Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs, William Burroughs · first published 1959
19% recommend72% neutral9% critical
Why HN recommends it
A disturbing, unflinching novel that hits hard on first reading, with striking prose and a vivid, hallucinatory view of a different world. It suits adult readers who can handle its intensity.
Common criticism: Several find the middle stretches repetitive and hard going.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Controversial and bizarre cult novel based on the author’s own experiences as a drug addict, first published in 1959. Formed as a series of inter-connected adventures set in locations as diverse as the U.S. Mexico and Morocco sees the protagonist, Burroughs’ alter-ego William Lee on the run from the police and always searching for his next fix. Burroughs once stated that the chapters can be read in any order.
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…essays about everything. Everyone can relate to what he writes of. And Bakewell does this by boiling down his many essays and biography into one single book. Absolutely engaging. * William Burroughs - "Naked Lunch". This book tore me up when I first read it when I was 12 years old. Not your atypical yoot book.
on “Ask HN: Which book/essay changed your life?” ↗…"schizophrenic". I thought everyone around me were psychopaths and I was the only sane one, but lived that in a more or less manic way. The only other piece of art that's had that kind of effect on me is the novel Naked Lunch. It's my favorite movie precisely because of how unflinchingly it plumbs those depths, those cracks, of the human condition and the anxiety of dying having not contributed enough.
on “Screenwriters' Lecture: Charlie Kaufman” ↗Moby Dick, Herman Melville VALIS, Philip K Dick Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance + also Lila, Robert Pirsig Naked Lunch, William Burroughs Immortality, Milan Kundera Catch-22, Joseph Heller (pair with The Deserters, Charles Glass -- In fact a lot of the stuff in Catch-22 is actually toned down from reality) Mastering…
on “Ask HN: What's the "best" book you've ever read?” ↗Burroughs also wrote a lovely book on cats he met. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_Inside I always liked that one. Naked Lunch grew on me, but was a bit tough when I read it for the first time. I was 13 back then.
on “Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and the Computer (2009)” ↗…Doctor of Death Island), and "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" for its three novellas. If you want something much more difficult, try J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition. He was influenced by Burroughs (Naked Lunch would be another recommendation here if you can stomach the Beatnik depravity within) and wrote a novel that will challenge its reader in many ways. It's very interesting to go straight from this into…
on “Short Little Difficult Books” ↗…on? Moby-Dick. Don Quixote, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, The Call of the Wild, Lord of the Flies, The Painted Bird, The Handmaid's Tale, 2001: A Space Odyssey, On the Beach, Naked Lunch, I Am Legend, The Grapes of Wrath, Last and First Men, Frankenstein, Try to avoid "Great Books" lists, though. Ask your closest friends who they read. Or if a literary reference comes up that sparks…
on “Ask HN: I don't read fiction, how much am I missing out on?” ↗these changed almost everything i think about: misc. Forrest Mims notebooks, the Python Tutorial, Practical C Programming first chapter of Sound and the Fury, snippets of Naked Lunch, wide swaths of Ulysses The Universe in a Nutshell, French's Special Relativity The Gamma Function, a graph theory text whose name i don't remember, baby Rudin Brain Structure and Its Origins, The…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗Don't believe what the article says about a "disjointed, almost illegible narrative". The Naked Lunch a very good approachable book. Also the movie captures it about as well as a film could. The real cut up books are The Nova Trilogy, and (although I did read all 3 when I was younger) they are quite…
on “William S. Burroughs's Paintings (2015)” ↗All great books but missing some important items: - Candide - A Peoples History... - Manufacturing Consent - Dharma Bums - Naked Lunch/Western Lands - Infinite Jest - Something Thompson, Campaign Trail '72 maybe.
on “The Mensa Reading List for Grades 9-12” ↗I was just reading a bit about Burroughs and put “Naked Lunch” on my to-read list. Any other recommendations?
on “William S. Burroughs's Paintings (2015)” ↗> There are almost always deep-rooted issues that the addiction hides William S Burroughs wrote, at the end of "The Naked Lunch": "Statistically, the people who become addicted to morphine are those who have access to it: doctors, nurses, anyone in contact with black market sources. In Persia, where opium is sold without control…
on “Down Here, They Sometimes Call It 'Boy'” ↗…gave birth to the Beat poets, Kerouac's On the Road, Allen Ginsberg (who wrote poetry that would be considered pretty vulgar even by today's standards, including highly detailed sex orgies), Burroughs' Naked Lunch, etc. Basically, the '50s (and other points in the 20th century), had a lot of literature which was less elegant and less vulnerable--just as experimental as today's works of arts, just as cynical and…
on ““A book is a sneeze”” ↗…lack much context. The film here is what I believe is a student project of Gus Van Sant who went on to be a professional movie director. The narration is from William Burroughs, who's most famous for "Naked Lunch". One interesting fact about Burroughs is that he was a chronic drug abuser and managed to shoot his wife during some sort of drug fueled accident. The message in this little piece can be easily interpreted…
on “The Discipline of DE (1978) [video]” ↗…merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client." ― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch This is slightly more complex with the social media business model: the product is the viewer, rather like a fish. The heroin-like bait to catch the viewer is the stream of short distractive entertainment…
on “Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends” ↗From William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch: > I am never here …. Never that is fully in possession, but somehow in a position to forestall ill-advised moves…. Patrolling is, in fact, my principal occupation….. No matter how tight Security, I…
on “People's sense of control over actions is reduced when angry or afraid: study” ↗