Rating: 
Summary: This book will change your ideas about... everthing.
Review: When I read Naked Lunch four years ago, I was completely astounded. I'd felt I had a contact high from the pages. The book began to work its way through my skin and on to the printed page: My writing hasn't been the same since. I was so freed from the conventional, and often times restaining "rules" of structure, plot, theme, and character. While Naked Lunch definately has some of these elements, mostly in the theme department, and little else, it works. I've noticed that readers of Jane Austen or the like usually DO NOT enjoy this book. It's threatening to them. They like their "story" served on a silver tray. YES, to have to think when you read this novel. You HAVE to read it actively, but at the same time, exterminate all rational thought. Let the book captivate you like a frantic jazz solo. It's not one of those arm chair books one sits down with and puts their brain on remote control. You can taste the violent music of Burroughs' work if you allow it. This book is nothing less than an experience. Do yourself a favor... EXPERIENCE IT.
Rating:
Summary: A Misunderstood Masterpiece
Review: I can't believe how amzingly interesting this book is! I have read it many times and will continue too for a long while. It is also amazing that my school teachers(yes I am only 14, I can still read) tell me that this book is just plain crap (and then force us to read "Of Mice and Men" for the 3rd time and tell me how much it changed modern literature and blah blah blah). This book influenced tons of writers, poets, visionaries, hippies, artists, and a bazillion other people. Come on, this book influenced modern music! Any book that can change the music world is very special and important (it heavily influenced the writting of Lou Reed in his Velvet Underground days of the late 60's). Everyone seems to take this book solely as a book about a junky's hallucinations and a vehicle for Burroughs' cut-up style. It is moslty in Interzone (the hallucinatory planet,city,whatever..), and I am sure that this place was created by various drugs. That is all beside the point, this book is mainly about addiction, not necessarilly addiction to smack or junk but man's addiction to everything he may be addicted to. All in all, with this book, you have to take it as it comes. If you don't like it, don't bother to read it, but you'll be missing out on an amazing literary work of great beauty.
Rating: 
Summary: either love it or hate it.
Review: this is not a book you read if you want to sit back and relax with something mindless. it took me a chapter or two to get use to his style of prose. but it was worth it, his images of a drug addicted life are stark and surreal. Some of his prose was pure poetry. when I finished this book all I could say was wow, you don't have to follow a set of rules about writing to create a masterpiece. sometimes all you need is orginality. The book of Burroughs letters to ginsberg is a great companion piece to this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite possibly the WORST book yet written!
Review: This book is one of those books that people talk about a lot, but probably never actually read. If Burroughs's intention is to shock, sicken, and disgust the reader, then he accomplishes that task. Not only hard to understand (does it even HAVE a point??), but grotesquely profane, "Naked Lunch" isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Save yourself the money, and rent the film instead, which has absolutley nothing to do with the book.
Rating:
Summary: Boring, idiotic and Pointless
Review: I picked up this book because of its reputation of being an underground classic. After suffering through this horrible "work", underground (DEEP UNDERGROUND) is where this tome belongs. Basically, the book is an unending montage of nonsensical images spliced in with bizarre homosexual occurances. You could literally pick out a page at random and still have an overall feel for the book. It can be simply described as a junkie with homosexual tendencies who prattles on and on, thinking he's interesting. Many have tried to have this book censored from schools, but that should never happen. Far from it. All juveniles should be FORCED to read it to see what happens when you're constantly stoned. A stronger anti-drug message could never be made. Stay away from this stupid book unless you just want to be bored senseless.
Rating:
Summary: Yawn....
Review: Having occasionally shared neighborhoods with junkies, I have always been amazed by how thoroughly uninteresting their lives are. This book confirms my view. It works really hard to make lives of junkies literary interesting, but fails since the material that the author works with is intrinsically dull. One cannot but help shedding a tear for all the trees that has been wasted making this all too thick book. (A disclaimer: If this book picks up in the second half I may be a bit unfair. Somehow I seriously doubt it. Particullarily because of the cutting technique that has been so much better applied elsewhere)
Rating: 
Summary: not a huge fan of beat writers... or starbucks coffee
Review: this book certainly has its high points. it seems, at times, however, to be a myriad of unconnected thoughts. then again, it was written in the midst of a heroin "trip". or whatever you call it. burroughs said himself, near the end of the book, that he was not concerned with an author-reader relationship, or plot for that matter. he was definitely pushing the boundaries with this work. some may proclaim it a work of genius (as norman mailer did), an innovation on the conventional method of writing prose; others may pass it off as a load of garbage, a subliterary work written by an erratic, delusional drug addict. I won't dispute either view--that's all subjective, I suppose. This book is definitely, however, humorous (subjective also, I'm sure), lurid, different (and not arguably), and, most importantly, real. under the surface, that is. (I've never seen any man-sized centipedes, or people transferring junk with their..... well nevermind....). If anyone ever reads this review (yeah, right) and hasn't read Naked Lunch, do. It's worth at least checking out--then if you don't like it you can come on this page and write another review no one will ever read, trashing the novel....
Rating:
Summary: what more can you say?
Review: Yes what more can you say about a book that has so settled itself in the collective mind and that itself points a knife to anybody who dares to say something, because it deals with all the lies we build up in our addiction to life and fear of death? Through all the noise a silence emanates from this turmoil of 'written pages'. His cut up trilogy would give words to that feeling, here it only exists in the mind of the reader who gets knocked out. But it is such an exhillarating book at the same time that with all the death smell in it you come to suspect that the writer has a deep love for the truth of being. The hatred he spits out is that of disgust for the trampling of just that truth, and he sees himself as an agent for this. A double agent, fallen victim to the enemy and struggling to escape from this untrue situation. There the book has a key to our sympathy. He engages us in his own battle, showing we are all double agents. And his language is so fresh and direct and full of images and sounds from the street that you are sucked into its world. And transformed. Dont't mistake Naked Lunch for a drugdream. Passages may be written under the influence, but it is the attempted transcending of all influences and control that lend this master piece its lucidity.
Rating:
Summary: drownings in the pits of junk
Review: when finished reading this book i was overwhelmed with the sensations that it brought, yet could not find a way to exactly describe what it was about. on one hand we are asked to view it as the choice piece of literature of the drug world, but it seems presumptuous to view it merely as that. the surrealistic world burroughs portrays at times mirrors our own with mountains of scandals, filth, and secrets and is also completely foreign with its aliens and strange sex games. it is a very sensual book yet maintains a distance the entire time. i found this method quite interesting as we are thrust headon into this world yet somehow we are never fully a part of it. while i certainly wouldn't recommend this book to everybody, i would definitely suggest reading it. it is a wonderful book by one of the greatest writers of this century.
Rating:
Summary: A masterful work that uses words like weapons
Review: Burroughs's vision of decay through the eyes of the junky may be the most innovative (and infuriating) book of the twentieth century. Burroughs blends fact and fiction into a melange of imagery that assaults the senses and purees the brain with its "trust me/trust me not" sensibility. Naked Lunch is like Henry Miller meets Thomas Pynchon (though it's faster than Miller and, in the end, more understandable than Pynchon). Every adult should read this book, if for no other reason than to blast them out of the cocoon of suburban domesticity that we make for ourselves in this day and age. BRAVO
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