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{{Short description|1959 novel by William S. Burroughs}}
{{About|the book|the film|Naked Lunch (film)||Naked Lunch (disambiguation)}}
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{{Infobox book
| name = Naked Lunch
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[[William S. Burroughs]] moved to the Tangier International Zone in 1954, shortly after the publication of his first novel ''[[Junkie (novel)|Junkie]]''. Burroughs was attracted by the zone's reputation for allowing drug use and homosexuality, as portrayed in the works of [[Paul Bowles]], and declared his intention to "steep myself in vice".{{sfn|Finlayson|2015|pp=185–187}} Bowles himself briefly appears in ''Naked Lunch'' under the name Andrew Keif.{{sfn|Finlayson|2015|p=212}}{{sfn|Goodman|1981|p=113}} In Tangier, Burroughs became severely addicted to [[Oxycodone|Eukodol]],{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=258}} eventually using the drug every two hours.{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=262}} He had previously been addicted to [[heroin]] while writing ''Junkie''.{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=190-102}} Burroughs also began a sexual relationship with a teenage boy named Kiki, which would last until Kiki's death in September 1957.{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=254}}{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=282}}
In May 1954, Burroughs began work on what would become ''Naked Lunch''. He mailed his early drafts to his friends [[Allen Ginsberg]] and [[Jack Kerouac]], who were the core members of the [[Beat generation]] along with Burroughs himself.{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=274}}{{sfn|Sterritt|2013|p=35}}
While living in Tangier, Burroughs witnessed violent clashes between Moroccan nationalists and [[French protectorate in Morocco|French authorities]] over its political status. Burroughs did not take a strong stance on the conflict, at one point calling himself "the most politically neutral man in Africa". He defended the riots as just and denounced the brutality of European [[imperialism]], but worried about the impact of Islamic rule on individual freedom.<ref name="Natives">{{cite book |last1=Hemmer |first1=Kurt |editor1-last=Harris |editor1-first=Oliver |editor2-last=MacFadyen |editor2-first=Ian |title=Naked Lunch @ 50: Anniversary Essays |date=2009 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |location=Carbondale |isbn=978-0-8093-2915-1 |pages=65–72 |chapter="The natives are getting uppity": Tangier and Naked Lunch}}</ref>
In 1955, Burroughs attempted to quit Eukodol by checking himself into Benchimol Hospital, where his experiences helped inspire the character of Dr Benway.{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=279–280}} In 1956, Burroughs successfully mitigated his drug dependency using [[apomorphine]].{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=284–285}} Burroughs replaced his opioid use with [[cannabis]], and continued writing sections of the novel and mailing them to Ginsberg.{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=290}}
In early 1957, Kerouac and Ginsberg visited Burroughs in Tangier, where they helped Burroughs type his manuscript and assemble the fragments he had mailed them over the years.{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=301–305}} However, Ginsberg worried the lack of character development or a clear narrative would make the book impossible to publish.{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=308}} That summer, Burroughs spent three weeks in Copenhagen, which inspired additional sections of the novel set in "Freeland".{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=309-311}}
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In New York City, William Lee hides from a narcotics agent. He and fellow heroin user Bill Gains agree that law enforcement has become too aggressive and decide to leave New York. Lee travels to Mexico City, then to the surreal city of Interzone.
Lee finds that Interzone is centered around a black market of drugs and giant centipede meat, and its residents include monstrous creatures called Mugwumps. The city is contested by four rival political parties:
A.J., a Factualist, and Hassan, a Liquefactionist, both support a mysterious organization called Islam Inc. This organization hires Lee to find and recruit the sociopathic Doctor Benway, who previously established a dystopian [[police state]] in Annexia. Lee meets Benway in Freeland, where he performs psychological experiments at a "Reconditioning Center". He agrees to work for Islam Inc. These events are interspersed with non-chronological vignettes about Lee's criminal history and drug use, A.J.'s and Hassan's sadomasochistic parties, Benway's unethical experiments, other characters' grotesque transformations, and abstract [[cut-up]] sequences with no clear narrative arc.
