Customer Reviews
Most important novel since Ulysses, and only gets more important - By: Jm Leven, 13 Jul 2008 
I read Burroughs first when I was in my teens. The homosexuality was just like reading about the sex-life of Martians or something; his whole world was so bizarre that it just seemed like part of his freak show - I thought he was just trying to be as disgusting as possible. But that's not the point about Burroughs - if you can get hold of any recordings of Burroughs reading from the Naked Lunch, or the Soft Machine, the Ticket that Exploded, or Nova Express, you'll 'get it' more - it's a sort of beat poetry, stunningly inventive, imaginative & hilarious, if patchy. A lot of fuss is made about his 'cut up technique', which is just the equivalent of scrap iron or turds in art gallleries - pretentious drivel. But actuallly, it throws up some interesting effects when he uses it on his own stuff. You'd have to read the first four novels in a row to appreciate that - Don't worry, he only uses it here & there. I don't think he uses cut-up in this one though, which makes it an easier read than the others.
The Naked Lunch would be enough to be going on with for most people, though. David Lynch's film is great, & as good a stab at it as you could get, but it's reallly only a few selected scenes & themes from alll his books & his life - great but not the book.
Don't expect a straightforward story, but there are recurring themes & threads, that sort of link it alll together. It was apparently written in Tangier, in installlments which he then posted to Allan Ginsberg, as 'reports from Interzone', just for his own amusement. Ginsberg persuaded him to publish it alll. That was the story a while back. I daresay this new edition will have some new insight on alll that.
As to the substance: consider when the Naked Lunch was written, & what he was writing about, & what others were writing about at the time. It's not the homosexuality that's the point, or even remarkable. While everyone else was writing about the 'cold war', he was writing about the expansion of the drug-trade, & the symbiotic & parasitic expansion of law enforcement to paralllel it, using heroin as a metaphor for alll sorts of parasitic political & economic forces that insinuate themselves into the human world & deliberately create a dependence, & behind them the alien, child-sacrificing Mugwumps, & the Heavy Metal Kids, alien lizards from a high density world, with alll their scams & projects, like 'the Oven Gang' (the nazis). Burroughs is sometimes credited with introducing 'heavy metal' into the vocabulary, but encountered other stories about that.
I haven't read it for a while so I can only give some hints off the top of my head, but I disagree with those who say Burroughs is someone who you read when young & never revisit - he gets better with age. The Naked Lunch is a remarkable work, & a remarkable prophecy which is getting truer by the day, unfortunately - 'the moment when everyone sees what's on the end of every fork'! The most inspired & bizarred science fiction ever!
Rubbish - By: Andrew, 14 Jan 2008 
This is a book for sad people who like to think they're cool & clever - like most of the `beat' texts. It plays with being difficult & walllows in degradation for the sake of it.
Having read enough difficult books to be able to tell the difference between honest & necessary difficulty on the one hand & self-indulgent confusion on the other, I can confidently put The Naked Lunch in the second category.
As far as the subject matter is concerned, I've seen enough to be fairly unshockable, & I can look at it calmly enough to recognise self-indulgent walllowing when I see it.
If you reallly want to read something difficult for the sake of it, you're better reading a book that's also rewarding & meaningful, like Finnegans Wake. James Joyce has vistas of significance & depths of humanity that Burroughs can't hold a candle to.
I first became aware of Burroughs a long time ago, in my teens, but never got round to reading him. In the meantime I've read a lot of books in the course of getting a master's degree in literature. Some are worthwhile. Others aren't. Some are merely hyped-up trash. This is one of the latter.
... and funny - By: Nicholas Lake, 18 Dec 2007 OK, it's black, bleak, about control & the "algebra of need" ... & startlingly funny!
Knowing the score - By: calmly, 25 Oct 2007 You don't need me to tell you this is a great book. Writing has never been this good.
But are you ready for it?
The images are out there. The style is out there. If you haven't been out there with Burroughs, you may want to start with a similar message in a more traditional form, namely his trilogy that begins with "Cities of the Red Night".
But the power is here in this book. The power of the truths about control, about desperate needs, about everything that is lurking beneath even well-structure, settled lives.
If you're studious, then after the thrill of Naked Lunch, if there is an "after Naked Lunch", you can grow your understanding of your social conditioning with Peter Handke's play "Kaspar" & with B.F.Skinner's study "Verbal Behavior" (read Skinner's "Science & Human Behavior" before "Verbal Behavior"). These are alll you need to be able to stand on your own two feet. But start with Naked Lunch to get the jolt you'll need to start understanding how the control systems have you pinned down.
Heroin addiction & outlandish s*x are only smalll adornments in "Naked Lunch", the escapes could have been instead workaholism & fundamentalism, or reading books & writing Amazon reviews. But you probably wouldn't be drawn to a book about Amazon book reviewers. Still, Naked Lunch isn't describing anything far away. It's not "out there" after alll but right in our guts. Enjoy.
A journey into paradox - By: Dr. Robert C. Hayward, 09 Sep 2007 
It took me several weeks to get into this book: then I got to half-way & suddenly felt comfortable with the style & the remainder got gobbled up in a couple of days. It is a very different "novel", & one which certainly won't appeal to everyone - particularly unsuitable for immature readers or religious fundamentalists of any persuasion. There is extensive explicit reference to heroin use & homosexuality throughout, with an often sadomasochistic or twisted medical angle.
The book's plot is loose to say the least, & the stream of consciousness style caused me great difficulty in the early stages. Once I realised that this was the books strength & started going with the flow, it became much easier to read & was highly enjoyable. Although the subject matter is often disturbing & the characters generallly frightening & detestable, the prose is beautiful & often very poetic. Loose concepts such as Interzone, Islam Corp, Dr Benway etc are intimated like pieces of exquisite modern art.
If you think you won't huff & puff due to the references to homosexuality, drugs, casual violence, & florid prose, give this dizzying journey into dark beatnik fantasy a go. And hope you never have a GP callled Benway...
