Rating: 
Summary: Satire in its most nightmarish form
Review: Naked Lunch is, to say the least, not for everyone. One of the main addictions featured in it is of course addiction to heroin, but the novel is about so much more than that. It's about addiction of any kind whether it's to drugs, money, power, or sex. Here we are introduced to Dr. Benway (a behavioral conditioning freak), a man who teaches his rectum how to talk, and to a group of people to hang themselves to feel that final orgasm which is rumored to be more powerful than any others you could ever have. In this book Burroughs also takes a swipe at the media and the written word (or "word-virus") in general, trying to destroy the importance of the narrative. Burroughs believed the media used language to control the way we think; I read somewhere that he called Time and Life magazine "some kind of police force for the mind." Some call this paranoia, others call it genius. I suggest you read this book and decide for yourselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Wild and Confusing, but Intensely Engaged
Review: William Burroughs' 1959 'novel,' or work, perhaps, "Naked Lunch" is really a wild and dirty (not a value judgment) cultural artifact. It can be extraordinarily difficult to follow and understand, even from one page to the next. The whole is composed of sketches, or episodes, some having no apparent connection to the others, except by associations of sexuality and rampant drug use/addiction/recovery. There are a couple of major structural elements that comprise the work: scenes and descriptions of the moment of 'need' for the addict (particularly of opiates) and of the social, economic, and political climate that perpetuates the problem; and the futuristic-Orwell-on-Heroin story of Interzone. Interzone, located nebulously in North Africa, is the site of cultural crossings, and a corrupt and totalitarian government, that seeks to control the bodies and minds of its 'citizens'. Some of the horde of villainy amok in Interzone: the nefarious Dr. Benway, whose crass self-assurance underlies anxieties brought on by his insistent medical prosecution of homosexuality; A.J., an opportunist, whose maddening interests include abortion; and a host of Party Leaders whose distance from the 'ordinary people' they represent is a severe critique, particularly on American government. Written during the Cold War and the persecution of Americans for supposedly 'communist' activities, Burroughs' work offers admittedly Swiftian satiric glances at many aspects of 1950's culture in terms of gender, complacency, and isolationism. For good and ill, the portrait of Interzone in "Naked Lunch" is no less a prophetic vision of a dystopia, such as we see in George Orwell's "1984," published just 10 years before. Both works are concerned with the brute physicality of life, as it is and as it could be in the future if current trends are left without check or amendment. Like "1984," but surpassing it in some ways, "Naked Lunch" addresses the dangers of government power over the human body, its reproductivity, and the unfortunate similarities apparently viewed by the state between its citizens and common herd animals. "Naked Lunch" is pervaded by scenes of overt sexual practices and orgies that 'bugger' description and even more disturbing scenes in which people are depicted as beasts - baboons and insects abound in the work. These are mitigated by references the narrator makes to himself as similar in bearing to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" - Burroughs asks his audience to listen or read in silence - because these are stories and vignettes which he must tell, both for his sake and ours. Scenes from real life, along with an introduction and appendix that deal with the experience of drug abuse provide an anchor (however tenuous) to the reader. If one reads the episodes that take place in Chicago, New York, Tangier, etc., as examples of the worst of humanity in our contemporary world - and sees this as the very foundation of the socio-political climate of Interzone, then the despair and challenge of the work become clear. Burroughs is reaching out to us to change our world fundamentally to be more tolerant and understanding, particularly in an era where, increasingly, strictly defined notions of nationality and national cultures are becoming ever more faint. This is a book, like Orwell's, which is more relevant than ever to readers in the early 21st century. It takes patience and application to read, but is ultimately rewarding and thought-provoking.
Rating: 
Summary: What?
Review: I first heard of this book on the VH1 Legends Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd Edition. I expect a book which discusses the daily life of a drug addict. I was very dissappointed. Aside from a few circumstances the book was little to do with drug addition. Instead, the book spends most of its time discussing homosexual experiences of a drug addict. The book is largely incoherent. However, it has been suggested that this book is best read like poetry. Even if this were the case, I fail to see any logic behind the book. I guess you would have to be ... well on drugs to understand this book. You can live your life knowing you missed nothing by not reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A reader
Review: After reading Junky and Queer, this book was a major disappointment. It is confusing, and not very well written. There is not real story here, just a lot of confusing rambling.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid, brilliant, and ... well that's about it
Review: I've read "Naked Lunch" twice and I keep trying to figure out what the right drug I need is. I am amazed at how ingenious it is, at the originality of the scenes, of the language, of the episodic and deliberately choppy narrative (which seems like a stream of consciousness nonetheless). But I can't agree with those who see the book as any kind of "indictment" of American society. I don't think it really knows what it is saying; the drugged-outness runs so deep that I can't make out an argument. Not that that's bad. Good literature doesn't need an argument to be good literature. But if you take away this side of Naked Lunch, then you have to throw up your hands at the sections where it SOUNDS like some kind of condemnation and say, "Well... Whatever." I guess it's like a picaresque novel on barbiturates. I don't see this as one of American literature's "must-reads," except to help gain some sense of the Beat movement and of the kind of stuff that developed in reaction to 1950's pop culture.....
