William S. Burroughs (1914–1997)

When we look back on our lives, there are key moments we are likely to remember. Our first day of school, Australia II winning the America’s Cup, the moment we lost our respective innocence. I lost mine aged eighteen, when I attempted to read Naked Lunch.

Naked Lunch entered my life in early 1990 when a newspaper article reported that an apparently infamous novel I had never heard of by an author I didn’t know was to be made into a film by director David Cronenberg. The article show more questioned not only the wisdom but also the sanity of Cronenberg for tackling such a project, as Naked Lunch had long been considered unfilmable.

I now know Naked Lunch to be a novel by William S. Burroughs, first published in 1959 in Paris by Olympia Press, and considered one of the landmark publications of American literature. However, in 1990 all I knew was that it was a controversial novel involving the words “Naked” and “Lunch”, both amongst an eighteen year olds favourites. Combined they suggested a tempting piece of creative writing, and an even better film.

I decided to read this unfilmable book before seeing the film.

So one fine autumn day I wandered into my local library and perused the Fiction section, specifically the shelves containing authors with surnames starting with “B”. I no doubt saw books by Richard Bach, William Peter Blatty and Charles Bukowski that day. But no Burroughs. Undaunted, I asked a librarian to reserve a copy.

She informed me that not only did the library not have a copy but there was only one Naked Lunch in the entire state library system, kept under lock and key at headquarters, along with other books considered too dangerous to keep on shelves for the general public to see. She could order it in but warned that the lending period was a week with no possibility of extension. She looked at me closely, watching for any sign of weakness in my resolve to borrow this filthy volume.

Later that week I received a call from a librarian informing me Naked Lunch had arrived. I had hardly the time to say “thank you” before she added that I would be required to produce identification proving I was eighteen and sign a form waiving the state library service of any responsibility for pain and suffering incurred from reading the book. Naked Lunch was sounding more interesting all the time.

Back at the library, I spent longer reading over the waiver’s fine print than I later would for my Home Loan application form. As the librarian reiterated the special borrowing conditions, a warm flush came over me, as I felt secretly thrilled. Not only was I about to read an obviously controversial book but people were expending a lot of effort on my behalf in the bargain.

As I held my copy of Naked Lunch for the first time there was a sense of anti-climax. Nothing on the paperback’s cover suggested I was holding something the state government deemed too dangerous to have in public view. Nor was there anything in the look the librarian gave me that suggested I was about to be greatly confused.

I got home, put the kettle on and started reading. Soon after I put the book down and went outside for some fresh air. Memory can be an imperfect creature but I recall the plot, such as it was, to involve men sodomising Arab boys. I’m sure there were other elements, such as drug taking and perhaps sexual acts not involving Arab boys, but Arab boys being sodomised seemed to stick in the mind of this somewhat naïve eighteen year old.

I would read one page at a time before needing to put the book aside and do something that didn’t make me feel so sordid. Eventually, driven by the knowledge that the book’s return date was looming fast, I would hesitantly pick up Naked Lunch again, read another page before again placing it aside for the sake of my mental wellbeing.

By the time the week ended I was still only half way through but fearing repercussions by the library police, I hotfooted the book back to the library.

There were a lot of questions the Naked Lunch film needed to answer.

It didn’t answer anything. While there was a thankful absence of Arab boys being sodomised, an array of weird special effects appeared in their stead, including, but not limited to, talking buttocks. If anything, my confusion about Naked Lunch increased.

I briefly considered going through the process of borrowing the novel again, but decided against it as I didn’t want to become known as “the man who twice borrowed the book that sits next to Mein Kampf on the shelf”.

In the years since, I have noted the acclaim lauded upon Naked Lunch. Time Magazine listed the novel as one of the 100 all time greats. The film has gained a cult following. And a recent search of the library shows a copy of Naked Lunch is freely available to borrow.

Other Naked Lunch related facts hitherto unknown to me also became known during a delve into the Internet, some merely intriguing (the band Steely Dan took its name from a dildo mentioned in the book) while others discoveries were more disturbing. One site provided some scene descriptions of the book, including a boy being raped as he hangs dead in a noose, and a couple lighting themselves on fire and fornicating as they fall from a skyscraper. I don’t recall reading either of these vignettes, perhaps for the best, as my nightmares are already graphic enough.

It took the touchstone of modern culture, The Simpsons, to put into words my feelings about Naked Lunch. In one episode Bart gains a fake drivers licence and takes his friends Milhouse, Martin and Nelson on a cross-country drive. The four are seen leaving a cinema showing Naked Lunch. Looking about as disturbed I did a decade or so before, Nelson says “I can find at least two things wrong with that title."

