Southern Illinois University Press, 2009 Paper: 978-0-8093-2916-8 | Cloth: 978-0-8093-2915-1 | eISBN: 978-0-8093-8673-4 Library of Congress Classification PS3552.U75N336 2009 Dewey Decimal Classification 813.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Naked Lunch was banned, castigated, and recognized as a work of genius on its first publication in 1959, and fifty years later it has lost nothing of its power to astonish, shock, and inspire. A lacerating satire, an exorcism of demons, a grotesque cabinet of horrors, it is the Black Book of the Beat Generation, the forerunner of the psychedelic counterculture, and a progenitor of postmodernism and the digital age. A work of excoriating laughter, linguistic derangement, and transcendent beauty, it remains both influential and inimitable.
This is the first book devoted in its entirety to William Burroughs’ masterpiece, bringing together an international array of scholars, artists, musicians, and academics from many fields to explore the origins, writing, reception, and complex meanings of Naked Lunch. Tracking the legendary book from Texas and Mexico to New York, Tangier, and Paris, Naked Lunch@50 significantly advances our understanding and appreciation of this most elusive and uncanny of texts.
Contributors:
Contributors:
Keith Albarn
Eric Andersen
Gail-Nina Anderson
Théophile Aries
Jed Birmingham
Shaun de Waal
Richard Doyle
Loren Glass
Oliver Harris
Kurt Hemmer
Allen Hibbard
Rob Holton
Andrew Hussey
Rob Johnson
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Ian MacFadyen
Polina Mackay
Jonas Mekas
Barry Miles
R. B. Morris
Timothy S. Murphy
Jurgen Ploog
Davis Schneiderman
Jennie Skerl
DJ Spooky
Philip Taaffe
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Oliver Harris, the author of William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination, is a professor of American literature at Keele University. He is the editor of The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945–1959, “Everything Lost”: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs, and Burroughs’ novels, Junky: The Definitive Text of “Junk” and The Yage Letters Redux. Harris is also the author of numerous scholarly articles on Burroughs, the Beat Generation, film noir, and the epistolary form.
Ian MacFadyen has written about William S. Burroughs in a number of essays, including “Machine Dreams: Optical Toys and Mechanical Boys” in the collection Flickers of the Dreamachine. His other work includes Ira Cohen’s Photographs: A Living Theatre and The Blood of the Poet: Lorca and the Duende.
REVIEWS
“Without William there is nothing. . . . Burroughs alone made us pay attention to the realities of contemporary life and gave us the energy to explore the psyche without a filter. . . . He is the brave fool (and he was no fool) who told us what is—was—could be.”—Lou Reed
“I can think of no other work of literary criticism that brings together such a multiplicity of artists, practitioners and critics in such a dynamic assembly of writing forms. The resulting symbiosis strikes me as a whole new critical form, utterly pertinent to Burroughs’ milieu.”—Michael Hrebeniak, author of Action Writing: Jack Kerouac’s Wild Form
— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Preface 00
Acknowledgments 00
In Defense of Perversity: Diary Entry, 1958 00
Jonas Mekas
Dossier One 00
Ian MacFadyen
The Beginnings of ¿Naked Lunch, an Endless Novel¿ 00
Oliver Harris
¿Room for One More¿: The Invitation to Naked Lunch 00
Rob Holton
Dossier Two 00
Ian MacFadyen
William S. Burroughs as ¿Good Ol¿ Boy¿: Naked Lunch in East Texas 00
Rob Johnson
Tangier and the Making of Naked Lunch 00
Allen Hibbard
¿The Natives Are Getting Uppity¿: Tangier and Naked Lunch 00
Kurt Hemmer
¿Paris Is About the Last Place . . .¿: William Burroughs In and Out of Paris and Tangier, 1958¿1960 00
Andrew Hussey
Burroughs: The Beat Hotel Years 00
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Dossier Three 00
Ian MacFadyen
The Danger Zone 00
Eric Andersen
I Am No Doctor 00
R. B. Morris
The Naked Lunch in My Life 00
Barry Miles
A Bombshell in Rhizomatic Slow Motion: The Reception of Naked Lunch in Germany 00
Jurgen Ploog
Banned: Naked Lunch in Apartheid South Africa 00
Shaun de Waal
The Olympia Press and Naked Lunch as Collectible and Book Object 00
Jed Birmingham
Naked Lunch: The Cover Story 00
Polina Mackay
Dossier Four 00
Ian MacFadyen
The Book, the Movie, the Legend: Naked Lunch at 50 00
Jennie Skerl
Still Dirty after All These Years: The Continuing Trials of Naked Lunch 00
Loren Glass
¿Gentlemen I Will Slop a Pearl¿: The (Non)Meaning of Naked Lunch 00
Davis Schneiderman
Burroughs¿ Visionary Lunch 00
Théophile Aries
Dossier Five 00
Ian MacFadyen
Sole Survivor a Raving Madman 00
Gail-Nina Anderson
Random Insect Doom: The Pulp Science Fiction of Naked Lunch 00
Timothy S. Murphy
All Consuming Images: DJ Burroughs and Me 00
Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid
Naked Life: William S. Burroughs, Bioscientist 00
Richard Doyle
Dossier Six: The Music of Naked Lunch 00
Ian MacFadyen
Works Cited and Consulted for Dossiers 000
Contributors 000
Index 000
Naked Lunch was banned, castigated, and recognized as a work of genius on its first publication in 1959, and fifty years later it has lost nothing of its power to astonish, shock, and inspire. A lacerating satire, an exorcism of demons, a grotesque cabinet of horrors, it is the Black Book of the Beat Generation, the forerunner of the psychedelic counterculture, and a progenitor of postmodernism and the digital age. A work of excoriating laughter, linguistic derangement, and transcendent beauty, it remains both influential and inimitable.
