You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.16 AVERAGE
3.16 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Utterly confounding.
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ah man, what a load of words. I read this because I'm seeing the movie in a few weeks. It looks incomprehensible, so I thought, "better read the book, help me understand things".
Dear reader, I am only more confused, if equal parts delighted.
This had me flashing back to last year's Infinite Jest where the best you can do is hold on and hope everything will be made clear later. The curse of these really good, challenging books is that they require a second read while actively deterring approaching the book again. I'm looking forward to reading Burroughs' other drug-soaked novels, seeing the films based off his work, and maybe returning to this in a couple years with the best understanding someone who's hardest drug use is marijuana and coffee can hope for.
Dear reader, I am only more confused, if equal parts delighted.
This had me flashing back to last year's Infinite Jest where the best you can do is hold on and hope everything will be made clear later. The curse of these really good, challenging books is that they require a second read while actively deterring approaching the book again. I'm looking forward to reading Burroughs' other drug-soaked novels, seeing the films based off his work, and maybe returning to this in a couple years with the best understanding someone who's hardest drug use is marijuana and coffee can hope for.
An uncompromising trip to the pits of hell.
EDIT: and one that i cannot get out of my mind apparentally. I literally think about this book all the time. Even though I really dislike it and don't understand it, there is just something about it that sticks with you, that's a bit deeper than just shock value. Its just so perverse and yet somehow.. beautiful? The writing is honestly amazing and yet it feels like reading the worst thing ever. Truly a perplexing work.
EDIT: and one that i cannot get out of my mind apparentally. I literally think about this book all the time. Even though I really dislike it and don't understand it, there is just something about it that sticks with you, that's a bit deeper than just shock value. Its just so perverse and yet somehow.. beautiful? The writing is honestly amazing and yet it feels like reading the worst thing ever. Truly a perplexing work.
Really wanted to finish it but just couldn't take it anymore. Obvious that the style influenced Pynchon and Gibson but they were able to take it and make actually interesting stories out of it instead of complete nonsense.
challenging
dark
"The body knows what veins you can hit... But when it comes I always hit blood... Red orchid bloomed at the bottom of the dropper."
I had more patience for Naked Lunch after reading the author's postscripts. The Cronenberg-esque sex and body horror are difficult to stomach -- so many ejaculation-and-excrement-soaked death sequences -- but that's by design, with Burroughs historically pushing limits to obscenity laws. The writing is also at least unabashedly queer, particularly a subaltern queerness, that insistently spurns the socially acceptable.
It's certainly a challenge reading a book that's more a poem, penned in an explicit rejection of story structure, meant more to repulse than to entertain (by the author's own admission!). But there's something affecting to a text drafted at the height of an opium addiction. And there's an anarchic anti-police politic I appreciate that winds its way into the grit and grime.
I had more patience for Naked Lunch after reading the author's postscripts. The Cronenberg-esque sex and body horror are difficult to stomach -- so many ejaculation-and-excrement-soaked death sequences -- but that's by design, with Burroughs historically pushing limits to obscenity laws. The writing is also at least unabashedly queer, particularly a subaltern queerness, that insistently spurns the socially acceptable.
It's certainly a challenge reading a book that's more a poem, penned in an explicit rejection of story structure, meant more to repulse than to entertain (by the author's own admission!). But there's something affecting to a text drafted at the height of an opium addiction. And there's an anarchic anti-police politic I appreciate that winds its way into the grit and grime.
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I have never read anything like this to the point I questioned myself about my English proficiency. No idea what to think of it as of now, maybe I will do a 2nd reading one day because I have absolutely no idea what happened.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexual content
it's actually so rare for me to not finish a book, especially one that I own, but this is just awful edgelord rage bait bullshit that I simply will not put up with. started reading it on a train and did the "shake my head while reading so people know I disapprove" thing in real actual life because I was so embarrassed to be reading something this bad in public. i also want to add that I do not think of this as a book that's difficult. again, i refused to finish but from what i've gathered so far it's actually very concise and direct in its prose and its messaging. it's just that those things are so fundamentally awful and irredeemable that no amount of creative narrative choices can salvage it. lastly i will say that i actually really enjoyed the first chapter, which felt exciting and it painted a picture of a "i'm waiting for the man" by velvet underground sort of druggie chic, but very quickly after this burroughs decided to abandon good writing in favor of shock value. like just repulsive meaningless nonsense. god. i'm actually so pissed off writing this.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Truly one of the great works of art full stop.
This is not a novel, do not approach it as one. Characters are nonexistent, narrative is destroyed. This is a book about destroying the power of words to control us, it is trying to blow up our memetic selves.
“This is Revelation and Prophecy of what I can pick up without FM on my 1920 crystal set with antennae of jissom…gentle reader, we see God through our assholes in the flash bulb of orgasm…through these orifices transmute your body…The way OUT is the way IN…”
This is not a novel, do not approach it as one. Characters are nonexistent, narrative is destroyed. This is a book about destroying the power of words to control us, it is trying to blow up our memetic selves.
“This is Revelation and Prophecy of what I can pick up without FM on my 1920 crystal set with antennae of jissom…gentle reader, we see God through our assholes in the flash bulb of orgasm…through these orifices transmute your body…The way OUT is the way IN…”
challenging
dark
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Loved it from start to finish, felt myself not wanting to pick it up right away just because of the way the vignettes are so scattered but if you read it more like short stories it works.