Rating: 
Summary: Imagination and Exotica: A Compelling Trip
Review:
NAKED LUNCH is the ultimate cut-up/quote bible/scrapbook of what it was like to be alive and a free-thinker in the Fifties. As well, the horrors of the "oil-burning junk habit" and the worlds in which the visionary dwells, are covered in great detail. There is somewhat of a back-story, dealing with a kind of Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-meets-HR-Giger-meet-sthe X Files cabal of aliens and other species infiltrating the human race. Burroughs sees himself as a catch-as-catch-can reporter on all this, "like an agent who has forgotten his own cover story [but] all agents defect and all resisters sell out."
This book is one wild ride, and as I said, should be read as a poetic scrapbook. Burroughs' contributions to all forms of media have been absolutely invaluable. This book was declared innocent of obscenity charges by the United States Supreme Court in 1959, and thus are we allowed to cuss (to an extent) on TV and on the radio. Burroughs made a great leap for free speech that is still being felt today: if a work uses questionable material within contextual merit, then it is not obscene. And NAKED LUNCH is anything but a hemmorhage of the imagination.
The role of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavor, the role of the writer as idol-breaker, and the very form of writing itself. His work is hard to access, and very much an acquired taste. But when you acquire the taste....the world never looks the same. Pick up a copy of this great book, and take your time. If nothing else you're bound to appreciate the exotic settings, Burroughs' imagination, his dry caustic wit, and some gorgeous surreal visuals: i.e. take in the Mugwumps (p.46): if this is not worth the price of a book, nothing is! Another cult novel I'd like to suggest is THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to follow at times...
Review: ...but that's to be expected. Before you read this book it's vital to listen to some spoken word recordings of William S. Burroughs. Once you hear him speak for 5 or 10 minutes you'll be able to read the book with his voice in mind. It's a monotone, world weary, deadpan voice, dusty dry and gritty. There's a lot of pain in this book. It's an EYE opener.
Rating:
Summary: what's going on in the world?
Review: Don't know how to really review a book of such. People labeling it like "for the sadist and masochistic" or "uncatagorized" being shallow in their depths.
Purly a book that steady recognizes how threatening it's ideas are to the reader ( or should i say "the subject"), any reader, no matter what opinion of individualism, even collective, holds. The fact the book dislocates your rationale on theory's of idea & concept as the subject as a matter a fact surly evokes all sorts of relative opinions being irrelivent and irreverent in compartive. I'm not one to talk anyway; but this book obviously did and still does take no prisoners, "and no holes barred!".
As complicating and de-escalating as the book allows itself to be you still find an inhibited coherence staggering uninterupted through the course of every sentence; something too horrowing and complete, history driven, eccentricly riveting and fanaticaly innocent among the happenings of humanity that drove the author to write.
Without a doubt the scariest book ever written.
The concept of dehumanization can not be ignored by anyone who lives, and in pieced-part what the book may be about. The book takes egocentric forms of fantasy, adventursome, vision, experience, rebellion, terror & sabatauge on a universal scale beyond peaks of mear interest and just might make you look at everything including prehistoric events differently.
A physicality lives inside the book, pages turned.
It has everything from pirates to aliens, information classified about past events and future even if the imagionable is the only thing that recongnizes or comprehends.
"With it and for it."
Rating:
Summary: definitely entertaining...
Review: hard to follow in some parts? Oh, yes. Insanely incoherent in other parts? You bet. But, somehow, for some odd reason, I did like this book. There were little meccas of comedy, and strange, perverted truths scattered throughout the text.
Alhtough we all know he was on drugs when he wrote it, it's worth a try. If you don't like it, trash it. But you just might, so give it a shot, even if you don't normally read Beat-Gen stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Cut the Control Lines..
Review: I couldn't read the book the first time through. The second time, I started in the middle, read through, and looped back around the beginning. It was great. As soon as I could get past my need to rationalize and HANG ON to things, it was fabulous. Let go and read. You'll get frustrated and realize just how programmed you are to need to be lead and entertained like a mindless puppet. You might even have the mind to throw the book across the room in disgust that you just can't hang on to the story. Perfect. Burroughs has succeeded.
