Naked Lunch: The Restored Text: William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholz, Barry Miles, Mark Bramhall: 9781433259678: Amazon.com: Books William S. Burroughs Next Special Offers and Product Promotions Editorial Reviews 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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Read more From Publishers Weekly William S. Burroughs's classic tale has been fully restored by his longtime editors, Grauerholz and Miles, and is invigorated by this enthusiastic reading.

Mark Bramhall offers a professional performance peppered with every trick of the actor's trade to make it a resonating effort. He approaches the work with such energy that the story seems like a new entity, freshly relevant and timely. Listeners will lose themselves in the journey of junkie William Lee as he makes his way from bizarre destination to even more bizarre destination in this unforgettable novel. A Grove paperback. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . New York Times best sellers Browse the New York Times best sellers in popular categories like Fiction, Nonfiction, Picture Books and more. See more Product Details Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.; Unabridged edition (February 1, 2009) Language: English Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces ( View shipping rates and policies ) Average Customer Review: By Hektor, Tamer of Hard Drives on March 25, 2013 Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase William Burroughs' magnum opus "Naked Lunch" is not for everybody.

I first read it many years ago, when I was in my late teens, thinking it would be funny because of the title and because I enjoyed the movie adaptation with Peter Weller (despite the fact that the movie and the book are virtually nothing alike) which I had seen on HBO some time back. Now I'm in my later 20s and I've read the book a second time, as well as many of Burroughs' other books, which have helped put everything in perspective. The book itself is not written using a traditional 'narrative.' Instead of having a beginning, middle and end, it's written with a non-linear style-- meaning you can pick it up at any time, turn to any page and read any sentence on any page that you want, in almost any order. Theoretically, if you were so inclined, you could read the book in reverse-- the last sentence first until you finish with the first sentence. In this respect the book is a true work of art. But like I said, it's not for everybody-- and you'll either get it or you won't get it-- and that's okay.

In a sense, the book is like visiting a modern art museum and seeing an abstract painting or sculpture-- it might mean something different to you than the person standing next to you-- or it might not mean anything at all. That aside, Burroughs has been said to have said that the book's title, "Naked Lunch" means exactly what it says: A frozen moment when you see exactly what's on the end of your fork-- or, in layman's terms, when you see something as it truly is. The book also makes several heavily politically charged statements, most notably being against the death penalty. Many people will ask what the "plot" of "Naked Lunch" is. Read more › Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch,' Still Fresh At 50 : NPR Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch,' Still Fresh At 50 Embed Embed Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch,' Still Fresh At 50 Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch,' Still Fresh At 50 Embed Embed William S. Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1975. He died in 1997 at the age of 83.

Evening Standard/Hulton Archive hide caption toggle caption Evening Standard/Hulton Archive William S. Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1975. He died in 1997 at the age of 83. Evening Standard/Hulton Archive Read An Excerpt First published 50 years ago, William S. Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch is a dark, wild ride through the terror of heroin addiction and withdrawal, filled with paranoia, erotica and drug-fueled hallucinations. In an introduction (of sorts) to the novel, Burroughs wrote that the book was a result of "detailed notes on sickness and delirium" that he took during his 15 years of heroin addiction. As he explained in a 1985 interview: "It was just my character. ... I always was attracted to the run-down, or the old or the offbeat." Burroughs hadn't always intended to be a man of letters.

An heir to the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, he initially studied medicine at Harvard before falling into the group of misfit writers who eventually evolved into "The Beats." Though Burroughs said his work had little in common stylistically with fellow Beats Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, he credits their encouragement in helping him get started. "I sort of resisted the idea of being a writer," he said. "But Jack [Kerouac] definitely did encourage me. And he said that I would write a novel called ... Naked Lunch. That's his title, Kerouac." Article continues after sponsorship Burroughs described the novel as "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is at the end of every fork." Poet Anne Waldman says that at the time it was published, Naked Lunch offered a stark contrast to the prevailing vision of reality during the Eisenhower years: I sort of resisted the idea of being a writer. ... But Jack [Kerouac] definitely did encourage me. And he said that I would write a novel called ... 'Naked Lunch.' That's his title, Kerouac. William S.