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[[File:Allen Ginsberg 1979 - cropped.jpg|thumb|left|200px|[[Allen Ginsberg]] ''(pictured in 1979)'' inadvertently coined the novel's title. Ginsberg later incorporated the title into a poem, which he read in court during one of the book's obscenity trials.]]
Burroughs originally used the title ''Interzone'' for his manuscript.{{sfn|Sterritt|2013|pp=60–61}} He also considered several titles involving the [[Sargasso Sea]], including ''Meet Me in Sargasso'' and ''The Sargasso Trail'', possibly inspired by [[William Hope Hodgson]]'s ''[[Sargasso Sea Stories]]''.<ref name="Insect">{{cite book |last1=Murphy |first1=Timothy S. |editor1-last=Harris |editor1-first=Oliver |editor2-last=MacFadyen |editor2-first=Ian |title=Naked Lunch @ 50: Anniversary Essays |date=2009 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |location=Carbondale |isbn=978-0-8093-2915-1 |pages=223–232 |chapter=Random Insect Doom: The Pulp Science Fiction of Naked Lunch}}</ref>
The final title began as a mistake. Reading aloud from the manuscript for ''[[Queer (novel)|Queer]]'', [[Allen Ginsberg]] misread the phrase "a leer of nakedlust wrenched" as "a leer of naked lunch", and [[Jack Kerouac]] suggested Burroughs embrace this mangled wording as a title. The title originally referred to a planned three-part work made up of "Junk", "Queer" and "Yage", corresponding to his first three manuscripts, before it came to describe the book later published as ''Naked Lunch''.<ref name="EndlessNovel">{{cite book |last1=Harris |first1=Oliver |editor1-last=Harris |editor1-first=Oliver |editor2-last=MacFadyen |editor2-first=Ian |title=Naked Lunch @ 50: Anniversary Essays |date=2009 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |location=Carbondale |isbn=978-0-8093-2915-1 |pages=14–25 |chapter=The Beginnings of "Naked Lunch, an Endless Novel"}}</ref> Ginsberg would later interpret and expand on the title in his poem ''On Burroughs' Work'', published in the collection ''Reality Sandwiches'':<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ginsberg |first1=Allen |title=Reality Sandwiches |date=1963 |publisher=City Lights Books |location=San Francisco |page=40 |url=https://archive.org/details/realitysandwiche00gins |access-date=4 August 2023}}</ref>
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Burroughs' writing aims to provoke disgust.{{sfn|Lydenberg|1987|p=143}} The novel contains many explicit sexual scenes, emphasizing "sterile, inhuman, malevolent" acts of [[castration]], [[sodomy]], [[pederasty]], and [[sadomasochism]];<ref name="hassan">{{cite book |last1=Hassan |first1=Ihab |editor1-last=Skerl |editor1-first=Jennie |editor2-last=Lydenberg |editor2-first=Robin |title=William S. Burroughs At the Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989 |date=1991 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |location=Carbondale and Edwardsville |isbn=0-8093-1586-6 |pages=53–67 |chapter=The Subtracting Machine: The Work of William Burroughs}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Oxenhandler |first1=Neal |editor1-last=Skerl |editor1-first=Jennie |editor2-last=Lydenberg |editor2-first=Robin |title=William S. Burroughs At the Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989 |date=1991 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |location=Carbondale and Edwardsville |isbn=0-8093-1586-6 |pages=133–147 |chapter=Listening to Burroughs' Voice}}</ref> in particular, the novel features recurring imagery connecting [[hanging]] with [[orgasm]].<ref>{{harvnb|Tanner|1966|p=550}}: "And the torments of deprivation are portrayed by the image of "the orgasm of a hanged man when the neck snaps" which becomes a veritable obsession in Naked Lunch."</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stimpson |first1=Catharine R. |title=The Beat Generation And The Trials Of Homosexual Liberation |journal=Salmagundi |date=1982 |issue=58/59 |pages=373–392 |jstor=40547579 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40547579 |issn=0036-3529 |quote=Repetitive images of necrophiliacs getting it off as young men ejaculate on the gallows are meant to gag}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Mullins|2002|p=63}}: "While representations of sex acts are absent from Burroughs's first three books, one sex act is repeatedly—almost obsessively—represented in Naked Lunch and later books. The various hanging scenes in Naked Lunch and the cut-up trilogy that follows all figure strangulation as the coming together of sex and death, of orgasm and metamorphosis."