Rating: 
Summary: Good novel, but too scatterbrained
Review: I read "Naked Lunch" hoping for a gripping story of darkness and despair, but instead I found this book to be a little light in comparison to similar works like "Last Exit to Brooklyn." While its content is equally disturbing, the tone is not as dark as it ought to have been to better explain the story. This book is decent. It's confusing. It's a challenge. I never advise people not to read a book just because I don't like it. Try it out--decide yourself.
Rating:
Summary: I'm not going to lie...
Review: I'm not going to lie and say I even understood this book 90% of the time. What I'm going to say though, is that the book held my interest throughout. Burroughs use of language is enough to do that. There were numerous portions that made me laugh out loud, and equally numerous portions that made me cringe. Of course, I still didn't understand a word of it. So, in short, I'm not real sure what to make of it. My advice for anyone who is thinking about reading it is to give it a shot. If you're adventurous enough, you'll probably get something out of it, and if you hate it, you won't have to waste much time with it (I read it in about three days). It's something different, and that alone makes it worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: An oft-misunderstood classic
Review: Naked Lunch is a seminal 20th century novel, but it probably isn't as widely read as it deserves to be. Many potential readers may be driven away by its total abscence of plot, its notorious obscenity, and its sporadic and impenetrable hallucinogenic passages.
The novel is not as inacessible as its reputation suggests; the first step towards a better understanding of this beat classic is researching its background, and its author. William S. Burroughs was an eccentric who went through phases of obsession with various esoteric themes, and he wrote Naked Lunch during the height of his obsessions with control, dehumanization and addiction. The novel itself is edited down from a thousand pages of 'notes' and is not meant to be ingested as a continuous whole - as Burroughs suggests in the introduction, you can jump in at any point.
Read some of Burroughs' essays, read about the Beat generation, and read Burroughs' more straightforward debut 'Junky,' and things will begin to come together in the surreal satire that is 'Naked Lunch.' The bizarre images and phrases will convey the bleak poetry they were meant to in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: disturbingly beautiful
Review: Naked Lunch is one of the few books that poeple will never take the time and thought to recognize its powerful meanings. When I read this book, I found myself slipping from reality a sentence at a time. Few books have the power to do that. And few authors are willing to go to that extreme. William Burroughs was definitely not afraid of the reactions he might get with this one, he poored his emotions, whether they make sense to anyone or not, and that is very admirable and brave. With Naked Lunch, you'll either despise it or love it, and many poeple won't understand it till about the third time through, but it's well worth the struggle in the end. It shows what most poeple are afraid of seeing and creates disturbing and descriptive images that many authors try to do, but fail . It has the power to open anyone's eyes to the reality of this world.
Rating:
Summary: Imagination and Exotica: A Compelling Trip
Review: NAKED LUNCH is the ultimate cut-up/quote bible/scrapbook of what it was like to be alive and a free-thinker in the Fifties. As well, the horrors of the "oil-burning junk habit" and the worlds in which the visionary dwells, are covered in great detail. There is somewhat of a back-story, dealing with a kind of Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-meets-HR-Giger-meet-sthe X Files cabal of aliens and other species infiltrating the human race. Burroughs sees himself as a catch-as-catch-can reporter on all this, "like an agent who has forgotten his own cover story [but] all agents defect and all resisters sell out." This book is one wild ride, and as I said, should be read as a poetic scrapbook. Burroughs' contributions to all forms of media have been absolutely invaluable. This book was declared innocent of obscenity charges by the United States Supreme Court in 1959, and thus are we allowed to cuss (to an extent) on TV and on the radio. Burroughs made a great leap for free speech that is still being felt today: if a work uses questionable material within contextual merit, then it is not obscene. And NAKED LUNCH is anything but a hemmorhage of the imagination. The role of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavor, the role of the writer as idol-breaker, and the very form of writing itself. His work is hard to access, and very much an acquired taste. But when you acquire the taste....the world never looks the same. Pick up a copy of this great book, and take your time. If nothing else you're bound to appreciate the exotic settings, Burroughs' imagination, his dry caustic wit, and some gorgeous surreal visuals: i.e. take in the Mugwumps (p.46): if this is not worth the price of a book, nothing is! Another cult novel I'd like to suggest is THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez
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