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Naked Lunch, by that Burroughs guy

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This book makes we wanna do drugs.

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:09 (twenty-one years ago)

don't do heroin, it's the first step towards smoking weed

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:14 (twenty-one years ago)

How did you find out about this book, Nowell?

― Creatures of the Sea (Medley) (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Read about it somewhere.

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:17 (twenty-one years ago)

When I read Naked Lunch it just made me want to accidently kill my wife by drunkenly attempting to shoot a glass off of her head.

― n/a (Nick A.), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:21 (twenty-one years ago)

It just makes me wanna do a lot of drugs. But I won't. I'm terrified of needles.

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

AaronHz to thread.

― Sanjay McDougal (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

you can smoke and snort heroin, from what I understand. or bake it into cookies

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

try junkie too

― bulbs (bulbs), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh yeah, I read in a Nabokov interview that William Burroughs liked to take prepubescent girls into motels and have sex with them.

― n/a (Nick A.), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Reading Bridget Jones made me wish I had periods. Books are dangerous!

― adam... (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:24 (twenty-one years ago)

I know you can smoke or snort heroin. But drugs are bad and addictive. They sure sound fun, though.

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:24 (twenty-one years ago)

You can't do drugs yet Nowell. You have to wait until you are old and miserable. Then do them.

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:25 (twenty-one years ago)

I liked junky.

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, adam. You smartass!

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:25 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm YOUNG and miserable.

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:25 (twenty-one years ago)

You don't know what miserable is yet.

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Reading books made me wish that one day I would awaken as a giant insect.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:26 (twenty-one years ago)

the drugs can only help, Nowell

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:26 (twenty-one years ago)

hurt. hurt!

― Riot Gear! (Gear!), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:26 (twenty-one years ago)

You sound jaded, Orbit.

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:27 (twenty-one years ago)

"Lunch" is barely readable. Queer and Junky are a little more palatable. I always think of Burroughs as a linguist and idea guy more than a straight-up writer.

― andy, Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:28 (twenty-one years ago)

"Oh yeah, I read in a Nabokov interview that William Burroughs liked to take prepubescent girls into motels and have sex with them"

You mean prepubescent BOYS...

WSB's audio experiments with Brion Gysin can be found online at ubuweb.com

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:29 (twenty-one years ago)

It's best to put books down and turn to Archie comics and that sort of thing.

― adam... (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:30 (twenty-one years ago)

"I always think of Burroughs as a linguist and idea guy more than a straight-up writer."

What's the difference?

― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:31 (twenty-one years ago)

I would rather her turn to heroin than Archie.

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:31 (twenty-one years ago)

A coherent narrative, maybe? xpost

― andy, Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:32 (twenty-one years ago)

i couldn't get more than a few pages into this book. is something wrong with me or is it not a good book?

― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:33 (twenty-one years ago)

i once read a book by marc behm and decided i wanted to become a serial stalker and murderess. this is true.

― bulbs (bulbs), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:33 (twenty-one years ago)

I am jaded.

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 21:34 (twenty-one years ago)

best Burroughs as idea guy:
The Job

best homoerotic pirate/ future plague/ detective novel:
Cities of the Red Night

― autovac (autovac), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 22:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Nowell if you want heroin just go down to 16th and Mission and wait around the Bart station for like twenty minutes. Eventually someone will ask you if you want a "one and one" (one baggy of black tar and one baggy of shit cocaine.) Say yes. They are usually around 10 bucks a pop and most people buy a few. Getting needles is harder, but you can smoke it the first time (you'll need some tinfoil, a knife and a lighter.) Good luck!

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:06 (twenty-one years ago)

There's nothing wrong with you, Caitlin. I mean, Burroughs wrote the book when he was very loaded. It's a strange story - if you can even call it a story. I've found myself pretty absorbed in it, though.

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Xpost
I think I'd rather not. But thanks anyway.

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I always thought he'd written it while clean, or on the tail end of withdrawal. I'm not sure it really holds up as a novel, but IMO it's still worth reading for all the dark, hilarious stuff in between the unreadable/incomprehensible bits. (S: all the Dr. Benway routines.) I haven't read it since college, though, so who knows, I might no longer agree with any of this . . .

― the krza (krza), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:15 (twenty-one years ago)

"I think I'd rather not. But thanks anyway."