Burroughs "It's not the woman with her Kelvinator refrigerator, opening the door to show you how crisp the lettuce stays," says Waldman. "It's the 'naked lunch' ... where you see reality clearly, you see the lettuce decomposing." That shocking reality caused a furor when excerpts were published in the University of Chicago's literary magazine in 1958. A Paris pornographer took note and published Naked Lunch in France the following year. Then in 1962, Grove Press issued the first American edition. A year later, a Boston bookstore owner was arrested for selling it. During the obscenity trial, the book was defended by writers Norman Mailer, Ginsberg and John Ciardi. Finally, in 1966, a high court ruled that the book had redeeming social value and was therefore not obscene. Regina Weinreich, who teaches Beat Generation literature at New York's School of Visual Arts, believes the novel represents an alternative way of life, one that focuses on the individual as opposed to the masses. "It cuts through the norms of society — the way that we all have to be polite, the way we all have to follow our institutions, our governments, our addictions," Weinreich explains.

"The alternative is to be [an] individual, and to go to those places on our own." To date, Naked Lunch has sold more than 1 million copies; a 50th anniversary edition of the novel is due out next month from Grove Press. Excerpt: 'Naked Lunch' October 8, 200910:49 AM ET William S. Burroughs Note: There is language in this excerpt some readers may find offensive. and start west I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train..Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit holds the door back for me. I am evidently his idea of a character. You know the type: comes on with bartenders and cab drivers, talking about right hooks and the Dodgers, calls the counterman in Nedick's by his first name. A real asshole. And right on time this narcotics dick in a white trench coat (imagine tailing somebody in a white trench coat.

Trying to pass as a fag I guess) hit the platform. I can hear the way he would say it holding my outfit in his left hand, right hand on his piece: "I think you dropped something, fella." But the subway is moving. "So long flatfoot!" I yell, giving the fruit his B production. I look into the fruit's eyes, take in the white teeth, the Florida tan, the two hundred dollar sharkskin suit, the button-down Brooks Brothers shirt and carrying The News as a prop. "Only thing I read is Little Abner." A square wants to come on hip...Talks about "pod," and smoke it now and then, and keeps some around to offer the fast Hollywood types. "Thanks, kid," I say, "I can see you're one of our own." His face lights up like a pinball machine, with stupid, pink affect. "Grassed on me he did," I said morosely. (Note: Grass is English thief slang for inform.) I drew closer and laid my dirty junky fingers on his sharkskin sleeve. "And us blood brothers in the same dirty needle.

I can tell you in confidence he is due for a hot shot." (Note: This is a cap of poison junk sold to addict for liquidation purposes. Often given to informers. Usually the hot shot is strychnine since it tastes and looks like junk.) "Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit—Kid, it was tasty... "Recollect when I am traveling with the Vigilante, best Shake Man in the industry. Out in Chi...We is working the fags in Lincoln Park. So one night the Vigilante turns up for work in cowboy boots and a black vest with a hunka tin on it and a lariat slung over his shoulder. "So I say: 'What's with you?

You wig already?' "He just looks at me and says: 'Fill your hand stranger' and hauls out an old rusty six shooter and I take off across Lincoln Park, bullets cutting all around me. And he hangs three fags before the fuzz nail him. I mean the Vigilante earned his moniker... "Ever notice how many expressions carry over from queers to con men? Like 'raise,' letting someone know you are in the same line? "'Get her!' "'Get the Paregoric Kid giving that mark the build up!' "'Eager Beaver wooing him much too fast.' "The Shoe Store Kid (he got that moniker shaking down fetishists in shoe stores) say: 'Give it to a mark with K.Y. and he will come back moaning for more.' And when the Kid spots a mark he begin to breathe heavy. His face swells and his lips turn purple like an Eskimo in heat. Then slow, slow he comes on the mark, feeling for him, palpating him with fingers of rotten ectoplasm. "The Rube has a sincere little boy look, burns through him like blue neon.