</ref> In most cases, the novel portrays sex as exploitative rather than consensual.{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=255–256}} Many "routines" involve [[body horror]], especially grotesque transformations of humans into insects or amorphous blobs.<ref name="hassan"/> Many of the novel's grotesque images revolve around consumption: people are described as animals like vampire bats and boa constrictors, trade giant centipede meat, and depend on the secretions of monsters called Mugwumps.{{sfn|Tanner|1966|pp=553–554}}{{sfn|Burroughs|1992|p=45}}
The novel describes its characters in behaviorist terms, emphasizing stimuli and responses rather than emotions and internal states. The novel depicts humans as mechanical beings, creating what Edward Foster describes as a "Pavlovian nightmare".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Foster |first1=Edward Halsey |title=Understanding the Beats |date=1992 |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |location=Columbia, S.C |isbn=0-87249-798-4 |pages=161–163}}</ref>
===Genre===
Biographer Barry Miles and Burroughs himself have called ''Naked Lunch'' a [[Picaresque novel]].{{sfn|Miles|2014|p=352}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rivers |first1=J.E. |editor1-last=Hibbard |editor1-first=Allen |title=Conversations with William S. Burroughs |date=1976 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |location=Jackson |isbn=1-57806-182-2 |chapter=An Interview with William S Burroughs |page=105}}</ref> Other critics consider the book a [[parody]] with elements of [[spy fiction]], [[detective fiction]], [[science fiction]], and [[horror fiction]].<ref name="Newhouse"/>{{sfn|Loewinsohn|1998|p=573}}, or a [[dystopian]] [[science fiction]] novel in the tradition of ''[[Brave New World]]'' and ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tytell |first1=John |editor1-last=Skerl |editor1-first=Jennie |editor2-last=Lydenberg |editor2-first=Robin |title=William S. Burroughs At the Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989 |date=1991 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |location=Carbondale and Edwardsville |isbn=0-8093-1586-6 |pages=155–156 |chapter=The Broken Circuit}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Moorcock |first1=Michael |title=The Cosmic Satirist|url=https://realitystudio.org/criticism/the-cosmic-satirist/ |access-date=5 July 2023 |magazine=New Worlds |date=February 1965}}</ref> [[Marshall McLuhan]] considered the novel an "anti-Utopia" response to [[Arthur Rimbaud]]'s ''[[Illuminations (poetry collection)|Illuminations]]''.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=McLuhan |first1=Marshall |title=Notes on Burroughs|magazine=The Nation |date=28 December 1964}}</ref> The novel has been described as [[Postmodern literature|postmodern]]{{sfn|Baldwin|2002|p=159}} and "proto-postmodern".{{sfn|Yu|2008|p=49}}
The novel is partly autobiographical. The first chapter retells events previously described in Burroughs' semi-autobiographical first novel ''[[Junkie (novel)|Junkie]]''
==Analysis and themes==
The novel describes Interzone's four political parties: the Liquefactionists want to physically dissolve and absorb other people, the Senders want to control other people's minds via [[telepathy]], and the Divisionists want to endlessly replicate themselves. These parties each represent threats to individualism, and are opposed by the fourth party, the Factualists, to which Lee belongs. The novel is especially critical of the Senders, describing them as "the Human Virus", interested in control solely for its own sake, and the root cause of "poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, [and] insanity".{{sfn|Tanner|1966|pp=556–557}}{{sfn|Burroughs|1992|p=141}} The novel showcases the struggle between authoritarian, bureaucratic control, epitomized by Dr. Benway, and individual freedom, represented by the Factualist Party. AJ and Lee, both Factualists, fight back against these systems of control with violence and absurd humor. However, Burroughs undermines these characters' heroism: AJ and Lee work for Islam Inc., which has unclear goals of its own, AJ may be a double agent, and Lee is himself controlled by addiction.<ref name="Newhouse">{{cite book |last1=Newhouse |first1=Thomas |title=The Beat generation and the popular novel in the United States: 1945-1970 |date=2000 |publisher=McFarland |location=Jefferson (N.C.) |isbn=0-7864-0841-3 |pages=112–117}}</ref>
