Naked Lunch/The Wasteland

Naked Lunch Book Review (with a couple of brief allusions to The Wasteland)

Naked Lunch, the famed work of the controversial American post-modernist writer William S Burroughs, was interesting to read to say the least and is perhaps the most testing novel I have ever read (at frequent points I considered burning the work and tearing it apart I was so appalled initially at its obscene and fragmented nature). Halfway through though, in order to obtain my sanity, I decided to give up attempting to read it for pleasure and turned on the ‘critic’s mindset’ as it were, and it is predominantly with this mindset that I construct this review. The novel follows the often-absent author Bill Lee's trek through various continents and wastelands, the presence of drugs and addiction being rather overwhelming. The places described furthermore make Eliot’s The Wasteland seem like a description of some heavenly paradise they were so destitute, barren, diseased and despair-ridden, the places and the events that unfold being based on Burroughs' years in areas such as Tangiers, though they are exaggerated to a surreal level. As I have said, from the point of view of an individual reading for pleasure there were few redeeming features in the work however, despite this dislike, from a critical perspective I can SOMEWHAT appreciate its worth.

One of the main themes of the novel itself is its damning condemnation of the lifestyle of ‘old, dirty and evil’ America and her quintessential characteristics. Her position on matters of moral contention is patronised through the ugly image of individuals ‘performing cut-rate abortions in subway toilets’ whilst the typical personality types of the alpha-male husband and the beauty queen are decimated in the following two images: ‘the Salvation Army of sincere, homosexual football coaches [singing]’ and the ‘[decapitation of] the American Girls’. The strong position of religion in American culture is equally mocked through the line ‘Emmanuel prophesises a Second Coming’ (which given the context of the novel and its salacious nature has little to do with religion). Burroughs' outlines in his afterword that one of the aims in the novel was ‘to reveal capital punishment {which even now is legal in 32 states of the country} as the obscene, barbaric and disgusting anachronism that it is’ and this is accomplished through a series of pornographic and primitive scenes in which individuals are hung for sexual enjoyment, severely degrading the principles of the practice. The whole ideal is thus mocked decisively along with those who watch on and take no political stance against the scandalous injustice as seen in the lookers-on who ‘shush each other, nudge and giggle’ amidst the spectacle. Burroughs also ridicules American capitalism and vanity as seen in the ludicrous portrayal of an individual who ‘since he has nothing to do…saves all his pay to buy fine clothes and changes three times a day in front of an enormous magnifying mirror’. Equally the description of ‘One Night Stands’, a means through which an individual can prop up their appearance for one more night of desirability before dying instantly afterwards has stark resemblances of the pub talk of The Wasteland and the destruction the birth prevention pills do to an individual’s body. Through attempting to stop normal biological processes we are destroying ourselves. American propriety is equally shamed through the line ‘ten prominent citizens – American, of course – subsequently died of shame’, this especially had resonance in a work that aims to open doors and expose hypocrisy, indeed its name originating for the wish to look into that ‘frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork’ and all facades fall apart. Indeed Burroughs’ mission is perhaps best exemplified through the image of ‘flesh [turning] to viscid, transparent jelly that drifts away in the green mist, unveiling a monster black centipede’, the images of corrupt politicians, doctors, sheriffs and the like expose the black immorality that lies behind their clean exterior. To conclude, perhaps the best image to showcase Burroughs’ hatred towards his country is that of the ‘decayed, corseted tenor bursting out of a Daniel Boone costume –…singing “The Star-Spangled Banner”’, America, in his opinion, is little more than a rubbish heap. This utter thrashing of the country’s ideals and morals does indeed add a rather bitter tone that underlies most of the work, however several key, valid points are made by Burroughs, supporting the claim of two of his fans over the ‘insight and prophecy’ of the work. One also gets a sense of an individual who clearly does not fit into his society (Burroughs being homosexual and a renowned drug addict) and that Naked Lunch in part acts as a means for him to unleash his frustrations over this fact. The sense of condemning this lifestyle often viewed as the norm also suggests another message from Burroughs, that of needing to question everything, not taking for granted patriotism, religion, expectations and traditional morality and being sucked into the void of convention, but actively analyzing the way the world is and challenging convention if need be. Burroughs, according to his biographer Barry Miles, indeed believed that the only way to challenge convention was through immorality, perhaps explaining the intensity of immoral images and events in the novel. 

