Naked Lunch
also The Naked Lunch

1969 paperback edition by Corgi Books, featuring a distorted image of Burroughs himself
Author	William S. Burroughs
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Olympia Press
Released	1959
Media Type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	NA

Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs. Some early European editions of the book are entitled The Naked Lunch as was the British 1969 paperback edition by Corgi Books but the article was dropped for American editions. It was the third novel he wrote, but was the second of his novels to see publication. The book was first published in France in 1959 by the infamous Olympia Press; an English-language edition by Grove Press followed soon after. David Cronenberg released a film of the same title based upon the novel and other Burroughs writings in 1991. ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (441x707, 68 KB) Summary 1969 UK paperback edition, Corgi Books Licensing File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... William Seward Burroughs II (pronounced ) (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative in prose. ... Olympia Press was a Paris based publisher, best known for the first print of Nabokov s Lolita; this led to copyright issues, since Nabokov was not satisfied with the publisher and the reputation it had, since besides some serious literature, it published mostly erotic novels. ... A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative in prose. ... William Seward Burroughs II (pronounced ) (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer. ... 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Olympia Press was a Paris based publisher, best known for the first print of Nabokov s Lolita; this led to copyright issues, since Nabokov was not satisfied with the publisher and the reputation it had, since besides some serious literature, it published mostly erotic novels. ... Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. ... David Cronenberg at Cannes 2002 David Paul Cronenberg OC, FRSC (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director and occasional actor. ... Naked Lunch is a 1991 film by the Canadian director David Cronenberg. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Controversy

Naked Lunch is considered Burroughs' seminal work, and one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature. Extremely controversial in both its subject matter and its use of often 'obscene' language (something Burroughs recognized and intended), the book was banned in many regions of the United States, and was one of the last American books to actually be put on trial for obscenity. The book was banned by Boston courts in 1962 due to obscenity (notably child murder in pedophilic acts), but that decision was reversed in a landmark 1966 opinion by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. This was the last major literary censorship battle in the US. The Appeals Court found the book did not violate obscenity statutes; the hearing included testimony in support of the work by Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer. A seminal work [semen = seed (from the Latin seminalis)] is a work from which other works come--it is an engendering work which is so important in its ideas or technique that other people take these up and create new works too. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... Nickname: City on the Hill, Beantown, The Hub (of the Universe) (The State House, according to Oliver Wendell Holmes, is the hub of the Solar System), Athens of America, The Cradle of Revolution, Puritan City, Americas Walking City Location in Massachusetts, USA Counties Suffolk County Mayor Thomas M. Menino... 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ... The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the highest court in the United States Commonwealth of Massachusetts. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Irwin Allen Ginsberg (IPA: ) (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American Beat poet born in Newark, New Jersey. ... Norman Mailer, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1948 Norman Kingsley Mailer (born January 31, 1923) is an American novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter and film director who, along with Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe, is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism. ...

In 1959 sections of the manuscript were published in a University of Chicago student run publication The Big Table. The edition was not well received, and caused the university administration to fire the student editors. When the editor Paul Carroll published BIG TABLE Magazine (Issue No. 1, Spring 1959) on his own accord, he was found guilty of sending obscene material through the U.S. mail for including "Ten Episodes from 'Naked Lunch'", a piece of writing the Judicial Officer for the United States Postal Service deemed "undisciplined prose, far more akin to the early work of experimental adolescents than to anything of literary merit" and initially judged it as nonmailable under the provisions of Section 1461, Title 18, United States Code. (The Big Table court decision) 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The University of Chicago will crush your soul. ... The United States Code (U.S.C.) is a compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal law of the United States. ...

Upon publication, Grove Press added to the book supplementary material regarding the censorship battle as well as an article written by Burroughs on the topic of drug addiction. In 2002, a "restored text" edition of Naked Lunch was published, with some new and previously suppressed material added. Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. ... Drug addiction, or dependency is the compulsive use of drugs, to the point where the user has no effective choice but to continue use. ...

