tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198360.post109645622867897392..comments2024-03-18T07:16:02.127+00:00Comments on An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming: The Naked LunchUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198360.post-1096636826127621442004-10-01T13:20:00.000+00:002004-10-01T13:20:00.000+00:00OK, I'm down with that. Reading the letters from t...OK, I'm down with that. Reading the letters from the period, it's obvious he was in the grip of some pretty powerful gnosis writing Naked Lunch. He was full of serious literary intentions, and gropings towards what he wanted to do with the novel, but yeah, the writing process was guided more by this rush of otherness, often debilitating and scary, than by his ideas. The ideas were used (and evolved) by his revelations. Maybe the balance slipped the other way with the cut-up experiments. But - no criticism in this. I think it's a standard dynamic: plunging right in, then learning to swim. It is easy to forget that Naked Lunch is cut-up free! He experienced it, then (via Gysin), discovered a technique to (re)create the experience.Gyrushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16813017280943698522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198360.post-1096555924299813382004-09-30T14:52:00.000+00:002004-09-30T14:52:00.000+00:00some excellent comments here and while I feel I ha...some excellent comments here and while I feel I have been a little misinterprted the points you make are valid and oddly reassuring...<br /><br />I do not doubt that Burroughs has always been a serious novelist, regardless of timelines, publication debates etc but what I feel (though this is part intuition, part troublemaking) is that he didn't come to Naked Lunch with the same agenda and political lucidity that he brought to his later writings. Yes, he had various political / philosophical issues to raise and yes, perhaps there was even a vaguely defined conceptual theme throughout the routines but I'd argue that this does not constitute a personal theoretical / mythological system until the later cut-up/fold-in novels and that Naked Lunch is a more fluid and personal work because of it.<br /><br />I'd also argue that, while certainly unusual, Naked Lunch is not Experimental Fiction because it has no clearly defined hypothesis (e.g. the leaking future...) or ethic.Lokihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03924395676931035948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198360.post-1096536956883444852004-09-30T09:35:00.000+00:002004-09-30T09:35:00.000+00:00I agree it's not a complete accident that Naked Lu...I agree it's not a complete accident that Naked Lunch was a literary success, i.e. I think Burroughs had literary ambition as well as a wicked mind and a vat of majoun. I'm sure he found it all the tastier for knowing that he was probably one step ahead of the critics and theorists, not in intellectual appreciation, but a visceral feel for where literature needed to go (for him at least). Also the 1945-1959 collected letters give the impression he wasn't that unselfconscious: "The two chapters of Naked Lunch that have been described as pornographhic are inteneded as a tract against Capital Punishment in the manner of Swift's Modest Proposal." A must-read, those letters, astonishingly vivid sense of his "channelling" the text of the novel. And hey, just checked on Amazon and looks like another volume is due in December. Wahey!Gyrushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16813017280943698522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7198360.post-1096498069370196352004-09-29T22:47:00.000+00:002004-09-29T22:47:00.000+00:00Actually, the biographical evidence seems to point...Actually, the biographical evidence seems to point to Burroughs being a serious writer <I>before</I> he published anything; by which I mean it was always expected that he would produce something amazing any minute. This is why Kerouac and Ginsberg were prepared to try and make some sense of his scattered writings. Burroughs was the Harvard graduate with a keen interest in, and firm grasp of literature, psychoanalysis, etc. etc. He may not have had language as a virus off pat at the time, but he was definitely expounding elements of his later theories of control. Of course he was simultaneously the fucked-up rich kid with a propensity for chemicals and a talent for telling stories: If he hadn't been, <I>Naked Lunch</I> could have been quite a boring book.johneffayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10188565082989108143noreply@blogger.com