Amen brother. show less

I had been curious about 'Naked Lunch' for some time before I eventually read it. I really had no idea whether I would end up loving it or hating it, but what I knew of its reputation fascinated me. A lot of words get thrown around to describe this book: terrifying, obscene, mind-bending, beautiful. The edition that I own calls it "probably the most shocking book in the English language", a claim that is difficult to dispute.

Sadly, I mainly just hated it. The relentless gore, the show more disturbingly violent sex scenes, the terrifying medical operations... they didn't bother me nearly as much as the complete lack of plot and character. Yes, I realize that it's the point of the book and of Burroughs' cut-up-and-fold-in style, that it's basically the insane ravings of an addict in severe withdrawal, that it's better read as poetry than as a novel.... but that doesn't make it any more enjoyable to actually read. Being a straight male, it obviously didn't have any erotic appeal to me (but then I can't fathom anybody of any sexual orientation getting off to the horrifying fantasies presented here, unless they are violent psychopaths), and I ended up just forcing myself from page to page, frustrated by the endless shifts to unrelated vignettes every time I had managed to orientate myself to what was going on and desperately wishing for some to happen besides transvestites getting their throats slit after sex. Ultimately, for all of its shocking content, 'Naked Lunch' is really rather boring.

The only reason I have given this as many stars as I have is for the essays on the writing process and Burroughs drug experiences at the end of the book. They are genuinely fascinating and compelling, and far more interesting than the book itself. As an insight into the madness of a man going through heroin withdrawal, 'Naked Lunch' has merit - as a novel, it is, in my opinion, a complete failure. Instead, I recommend Burroughs' first novel, 'Junky', an utterly engrossing read which actually succeeds in both placing the reader into the mind of a drug addict and as a narrative in its own right. show less