That one stepped right off a Saturday Evening Post cover with a string of bullheads, and preserved himself in junk. His marks never beef and the Bunko people are really carrying a needle for the Rube. One day Little Boy Blue starts to slip, and what crawls out would make an ambulance attendant puke. The Rube flips in the end, running through empty automats and subway stations, screaming: 'Come back, kid!! Come back!!' and follows his boy right into the East River, down through condoms and orange peels, mosaic of floating newspapers, down into the silent black ooze with gangsters in concrete, and pistols pounded flat to avoid the probing finger of prurient ballistic experts." And the fruit is thinking: "What a character!! Wait till I tell the boys in Clark's about this one." He's a character collector, would stand still for Joe Gould's seagull act. So I put it on him for a sawski and make a meet to sell him some "pod" as he calls it, thinking, "I'll catnip the jerk." (Note: Catnip smells like marijuana when it burns.

Frequently passed on the incautious or uninstructed.) "Well," I said, tapping my arm, "duty calls. As one judge said to another: 'Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary.'" I cut into the Automat and there is Bill Gains huddled in someone else's overcoat looking like a 1910 banker with paresis, and Old Bart, shabby and inconspicuous, dunking pound cake with his dirty fingers, shiny over the dirt. I had some uptown customers Bill took care of, and Bart knew a few old relics from hop smoking times, spectral janitors, grey as ashes, phantom porters sweeping out dusty halls with a slow old man's hand, coughing and spitting in the junk-sick dawn, retired asthmatic fences in theatrical hotels, Pantopon Rose the old madam from Peoria, stoical Chinese waiters never show sickness. Bart sought them out with his old junky walk, patient and cautious and slow, dropped into their bloodless hands a few hours of warmth. I made the round with him once for kicks.

You know how old people lose all shame about eating, and it makes you puke to watch them? Old junkies are the same about junk. They gibber and squeal at the sight of it. The spit hangs off their chin, and their stomach rumbles and all their guts grind in peristalsis while they cook up, dissolving the body's decent skin, you expect any moment a great blob of protoplasm will flop right out and surround the junk. Really disgust you to see it. "Well, my boys will be like that one day," I thought philosophically. "Isn't life peculiar?" So back downtown by the Sheridan Square Station in case the dick is lurking in a broom closet. Like I say it couldn't last. I knew they were out there powwowing and making their evil fuzz magic, putting dolls of me in Leavenworth. "No use sticking needles in that one, Mike." I hear they got Chapin with a doll. This old eunuch dick just sat in the precinct basement hanging a doll of him day and night, year in year out. And when Chapin hanged in Connecticut, they find this old creep with his neck broken. "He fell downstairs," they say.

You know the old cop bullshit. Junk is surrounded by magic and taboos, curses and amulets. I could find my Mexico City connection by radar. "Not this street, the next, right...now left. Now right again," and there he is, toothless old woman face and canceled eyes. I know this one pusher walks around humming a tune and everybody he passes takes it up. He is so grey and spectral and anonymous they don't see him and think it is their own mind humming the tune. So the customers come in on Smiles, or I'm in the Mood for Love, or They Say We're Too Young to Go Steady, or whatever the song is for that day. Sometimes you can see maybe fifty ratty-looking junkies squealing sick, running along behind a boy with a harmonica, and there is The Man on a cane seat throwing bread to the swans, a fat drag queen walking his Afghan hound through the East Fifties, an old wino pissing against an El post, a radical Jewish student giving out leaflets in Washington Square, a tree surgeon, an exterminator, an advertising fruit in Nedick's where he calls the counterman by his first name.

