Naked Lunch

Discussion in 'Beat and Hippie Books' started by DrDooblittle, Sep 7, 2004.

  1. DrDooblittle

    DrDooblittle Hip Forums Supporter HipForums Supporter

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    Anyone read this book? it uses soo much slang i cant even understand it! does it get better as it goes along?
     
  2. Asmodean

    Asmodean Slo motion rider

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    I kinda red the book, but i didn't understand it all.. When i saw the movie later, things get a lot clearer.
     
  3. JOsie

    JOsie Member

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    the movie has nothing to do with the book...it's just very loosely based on the characters...

    but i do love the book...i read it all the way through on a coach to glasgow a few weeks back...
     
  4. just me

    just me Member

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    heyy, i just finished reading it actually. crazy.
    im starting to read it again because its so difficult to understand, do you have an unedited version? its easier to read the edited versions i think
     
  5. Sound Stew

    Sound Stew Member

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    I started it and quit it because I didn't understand a thing.Same with Trainspotting.Very hard to read if english is not your native language.
     
  6. Pressed_Rat

    Pressed_Rat Do you even lift, bruh?

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    It's a great book -- very hyped, but great. Very revolutionary, too.

    And if you don't understand what the book is about, you're not suppoed to. Think of it as one big, tripped out excursion to hell and back.

    Personally, my favorite Burroughs book is Junkie.
     
  7. dylanzeppelin

    dylanzeppelin daydream believer

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    craziest book i have ever read.
     
  8. Zer0_II

    Zer0_II Member

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    My favorite Burroughs book is also Junkie, and it's also a difficult read. Burroughs definately uses a lot of slang in his writing.
     
  9. Godot

    Godot Member

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    Naked Lunch- Ive never read it all the way through. but ive started reading it more times than i can count. Like Finnegans Wake, its the kind of book that you read more for the imagery and the brilliance of the writing, not the plot.
     
  10. junkyman420

    junkyman420 Member

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    it is one of my favorite books because it's fuckin hilarious and so far out there especially for when it was written.

    you'll want to read through it more than just once... you'll get more and more out of it once you get used to his style. try readin it when after smokin, it's very very entertaining.
     
  11. chocolatechipcookie

    chocolatechipcookie Member

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    it is hard to read if there are too many words you never heard but i have a great dictionary: http://rhyme.poetry.com

    i would read three quarters. i didnt like the gross sex with all the shitting but i really liked the brainwashing spying and paranoia. that book is one big trip

    maybe some of his older works is a lot easier to read because they attempt to have a plot line I also read The cities of the red night which was alright, although it had a very weir ending in a form of a hallucination. I will read the White subway because ive heard its very good
     
  12. junkyman420

    junkyman420 Member

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    agreed... also one of the funniest, imo. some parts make me laugh out loud :D
     
  13. Xiola

    Xiola One Lonely Seagull

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    Yeah I've read it, Wouldn't really rave about it though. As many others have said on here 'Junkie' is my personal favourite Burroughs book.
     
  14. SelfControl

    SelfControl Boned.

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    I found with Naked Lunch that you can juust dip into it anywhere, like Trout Fishing In America but less so. I saw the movie before the book, and it didn't clarify anything.

    I like Naked Lunch, but I don't quite get why it was considered a great work. Was it Burroughs' major breakthrough novel or something? Because it's not that different from, say, The Soft Machine (bits of it are obviously cut from the same texts) and while I like that style of writing, I can't really think of anything that would exactly differentiate one book from another.
     
  15. BlackBillBlake

    BlackBillBlake resigned HipForums Supporter

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    Naked Lunch was written before soft machine and WSB's other cut-up works. He didn't use the cut-up method (pioneered by Brion Gysin) on Naked Lunch. Burroughs wrote it in Tangier, in his own words 'on pot'.
    It was indeed Burrough's breaktrough novel, and spawned a whole series of court cases when it was first published.
    After Naked lunch, WSB went on to write several novels using the cut-up technique - Soft Machine, Nova Express, The Wild Boys etc. However, he returned to a more linear style of prose in the excellent Cities of the Red Night, and the later books are perhaps more accessible than either naked lunch or the cut-ups.
    Myself, I think Burroughs was the greatest post-war American writer by a very long margin.
     
  16. Spoonybard

    Spoonybard Member

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    It isn't in any sort of order. They were originally in correct order, yes, but Kerouac and Ginsberg helped Burroughs put it together, and apperently they were the ones to put it in its current form. To me, the book is just nonsensical.

    The movie is a biography of Burroughs with certain aspects of the book tied into it.
     
  17. lady

    lady Member

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    Naked Lunch--ahh that changed me. I loved how you could open it at any point and it was just BAM--another revelation. I read it when I was 14 and then again this year, and it has hit me in two completely different ways in just a couple of years. And that's exactly what it does--hit.

    The first line of the foward is "In life there is that which is funny, and there is that which is politely supposed to be funny." And the book goes from there. What is shockingly disgusting catches the readers attention. It doesn't have to be pretty and it doesn't have to make sense, because its point is made.

    And then you finally get it: "They just bring so-called lunch...A hard-boiled egg with the shell off revealing an object like I never seen before..."

    Burroughs is sick, but incredible.
     

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