The principle theme of the novel however has to be addiction, something that all the varied individuals described in the work have in common. It relegates them to complete desperation and shame, one individual noting how he’d do ‘anything’ to have another shot of junk (note the italics), the drugs taking an almost maternal role through their comforting influence as seen in ‘the kicking addict nursing his baby flesh’. The junk has a complete hold over the addict’s life and is the only thing that they live for, as seen in the effective imagery of ‘days glide by strung on a syringe with a long thread of blood’ and all this is done despite the material, economic, social and mental destruction that addiction brings about. Perhaps the most effective phrasing in the work to reflect this utter dependence comes in the line ‘home is the heroin’, the changed order of words (it not being the more grammatically sound and expected ‘heroin is the home’) reflects how the drug has taken the place of any physical source of refuge or comfort. Indeed Burroughs’ describes addiction to junk as being a ‘metabolic addiction’, something that is almost unwilling, but a biological need for survival. For me, one of the critical strengths of the work is how a complete picture of addiction is painted, despite the fragmented and disconnected structure that elsewhere predominates.

To be honest I was personally repulsed by the vulgar, vomit-inducing, salacious, contaminated and uncomfortable images that Naked Lunch brought to the forefront and I have to admit that this is the first book when I have ever quite frankly understood the case of the courts that prominently opposed it at its early inception. Indeed, despite the critics Barry Miles and James Grauerholz noting the hilarious tone of the work, personally I think ‘horrifying’ would be a more fitting description. Certainly regardless of its critical value, in terms of reading for pleasure there was no such thing with Naked Lunch for me personally. Furthermore, especially with the capital punishment argument Burroughs ingrained in the work, the pornographic segment aimed to display it, after inducing shock and repulsion then became rather dull and repetitive as successive sexualised hangings occurred, the argument rather losing its power and effect through the presentation. In comparison to works such as Nabokov's Lolita, which addresses similar issues of discomfort and moral backwardness, the over-the-top and blatant approach seemed rather superficial and was far less effective. However, having read the more human after-notes I have since somewhat retracted from my staunchly opposed stance to the work, which at one point had led be to add ‘this is not literature’ to my annotations, and now I can partially understand its position on the literary canon. Moving on from the content to the style, the fragmented tone certainly took adjusting too. Despite at first maintaining a slight sense of coherence, the novel, towards the end became increasingly difficult to decipher before fading into nothingness (this incoherence is somewhat explained by the nature of the book's composition, it originated as letters written by Burroughs to his former lover Ginsberg who then realised their literary merit and so, with writer Jack Kerouac, came to Burroughs to help him compile and edit the mass of content)…it certainly is not the ideal book for those looking for an easy, casual read.... In Burroughs own words, ‘[the sections of the novel] atrophy and amputate spontaneous like the little two amputates in a West African disease confined to the Negro race’ and indeed it is true that the traditional idea of a fixed text is completely rebelled against in Naked Lunch and I did find there to be certain literary strengths through such an approach. The disconnected style added further to the confusion and dismay of the wasteland described and also mirrored the presumed sense of being under the influence of drugs (the world that surrounds the addict disappearing into a disordered void of intangible activity). There was also a sense, in many areas, of the form being reminiscent of note-taking along with the suggestion of a voyeuristic narrator, perhaps explaining the inconsistency. What interested me most about the writing style has to be however Burroughs’ insane obsession with using ellipses, to a level such that Dickinson’s addiction to the dash was almost superseded. Indeed, fellow writer and friend of Burroughs, Ginsberg once alluded to Burroughs in one of his poems as an individual ‘obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis’. In terms of what it added to the work, undoubtedly the frequent ellipses accentuated the atmosphere of confusion evoked by the fragmented style itself. They also had a mocking, dare I say humorous purpose, of ridiculing the boring ennui of the American lifestyle whilst also allowing the disjointed sections to somewhat sync together, acting as a welcome bridge. Thus, despite my personal objections as a reader, as a critic there is much to be said for Burroughs' style and imagery. 

Therefore to conclude, despite on a personal level finding Naked Lunch to be a nightmare read, on a critical level much has to be said about the effects of Burroughs’ unique approach to the text along with his success in portraying a sense of despair, horror and absorption that comes with addiction. This is however certainly not a read for the lighthearted or those with weak stomachs....