22, 2006 at 09:37:17 AM EST

...book authored by and modeled after a dystopic, queer dope fiend. This shit is not a virus, or a literary catalyst of any kind, merely somewhat disturbing imagery described very well. I put some effort into reading it when I was about 16, some 37 years ago, and enjoyed it in the same way I enjoyed Hesse, Vonnegut, Kerouac, (limited)Ginsberg, Kupferberg and Tom Wolfe.

"the weekends at the college didn't turn out like you planned, the things that pass for knowledge, I just don't understand"
                 -some rock band named after a dildo

Nicely approached. (none / 1) (#149)
by vera on Mon Oct 23, 2006 at 02:03:46 AM EST

I enjoy your passionate attempts to inflict curiousity upon as varied an audience as possible.  Your control of language is sufficient to explain the why of a complex system without falling back on a language more specifically tailored to the course of study you're attempting to convey as appealing to those unfamiliar with the more rigorous discourse.

If I can make time to revisit the subject of Burroughs' art, I'll be approaching you about some of the denser aspects of his arguments.

Peace,

--vera

It's great to see how Burroughs has influenced you (none / 1) (#153)
by glor on Tue Oct 24, 2006 at 02:42:01 AM EST

... into declaring your own war against language.

--
Disclaimer: I am not the most intelligent kuron.

suggestion (none / 0) (#163)
by bankind on Mon Oct 30, 2006 at 11:00:12 AM EST

do a find replace "Burroughs" with "GG Allin" and resubmit.


"Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time -- but we've given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics." -Krugman

Burroughs burrowed..... (none / 0) (#164)
by Marvaud on Sat Nov 04, 2006 at 06:13:28 AM EST

I have read Junky and The Wild Boys and the Book of the Dead.
I will now go borrow Naked Lunch.
But ouch, I just realized I owe the library $50.00 fine.
And that was for the quit smoking book I borrowed.
Grrr......

The Making and Meaning of Naked Lunch | 164 comments (144 topical, 20 editorial, 0 hidden)
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