The world network of junkies, tuned on a cord of rancid jissom, tying up in furnished rooms, shivering in the junk-sick morning. (Old Pete men suck the black smoke in the Chink laundry back room and Melancholy Baby dies from an overdose of time or cold turkey withdrawal of breath.) In Yemen, Paris, New Orleans, Mexico City and Istanbul—shivering under the air hammers and the steam shovels, shrieked junky curses at one another neither of us heard, and The Man leaned out of a passing steam roller and I copped in a bucket of tar. (Note: Istanbul is being torn down and rebuilt, especially shabby junk quarters. Istanbul has more heroin junkies than NYC.) The living and the dead, in sickness or on the nod, hooked or kicked or hooked again, come in on the junk beam and the Connection is eating Chop Suey on Dolores Street, Mexico, D.F., dunking pound cake in the Automat, chased up Exchange Place by a baying pack of People.

(Note: People is New Orleans slang for narcotic fuzz.) The old Chinaman dips river water into a rusty tin can, washes down a yen pox hard and black as a cinder. (Note: Yen pox is theash of smoked opium.) Well, the fuzz has my spoon and dropper, and I know they are coming in on my frequency led by this blind pigeon known as Willy the Disk. Willy has a round, disk mouth lined with sensitive, erectile black hairs. He is blind from shooting in the eyeball, his nose and palate eaten away sniffing H, his body a mass of scar tissue hard and dry as wood. He can only eat the shit now with that mouth, sometimes sways out on a long tube of ectoplasm, feeling for the silent frequency of junk. He follows my trail all over the city into rooms I move out already, and the fuzz walks in on some newlyweds from Sioux Falls. "All right, Lee!! Come out from behind that strap-on! We know you," and pull the man's prick off straightaway.

Now Willy is getting hot and you can hear him always out there in darkness (he only functions at night) whimpering, and feel the terrible urgency of that blind, seeking mouth. When they move in for the bust, Willy goes all out of control, and his mouth eats a hole right through the door. If the cops weren't there to restrain him with a stock probe, he would suck the juice right out of every junky he ran down. I knew, and everybody else knew they had the Disk on me. And if my kid customers ever hit the stand: "He force me to commit all kinda awful sex acts in return for junk" I could kiss the street goodbye. So we stock up on H, buy a secondhand Studebaker, and start west. Naked Lunch Copyright 1959 by William S. Burroughs, reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. The immortal awfulness of “Naked Lunch” - Salon.com Wednesday, Apr 21, 2010 11:02 AM UTC The immortal awfulness of “Naked Lunch” William S.

Burroughs' subversive classic turns 50 -- and is still as vile and embarrassing as it always was Topics: Books , Fiction , Entertainment News "Naked Lunch: 50th Anniversary Edition" Everybody remembers his first time. Nobody talks about William S. Burroughs’s “ Naked Lunch ,” which celebrated its 50th birthday this past November (dated from its 1959 publication in Paris by Maurice Girodias’ infamous Olympia Press), without indulging in a dreamily solipsistic nostalgia trip. Lewis Jones, in the London Spectator: “When I first read “Naked Lunch,” as a teenager sleeping rough in a Greek olive grove …”; Barry Miles, the author of a hilariously credulous Burroughs biography (“ El Hombre Invisible” ) and co-editor of this commemorative volume, on a Columbia University panel: “I was living in this hippie commune apartment in London … The book completely knocked me out, the epitome of stoned humor and bohemian subversion.” I’ll join in the fun. I first encountered “Naked Lunch” in eighth grade, in the backseat of my parents’ car — a clear-cut case of child abuse by neglect.

I’d purchased it on a family outing to Waldenbooks, a store that, it’s interesting to note, mostly traffics in kitten calendars and “Cathy” bookmarks. “Please,” I thought, “don’t let Mom ask to see this.” You could read any page at random — as Burroughs essentially intended, once insisting in a letter, underscored, and in all caps, that it wasn’t a novel — and get sick to your stomach. “Junk sick,” as Burroughs would say, in another context. Why is “Where were you when …,” a question for assassinations and catastrophes, so often asked with respect to this book? Maybe because reading “Naked Lunch” is an act of violence to one’s psyche. Jack Kerouac, who suggested the book’s title (based on a misreading of the phrase “naked lust”) and typed up the manuscript, claimed it gave him nightmares. Good for him, or at least for his unconscious mind.

