Rating: 
Summary: TOO MUCH
Review: this book makes me feel both mentally and physically disturbed. a big N O for me. a line has to be drawn up somewhere. the book does touch on the brutal hypocrisy of America and the world - however, this book goes way TOO FAR in its methods, methinks. give it a try if you're brave - I do honor it as possibly the most completely messed up book ever written. If you actually find yourself liking this genre, try Charles B.
Rating: 
Summary: Classic weirdness
Review: This book certainly isn't for everyone, but none the less this book is a gateway into the strange and humorous world of William S. Burroughs. Personally I don't think of this as a great piece of literature, rather I think of it as insight into an individual that had a very unique way of looking at things in the world. At points this book is dark, unintelligible, crafty, and flat out funny if you have a black sense of humor. A good companion to this book is Call Me Burroughs where you can hear a couple of sections of this classic read by the author himself.
Rating:
Summary: For those new and old to Naked Lunch...
Review: I will try to present a review that is both helpful to those new to Naked Lunch as well as though familiar with the work. Before I begin to do so I would like to make a comment about the newly released version (Naked Lunch: The Restored Text ISBN: 0802116396). Although I have not had a chance to read through this edition first hand, I have been told that it leaves out essential elements included in the original. If this be the case, I would highly recommend avoiding this edition and go with an early edition of Naked Lunch. With that said let us begin....First off I will start for those of you new to William Burroughs, if you have never read anything of Burroughs before approaching this book DO NOT expect to pick up Naked Lunch and understand it. Although this is generally regarded as his greatest work, Burroughs' preceding books are fundamental to understanding much of what takes place in it. This text is important for a variety of reasons, however, if you go into it blind you will probably find it so unpalatable you may not even finish the text. It may be like nothing you've ever read before. It is dark, mordant, overtly sexual, drug infested, and extremely autobiographical (which is why the books leading up to Naked Lunch are important to understanding this work). I highly commend the list created by Steve Hancock (Map to Burrough's Interzone). This is an excellent roadmap to Burroughs. I advise any novice to begin here. If nothing else, start with Junky (ISBN: 0140043519). This is the first novel by Burroughs and will give you much insight into the man. Now for those of you that have read Naked Lunch, got it or didn't, the above advice may be helpful as well. A book I would recommend as the perfect companion to Naked Lunch is Interzone (ISBN: 0140094512). This is a collection of works between the transition of Junky to Naked Lunch (originally titled Interzone). Sections of this book are letters/notes to Allen Ginsberg and Burroughs himself. Other parts are short stories, diary entries, letters, and autobiographical sketches. I cannot say enough good things about notes in this book describing Burroughs' intentions with Naked Lunch. This would be an wonderful book to peruse for those unsure of the genius of Naked Lunch. "What am I trying to do with writing? This novel is about transitions, larval forms, emergent telepathic faculty, attempts to control and stifle new forms...Control, bureaucracy, regimentation, these are merely symptoms of a deeper sickness that no political or economic program can touch...The fragmentary quality of the work is inherent in the method and will resolve itself so far as necessary. That is, I include the author, Lee, in the novel, and by so doing separate myself from him so that he becomes another character, central to be sure, occupying a special position, but not myself at all...I would always be the observer and not the participant by the very act of writing about a figure who represents myself...The novel is a dead from, rigid and arbitrary. I can't use it." (selections from Interzone by William S. Burroughs edited by James Grauerholz)
Rating:
Summary: A lightpost of its genre
Review: When the film of this book came out there was a temporary resurgance of interest in Burroughs, mostly to do with the controversial aspect of his work. At the time my older sister had this book and wasn't very interested in it so being a curious 13 year old I picked it up wanting to find out what was so 'depraved' about it.
From the first page I quickly found myself immersed in a very strange, paranoid world indeed and found it absolutely fascinating. The writing style is quite manic, jumping through different subject matter, sometimes incoherently. It took me a couple of chapters to realise that most of the prose is the hallucinogenic ramblings of a drug addict. When I realised this I stopped trying to read the book like a novel or look for any kind of storyline for that matter and just read excerpts, sometimes twice for good measure. Despite the constant drug references I feel there is a strong anti-narcotics (certainly heroin anyway) theme, Burroughs conveys the sense of helplessness he experiences at trying to kick his habit insightfully and deliriously. If there was an overall storyline to this book then it would be a tale of decline; from his sometimes charming descriptions and interludes with the junkies in his area of New York, over the course of a few years his deranged drug life and spirit of adventure takes him to Tangiers. During the course of these travels his desire to kick the habit becomes stronger, the naivety of his New York life is stripped away and his furtive hallucinations become darker and more schizophrenic as he searches for a place of refuge away from the 'normal' America he fears and dislikes. This book isn't so much a story as a visceral experience. It makes you curious about the drug induced beat culture he was at the centre of, though his disdain for the 'junk' which controls him is always apparent. The literary credibility of this book is often disputed but regardless its comically entertaining and its influence cannot be doubted.