The 1950s were a time of repression, or at least that’s what popular media would have you believe. Married couples on television shows had separate beds in those rare instances when bedrooms were allowed to be shown. When people got shot in the movies they didn’t bleed. Elvis Presley could only be shown on TV from the waist up. Interracial social relationships of any kind were forbidden while lynchings were common in the South. But they would never put that on the evening news. Politics show more were a taboo subject. Simply saying you disagreed with certain politicians could get you labeled a communist and your career could be ruined even if you weren’t actually a communist. Any discussions about sexuality of any sort were censored either by law or by choice. The use of narcotics was hidden from public view and Cold War era paranoia about the nuclear bomb was rampant and even encouraged by the government through the spread of propaganda.
But all this was going on fifty years after the publication of Ulysses. The ideas of Freud and Nietzsche were no longer new. People were aware that a chthonic, underground world existed and there was a whole lot more going on in America just beyond the surface of what was socially acceptible. But things were bubbling up to the surface. One of them was the Beat Generation, a new manifestation of the bohemian tradition in which poets and criminals listened to jazz, experimented with drugs and free love, and lived the life they wanted according to their own rules. Out of this counter culture came the gay, heroin addicted author William S. Burroughs, who may or may not have accidentally shot his wife in Mexico City, and his ground breaking novel Naked Lunch. The title says a lot because it is a work that reveals the hidden and the suppressed without restraint in all its naked glory. But glorious it isn’t, and in fact most would say it is a literary expression of all that is vile and repulsive.
Burroughs started out writing short pieces that were like bursts or explosions of verbiage depicting the underworld life he was familiar with. Some are like vignettes or prose poems. Sometimes they are almost like stories. But Burroughs couldn’t get his life together enough to put a whole novel together so Allen Ginsberg and Brion Gysin pieced some of these into a montage that came to be known as Naked Lunch.
The book begins with descriptions of heroin addiction and the lifestyle that accompanies it. The unpleasant tactile sensations and smells of filth, grime, slime, stickiness, and bodily fluids are ever present. Insects and other vermin are more numerous than people. The difference between people and vermin is hard to distinguish at times. Also the boundaries between the body and all the rotten mess is permeable and sometimes hard to identify. The reader is immediately plunged into a pool of sewage.
And as far as ugly creatures go, some of the ugliest are the Mugwumps. These are humanoid beings straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting that are half insect and half man. They secrete a substance that is addicting to some other creatures that suck it off their skin. This may be a metaphor for the relationship between the drug pusher and their buyers with a gay element thrown in. If that creepy image is what Burroughs meant to represent, you might say he isn’t comfortable with fitting into either category. The term “mugwump” by the way, refers to a constituent of voters in the 19th century at the end of the Reconstruction era. They were disgusted with both the Democrats and Republicans and insisted on voting according to a candidates policies and moral character rather than partisan alliance. The word itself is derived from an Algonquin word meaning “superior man” or “boss”. It’s hard to tell if a political statement is intended here, but the concept of Mugwumps as a voting bloc would fit in with the passages later in the novel that satirize American political parties, none of which are made to sound appealing from Burroughs’ point of view.
As the passages take on more form, we are introduced to the recurring character of Dr. Benway, the sleazy surgeon who massages a patient’s heart with a toilet plunger while dropping cigarette ashes into the incision. He gives an unnamed narrator a tour through his hospital where he performs arbitrary operations of no medical value whatsoever. The tour ends with a visit to a locked ward where patients have been reduced to a vegetative state of idiocy because of Dr. Benway’s experiments with behavior control. The passage ends when inmates of a psychiatric ward break out, have a riot, and do all kinds of foul and disgusting things to each other and the people on the street. In another scenario, Dr. Benway does surgery on a stage in front of an audience as if he is a practitioner of the performing arts just as much as he is of the medical arts. The term “operating theater” actually goes back to the Renaissance when surgeries were performed for educational purposes in front of an audienc. But Dr. Benway’s arbitrary and pointless surgery is interrupted by what we might call a heckler with a scalpel.
Dr. Benway is the crux of a lot of Burroughs’ writings post-Naked Lunch. He is an agent of control whose medical practices serve two purposes. One is mind and behavior control, although he usually fails in this by either destroying his patients or unwittingly causing outbreaks of chaos. The other is art. Dr. Benway performs surgery for surgery’s sake the way artists creates art for art’s sake. He is amoral, unethical, has no interest in helping his patients and his surgeries make no sense from a rational point of view, but he does them because that’s all he can do. He doesn’t know how to do anything else. He is just an agent, an elementary force who acts out of inner necessity. You can say a lot of artists, especially in the modern era, do the same, channeling what they do, letting the artistic process guide their hands rather than creating with definite intention.
Dr. Benway makes a further appearance near the end of the book when he brings Carl Peterson, another recurring character in Burroughs’ works, into his office to run some tests designed to uncover any hidden traces of homosexuality in the ex-soldier. Carl struggles to repress any evidence of an affair he had with another man while in the military. Here again we have the element of control and chaos because Dr. Benway represents the attempted institutional control over sexual behavior while Carl Peterson’s sexual orientation is something outside the scope of psychiatric domination. For lovers of obscure literary references, the passage ends with Carl trying and failing to approach a green door; the term “green door” is a military terminology meaning “top secret” or “highly classified”. Carl wants to open the door and reveal his sexual secret but he is unable to because he is a rat caught in Dr. Benway’s maze. The theme of control through repression is on full display here.
On the other side of the control through repression theme is the continual outbreaks of sex and violence that permeate the novel. The riot resulting from patients’ escaping from Dr. Benway’s psychiatric hospital has already been mentioned, but other passages have things like “Hassan’s Rumpus Room”, where a surreal, unresrticted orgy takes place, and the film introduced by Slashtubitch is shown. (I’ve read this book several times and still have no idea who Slashtubitch is supposed to be. Hassan is possibly Hassan I Sabbah, another recurring character in later works) The film is pornographic and shows a love making scene between Mary and Johnny involving the use of the Steely Dan dildo. And yes, the rock band Steely Dan did lift their name from Naked Lunch. The film ends with Mary hanging Johnny who ejaculates when he dies. Burroughs is obsessed with this image since it appears ad nauseum in almost every book he ever wrote. Mary then eats his face reminscent of the way a female praying mantis eats the head of the male after sexual intercourse, something that also preoccupied the Surrealist pioneer Andre Breton. Here we have another recurring theme in Burroughs’ works, that of the female as a destructive force of control. His portrayal of women is unapologetically misogynist and his obsessive, hyper-masculine writings about guns and exotic weaponry can be interpreted as a defense against what he perceives to be the controlling instincts of women.