There is something gratingly adolescent about those who insist on the essential humor of a work replete with violent interspecies pornography (“The Mugwump pushes a slender blond youth to a couch and strips him expertly”); fetishistic descriptions of putrefaction and disease (“[h]e’s got a prolapsed asshole and when he wants to get screwed he’ll pass you his ass on three feet of in-tes-tine”); and general nastiness (“Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk?”). The book is very occasionally funny, in a Mickey Spillane meets the Marquis de Sade kind of way, but its savage imagery, non-linearity, repetition and plotlessness make it something worse than nightmarish — they make it boring, even embarrassing. There are frequent authorial intrusions along the lines of “Note: Catnip smells like marijuana when it burns. Frequently passed on the incautious or uninstructed.” The reader begins to feel like a baby sitter whose young charge is describing an R-rated movie he was accidentally allowed to see.

In Burroughs’ case, the movie is about opiate addiction, which he deliberately cultivated over a lifetime, perhaps for something to write about. Burroughs the man was as awful as he was beloved. He enjoyed a very comfortable upbringing in St. Louis — his grandfather invented the adding machine — and received an allowance for much of his life, but petulantly insisted “we were not rich.” He had a son he didn’t take care of, whose mother, Joan Vollmer, he’d shot dead in a drunken game of “William Tell.” Adding insult to murder, he spent much of his writing life glorifying the incident, imagining that a so-called Ugly Spirit had invaded him and forced his hand. He even attempted a kitschy sweat lodge “exorcism” late in life, described in nauseatingly approving detail in the Miles biography. Burroughs is often said to have exerted a major influence on popular culture.

This seems limited to the fact that his work is alluded to in a Joy Division song (“Interzone,” named for a setting in “Naked Lunch”); that he has a brief role in Gus Van Sant’s “Drugstore Cowboy” (1989); that he has an even briefer cameo in a U2 video; and that the rock group Steely Dan is named after a dildo featured in “Naked Lunch.” It is unthinkable that Burroughs’ writing had a significant influence on anyone above high-school age. “Naked Lunch” is ostensibly about addiction and “control”; Burroughs and his myrmidons have even argued that the pornographic leitmotif of hanging represents a Swiftian satire of capital punishment — nice try. Really, it is about shock for shock’s sake, as is apparent to the precocious young people to whom it tends to appeal, and as is doubly apparent in the fact that it is remembered by readers as a sensation rather than in terms of its contents. Nobody will quote “Naked Lunch,” not even its scabrous Dr. Benway, as literature — if at all, it will be as an inside joke.

“Naked Lunch” is one of those regrettable works that must be defended on the grounds that it does well what it set out to do, with no consideration given to whether what it set out to do is worth doing. It is very like a nightmare — so? Its vocabulary is pathetically limited, with “insect,” “erectile,” and “atrophied” appearing as adjectives over and over again, whether or not they make any sense; its stunted imagination reaches reflexively to drug culture and medical or anthropological gross-out lore. Its satire is all telegraphic, all punch line: Just because you have a loudmouth Southern sheriff or a big-city detective, doesn’t mean you’ve said anything useful or interesting about racism or due-process violations. Burroughs is one of those figures whose intelligence is overestimated because, slight though it is, it contrasts sharply with his outrageous public persona. Even on the subject of narcotics, the one thing he should be expected to understand, he’s hopelessly muddled. His “Letter From a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs,” printed in the British Journal of Addiction, Vol. 53, No.