This is the first book devoted in its entirety to William Burroughs’ masterpiece, bringing together an international array of scholars, artists, musicians, and academics from many fields to explore the origins, writing, reception, and complex meanings of Naked Lunch. Tracking the legendary book from Texas and Mexico to New York, Tangier, and Paris, Naked Lunch@50 significantly advances our understanding and appreciation of this most elusive and uncanny of texts.
Contributors:
Contributors:
Keith Albarn
Eric Andersen
Gail-Nina Anderson
Théophile Aries
Jed Birmingham
Shaun de Waal
Richard Doyle
Loren Glass
Oliver Harris
Kurt Hemmer
Allen Hibbard
Rob Holton
Andrew Hussey
Rob Johnson
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Ian MacFadyen
Polina Mackay
Jonas Mekas
Barry Miles
R. B. Morris
Timothy S. Murphy
Jurgen Ploog
Davis Schneiderman
Jennie Skerl
DJ Spooky
Philip Taaffe
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Oliver Harris, the author of William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination, is a professor of American literature at Keele University. He is the editor of The Letters of William S. Burroughs, 1945–1959, “Everything Lost”: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs, and Burroughs’ novels, Junky: The Definitive Text of “Junk” and The Yage Letters Redux. Harris is also the author of numerous scholarly articles on Burroughs, the Beat Generation, film noir, and the epistolary form.
Ian MacFadyen has written about William S. Burroughs in a number of essays, including “Machine Dreams: Optical Toys and Mechanical Boys” in the collection Flickers of the Dreamachine. His other work includes Ira Cohen’s Photographs: A Living Theatre and The Blood of the Poet: Lorca and the Duende.
REVIEWS
“Without William there is nothing. . . . Burroughs alone made us pay attention to the realities of contemporary life and gave us the energy to explore the psyche without a filter. . . . He is the brave fool (and he was no fool) who told us what is—was—could be.”—Lou Reed
“I can think of no other work of literary criticism that brings together such a multiplicity of artists, practitioners and critics in such a dynamic assembly of writing forms. The resulting symbiosis strikes me as a whole new critical form, utterly pertinent to Burroughs’ milieu.”—Michael Hrebeniak, author of Action Writing: Jack Kerouac’s Wild Form
— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Preface 00
Acknowledgments 00
In Defense of Perversity: Diary Entry, 1958 00
Jonas Mekas
Dossier One 00
Ian MacFadyen
The Beginnings of ¿Naked Lunch, an Endless Novel¿ 00
Oliver Harris
¿Room for One More¿: The Invitation to Naked Lunch 00
Rob Holton
Dossier Two 00
Ian MacFadyen
William S. Burroughs as ¿Good Ol¿ Boy¿: Naked Lunch in East Texas 00
Rob Johnson
Tangier and the Making of Naked Lunch 00
Allen Hibbard
¿The Natives Are Getting Uppity¿: Tangier and Naked Lunch 00
Kurt Hemmer
¿Paris Is About the Last Place . . .¿: William Burroughs In and Out of Paris and Tangier, 1958¿1960 00
Andrew Hussey
Burroughs: The Beat Hotel Years 00
Jean-Jacques Lebel
Dossier Three 00
Ian MacFadyen
The Danger Zone 00
Eric Andersen
I Am No Doctor 00
R. B. Morris
The Naked Lunch in My Life 00
Barry Miles
A Bombshell in Rhizomatic Slow Motion: The Reception of Naked Lunch in Germany 00
Jurgen Ploog
Banned: Naked Lunch in Apartheid South Africa 00
Shaun de Waal
The Olympia Press and Naked Lunch as Collectible and Book Object 00
Jed Birmingham
Naked Lunch: The Cover Story 00
Polina Mackay
Dossier Four 00
Ian MacFadyen
The Book, the Movie, the Legend: Naked Lunch at 50 00
Jennie Skerl
Still Dirty after All These Years: The Continuing Trials of Naked Lunch 00
Loren Glass
¿Gentlemen I Will Slop a Pearl¿: The (Non)Meaning of Naked Lunch 00
Davis Schneiderman
Burroughs¿ Visionary Lunch 00
Théophile Aries
Dossier Five 00
Ian MacFadyen
Sole Survivor a Raving Madman 00
Gail-Nina Anderson
Random Insect Doom: The Pulp Science Fiction of Naked Lunch 00
Timothy S. Murphy
All Consuming Images: DJ Burroughs and Me 00
Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid
Naked Life: William S. Burroughs, Bioscientist 00
Richard Doyle
Dossier Six: The Music of Naked Lunch 00
Ian MacFadyen
Works Cited and Consulted for Dossiers 000
Contributors 000
Index 000
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC