Naked Lunch

Rating:
Summary: An oft-misunderstood classic
Review: Naked Lunch is a seminal 20th century novel, but it probably isn't as widely read as it deserves to be. Many potential readers may be driven away by its total abscence of plot, its notorious obscenity, and its sporadic and impenetrable hallucinogenic passages.

The novel is not as inacessible as its reputation suggests; the first step towards a better understanding of this beat classic is researching its background, and its author. William S. Burroughs was an eccentric who went through phases of obsession with various esoteric themes, and he wrote Naked Lunch during the height of his obsessions with control, dehumanization and addiction. The novel itself is edited down from a thousand pages of 'notes' and is not meant to be ingested as a continuous whole - as Burroughs suggests in the introduction, you can jump in at any point.

Read some of Burroughs' essays, read about the Beat generation, and read Burroughs' more straightforward debut 'Junky,' and things will begin to come together in the surreal satire that is 'Naked Lunch.' The bizarre images and phrases will convey the bleak poetry they were meant to in the first place.

Rating:
Summary: I'm not going to lie...
Review: I'm not going to lie and say I even understood this book 90% of the time. What I'm going to say though, is that the book held my interest throughout. Burroughs use of language is enough to do that. There were numerous portions that made me laugh out loud, and equally numerous portions that made me cringe. Of course, I still didn't understand a word of it. So, in short, I'm not real sure what to make of it. My advice for anyone who is thinking about reading it is to give it a shot. If you're adventurous enough, you'll probably get something out of it, and if you hate it, you won't have to waste much time with it (I read it in about three days). It's something different, and that alone makes it worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: definitely entertaining...
Review: hard to follow in some parts? Oh, yes. Insanely incoherent in other parts? You bet. But, somehow, for some odd reason, I did like this book. There were little meccas of comedy, and strange, perverted truths scattered throughout the text.

Alhtough we all know he was on drugs when he wrote it, it's worth a try. If you don't like it, trash it. But you just might, so give it a shot, even if you don't normally read Beat-Gen stuff.

Rating:
Summary: disturbingly beautiful
Review: Naked Lunch is one of the few books that poeple will never take the time and thought to recognize its powerful meanings. When I read this book, I found myself slipping from reality a sentence at a time. Few books have the power to do that. And few authors are willing to go to that extreme. William Burroughs was definitely not afraid of the reactions he might get with this one, he poored his emotions, whether they make sense to anyone or not, and that is very admirable and brave. With Naked Lunch, you'll either despise it or love it, and many poeple won't understand it till about the third time through, but it's well worth the struggle in the end. It shows what most poeple are afraid of seeing and creates disturbing and descriptive images that many authors try to do, but fail . It has the power to open anyone's eyes to the reality of this world.