Naked Lunch

Rating:
Summary: Naked Lunch goes the distance
Review: This is by far my favorite book of all time. Not only because it's very grotesque, but because Burroughs uses a vast array of imagery to illustrate his novel in the reader's mind. Although the story is shouded in drug related and homosexual exploits, it comes otherger at the end with the appendix and is also brouight together by the forward. This was the first book that I've read that I needed to read the forward to understand the whole point of the book. It may sound laborious to have to read not only the forward but an appendix as well, but it inhances the reading enjoyment of the otherwise hard to follow book. The characters are described in such detail that the reader will see the events unfold before their very eyes, one attribute that Burroughs has mastered wholly. In closing, this book should be read at least once by every man, woman, and everyone in between because it will give us all an insight in to the harsh realities, and not - so realities of drugs and homosexuality.

Rating:
Summary: very, very amazing
Review: This book is quite simply the most deluded, dissonant, shocking, revolting, pornographic, amazing, mood-shifting book I've ever had my pleasure(?) to read. It's not the best 20th century novel, in my opinion. It's very difficult, fantastic, and down-right hillarious. It's hard for me to say that I liked it. I think I did. I couldn't put it down, and it made me crack up at times and boggled my mind. It also shocked the hell out of me and at times I had no idea what was going on or horrid imagery was repeating over and over and over that I could not wait to get through a chapter. Though several of the larger chapters I read three times, I've read the whole book all the way through only once, so it's possible I'll see more and more as I read it again, as reading the large chapters a few times does certainly help. If it's too weird and you cannot handle it (I nearly could not), skip to the last chapters, starting with Islam, Inc. In fact, the second to the last chapter clears things up a good deal, but the novel still seems to be a disordered, incoherent, revolting tool of destruction. If you are looking for something different, or just what to see what the fuss is all about, read it. It is quite simply fucked up.

Rating:
Summary: What can you say?
Review: I was hesitant to give this book a starred review. Can I accurately say that I liked it? Well, yes, I can admire its inventiveness and originality, Burroughs' unwillingness (although surely not intentional, since the book was written in a drug haze) to bow to convention and "decency", and the sheer audacity of some of it. But also, the book disturbed me. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I also have to frown on the way wannabe beatniks and artsy-types have latched on to this book. It is a book. It is not the best book ever written, it is certainly not the worst, and it may not even be the most daring book ever. I appreciated it, and chances are that somewhere along the line I will read it again (if only to remind myself why I now shudder when I hear anything by or relating to the rock group "Steely Dan"). It's hard to say anything about this book. It really is.

Rating:
Summary: I believe that "Naked Lunch" is the best book I've read.
Review: "Naked Lunch" is fantastic, because it is brutally honest in it's use of the written word.

Rating:
Summary: The original trash classic, with some words of warning
Review: Naked Lunch must be the most horrifying, the most revolting, the most disgusting, the most repulsive, the most depraved, the most obscene book I've ever read. Not that I didn't like it. It has many moments of fine satire and surrealism, though the graphic scenes of homeosexuality and constant profanity are a bit over the top. Consider a scene in which a Mugwump graphically rapes and mutilates a young man. Read Naked Lunch, but only if you have a cast-iron stomach.

Rating:
Summary: What more can be said?
Review: I don't think I could add anymore to the multitude of reviews below me without being redundant. The book is fantastic. By far Burroughs best work and the best piece of non-linear writing to come from the beat generation. I have to respond to morbeus' review below. I agree with Burroughs trying to con us, in a way that's true, but the comment on not thinking Burroughs was a day to day junkie slumming it out in morocco in the late fifties is completely untrue. It was the allowance from his parents that allowed him to get into the junk scene in the first place without much effort. By the time he descended to where he was in Morocco he was a full-fledged addict, have no doubt, and I have it on a good source that when Ginsberg did find him in the single room apartment he was very close to gone. Maybe its a misunderstanding of heroin's effects that leads to this belief but there are moments of clarity in between fixes, and there might be a couple of days inbetween fixes (usually when the addict decides he's quit) before resistance wears thin. Burroughs thoroughly used these moments to type. I think the biggest con to the reader, and the best, is how one's lead to believe the book was incedental to his experience when the experience was almost setup to produce the book. In that regard he knew that something could come from this binge, something that would be extremely well suited to his style of cut and paste writing (which is by the way aa attempt to mimic a junkies thought patterns, but I think someone already said that.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant piece of work
Review: Burroughs paces across the spectra of feeling and creativity in this classic book (it doesn't really feel like a "novel"). He induces confusion, disgust, hope, insight and various other reactions in the reader, and if the reader "gets" any of it, there is a big payoff. You see, Burroughs is a fantastic writer. He can take absurd situations and make sense out of them, all the while dazzling the reader with his weird feel for structure and plot. I've read this book a dozen times, I think, and I'm always discovering something new. I bought the cassette version, with 80-year-old Burroughs reading the thing, and listening to that turned the book on its head for me, making me appreciate points I hadn't noticed before. So why not a 10? Because this is a cold piece of art, rather than an uplifting experience.

