Thursday, December 10, 2009
Naked Lunch Week 2
I have recently reached the 80 page mark of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs and I have entered the no-dropping zone so no matter how crude and nihilistic Burroughs hipster-esque masterpiece gets I will continue to read. A main character has been fleshed out in a man named Bill Lee, who is really just a device to reflect Burrough's own junkie thinking. Lee is stoned out of his mind and has weird narcotics-induced dreams. One in which his paid by the President to get him high by taking some weird drug and transferring it through bodily fluids. The book is hilarious, but if you read too much it can hurt your head and your stomach. Yesterday as I was reading the vignette on the Informants visit to the fake area of Interzone, I nearly barfed reading Burrough lucid descriptions of the jail for drug abusers. This is the most disgusting book I have ever read, but I have to admit there are parts of the book I really enjoy. For it's short length I can think of worse things than reading a book praised for being the best counter culture book of the 20th century.
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Your blog is very informative and entertaining to read. Your entries are very well written, and your description of Naked Lunch is really intriguing. I find it interesting how you describe the novel as "crude and nihilistic" right before you state that it is a "masterpiece." As a "counter culture book," does its crudeness make it fit all the more into this category? This entry has really gotten me curious about Naked Lunch, and I think I'll look into it sometime. It certainly sounds like an unusual book!
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