Plot summary

Naked Lunch consists of many loosely related vignettes in which several characters such as the sadistic, sociopathic and borderline incompetent Dr. Benway reappear. The primary character (one might say the main character), is agent Bill Lee (a pseudonym for Burroughs — Lee was his mother's maiden name; Burroughs also appears in Kerouac's On the Road as "Old Bull Lee" and used the pseudonym William Lee for his first novel, Junkie, and for his second novel, Queer). Benway is the name of a character in William Burroughs Naked Lunch. Perhaps the first online personas ever recognized. ... On the Road book cover On the Road is a novel by Jack Kerouac, published by Viking Press in 1957. ... A pseudonym (Greek: false name) is a fictitious name used by an individual as an alternative to his or her legal name. ... 50th anniversary edition, with Burroughs intended title spelling. ...

The book's structure anticipates the cut-up technique Burroughs would later employ in novels such as the so-called "Nova Trilogy" (The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express). The stories draw from his experiences in Tangiers and his life in America and Mexico, as well as a tour through South America he undertook after accidentally shooting his common-law wife Joan Vollmer in the head while playing a drunken game of William Tell. Throughout this period he became addicted to several drugs (notably heroin and morphine). The novel's mix of taboo fantasies, peculiar creatures (like the predatory Mugwumps), and eccentric personalities all serve to unmask mechanisms and processes of control; to "reveal what is at the end of every fork." The title was suggested by Burroughs's friend Jack Kerouac. The novel is a particularly grand illustration of Burroughs's skill with dialogue. Poet Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs' close friend and sometime lover, refers to Naked Lunch in his introduction to his epic poem "Howl". The cut-up technique is a literary form or method in which a text is cut up at random and rearranged to create a new text. ... The Nova Trilogy, The Nova Epic or The Cut-up Trilogy is a name commonly given by critics to a series of three experimental prose novels by William S. Burroughs. ... The Soft Machine is the title of a novel by William S. Burroughs, first published in 1961 and was Burroughs first novel after the grandbreaking publication of Naked Lunch. ... The Ticket That Exploded is a novel by William S. Burroughs published in 1962. ... Nova Express is a 1964 novel by William Burroughs, whose plot cannot easily be described. ... Tangier (in Berber and Arabic Tanja, in Spanish Tánger and in French Tanger) is a city of northern Morocco with a population of 350,000, or 550,000 including suburbs. ... United States is the current Good Article Collaboration of the week! Please help to improve this article to the highest of standards. ... South America South America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. ... In many jurisdictions, common-law marriage is a legal provision whereby two people who are eligible to marry, but who do not obtain a legal marriage, are nevertheless considered married under certain conditions. ... Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs in New York City. ... Statue of Wilhelm Tell and his Son in Altdorf, Switzerland (Richard Kissling, 1895). ... Heroin, also known as diamorphine (BAN) or diacetylmorphine (INN), is a semi-synthetic opioid. ... Morphine (INN) (IPA: ) is an extremely powerful opiate analgesic drug and is the principal active agent in opium. ... Mugwump is a term from 19th-century U.S. politics. ... Jack Kerouac (pronounced ) (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, artist, and part of the Beat Generation. ... Irwin Allen Ginsberg (IPA: ) (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American Beat poet born in Newark, New Jersey. ... Howl and Other Poems was published in the fall of 1956 as number four in the Pocket Poets Series from City Lights Books Bob O. Rosenthal; poet and author; Allen Ginsbergs assistant of 20 years and trustee of the Ginsberg estate; discussing Howl at a 2006 symposium on the...

The book contains what is generally considered to be some of Burroughs' most memorable and quoted passages. One of the most quoted is a section (or, to use Burroughs' terminology, a "routine") known as "The Talking Asshole". This story-within-a-story involves a man who teaches his anal orifice to talk, a trick he soon regrets when it develops a personality and mind of its own and eventually takes over the man's body. Notable recordings and performances of this routine include Frank Zappa reading it during 1978's The Nova Convention (it was recorded and released by Giorno Poetry Systems), by Burroughs himself in his mid-1990s CD Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales, and it is quoted virtually verbatim by Peter Weller's character in the film version of Naked Lunch. Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, guitarist, singer, film director, and satirist. ... Founded in 1965, Giorno Poetry Systems was an American artist collective and non-profit organisation founded by poet and performance artist John Giorno with the direct aim to connect poetry and related art forms to a larger audience using innovative ideas, such as communication technology, audiovisual materials and techniques. ... Peter Weller (born June 24, 1947, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, United States) is an American film actor and lecturer. ...

