"He was," as Salon's Gary Kamyia notes, "20th-century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of dread.... Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughly and obsessively rendered as Blake's." Why has this homosexual ex-junkie, whose claim to fame rests entirely on one book--the hallucinogenic ravings of a heroin addict--so seized the collective imagination? Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in a Tangier, Morocco, hotel room between 1954 and 1957. Allen Ginsberg and his beatnik cronies burst onto the scene, rescued the manuscript from the food-encrusted floor, and introduced some order to the pages. It was published in Paris in 1959 by the notorious Olympia Press and in the U.S. in 1962; the landmark obscenity trial that ensued served to end literary censorship in America. Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol. Read it and see for yourself.


Midwest Book Review
A classic of modern literature for over 35 years, Naked Lunch is the unnerving tale of a narcotics addict's monumental descent into hell, as he travels from New York to Tangiers, and then into the Interzone. There he finds a nightmarish modern urban wasteland in which the forces of evil vie for control of the individual and all of humanity. This abridged recording is in the author's own voice.


Book Description
Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the 20th century. Exerting its influence on the work of authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson, on the relationship of art and obscenity, and on the shape of music, film, and media generally, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture. Now, nearly forty years after the book's first U.S. appearance, Burroughs scholar Barry Miles and Burroughs's longtime editor James Grauerholz have given us an edition of the book which includes many editorial corrections to errors present in the existing text, and incorporates Burroughs's notes on the text, several essays he wrote over the years about the book, and, most excitingly, an appendix of twenty percent new material and alternate drafts from the original manuscript, which predates the edition eventually was published by Olympia Press in Paris. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of perhaps his most enduring artistic legacy.

ANNOTATION

A classic of modern literature for over 35 years, Naked Lunch is the unnerving tale of Bill Lee, addicted to hustlers and narcotics, and his monumental descent into Hell. His journey takes him from New York to Tangiers, as he runs from the police and searches for a place to buy and take drugs.

Ultimately, he enters the hallucinatory fantasy world of the 'Interzone,' a nightmarish urban wasteland where individual freedom confronts the forces of totalitarianism.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, a book that redefined not just literature but American culture. An unnerving tale of a narcotics addict unmoored in New York, Tangiers, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone, its formal innovation, formerly taboo subject matter, and tour de force execution have exerted their influence on the work of authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson; on the relationship of art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media generally. Naked Lunch: The Restored Text includes many editorial corrections to errors present in previous editions, and incorporates Burroughs's notes on the text, several essays he wrote over the years about the book, and an appendix of 20 percent new material and alternate drafts from the original manuscript, which predates the first published version. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of this classic of our culture.

SYNOPSIS

A classic of modern literature for over 35 years, Naked Lunch is the unnerving tale of Bill Lee, addicted to hustlers and narcotics, and his monumental descent into Hell. His journey takes him from New York to Tangiers, as he runs from the police and searches for a place to buy and take drugs.

Ultimately, he enters the hallucinatory fantasy world of the 'Interzone,' a nightmarish urban wasteland where individual freedom confronts the forces of totalitarianism.

FROM THE CRITICS

Newsweek

"A masterpiece. A cry from hell, a brutal, terrifying, and savagely funny book that swings between uncontrolled hallucination and fierce, exact satire."

Herbert Gold

It happens that Burroughs possesses a special literary gift. Naked Lunch is less a novel than a series of essays, fantasies, prose poems, dramatic fragments, bitter arguments, jokes, puns, epigrams--all hovering about the explicit subject matter of making out on drugs while not making out in either work or love... (Naked Lunch) takes a coldly implacable look at the dark side of our nature... William Burroughs has written the basic work for understanding that desperate symptoms which is the beat style of life.-- Books of the Century, The New York Times review, November, 1962

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

"A book of great beauty.... Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genious." — Norman Mailer

"Only after the first shock does one realize that what Burroughs is writing about is not only the destruction of depraved men by their drug lust, but the destruction of all men by their consuming addictions... He is a writer of great power and artistic integrity engaged in a profoundly meaningful search for true values." — John Ciardi