Rating:
Summary: Slip Into The Hidden Creavace Of Reality
Review: This book really gets to me. It's got all of the bells & whistles of taking an altered trip, including extreme hallucinations, time-shifts and paranoia. ("I can feel the heat closing in."-first sentence.) It's dark, twisted, demented, funny, contemplating, with an anti-heroin finallity. Bill comes to many conclusions on various levels; touching everything from power-abuse to medical abuse, to sex abuse and all other things that are happening either without our knowledge, or without our care. I've read somewhere that this is a cut n paste job made for artistic value to deviate from what readers are used to --but this is irrelevant. It's a masterpiece of social commentary, looking deep within the mind of one who is in the midst of what is really happening... seeming to use drugs in order to cope with it... and realizes the horrid state of affairs Western society is actually emmersed in. Put Bill Burroughs alongside Samuel Beckett, George Orwell and Oscar Wilde, in telling it like it is, holding nothing back.
Rating:
Summary: 'disney' version of Naked Lunch
Review: Bright marketing of a restored 'William Burroughs.' In this version of Naked Lunch, in the editors' notes (one of the 'editors' is a former lover and adopted son of WSB), there's no William shooting Joan Burroughs. Not a word about the murder that William said caused him to become a writer. Nothing. Not a hint. Perhaps in the next version, William will be heterosexual? The [price] is for about 50 new pages of information. The only bright part of the book--besides marketing the 'restored' non-killing William Burroughs --is that this version totally replaces William's version (in print through about 40 editions--unchanged by William over about that many years), and will now be the only version available in the USA .
Now that is marketing--but not literature or history. Sad that Barry Miles seems to have made some devil's deal--get your name on a famous book as editor--forget real history (Joan who?). Forget that William never even put Ginsberg's or Kerouac's names on his original version (they were the real editors). What next, a Reader's Digest version of On the Road? Howl without four-letter words? Amazing what greed will make some people do. Let's hope that the estates of Kerouac and Ginsberg have more taste. Keep your original Naked Lunch, William's version. Buy all the copies of the original now--they may have a lot of value in the years to come.
Rating:
Summary: freedom of mind
Review: this book represents all that ever was and ever will be, or atleast tries to. it's the imaginative rantings and political ideas of someone who has taken so much acid that he has litterally evolved to the next level---various images from past present and future collide and cut, elements of each other fusing new beings new words new situations new plains of existence...over time, Burroughs would get deeper and deeper into his almost art collage mnimalist imagination, breaking from the more crude elements to produce pure images of spontaneous, random psychadelic imagery. He has inspired tons of psychadelic musicians, novelists and various other artists; this is his first and most accessible entrance, as you may already know. Take the time to read this in a quiet place and let it rearrange your brain, just like acid...Burroughs will alter everything afterwards, and you'll never look at the world the same way. Free yr. mind...."Nothing is True. Everything Is Permitted."...."I'm getting so far out, one day I'll never come back again"...let the words disassosciate from their meaning and become free-flowing image text....fade out...
Rating: 
Summary: A difficult read
Review: Naked luch starts out as absolute gibberish, and I almost gave up reading it. As I continued, however, the story (and I use the term loosely) began to take shape, and was even quite funny in places. It began to deteriorate again near the end, but that would seem to be intentional since it began as such. I can't say it was a good book, but it was interesting in terms of style, description (which was really quite extraordinary), and content. As for the rest of it I can't decide if I didn't "get it" or if there was anything to get. I can't recommend it to a general audience, but it may make a good study for those interested in writing or the drug-culture.
Rating:
Summary: Just waste
Review: The people who admire this book just admire other crap like "rebellious" artist (like conceptualists and primitivism) If you really looking for a good book read Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Do not ready this scum literature. With respect.
Rating:
Summary: Old news
Review: This book was seems to have been written solely to shock the "squares" (to use Burroughs' dated lingo from his dated book). Maybe it once did, but it's old news now. It's not even erotic. It made me yawn. A book that has aged better is "Journey to the End of the Night" by Celine. Read that instead.
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