Robin Lydenberg observes that all three non-Factionalist parties represent homogenization and opposition to individual expression. Likewise, Dr. Benway and other scientists attempt to "improve" humanity, but show contempt for the diversity and complexity of human life.{{sfn|Lydenberg|1985|p=61–62}} Ron Loewinsohn identifies the political parties as representing different methods of international control: Liquefactionists as [[fascism]], Divisionists as [[colonialism]], and Senders as the [[soft power]] and cultural influence of the United States.{{sfn|Loewinsohn|1998|p=572}} He notes that the Factualists, who infiltrate and undermine the other parties, mirror Burroughs' understanding of how apomorphine works to
Interzone is also marked by a violent struggle between Nationalists and Imperialists, reflecting the political situation Burroughs observed in Tangiers. The novel does not align itself with either side. One of the book's most political routines mocks the Nationalist Party Leader, describing him as a "gangster in drag" who cares only about his own position, not the residents of Interzone. However, the Capitalists who oppose him are equally unconcerned with Interzone's residents, who they see as targets to exploit. This skepticism of both sides reflects Burroughs' own
The novel's routines emphasize [[addiction]], especially to [[heroin]], which can be read as a metaphor for broader social problems and obsessions.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Woodard |first1=Rob |title=Naked Lunch is still fresh |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/apr/16/naked-lunch-william-burroughs |access-date=6 July 2023 |work=The Guardian |date=16 Apr 2009}}</ref>{{sfn|Sterritt|2013|pp=60–61}}{{sfn|Tanner|1966|p=552}} David Ayers interprets heroin as Burroughs' "paradigm" for understanding systems of control.<ref name="Ayers"/> However, Frank McConnell argues that ''Naked Lunch'' is straightforwardly about heroin addiction in itself, and should not be read as symbolic.<ref name="mcconnell"/> Lydenberg argues that Burroughs' parenthetical asides challenge the reader's instinct to "evade" the darkness of the book by treating its disturbing elements as symbols or [[allegories]], and instead show that Burroughs insists on a literal reading.{{sfn|Lydenberg|1987|pp=13-15}} Frederick Whiting emphasizes that the novel's drug motif should be seen as a [[metonym]] for social and economic issues, not a metaphor.{{sfn|Whiting|2006|p=165}}
The novel has been described as "an essentially nihilistic work"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lodge |first1=David |editor1-last=Skerl |editor1-first=Jennie |editor2-last=Lydenberg |editor2-first=Robin |title=William S. Burroughs At the Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989 |date=1991 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |location=Carbondale and Edwardsville |isbn=0-8093-1586-6 |page=78 |chapter=Objections to William Burroughs}}</ref> and "consistently hostile, contemptuous, forcefully hateful [...] without joy."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hoffman |first1=Frederick |title=The Mortal No: Death And The Modern Imagination |date=1964 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton, New Jersey |pages=487–488}}</ref> Robin Lydenberg suggests that the novel advocates "a violent rejection and undermining of the entire dual system of morality."{{sfn|Lydenberg|1987|p=6}}
Barry Miles interprets the recurring hanging scenes as critiquing sexual exploitation, racist lynchings, and capital punishment in general.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Miles |first1=Barry |title=William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible: A Portrait |date=1993 |publisher=Hyperion |location=New York |isbn=9781562828486 |pages=90–91 |edition=1st}}</ref> Burroughs himself considered his novel a Swiftian argument against the death penalty.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Corso |first1=Gregory |last2=Ginsberg |first2=Allen |editor1-last=Hibbard |editor1-first=Allen |title=Conversations with William S. Burroughs |date=1999 |publisher=University press of Mississipi |location=Jackson |isbn=1-57806-182-2 |page=4 |chapter=Interview with William Burroughs}}</ref>
