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Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs. Some early European editions of the book are entitled The Naked Lunch as was the British 1969 paperback edition by Corgi Books but the article was dropped for American editions. It was the third novel he wrote, but was the second of his novels to see publication. The book was first published in France in 1959 by the infamous Olympia Press; an English-language edition by Grove Press followed soon after. David Cronenberg released a film of the same title based upon the novel and other Burroughs writings in 1991.

The controversy

Naked Lunch is considered Burroughs' seminal work, and one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature. Extremely controversial in both its subject matter and its use of often 'obscene' language, something Burroughs recognized and intended, the book was banned in many regions of the United States, and was one of the last American books to actually be put on trial for obscenity. The book was banned by Boston courts in 1962 due to obscenity (notably child murder in pedophilic acts), but that decision was reversed in a landmark 1966 opinion by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. This was the last major literary censorship battle in the US. The Appeals Court found the book did not violate obscenity statutes; the hearing included testimony in support of the work by Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer.

In 1959 sections of the manuscript were published in a University of Chicago student run publication The Big Table. The edition was not well received, and caused the university administration to fire the student editors. When the editor Paul Carroll published BIG TABLE Magazine (Issue No. 1, Spring 1959) on his own accord, he was found guilty of sending obscene material through the U.S. mail for including "Ten Episodes from 'Naked Lunch'", a piece of writing the Judicial Officer for the United States Postal Service deemed "undisciplined prose, far more akin to the early work of experimental adolescents than to anything of literary merit" and initially judged it as nonmailable under the provisions of Section 1461, Title 18, United States Code.(The Big Table court decision).

Upon publication, Grove Press added to the book supplementary material regarding the censorship battle as well as an article written by Burroughs on the topic of drug addiction. In 2002, a "restored text" edition of Naked Lunch was published, with some new and previously suppressed material added.

The text

Naked Lunch consists of many loosely related vignettes in which several characters such as the sadistic, sociopathic and borderline incompetent Dr. Benway reappear. The primary character (one might say the main character), is agent Bill Lee (a pseudonym for Burroughs — Lee was his mother's maiden name; Burroughs also appears in Kerouac's On the Road as "Old Bull Lee" and used the pseudonym William Lee for his first novel, Junkie, and for his second novel, Queer).

The book's structure anticipates the cut-up technique Burroughs would later employ in novels such as the so-called "Nova Trilogy" (The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express). The stories draw from his experiences in Tangier and his life in America and Mexico, as well as a tour through South America he undertook after accidently shooting his common-law wife Joan Vollmer in the head while playing a drunken game of William Tell. Throughout this period he became addicted to several drugs (notably heroin and morphine). The novel's mix of taboo fantasies, peculiar creatures (like the predatory Mugwumps), and eccentric personalities all serve to unmask mechanisms and processes of control; to "reveal what is at the end of every fork." The title was suggested by Burroughs's friend Jack Kerouac. The novel is a particularly grand illustration of Burroughs's skill with dialogue. Poet Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs' close friend and sometime lover, refers to Naked Lunch in his introduction to his epic poem "Howl".

The book contains what is generally considered to be some of Burroughs' most memorable and quoted passages. One of the most quoted is a section (or, to use Burroughs' terminology, a "routine") known as "The Talking Asshole". This story-within-a-story involves a man who teaches his anal orifice to talk, a trick he soon regrets when it develops a personality and mind of its own and eventually takes over the man's body. Notable recordings and performances of this routine include Frank Zappa reading it during 1978's The Nova Convention (it was recorded and released by Giorno Poetry Systems), by Burroughs himself in his mid-1990s CD Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales, and it is quoted virtually verbatim by Peter Weller's character in the film version of Naked Lunch.

Several characters would reappear in many later works, most notably the surgeon Dr. Benway, Clem Snide "the Private Asshole", and Inspector Lee. In 1989, Burroughs published Interzone, a collection of short stories and other writings including a chapter entitled "WORD" that at one time was considered for inclusion in Naked Lunch. According to some sources, Burroughs original title for the novel Naked Lunch was also Interzone.

Interpretation

The redeeming literary merit of the work is found in the biting satire and social criticism many of these episodes contain. Burroughs digests the modern American mind and spits out a wild, almost repulsive parade of images and characters that encapsulate the current state of the 20th century. From the seedy abortionist who solicits pregnant women on the street, to the racist County Clerk of the south, to the macho father who buys a prostitute for his sixteen year old son on his birthday, only to discover the kid literally got a "piece of ass", Naked Lunch exposes the under workings of the American experience, and shows the beginnings of a social pathology and hypocrisy that would erupt in the 1960s as a 'culture war'. Burroughs himself found the material disturbing to write, but also a cleansing of his life-long frustrations and unconsciously repressed experiences.

Naked Lunch in popular culture

Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in room #9 of the Hotel el Muniria in Tangier. Today, photos of Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and other beat generation poets hang on the walls of the adjoining bar, the Tangerinn.

The British science fiction magazine Interzone obviously gets its name from Naked Lunch. The music group Steely Dan takes its name from a dildo mentioned in Naked Lunch. The music group Clem Snide also takes its name from a character in Naked Lunch. In 1994, the band Bomb The Bass released their album Clear which contains a track called "Bug Powder Dust". The lyrics of that song contain a lot of references to characters, places and actions that are part of the book. An episode of the TV series Crime Scene Investigation includes a character named Dr. Benway in one episode. In the 1984 Alex Cox film, Repo Man, there is a hospital scene in which Dr. Benway is paged. Also in the 1998 film Dark City, "Dr. Benway" and "Mr. Lee" are paged in a hospital scene. The instrumental post-rock band Tortoise included a song entitled "Benway" on their 2001 album Standards. Numerous recordings of Burroughs reading excerpts from Naked Lunch have been released over the years, as well as a full audio book version issued a few years before his death. The book's name also turns up (apparantly at random) in "FLCLimax," the final episode of the anime FLCL, where it is shouted in a rhyming fit ("...Naked Lunch, Hawaiian Punch!") by character Haruhara Haruko.

The film

Ever since the 1960s, numerous film makers considered how to adapt Naked Lunch for the screen. Antony Balch, who worked with Burroughs on a number of short film projects in 1960s, considered making the film, as did others, but the book was ultimately deemed unfilmable.

It wasn't until 1991 that Canadian director David Cronenberg took up the challenge. Rather than attempt a straight adaptation of the novel, however, Cronenberg instead took elements from the book and combined them with elements from Burroughs' own life, to create a mutated fiction-biography hybrid.

Peter Weller starred as William Lee in this film, which was critically acclaimed in some quarters and derided in others.

On The Simpsons episode "Bart On The Road", Bart, Milhouse, Nelson sneak into an R-rated movie called "Naked Lunch" (after Bart creates a fake ID for himself after watching his aunts work at the DMV all day). When they come out disappointed, Nelson points out that he can "find at least two things wrong with that title."

External links

1959 novels Banned books William S. Burroughs novels | American novels Time Magazine 100 best novels | Beat Generation | Seminal works | LGBT literature Le Festin nu | Голый завтрак

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Naked Lunch".

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