Naked Lunch (1959)

So you get twenty or thirty pages into this book and you go WTF? And you run to Google or Wikipedia, or maybe LibraryThing to see what you are supposed to think, because clearly you missed something. You're not one of the chosen ones - the work doesn't speak to you - you're too thick to appreciate it - you skipped class that day . . .

So now you are online, searching reviews, and you see words like: 'groundbreaking,' 'visceral,' 'audacious,' and 'non-linear.' Ahh, the reassuring authority of terms. That feels better! You go back to the book, and for while you succeed in wearing some of the reverence you read online - for this writer whose beat words spew out like overripe fruit and broken glass, and which he glues to the page using every conceivable and unfortunate body fluid.

Your eyes glaze over at sentences that promise temporary handholds of sense and then forget their origins without notice. You catch at the swirl of crude images and broken meanings that come and go like random bursts of machine gun fire. Clearly, some of the bullets are hitting you, though many fly harmlessly past. But the ones that do connect. . . you begin to wonder what the hell they might be doing. Is there a subliminal agenda? Are you being corrupted by this book?

But maybe getting a little unhinged is not such a bad thing. And really, the book isn't so long. You can stomach the uneasiness. Finally you settle into a pattern of reading one sentence after another - dubiously and a little mechanically - like a puzzled arts patron given a one inch window to move randomly over a Jackson Pollock canvas. This task is not easy. You just wish the words would all shout their meanings at once - discarding the sequential - so you can hear it as one grand howl of pain and confusion.

And you start thinking about the metaphor of the canvas; and maybe just standing speechless in front of it is OK. And then finally, Burroughs tells you at the end to start anywhere in the book. (“Gee, thanks!”) All of which underlies the suspicion that this book doesn’t even exist while you are reading it, that it coalesces into a book sometime after you finish, and to say you "read" it is to say that you remember pieces of a confusing and relentless pipe dream.

This book is chaos. But once I better understood the stream of writing, it began to read like poetry. Naked Lunch is a grotesque commentary on addiction that resonates into an observation on society and human existance as a whole. Sometimes it's necessary (perhaps refreshing?) to see life - or a muffled, eccentric chunk of it - through the eyes of an honest, unforgiving, junked-up masochist writer from the 1950s. ( )

Since this really isn't a novel and even William S Burroughs didn't think this was a novel - I don't think one can really say they are ever done with this book. I did read it in order;something that Burroughs didn't even think was necessary and so I guess in getting from point A to point B meaning the last page then I am finished with this book but really finished with it.....nope..I don't think so. I think my next read of this book will be a random one just starting on any section and working my way through randomly. I liked this book although it was difficult to read at times but when I stopped thinking of it as a novel and more like a long poem or experimental writing I liked it that much more. It was a challenge. A challenge because if the vulgarities and vivid drug descriptions, a challenge cause of the use of the language. It is a great book but it is not for the prude or the faint of heart. ( )

Il protoplasma e la Scimmia

Prestato da una amica (in realtà sfidata: prova a vedere se riesci a andare oltre pagina 20) e finito.
Per come la vedo io è un flusso di coscienza ininterrotto di un tossico, e non ha alcun filo logico.
Il linguaggio è crudo e racconta (quando si riesce a discernerle) situazioni ancora più crude di violenza e degrado, il problema è che spesso è solo un susseguirsi di sensazioni e fugaci immagini, e questo modo di scrivere deve piacere (a me decisamente non piace).
Le appendici, invece, per me sono state boccate di aria fresca e di realtà comprensibile. ( )

It might help to understand Burrough's prose if approached from a state of mind otherwise altered (use Zen, Yoga, prayer or any other substance of choice). ( )