5 Quotes
• "There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing...I am a recording instrument...I do not presume to impose 'story' 'plot' 'continuity'...insofar as I succeed in direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function...I am not an entertainer" - W. Burroughs in Naked Lunch (221)
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5 Motifs
• Insects
• Junk/Drugs
• Viscera
• Bodily functions and fluids. Naked Lunch is full of descriptions and moments involving vomit, blood, excrement, semen, etc. They are all mentioned unapologetically. Also discusses biological processes and terms - plasma, ectoplasm, ooze, protoplasm, innards, etc. Makes people and bodies seem disgusting.
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5 Characters
• Mugwumps - Reptillian creatures that inhabit Interzone. Deviant and dangerous creatures. Their bodily fluids are sought after by addicts, a highly addictive substance likened to heroin.
• Dr. Benway - Corrupt, morally-bankrupt, sadistic doctor. Runs experiments on humans, including brain control. Not sure on the basis of this character, but a lot of the darkly humorous lines come from Benway.
• William Lee - Burroughs' alter-ego, an author-surrogate character. Shows how many chunks of the book are based on his own experiences.
• A whole host of 'supporting characters' - they all seem strangely real, like Burroughs may have observed or met them himself. Even those that are described in a few words and never mentioned again. ('Spectral janitors', 'The County Clerk', Policemen...)
Pg 24 'And always cops: smooth college-trained state cops, practised, apologetic patter, electronic eyes weigh your car and luggage, clothes and face; snarling big city dicks, soft-spoken country sheriffs with something black and menacing in old eyes color of a faded grey flannel shirt...'
5 Locations
• Tangier, Morocco
• Interzone - A fictional city that's like a combination of many different locations.
• America - In particular, descriptions of the South. Described as a rotten, evil place - both in its urban and rural locations...
Pg 24 'America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.'
Pg 24 'Chicago: invisible hierarchy of decorticated wops, smell of atrophied gangsters, earthbound ghost hits you at North and Halstead, Cicero, Lincoln Park, panhandler of dreams, past invading the present, rancid magic of slot machines and roadhouses.
'Illinois and Missouri, miasma of mound-building peoples, groveling worship of the Food Source, cruel and ugly festivals, dead-end horror of the Centipede God reaches from Moundville to the lunar deserts of coastal Peru.'
'And the U.S. drag closes around us like no other drag in the world, worse than the Andes, high mountain towns, cold wind down from postcard mountains, thin air like death in the throat, river towns of Ecuador, malaria grey as junk under black Stetson, muzzle loading shotguns, vultures pecking through the mud streets...'
• Mexico
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5 Pieces of Information About the Author
• Writing is heavily informed by personal experiences (encounters, friendships, drug use, travel)
• His book Naked Lunch was put on trial in Boston, 1962 due to obscenity. Four years later, the Massachusetts supreme court would overturn Boston's decision, saying it had atleast 'some' social value. The book was supported by authors Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer.
Norman Mailer during the trial: "There is a kind of speech that is referred to as gutter talk that often has a very fine, incisive, dramatic line to it; and Burroughs captures that speech like no American writer I know. He also . . . has an exquisite poetic sense. His poetic images are intense. They are often disgusting; but at the same time there is a sense of collision in them, of montage that is quite unusual."
• The Judicial Officer for the U.S. Postal Service referred to Naked Lunch as "undisciplined prose, far more akin to the early work of experimental adolescents than to anything of literary merit."