Several characters would reappear in many later works, most notably the surgeon Dr. Benway, Clem Snide "the Private Asshole", and Inspector Lee. In 1989, Burroughs published Interzone, a collection of short stories and other writings including a chapter entitled "WORD" that at one time was considered for inclusion in Naked Lunch. According to some sources, Burroughs original title for the novel Naked Lunch was also Interzone. 1990 paperback edition by Penguin Books. ...

Interpretation

The redeeming literary merit of the work is found in the biting satire and social criticism many of these episodes contain. Burroughs digests the modern American mind and spits out a wild, almost repulsive parade of images and characters that encapsulate the current state of the 20th century. From the seedy abortionist who solicits pregnant women on the street, to the racist County Clerk of the south, to the macho father who buys a prostitute for his fifteen year old son on his birthday, only to discover the kid literally got a "piece of ass", Naked Lunch exposes the under workings of the American experience, and shows the beginnings of a social pathology and hypocrisy that would erupt in the 1960s as a 'culture war'. Burroughs himself found the material disturbing to write, but also a cleansing of his life-long frustrations and unconsciously repressed experiences. The World According To Ronald Reagan, a satirical map by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist David Horsey Satire is a technique used in drama and the performing arts, fiction, journalism, and occasionally in poetry and the graphic arts. ...

In popular culture

Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in room #9 of the Hotel el Muniria in Tangier. Today, photos of Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and other beat generation poets hang on the walls of the adjoining bar, the Tangerinn. Tangier, Morocco Tangier (Tanja طنچة in Berber and Arabic, Tánger in Spanish, and Tanger in French), is a city of northern Morocco with a population of 669,685 (2004 census). ... Irwin Allen Ginsberg (IPA: ) (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American Beat poet born in Newark, New Jersey. ... Jack Kerouac (pronounced ) (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, artist, and part of the Beat Generation. ... The term Beat Generation refers primarily to a group of American writers of the 1950s. ... Tangerinn Categories: Stub ...

The British science fiction magazine Interzone gets its name from Naked Lunch. Interzone is a British science fiction and fantasy magazine, published since 1982. ...

• The music group Steely Dan takes its name from a dildo mentioned in Naked Lunch.

The music group Clem Snide also takes its name from a character in Naked Lunch. Steely Dan is an American rock band centered around the core members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. ... A 7-inch silicone dildo A dildo (or dildoe, a rare alternate spelling) is a sex toy, often explicitly phallic in appearance, intended for bodily interaction during masturbation or sexual intercourse. ...

• In 1994, the band Bomb The Bass released their album Clear which contains a track called "Bug Powder Dust". The lyrics of that song contain a lot of references to characters, places and actions that are part of the book.
• An episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation includes a character named Dr. Benway in one episode.
• In the 1984 Alex Cox film, Repo Man, there is a hospital scene in which Dr. Benway and Mr. Lee are paged. The two are also paged in a hospital scene in the 1998 film Dark City.
• The instrumental post-rock band Tortoise included a song entitled "Benway" on their 2001 album Standards.
• The post-punk band Joy Division recorded a song on their debut album Unknown Pleasures called "Interzone."
• Raw Rock band Showbread included a track on their recent album, entitled Naked Lunch.
• Numerous recordings of Burroughs reading excerpts from Naked Lunch have been released over the years, as well as a full audio book version issued a few years before his death.
• The book's name also turns up (apparently at random) in "FLCLimax," the final episode of the anime FLCL, where it is shouted in a rhyming fit ("...Naked Lunch, Hawaiian Punch!") by character Haruhara Haruko.
• Referred to in the book The Liar by Stephen Fry.