Your loss. Nothing the high school boyz like more than abscesses and collapsed veins.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:16 (twenty-one years ago)

X post
I heard that Burroughs barely remembered writing it, he was so high. And I agree that there are some hilarious parts.

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Have you read any other Beat novelists, Nowell?

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Like who? Jack Kerouac is one of them, right? (FYI: Naked Lunch is the only book by Burroughs I've read so far.)

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, Kerouac, Corso, Huncke, probably a bunch of others I'm forgetting. Ginsberg and Propper as poets...

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Nope, haven't read 'em. What's a good one?

― Nowell (Nowell), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, I guess Kerouac's On The Road would be the one I would read if I was 15...

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Wednesday, 24 November 2004 23:59 (twenty-one years ago)

HI DERE

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Howdy.

― Nowell (Nowell), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Xpost
Does it matter how old I am?

― Nowell (Nowell), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I read Naked Lunch, On The Road and Howl when I was 14, look how I turned out!

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:02 (twenty-one years ago)

You seem fine to me. But maybe it's cuz you're a man...

― Nowell (Nowell), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:03 (twenty-one years ago)

(x-post)

I don't know. It's a book that young people really connect with, and it meant a lot to me when I was your age. It depends, I suppose.

Did they turn you gay, Aaron?

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Now why would they make him gay?

― Nowell (Nowell), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, they're all gay, and Ginsberg's poetry can be pretty explicit. (I don't believe they would/could have that effect)

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:06 (twenty-one years ago)

It sure as hell hasn't made me gay.

― Nowell (Nowell), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:06 (twenty-one years ago)

"Oh yeah, I read in a Nabokov interview that William Burroughs liked to take prepubescent girls into motels and have sex with them"

You mean prepubescent BOYS...

Um yeah n/a, that joke doesn't work because Burroughs already admitted in his own interviews just about anything anyone else could accuse him of. Except being mean to cats, he would never do that. Them's fightin words to WSB.

Not completely, Kevin
x-post

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, he liked cats. That's good.

― Nowell (Nowell), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:09 (twenty-one years ago)

LOVED them. More than people I'd reckon.

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, but used to inject cats into his arms.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Or something. Don't know what that means.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Nowell, just out of curiousity did you find out about Naked Lunch from the liner notes to Incesticide?. I'm pretty sure that's what made me read it when I was your age.

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:13 (twenty-one years ago)

...or being on the Wipers' compilation, or Thor from T.K. giving me a signed first edition of Naked Lunch, or making a friend like Stephen Pavlovic...

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Obviously what this thread needs is some Naked Lunch excerpts:

Mary is strapping on a rubber penis: "Steely Dan III from Yokohama," she says, caressing the shaft. Milk spurts across the room.

"Be sure that milk is pasteurized. Don't go giving me some kinda awful cow disease like anthrax or glanders or aftosa..."

"When I was a transvestite Liz in Chi used to work as an exterminator. Make advances to pretty boys for the thrill of being beaten as a man. Later I catch this one kid, overpower him with supersonic judo I learned from an old Lesbian Zen monk. I tie him up, strip off his clothes with a razor and fuck him with Steely Dan I. He is so relieved I don't castrate him literal he come all over my bedbug spray."

"What happened to Steely Dan I?"

"He was torn in two by a bull dyke. Most terrific vaginal grip I ever experienced. She could cave in a lead pipe. It was one of her parlor tricks."

"And Steely Dan II?"

"Chewed to bits by a famished candiru in the Upper Baboonsasshole. And don't say 'Wheeeeeeee!' this time."

"Why not? It's real boyish."

"Barefoot boy, check thy bullheads with the madame."
___________________________________________________________
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard.

"This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.

"This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called "The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?'

"'Nah! I had to go relieve myself.'

"After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.

"Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in- curving hooks and start eating. He thought this was cute at first and built and act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: 'It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat AND shit.'

"After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous- except for the EYES you dig. That's one thing the asshole COULDN'T do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes WENT OUT, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eyes on the end of a stalk.

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:24 (twenty-one years ago)

"Lunch" is barely readable. Queer and Junky are a little more palatable.
Ok, I'm not picking on andy here since there are quite a few people who hold this opinion, and he didn't say it exactly, but in any case the "Junky and Queer are the only readable ones" people are missing out.
Not only does he have plenty of stuff with a linear narrative, but the non-linear stuff is totally worth it once you get used to his stylistic quirks.
(And FFS people, just SKIM the cut-up type bits if they throw you off that much, aside from that kind of thing he's perfectly lucid, and you're not missing much to tell the truth.)