Rating:
Summary: you've got to delve deeper
Review: This book is a personal favorite of mine, I've enjoyed it ever since the second time i read it. The first time I read it, I was quite taken aback at the, umm, interesting content. Past that, I was totally confused, and bewildered. In order to "understand" the book, one must know it's background. Burroughs wrote those words not to confuse the reader, but because they made sense to him at the time, he was going through withdrawal, and in that state, anything goes. If the people who wrote reviews before me had not liked the book because they didn't understand it, what they needed to do was go learn more about Burroughs, and read some of his other books that do make more sense. I highly recommend "Queer", and "Junky" as guides to the perplexed. and, above all, nothing beats listening to that voice on the audiobook, everything will snap into place, it's a very good book, but you've got to do your homework first.

Rating:
Summary: i'm reading it for the 10th time
Review: I couldnt be happier that my best friend put this book into my hands. It opend my eyes to a world that i was unaware of. I'm looking forward to reeding more of Burroughs books!

Rating:
Summary: Naked Lunch is the essential con on the reader.
Review: After reading several of the reviews by customers regarding their frustrations and "exuberance", I can find it plausible that so many would discard this book as complete babble and non-linear. At the same time I find the "over-analysis" by others to be completely "over-analizing" in attempts to "get it", much apologies for the expression of an opinion. Burroughs' Naked Lunch is one of the most misunderstood books ever written, second, I believe, only to the bible in misinterpretation. While Burroughs was a habitual drug user, he wasn't the crazed, strung-out heroin user with no mental functioning, if so how did he write it in the first place. Of course his pals Ginsberg and Keroac "constructed" the book for him or did they? This was a book intended to con people about what a book is, should be and what the writer is and should be. Naked Lunch can be looked at as a collection of scenerios describing both the non-afflicted mind and the afflicted mind of a drug user. To think that Burroughs would have been slumming the streets in ratty clothes is laughable at best. This is a writer who up until being published lived off an allowance from his parents. Naked Lunch is a part of Burroughs and the two are intertwined in that the presentation of image is based on the lanquage being used to present that image. Think of Burroughs' anti-establishment presentation of himself and the his Nike commercials...too hip. Then think of the image Naked Lunch presents to the reader. Naked Lunch is a book by not being a book, the non-linear construction was intentional not thrown together or was it? Naked Lunch can be understood by everyone, the need for a English degree is non-essential nor is the idea of analytical comparisons to other authors. Naked Lunch is and isn't. The con is what Naked Lunch is. Naked Lunch can be read in any fashion and the message is the same, you've been conned. Time stands still, moves, intertwines. Reality exists and doesn't exist, Bill Lee is William is Dr. Benway is the talk asshole. Naked Lunch allows the reader to experience their own conciousness in the fashion in which "it" operates. Naked Lunch is one of the finest examples of 20th century literature for what it accomplishes. Naked Lunch is everything and nothing to everyone who reads it. No one interpretation is right, but all interpretations are right. Everything you read in Naked Lunch is based on "Solid Fact". Read the beginning of Naked Lunch and you are given the story of "I wrote this while completely on drugs and I had no idea what I was writing", then read the end with the "scientific" disertation on drugs and what treatments are and what Burroughs is telling the readers, then...Think of the image being presented to you and then question everything being said on the page. What is the image? What is the story? What is the meaning? What is the message? Am I being conned? If you answer these questions and find answers question the answers, then again you could just read the book and enjoy the paragraphic "scenerios" and not think about the "message" or the "big picture."