Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs that was first published in 1959.[5] Since its original publication in Paris in 1959, Naked Lunch has become one of the most important novels of the twentieth century.[4] Exerting its influence on the relationship of art and obscenity, it is one of the books that redefined not just literature but American culture.[1]

Publication History

The novel was then published in English in Paris, under the title The Naked Lunch, by Olympia Press in 1959.[5] Excerpts from Naked Lunch first appeared in the magazine Chicago Review in 1958. When an issue of the magazine containing further excerpts was withdrawn from publication in 1959, a new literary magazine, Big Table, published the contents of that issue.[5]

American obscenity laws prohibited the publication of the book in the United States, and so it wasn't until 1962 that Naked Lunch came to be published by Grove Press.[13] Grove Press, in the U.S., published Naked Lunch in 1962; this edition included material from the "Interzone" section that was omitted from the first publication as well as Burroughs's "Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs."[5] The two editions differed greatly because the Grove Press version was based on a much earlier manuscript, given to them by Allen Ginsberg.[13]

Structure and Style

The novel consists of a nonlinear series of vignettes, which Burroughs calls "routines."[5] Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot[3] and becomes increasingly disjointed and impressionistic, and finally simply stops.[3] One can take the various segments of Naked Lunch and arrange them (or, indeed, read them) in any order they like.[6]

In the Nova Trilogy Burroughs expressly adopts the 'Brion Gysin cut-up method' – cutting up pages of text into sections and randomly placing them on a new page – but he had tried an earlier version of cut-up in Naked Lunch, composing it from a much larger collection of vignettes or 'routines'.[3] Burroughs invents his own style, here and in other novels, based on what he called the "cut-up technique," which serves to render the reader equally unable to make full sense of the surroundings.[5]

Narrative and Setting

It is narrated by a drug addict named William Lee, who flees New York City and travels to Chicago, St. Louis, Houston, and New Orleans in the United States. He then goes to Mexico and later to the imaginary Freeland and to Interzone, based on the Tangier International Zone, and finally back to New York City.[5] A startling tale of a narcotics addict unmoored in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone, its formal innovation, taboo subject matter, and virtuoso style have exerted a significant influence on authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, William Gibson, and Will Self, as well as on music, film, and the media generally.[6]

Themes and Literary Significance

The novel's central argument is that drugs are not an accidental problem; the whole notion of addiction is deeply engrained in a society that fetishizes commodity and consumption. Furthermore, the line between so-called prescription drugs and illegal drugs is a narrow one, which can be manipulated by those in power to serve their need for ever-increasing profits.[5]

Burroughs has often been hailed as a celebrator of drug indulgence and sexual excess, but his best works, among which Naked Lunch is preeminent, provide a far deeper and more complex account of Western culture.[5] More important than this argument, however, is the tremendous energy and vividness that Burroughs brings to his scenes of violence and mayhem. He presents us with a cast of characters who are constantly tearing at the walls of the prisons their lives have become; they see something of the truth of "the system" but are too paralyzed by dependence to escape.[5]

Title Origin

The title of the book is a somewhat contentious issue. According to Burroughs' introduction, Jack Kerouac was responsible for naming the book, and that "the title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."[13] Kerouac appreciated the accreditation, as he stated in a 1960 letter to Ginsberg, but pointed out that the phrase had been misread. Originally it had been "Naked Lust". And so from the misread "Naked Lust" we came to "Naked Lunch", which the publisher of the book and many of fans over the years have all mistaken for The Naked Lunch.[13]

Obscenity Trials and Legal Challenges

The book was brought to trial on obscenity charges after a Boston bookseller was arrested for selling copies of it.[11] Its obscenity trial in Boston was the last significant obscenity trial in American literature. Upon its publication in the United States it was banned in both Boston and Los Angeles.[13]

The case was handled by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, but the hearing was delayed until after the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Memoirs v. Massachussets in March 1966, which confirmed that a "book cannot be held to be obscene in view of substantial evidence showing that it has literary, historical, and social importance"[11] Following this decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Court cleared Naked Lunch of obscenity charges[11] in July 1966.

Ginsberg – who helped Burroughs write Naked Lunch – was instrumental in orchestrating its success over the obscenity charges brought in a Boston courtroom.[13] Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg explained to the judge the necessity of the writing and that even though it contained "pornographic" material it was used in a fashion resembling art and had merit in our society.[14]

Banned in Boston in 1962, the three-and-a-half-year trial of Naked Lunch is considered the last example of censorship against a work of literature by the state government, Post Office, and Customs Service[16] The release of the Grove Press edition of Naked Lunch in 1966 after two obscenity trials marked the end of complete literary censorship in the US and was a crucial step towards the canonization of underground authors.[15]

Critical Reception and Cultural Impact

Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift", a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism.[1] J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War", while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius".[1]

By making it necessary to argue on behalf of the text's form, the obscenity trials helped in framing Burroughs's arguably "formless" text as both a coherent work and a work of high literary merit.[15] The novel's experimental approach and controversial content established it as a cornerstone of Beat Generation literature and a significant influence on postmodern fiction.