2, and appended to this and to other editions of “Naked Lunch,” seems oblivious to the fact that a sample pool of one person is not medically valuable. And he writes in “Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness” that “[t]he junk virus is public health problem number one of the world today” (emphasis his), only to pretend three decades later, in “Afterthoughts on a Deposition,” that he was referring to “anti-drug hysteria … a deadly threat to personal freedoms.” This is a shameless distortion of his unambiguous previous message. It reveals what has been evident to many readers all along: Burroughs was always ready with high-minded defenses of his work, which could only elicit one aesthetic response: revulsion. Still, “Naked Lunch” serves a very valuable and reliable purpose. Get to it early enough, somewhere between the Hardy Boys and Holden Caulfield, and the fatigue and tedium will inoculate you against all sorts of intellectual malfeasance.

You’ll never swallow the line that obscenity is a hallmark of genius, or that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom (usually it leads to the palace of excess, except when it leads to the hovel of incomprehensibility). Dismiss Burroughs as a pull-my-finger bore and you’re ready to dismiss Matthew Barney, Damien Hirst, the Chapman Brothers, Jonathan Littell and a host of others too dull to mention. “I am not an entertainer,” Burroughs wrote in 1959. You can sure as hell say that again. Naked Lunch (1991) - IMDb IMDb 2 January 2017 8:47 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally murders his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in a port town in North Africa.

Director: a list of 33 titles created 14 Jan 2014 a list of 31 titles created 27 Oct 2014 a list of 39 titles created 20 Aug 2015 a list of 34 titles created 20 Sep 2015 a list of 23 titles created 11 months ago Search for " Naked Lunch " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 13 wins & 9 nominations. See more awards » Photos A sleazy cable-TV programmer begins to see his life and the future of media spin out of control in a very unusual fashion when he acquires a new kind of programming for his station. Director: David Cronenberg Twin gynecologists take full advantage of the fact that nobody can tell them apart, until their relationship begins to deteriorate over a woman.

Director: David Cronenberg After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife. Director: David Cronenberg A scientist sends a man with extraordinary psychic powers to hunt others like him. Director: David Cronenberg A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged. Director: David Cronenberg A mentally disturbed man takes residence in a halfway house. His mind gradually slips back into the realm created by his illness, where he replays a key part of his childhood. Director: David Cronenberg A man tries to uncover an unconventional psychologist's therapy techniques on his institutionalized wife, amidst a series of brutal murders. Director: David Cronenberg A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong. Director: David Cronenberg A man awakens from a coma to discover he has a psychic detective ability.

Director: David Cronenberg In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with an opera singer, Song Liling - but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks. Director: David Cronenberg The residents of a suburban high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others by the slightest sexual contact. Director: David Cronenberg A young woman develops a taste for human blood after undergoing experimental plastic surgery, and her victims turn into rabid, blood-thirsty zombies who proceed to infect others, which turns into a city-wide epidemic. Director: David Cronenberg Edit Storyline Not an adaptation of beat writer William S. Burrough's novel but a mix of biography and an interpretation of his drug- induced writing processes combined with elements of his work in this paranoid fantasy about Bill Lee, a writer who accidentally shoots his wife, whose typewriter transforms into a cockroach and who becomes involved in a mysterious plot in North African port called Interzone. Wonderfully bizarre, not unlike Burrough's books. Written by Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca> David Cronenberg and William S. Burroughs invite you to lunch.

See more » Genres: Rated R for heavy drug content, bizarre eroticism, and language | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 24 April 1992 (UK) See more » Also Known As: David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia One of the "Mugwumps" creatures built for the movie still exists and is held by Recorded Pictures Company, the production company of Jeremy Thomas . Nevertheless, they are said to have degraded very fast, as they were not built to last (according to David Cronenberg on the DVD commentary). See more » Goofs The glass shot off Judy Davis' head changes to a plastic glass. First instance as the glass is falling off her head after the shot and then at end of film it is a plastic glass Ms Davis balances on her head. It remains plastic until it falls to floor and changes back into glass. See more » Quotes Twisted Film concerning twisted minds 20 November 2003 | by hohumdedum2 (United States) – See all my reviews Naked Lunch seems to be just totally incomprehensible upon first viewing. However, after watching it again, you start to understand more and more.