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:34 (twenty-one years ago)

That reminds me that one of the things I loved about NL back in the day was the tone: all those grotesque details delivered in that clipped, no-nonsense, deadpan voice.

(From the bits I've heard, Burroughs' reading voice and comic timing were both pretty amazing.)

(xpost)

― the krza (krza), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:35 (twenty-one years ago)

i want to read this book. maybe i should try again. nowell, you should read some nabokov. i think you would like it a lot.

― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:36 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, everyone should at the very least own a copy of the Call Me Burroughs CD. Fantastic.
x-post

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Ah -- off to slsk!

― the krza (krza), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Godspeed You! Gentleman Junky

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:39 (twenty-one years ago)

That reminds me: Burroughs is the type of writer where the more biographical information you know, the better. Read interviews, too. Once you really know where he's coming from the books don't seem so difficult at all.
I can personally recommend With William Burroughs: A Report From the Bunker (my favorite), The Job, Gentleman Junky (awesome full color bio) and Literary Outlaw.
Also pick up the Last Words journals written in the last year of his life, and there's a relatively new book of collected interviews I haven't gotten ahold of yet.

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Thursday, 25 November 2004 00:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I was actually reading 'Lolita' by Nabokov pretty recently. I don't know what I think of it. I didn't read the whole thing.

― Nowell (Nowell), Saturday, 27 November 2004 00:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Lolita is great. I don't know what other Nabokov stuff teenagers would find interesting, though. I'm not saying that to pick on Nowell. I just known that I loved Lolita at 15 and immediately rushed out to get Pale Fire, which looked baffling and boring and I never read it. (Until last week, ha!)

― Sanjay McDougal (jaymc), Saturday, 27 November 2004 01:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, is it good? ('Pale Fire', I mean.)

― Nowell (Nowell), Saturday, 27 November 2004 01:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes. It is good. It's strange, though.

― Sanjay McDougal (jaymc), Saturday, 27 November 2004 01:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Okay, I'll try reading it too, then.
And 'Naked Lunch' is very, very strange. What it is really about? What's the gist of it?

― Nowell (Nowell), Saturday, 27 November 2004 01:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Pnin is also good (by Nabokov), very cute and sad, but I don't know how much you'd like it.

― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Saturday, 27 November 2004 01:19 (twenty-one years ago)

"that Burroughs guy"

― Matt (Matt), Saturday, 27 November 2004 01:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, Pale Fire seems to be a book that is put off for a long time - despite loving Nabakov, I didn't read it until I had to at university, and then wondered why I didn't bother before. It is a fantastic book, as is Lolita, which you should finish.

As for other stuff - have you read any Steinbeck? Always good, though I imagine they will have made you read some at school. Are you interested in poetry at all?

(x-post - You know Bill would have loved that description : ))

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Saturday, 27 November 2004 01:26 (twenty-one years ago)

very probably Kevin, it just amused me

― Matt (Matt), Saturday, 27 November 2004 01:32 (twenty-one years ago)

'Naked Lunch' is very, very strange. What it is really about? What's the gist of it?
Systems and methods of control, abuse of power, hypocrisy...most of Burroughs' stuff runs along these lines.

― It's hard to kill a horse with a flute (AaronHz), Saturday, 27 November 2004 03:21 (twenty-one years ago)

(From the bits I've heard, Burroughs' reading voice and comic timing were both pretty amazing.)

I agree, since I heard his recordings I've thought of him as a kind of alt-culture Bob Newhart.

― nickn (nickn), Saturday, 27 November 2004 08:23 (twenty-one years ago)

I've read Steinbeck. 'Of Mice and Men' - I read that a LONG time ago. It's so sad.

― Nowell (Nowell), Monday, 29 November 2004 19:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Burroughs' books are FRIGHTENINGLY prophetic when it comes to exposing control systems, addiction, the prison industry, Islamic/Western friction, people being intimate with computers, etc., etc. What was satirical 40 or so years ago is reality now.

Check out "The Herbert Huncke Reader" too--used copies are easily found on Amazon.

― shookout (shookout), Monday, 29 November 2004 21:50 (twenty-one years ago)

I get what you mean! That said, I need to focus on 'Naked Lunch' a little harder. Or am I just dumb?

― Nowell (Nowell), Monday, 29 November 2004 21:52 (twenty-one years ago)


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