I would have given this just 1 star but the fact that it occasionally made me laugh and roll my eyes ("what the hell am I reading here??") was enough for me to throw another one behind it. As much as I've always chuckled at the mere idea that someone manages to shock with art I don't think that something should be published just because of shock value. Whether it happened in this case, I don't kno... read more
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Amazon.com Review
"He was," as Salon's Gary Kamyia notes, "20th-century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of dread.... Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughlH
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Amazon.com Review
"He was," as Salon's Gary Kamyia notes, "20th-century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of dread.... Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughly and obsessively rendered as Blake's."
Why has this homosexual ex-junkie, whose claim to fame rests entirely on one book--the hallucinogenic ravings of a heroin addict--so seized the collective imagination? Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in a Tangier, Morocco, hotel room between 1954 and 1957. Allen Ginsberg and his beatnik cronies burst onto the scene, rescued the manuscript from the food-encrusted floor, and introduced some order to the pages. It was published in Paris in 1959 by the notorious Olympia Press and in the U.S. in 1962; the landmark obscenity trial that ensued served to end literary censorship in America.
Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol. Read it and see for yourself.
"Helmikuu
Luettu suomeksi
En vaan osaa nostaa tätä jalustalle. Tykkäsin alusta ja lopun esipuheesta, sit tässä oli muutama yksittäinen kohtaus joka sai mut hymisemään epäuskoisena. Tekis mieli vinkua myös vähän turhankin runsaasta homostelusta, mutten viitsi koska se nyt vaan kuului asiaan. En usko palaavani Burroughsin pariin enää.
e. tähtien kans kävi joku ajatusvirhe ja muutin ne oikeampaan suuntaan. "
m08221196 added this to a list 4 months, 1 week ago
"Kaikin puolin hieno klassikkoteos. Alastoman lounaan tarina on todella hajanainen (joskus ehkä liiankin hajanainen), lähes silkkaa tajunnanvirtaa josta lukija saa koottua johtopäätelmänsä vasta lopussa, jossa selitellään ehkä turhankin paljon. Alastoman lounaan lyhyet tarinat ovat kerronnaltaan hienoja, vakuuttavia ja yksityiskohtaisia, tosin eroottisuutta olisi saanut vähentää. Hienointa kuitenkin on Burroughsin teoksessa se, että kappaleet voi lukea missä järjestyksessä tahansa"
“I would have given this just 1 star but the fact that it occasionally made me laugh and roll my eyes ("what the hell am I reading here??") was enough for me to throw another one behind it. As much as I've always chuckled at the mere idea that someone manages to shock with art I don't think that something should be published just because of shock value. Whether it happened in this case, I don't know, but it inevitably crossed my mind. The junkie ramblings got old before halfway at which point I started hoping that Burroughs would have edited the whole thing a little more. Hallucinatory notes written under the influence of drugs may not always be awesome source material.” read more
mannapuuro added this to a list 2 years, 12 months ago
"An heir to the Burroughs adding machine fortune, Burroughs the novelist hated the despots of Squaresville and the whole world where money makes its fist. This is his greatest book and the template for all the ones that followed. With its fractured account of junkies and assorted urban desperadoes, its fang-baring humor and its sudden excursions into sheer hallucination, it instantly made him the depraved scoutmaster for generations of would-be hipsters. He once said, "My purpose in writing has a"
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