Naked Lunch

This is the definitive Burroughs book. It slips and slides and glides through alleyways and canals of madness, degredation and perversion, ending up nowhere. It's sick and very, very clever.

I don't know how much I want to go into this book now; I'd rather you check out a typical and very funny excerpt about Bradley the Buyer that I've typed in. As for the history of the book: Burroughs wrote much of the raw material while living in Tangier during the mid-fifties, while his friends were finally becoming famous in America. When Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg visited him in Tangier they encouraged him to put the material together into book form, and Kerouac came up with the title. Olympia Press, a small and controversial Parisian operation, published the first edition, but the book didn't really become a sensation until the early 60's, when Burroughs began making appearances to publicize it.

A film called 'Naked Lunch' was made a few years ago; it was not so much a film of the book (which is non-linear in structure) as inspired by it.

Literary Kicks
by Levi Asher