Rating:
Summary: "I am a recording instrument. I am not an entertainer"
Review: If you are considering reading Naked Lunch, you should be warned that it is one of the most challenging classics of recent literary history. The infamous novel, scrawled down during the twilight of author, William S. Burroughs' fifteen-year addiction to opiates, has frustrated countless readers with its inability to fit into any type of classification; its vulgar, offensive nature and its shaky stream-of-conscious narration. To some, Naked Lunch may seem like tasteless gibberish (That is certainly how it seemed to the Massachusetts Attorney General who unsuccessfully tried the novel for obscenity charges in 1966). But by taking the right approach to this story of Bill Lee, a drug pusher and habitual user, and Interzone, the surrealist, netherworld in urban Mexico to which he flees, you may find it to be a spectacular writing. Keep in mind that Burroughs is the definition of a beatnik, an author who forbids himself any scholarly instruction and simply wrote as he felt, scraping satire, fantasy and social realism together into one vessel. Understand that he lived much of his life as a drifter, pulled ever downward into society's grimier aspects. Vulgarity and mortification are simply results of the author writing what he knows. Remember that his psyche had been scrambled by opiates and that Naked Lunch's rickety form intriguingly mirrors Burroughs' sense of reality. Now you are ready for this bizarre, extraordinary book. Although reading Naked Lunch is a thorny process, it offers numerable delights: Deep belly-laughter at Interzone's funhouse mirroring of American decadence, intense visualization of the area's vividly described, baroque spectacles, astonishment at its denizens' all-consuming greed, hypocrisy and sadism, speculation at how much of these strange observations were based on what Burroughs actually experienced and fascination at the way in which the narration breaks down as the speaker's mind erodes. I hope that you find that, despite its disregard for almost every rule taught in High School English; despite its rawness and vulgarity and despite being an exceptional challenge to follow, Naked Lunch is a mind-blowing book.
Rating:
Summary: Gross and Amazing
Review: I had to read this book. I read the sleeve notes and that was it. Basically from what I gather it's a bit of an autobiography. I have since read about William S Burroughs and to me it seems that this book is a story about him and his life on whatever drug came his way and whatever character came his way. It's extremely disturbing at times and utterly confusing at others I recommend it is read more than once. This is definately a book you can't put down. You get a glimpse of what must be happening inside a junkies head, and it's not nice. There should be a warning that people with weak consitutions shouldn't read it
Rating:
Summary: What America should read at some point
Review: Here's a good book. You might not read it to the end, but what you do read, you'll remember. William Burroughs is basically a common man of America with a common addiction, but he has an uncommon, unflinching imagination, helped out by his addiction and withdrawal from heroin. Electricity, hallucination, paranoia, sexual fantasy, and hip talk permeate the pages and keep the reader confused, disgusted, and blissfully entertained by turn. Go ahead and buy this book, because you might need it at some point in your life. After all, if junkies can't get their fix, if the heat can't sniff out a pusher or two, if upstanding, sexually-repressed Americans can't wet and soil themselves in public, and if good, brown, Arabian boys can't be violated, where would any of us be?
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Summary: Naked Lunch lurs you with the shrill of junkie sirens
Review: Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs, is like inhaling a tornado of vision, of America, of the soul of humanity, and of the junkie from a heroine addict's hungry mind. In Naked Lunch, Burroughs denounces the gray of mass conform-ism, which has settled like a sodden sponge over the square inhabitants of America. He shows the American way of life, as being policed by mom and pop and their good ole' Christian values. Burroughs relayed in the novel, that America is censored by the extreme fear of erotica, sexuality, drug use, and the queerness of the hip. Also, Burroughs prose navigates its way through many layers of the human mind, exploring and allowing you to become the screwball, the sick, the perverse, the nymphomaniac, the junkie, the racist, the politician, the homophobic, or the square. Burroughs also bluntly states that the junkie is the saddest form of life, fueled entirely by the utter need for junk. Burroughs describes junk as an "evil virus", decaying body and mind into slime pools of agony in a never ending lust for the pleasure of high. In Naked Lunch, Burroughs writes in non-linear prose, in a confusing, at times plotless vision of himself and the world. His words are a roller coaster of thought and reflection, vision and persecution, wake up call and warning, but his choppy whirlwind of words could be confused as a haze of junk crazed babble, which it is definetly not. Naked Lunch, in the opinion of many, sits on a hairline between the art and rawness of the mind and how it interprets addiction, and something along the lines of extreme indulgence, and pornography. I would recommend this book to the person who enjoys the obscure world of oddball beat poetry or stream of consciousness writing. I would also recommend this book to someone itching to find a novel, which allows them to think and come upon their own realizations of life, or to someone who is simply looking for a twisted, thrilling novel. Naked Lunch, is one of the best books I have ever read. Burroughs created a window into the nuclear wastelands of a junkie's mind in Naked Lunch; it's a frightening and illusive place for many, but its all the more real from reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Huh?
Review: I am about halfway through this "book" of 200+ pages of incomprehensible gibberish, and I haven't yet decided whether to keep on slogging through it or give up. It makes anything Bret Easton Ellis writes look like Pulitzer prize material by comparison. But I'm sure the pseudo-intellects out there who lavish praise on this pile of literary garbage (even if they haven't read it) would say that I'm a philistine who just doesn't get it. Maybe I should start shooting heroin. Would I get it then?
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