Bomb the Bass was the creation of the British musician Tim Simenon. ... CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is a popular Alliance Atlantis/CBS police procedural television series, running since October 2000, about a team of forensic scientists. ... Alexander Morton Cox (b. ... The four alien bodies. Repo Man is a 1984 cult film directed by Alex Cox, produced by Michael Nesmith, and starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton. ... Dark City is a 1998 film written by Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer, and directed by Proyas. ... Instrumental rock is a type of rock and roll music which emphasises musical instruments, and which features little or no singing. ... The term post-rock was coined by Simon Reynolds in issue 123 of The Wire (May 1994) to describe a sort of music using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and powerchords. ... Tortoise, an instrumental rock band, formed in Chicago, Illinois in 1990. ... Standards is a 2001 album by Tortoise. ... Post punk generally refers to the particularly fertile and creative period following the initial punk rock explosion. During the first wave of punk, roughly spanning 1976-1983, bands such as The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones and The Damned began to challenge the current styles and conventions of rock... Joy Division was a rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. ... Unknown Pleasures is the first album by Joy Division, released in 1979. ... Showbread, shewbread, Schaubrot, lechem (hap)pānīm(לחם פנים) refers to the twelve cakes or loaves of bread which were continually present on the Table of Shewbread in the Jewish Temple as an offering to YHWH. // Composition and Presentation Biblical Data: Twelve cakes, with two-tenths of an ephah in each... FLCLimax is the sixth and final episode of the TV anime FLCL. It sums up the events of the preceding five episodes, as Haruko returns to Mabase and Naota attempts to come to grips with a world he perceives as boring. ... The main cast of the anime Cowboy Bebop (1998) (L to R: Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Ed Tivrusky, Faye Valentine, and Ein the dog) Anime ) (IPA pronunciation: in Japanese, but typically or in English) is an abbreviation of the word animation. Outside Japan, the term most popularly refers to animation... FLCL , sometimes romanized as Fooly Cooly) is a six episode Japanese animation OVA series, the brainchild of director Kazuya Tsurumaki and released by Gainax and Production I.G.. The series focuses on Nandaba Naota, a twelve-year-old boy living in the fictional and initially tranquil Japanese suburb of Mabase. ... Hawaiian Punch is the name of a brand of fruit punch drinks (containing less than 5% fruit juice) owned by Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. ... The Liar (1992) was the first novel by Stephen Fry, recording the life of Adrian Healey, a student at Cambridge University. ... Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English comedian, author, actor and filmmaker. ...

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Main article: Naked Lunch (film)

Ever since the 1960s, numerous film makers considered how to adapt Naked Lunch for the screen. Antony Balch, who worked with Burroughs on a number of short film projects in 1960s, considered making the film as a musical with Mick Jagger in the leading role, but the project fell through when relationships soured between Balch and Jagger. Others, too, wanted to bring the novel to celluloid, but it was ultimately deemed unfilmable. Naked Lunch is a 1991 film by the Canadian director David Cronenberg. ... Antony Balch (1937-1980) was a British film director and distributor, best known for his screen collaborations with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs in the 1960s and the 1970s horror film, Horror Hospital. ... This article or section needs additional references or sources to improve its verifiability. ...

It wasn't until 1991 that Canadian director David Cronenberg took up the challenge. Rather than attempt a straight adaptation of the novel, however, Cronenberg instead took elements from the book and combined them with elements from Burroughs' own life, to create a fiction-biography hybrid. David Cronenberg at Cannes 2002 David Paul Cronenberg OC, FRSC (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian film director and occasional actor. ...

Peter Weller starred as William Lee in this film, which was critically acclaimed in some quarters and derided in others. Peter Weller (born June 24, 1947, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, United States) is an American film actor and lecturer. ...

On The Simpsons episode "Bart on the Road", Bart, Milhouse, Nelson sneak into an R-rated movie called "Naked Lunch" (after Bart creates a fake ID for himself after watching his aunts work at the DMV all day). When they emerge disappointed, Nelson points out that he can "find at least two things wrong with that title." Simpsons redirects here. ... Bart on the Road is the twentieth episode of The Simpsons seventh season. ... Bartholomew Bart Jo-jo Simpson (age 10 throughout the series) is a fictional character featured in the animated television series The Simpsons. ... Milhouse Mussolini Van Houten is a fictional character featured in the animated television series The Simpsons, voiced by Pamela Hayden. ... Nelson Muntz (voiced by Nancy Cartwright) is a character from The Simpsons. ...

External links

• RealityStudio.org -- A Burroughs community featuring a moderated forum, Burroughs texts, exclusive interviews, news, and more.
• Essays and photographs on William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Tangier Beat Generation, Joujouka
• The Boston Trial of Naked Lunch.
• William Burroughs; Metáfora paranoica del virus a partir de Naked Lunch –El Almuerzo desnudo | En Psikeba