One other interesting chapter is that of “The Talking Asshole”. A man discovers that his asshole can talk. At first the novelty of this amuses people and he becomes famous, but then his asshole takes over his life and he turns into nothing more than a giant asshole that never shuts up. This is obviously a satire of people who “talk out their ass”, be they politicians, drunks, college students, or other varieties of know-it-alls who don’t know what they’re talking about. The internet is bursting with these types and in the days of Fox News and the Trump presidency, the Talking Asshole rings more true than ever. In the twisted mind of Burroughs, there is also an element of opiate addiction in this passage since the asshole starts out by being amusing and then grows so large it consumes the man’s entire life. Kind of like heroin addiction. What Burroughs is getting at is that talking, especially bullshitting, can be an addiction like anything else. This comes back to Dr. Benway who is characterized as a control addict with the commentary added that control serves no purpose other than control in the same way that heroin addiction serves no other purpose than addiction. Burroughs may be projecting his own problems onto the world, but when elements of his problems correspond to reality, it feels like a revelation.
On the surface, a lot of Naked Lunch appears to be little more than obscene drivel. It’s true that some parts are nothing but surreal imagery, nonsense, and literary diarrhea. By the way, this was written before Burroughs began using the cut up technique so anything that confuses you is done on purpose; it is meant to be disorienting. But then the passages about control are those that are most clearly written and those are surrounded by other passages of explosive violence and chaos. The explosive nature of those passages serves to illustrate the results of repression. Burroughs’ obsessions with guns, orgasms, orgies, defecation, dismemberment, hangings, and all other outbursts of violence can be seen as the repression of his homosexuality and drug addiction coming undone and bursting out into plain sight. The repressive nature of American society creates a pressure cooker leading to explosions of everything we aren’t supposed to see. The more American society tries to repress the underground cultures of sexual expression, drug use, and criminality, the more those cultures try to undo their repression and the result is the rise of counter cultures concerned with free expression of desires and artistic projects like the novel that is Naked Lunch.
This novel doesn’t represent Burroughs’ best writing. What makes it so great is that it introduces so many themes that pre-occupied him in his later years when he went in the direction of more science-fiction type books. It is also a lot more accessible than his later works, at least for the first time reader. Even if you don’t understand everything written or struggle to put it together as a whole, it still has a strong impact that will stay with you for years to come. Even after 70 years, the wild and untamed nature of this legendary book can still blow your hair back the other way. Burroughs’ ability to write great sentences that create imagery is first rate as well. The language he uses is like a mixture of surrealist poetry and bare bones, pulp crime novel directness. In fact, during the obscenity trial in which the government tried to censor and ban this book, one of the things that saved it was the lyrical use of vocabulary that sometimes captured snippets of haunting beauty.
Finally, I’d like to address a couple stray thoughts. The first is that of the racism depicted in the book. Some people have complained about it, but I feel they are misreading what Burroughs is saying. The racist comments are sick, but you have to consider the context and who is making them. They entirely come from the mouths of police, bureaucrats, rednecks, and other boorish kinds of people. If you understand the author, you know that he despises these kinds of people. Their offensive racist humor is depicted here as more shit and garbage flowing through the sewer world being portrayed. He isn’t celebrating the world he is writing about; he is showing us how terrible it all is.
The other stray thought is related to some obscure details regarding Burroughs’ wife Joan, the one he shot in Mexico City. In one paragraph, and without any context, Willy Jr. gets angry because the unnamed narrator eats his sugar skull on the Day Of the Dead. Then the narrator says that after he moved to Tangier, someone told him that his wife had died. Those in the know will recognize the reference to the unwanted son Burroughs had with his wife and his move, minus his wife, from Mexico to Tangier. Another subtle reference to Joan comes when Carl Peterson is in Dr. Benway’s office being accosted about his gay tendencies. Dr. Benway says that sometimes gay men get married and the result is...here Dr. Benway’s speech trails off with the implication that gay men who marry women sometimes murder their wives. It is fair to consider that William S. Burroughs is arguable one of the most autobiographical authors in history, something that becomes clear if you know his biography and understand how to decode his writings. But if this is so, why are there so few references to the killing of his wife as some critics have said? The answer is that they are there all over the place. He hides it in plain sight and if you understand how psychological displacement operates, you can see it more clearly.
Naked Lunch is an ancestral work that rides on the coattails of Freud and James Joyce. Freud said that being a member of society means suppressing the selfish desires of the individual where they get left to fester as the id, sometimes breaking into consciousness in the form of dreams. James Joyce in Ulysses used stream of consciousness writing to turn away from the public and go inwards to portray the inner workings and linguistic free associations of the human mind with no restrictions on what that might be including any bodily functions or disturbing thoughts. Naked Lunch is an expression of the id, the inner landscape, the unconscious, and everything we aren’t supposed to see in public. William S. Burroughs ingested elements of human society, disgested them in the inner workings of his mind, and then expressed them in the dream state of writing without holding anything back. It’s too easy to say it’s all a projection of his inner landscape onto the world because what he projects is a product of what he experienced in the world. He reminds us that vomit and feces started out as food. In this way, Naked Lunch is like shitting on a plate and serving it to you as a meal as to remind us of what we do that we wish to hide. Hell isn’t in some dimension we go to when we die. It is in the hidden recesses of our minds and all around us wherever we go and in whoever we meet. You are a part of it, like it or not. show less

Like watching an avant-garde B-movie through a heap of glass shards. Prose sharp and jagged, cut up and folded in, deforming any light that passes through. Burroughs imparts neither comfort nor ease. He was a soothsayer. He gets bunched in with the Beats, but he was 4 or 5 clicks beyond anything Ginsberg, Kerouac, etc ever imagined they could imagine. No bullshit sentimentality can save us. We’re up against weaponized mescaline, image guns and virus crystals. Don’t be fooled by the show more hepcat junkie lingo. The authorities know full well that the new mass man is easily manipulated by fear and anger. Run away first chance you get. show less