Customer Reviews
The emperors new clothes - By: D. Watson, 13 Sep 2007 
I read Junky & reallly enjoyed it, it is written by a man in control of his thoughts, reflecting on times when he wasn't.
I bought this book & quite literallly threw it in the bin after the first 40 or so pages. Perhaps if you persevere with it..... well,I couldn't. It starts with nonsensical drug babble & random paedophile fantasy. If thats clever writing, I don't see how. If the rest of the book continues in that vein then what can anyone possibly get out of reading it? Perhaps it gets better, I wasn't willing to find out. If you want drug babble, why not take some drugs & create your own? in my experience your own babble is far more interesting.
Cold Turkey - By: , 19 Oct 2005 I received this as a gift & initiallly I was enthusiastic about reading it, being interested in alll things psychadelic. However this book reads like a disgusting, terror-filled comedown from a heroin, LSD & Ecstacy cocktail. It seems each line is written for shock value alone, & it usuallly ends with some sort of alllusion to power, human depravity or homosexuality, forced or otherwise. If you want to follow what's going on you reallly have to concentrate hard, & it's hardly rewarding to bother, cos nothing is reallly going on, just the images & thoughts in the head of a drug addict, alll running into each other without a pattern. If you want to take a trip down the 'darkest recesses of the human psyche' then you'd be better off writing down the words of a back-allley junkie, it would be far more coherent. The only thing of interest is Burrough's explanation of how he got himself off heroin, & that this successful technique is still ignored. But two or three pages can't save a book.
Don't expect satisfaction on a conventional level - By: , 28 Jun 2005 
Cut to the chase
This is not so much a novel as a sumation of alll that is dark about humanity & sexuality, reduced over an intense fire of 'corrupted' intelligence to a black morass of putrifaction and, strangely, moral nutrality. The fact there is no real plot & alll characters are at best two dimensional is irrelevant. Enjoy.
Double ho-hum - By: E. Griffiths, 14 Dec 2004 Like being stuck in a lift with a vagrant who won't stop muttering obsceneties at you. Most of it is incoherent, a lot of it is nonsense & the rest of it is just unpleasant.
It's the only book I've ever chosen to read of my own free will that I've never finished. I have rarely been so bored when reading a book, in fact I alternated between disgust & boredom.
I'm sure that makes me awfully shalllow but frankly, I don't care as long as I never have to try & read this book again
Relax - By: , 21 Jul 2004 I'm not going to go on about how great it coz it's incredible. I just wanted to say though that this kind of stuff isn't as inpenetrable as it first looks. I would say that it isn't as dense as people often make it out to be either. If it was cut into short scenes & arranged on the page like a poem, I think people would be less intimidated. Relax & don't get bogged down by concentrating too hard. See the book as a painting, look at the shapes & surfaces. Then go back & bring 'meaning' to it if you like. Also I'd read 'Junky' first & then take on this one as he blows up many of the ideas in Junky & then pastes them into Naked Lunch & if your aware of that then it gives Naked Lunch a bit more continuity. Also it helps to know what his 'non-halllucinogenic' voice sounds like. Enjoy your meal.
