>start pic related
>get halfway through
>it's just a series of unrelated scenes and incidents about degenerates and occasionally some sci-fi body horror
What is the value in this? The wikipedia article says it's a "landmark" of American literature, then just talks about how controversial.
I was thinking of quitting it but I was concerned I was being too sensitive over the disgustingness. Then I realized I was just bored. Am I missing something or is it only popular for its shock value?
shoulda just watched the movie, senpai
There is no value, the beats are shit. Shit's in the tumblr realm for a reason, m8
Okay thank you I was hoping this was the case! I hate quitting books, especially short ones, but if it sucks, it sucks.
it depicts the lifestyle of a degenerate junkie as a deranged, repugnant wasteland. that's what i got out of it anyway.
his nova trilogy is written in a similar style but also explores some really neat ideas related to mass media and language.
>Implyying
It's fun
The events and scenes are mostly related thematically not narratively, some are both. Book offers an interesting look into various oddities in life most normal folk won't ever experience and offers some interesting ruminations on socio-political issues. I fucking hate the beats, Burroughs doesn't deserve to lumped in with those cunts.
No, it doesnt suck. Get over yourself. You think if youre confused by something at first it must mean everyone who saw value in it is faking? Even if you decide you didn't like it after reading, from this post it seems like you didnt even try to understand it.
Not that I think an explanation will help you, but I'll try anyway. There is a narrative, there's just no chronology to it. There are reoccuring characters and themes that develop through a variety of scenes, some fictional societies satirizing aspects of our own, some fever dream landscapes expressing the world as experienced by the worst kind of junky degenerate.
I found it to be extremely entertaining, some of it hilarious some of it horrific, and Burroughs explains many of his intentions in essays that are in the back of your copy if yours looks like the pic you posted.
Psychedelic imagery. Interesting, surreal locales and characters. Not for everybody.
Context of the book's writing is as interesting as the book itself; your mileage may vary, natch, but reading the book without understanding how it came to be is a mistake; it illuminates why it takes such a fragmented format.
I actually use this book as an example of why Roland Barthes "Death Of The Author" approach is not the best one for all texts.
The book was derived from letters Burroughs was sending to Ginsberg and Kerouac during his stay in Tangier; the stories and aphorisms are basically the results of a mind warped by his self-imposed exile there after he killed his wife (accidentally-on-purpose) and went to Morocco to forget the whole thing by indulging in Junk and Boy Buggery.
After a few years Kerouac and Ginsberg "rescued" him as they noted his letters were becoming more strange and horrible; they came to Tangier to get him, took him to France and there he edited his letters into the Naked Lunch with Kerouac's aid. - France was the only place they could get his stuff published at that time.
>ahistorical reading
where the fuck do you memes come from
late Burroughs > early Burroughs
op i made it about a third through it and felt totally repulsed. it's just some gay junkie ramblings for an incoherent geezer
Exactly.
It is a thing to which you would never normally be exposed; and you were repulsed by it.
There are things in this world that are too horrible for you to bear which others do so willingly, this is what YOU took from this book, whether you appreciate that or not.
Looks like the font of the Spongebob episode titles
Correction; Spongebob looks like THIS.
thread;
True. At first I was considering quitting because of how disgusting it was. Then I decided that wasn't a reason to stop reading it. Then a bit later I realized I was bored reading it since it was just a series vignettes describing different scenes. Like "here is horrible thing A, now here is horrible thing B."
So The 120 Days of Sodom?
Grow a skin.
i was the first user to make a thread about this. if it becomes a meme im claiming ownership rights here and now
You can't rebuke the man for knowing what he likes to read about and what he does not.
I like TNL and I'm open to trying guys like De Sade and Bataille, but I'd never foist them on the unwilling.
I mean, can you imagine tying an unwilling participant down and subjecting them to "120 Days of Sodom" - The Book in it's entirest?
It would be an inhuman act.
pretend Yage Letters is listed beside Junky and Queer, and here are the steps to better Burroughs appreciation
Junky better
>Grow a skin.
My point was less about it being super-gross and more about it being repetitive.
you are now aware what a giant influence this guy was on the Beats and how much better than all of them he is. Why do you think Burroughs picked tangier?
More like this?
Good chart. Thanks lad
pls respond
I liked the Nova Trilogy better than Naked Lunch.
OP, give those a shot. Start with The Soft Machine. If you can't deal with that either, then you probably won't enjoy anything else he did.
That's the problem with reading old novels. The things that made them novel have since been absorbed into other works that you've encountered earlier.
It's a cut up user. A non-linear cut up. An original written by one of the more intuitively smart men of the 20th century.
It is drug fueled and degenerate, of course. The critics talked about the destruction of literature and the modern novelist, but Burroughs knew exactly what he was doing, don't let that old junky outfox you.
It's disgustingly brilliant in it's execution and identity. You don't have to "get it" or "like it" it stands on it's own three feet so to speak.
Perhaps you just don't like it? The Beats were cool (Burroughs wasn't really a Beat) so a lot of kids think they are supposed to like them (and this be associated with cool) but that's trivial thinking. If you think it's shit, then to you it's shit. Go with it, just don't pretend. That's insufferable cuntageness.
Also, Cronenberg's movie is not what I would call a great adaptation. IT IS a good film but it's Cronenberg's interpretation of an adaption of Naked Lunch, which is ultimately the best way to handle the situation given the discordant flow of the narrative and temperament of the diction.
I loved Naked Lunch. Then again, I was a drug fueled degenerate when I read so who knows, you know?
Western Lands is Burroughs' GOAT novel (and the undefeated GOAT novel of the world) so no there is no more like it
>implying Naked Lunch was a cutup
lmao