===The man who taught his asshole to talk===
One of the novel's most famous routines describes "the man who taught his asshole to talk".{{sfn|Burroughs|1992|p=110}} Armed with the power of speech, the anus takes over the man's body and brain. Tony Tanner sees this routine as a paradigm for Burroughs' general theme of humans decaying into lower forms of life.{{sfn|Tanner|1966|p=555}} Wayne Pounds reads it as a parody of [[behaviorism|behaviorist]] engineering and the pursuit of efficiency.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pounds |first1=Wayne |title=The Postmodern Anus: Parody and Utopia in Two Recent Novels by William Burroughs |journal=Poetics Today |date=1987 |volume=8 |issue=3/4 |pages=611–629 |doi=10.2307/1772572 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772572 |issn=0333-5372}}</ref> Robin Lydenberg reads it as challenging the notion that language differentiate humans from animals.{{sfn|Lydenberg|1985|p=58}} Loewinsohn sees it representing zero-sum domination, contrasted against another anus-centered story shortly afterward which represents positive-sum cooperation.{{sfn|Loewinsohn|1998|p=582}} Manuel Luis Martínez considers it a political allegory for Burroughs' [[libertarianism|libertarian]] beliefs. The anus claims to want equal rights before taking over the body, and the routine is juxtaposed with Dr. Benway calling democracy a cancer, suggesting that egalitarianism can become authoritarian.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Martínez |first1=Manuel Luis |title=Countering the Counterculture: Rereading Postwar American Dissent from Jack Kerouac to Tomás Rivera |date=2003 |publisher=University of Wisconsin Press |location=Madison |isbn=0-299-19284-9 |pages=34–37}}</ref> Burroughs himself considered the scene a metaphor for ever-expanding [[bureaucracy]].{{sfn|Goodman|1981|p=113}}
Jamie Russell interprets the routine as expressing Burroughs' view of homosexuality. Burroughs believed that men were coerced into a binary of either heterosexuality or effeminacy, as the "[[sissy]]" archetype was the only role society recognized for gay men. He considered this feminine mimicry self-destructive, not empowering or subversive, and believed it created a marginalized identity akin to schizophrenia. Russell observes that the anus is originally used for a [[Ventriloquism|ventriloquy]] routine. This mirrors a description in Burroughs' first novel ''Junkie'', in which effeminate gay men are derided as "ventriloquists’ dummies who have moved in and taken over the ventriloquist".{{sfn|Russell|2001|pp=43–52}}
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* {{cite book |last1=Goodman |first1=Michael Barry |title=Contemporary Literary Censorship: The Case History of Burroughs' Naked Lunch |date=1981 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |location=Metuchen, N.J. London |isbn=0-8108-1398-X}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Loewinsohn |first1=Ron |title="Gentle Reader, I Fain Would Spare You This, but My Pen Hath Its Will like the Ancient Mariner": Narrator(s) and Audience in William S. Burroughs's "Naked Lunch" |journal=Contemporary Literature |date=1998 |volume=39 |issue=4 |pages=560–585 |doi=10.2307/1208726 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208726 |issn=0010-7484}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Lydenberg |first1=Robin |title=Notes from the Orifice: Language and the Body in William Burroughs |journal=Contemporary Literature |date=1985 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=55–73 |doi=10.2307/1208201 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1208201 |issn=0010-7484}}
* {{cite book |last1=Lydenberg |first1=Robin |title=Word Cultures: Radical Theory and Practice in William S. Burroughs' Fiction |date=1987 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Urbana and Chicago |isbn=0-252-01413-8}}
* {{cite book |last1=Miles |first1=Barry |title=Call Me Burroughs: A Life |date=2014 |publisher=Twelve |location=New York |isbn=9781455511938 |edition=First |url=https://archive.org/details/callmeburroughsl0000mile}}
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