Upon multiple viewings, you really get a feel for what's transpiring before your eyes. The ultimate message is that it is really just a metaphor for heroin addiction, even though it's so much more deeper than that. It's an intricate study of a man, William S. Burroughs, who was a heroin addict, and among other things one of the most significant Beat authors ever. The film delves deeply into the psyche of Burroughs and takes you on a trip in his mind and your own. There are touches of reality and many flashes of paranoia, and it is all done with style and grace. Seriously one of the best films about an author, Naked Lunch will certainly stand the test of time against other films which may seem at first entertaining, but lose their luster upon multiple viewings. Whereas, Naked Lunch, in my opinion, never will. 10 out of 10. 86 of 103 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Naked Lunch (Literature) - TV Tropes Naked Lunch You need to login to do this.

Get Known if you don't have an account Share — Nelson Muntz , after seeing the movie My God, how do you summarize the 1959 novel Naked Lunch, the seminal work of beat generation author William S. Burroughs , in mere words? A dystopian sci-fi meets Dante's Inferno , but experienced by a heroin addict in the 1950s . A carnival of everything middle-class America apparently feared at the time: experimental sexuality , drug abuse , foreigners, interracial relations , 'forbidden sciences' , comic books , gang violence and mob rule . A Take That against traditional American values and perceived hypocrisies which reads like a collaboration between Allen Ginsberg and Encyclopedia Dramatica. Some editions of the book include an author's foreword, where Burroughs explains the title. The phrase "naked lunch" is meant to describe the unvarnished truth about what people do to survive in society . The specific lunch that Burroughs wants to unclothe is the custom of capital punishment . He objects to the fact that many people who endorse capital punishment are still reluctant to pull the switch, throw the first stone, or otherwise take on the moral responsibility for the killing of a human being.

In a sense, "naked lunch" is the opposite of euphemism. Thus his famous quote, "Let them see what is at the end of that long newspaper spoon." Of course, Burroughs, by his own admission, doesn't remember writing most of the actual text of the book , so the author's foreword could very well be Retcon . Naked Lunch was very loosely adapted into a film in 1991 by David Cronenberg . This book provides examples of: Accent Relapse : While probably theatrics on Benway's part, he'll sometimes speak in an effeminate, stereotypically gay voice, and at other times speak like an American Southerner. Also: "Benway's voice drifts into my consciousness from no particular place... a disembodied voice that is sometimes loud and clear, sometimes barely audible, like music down a windy street." Also Salvador Hassan O'Leary, who is said to lapse into broken English in times of stress. "His accent at such moments suggests an Italian origin." All Gays Are Promiscuous : In fairness, it's the '50s. Gay culture didn't have the stability to really support monogamy when this was written.

Alternate Universe : Interzone is a dystopian caricature of Tangier, Morocco. Anachronic Order : The chapters are arranged in the order in which they came back from the printer; Burroughs and his friends decided that they couldn't really improve on it. Burroughs was famous for doing this 'cut-up' in his other poetry, as well. Except for the section where Lee kills Hauser and O'Brien. It was originally supposed to happen near the beginning, but was moved to the end, creating another contradiction in space and time where Lee is presumably back in America, after having traveled through Mexico and South America into Africa. And I Must Scream : "Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole how to talk?" Arc Words : Certain phrases and descriptions are repeated constantly throughout Burroughs's body of work. Most during his Nova Trilogy and Red Night Trilogy, but Naked Lunch has a few, as it is the culmination of all of his early work; 'blank insect eyes', 'like music down a windy street', 'shitting and pissing in terror', 'No glot. C'lom Fliday'.

Ax-Crazy : A.J., who, after crashing Hassan's orgy dressed like a pirate, decapitates middle-aged women while singing 'Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle of Rum'.

Question: Who wrote Naked Lunch, (also titled The Naked Lunch)?
Answer: William Burroughs