Getting through Naked Lunch and what was, at first, cumbersome to read became extremely enjoyable. His prose and irreverent subject matter makes for an interesting read.
Soundtrack for the thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOACcFkmwt8
>>7364005
Also, want to add that I can clearly see his influence on Pynchon (at least Gravity's Rainbow) with the barrage of irrelevant acronyms, random names, and seamless transitions.
>>7364013
That's great to hear. Tell me, what you think about the Jeeeeews...?
>>7364015
All they wanna do is doodle christian girls..
>>7364013
>irrelevant acronyms, random names, and seamless transitions.
Hmm, I'm beginning to think Pynchon used the cut-up method and then edited it.
>>7364040
I feel this way as well but if he did then he did a good job of editing. Gravity's Rainbow is far more lucid than Naked Lunch and actually has a plot.
>>7364058
Definitely. The syntax is so tangled that I can't imagine it being designed by normal methods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wawSCvuGj4o
that's my soundtrack for the book
>>7364005
>you will never corner the placenta black market
>you will never hustle on the block with Hassan the dealer
what does it all mean
>>7364089
When WSB says 'ayy' he really i talking about the complex of the Hume/Kant-bet you thought this would say lmao or somethingsystem after it has been passed through the dealer/user chain. That relationship w/the addict money and where it comes from—where DOES it come from?—that relationship feeds into the degeneracy.
Burroughs will always be my GOAT author. I just listened to the 3-parter on YouTube of his 1970-something class on "creative reading," which is great if you want to listen to Burroughs just being Burroughs for about 4 hours, offering autistic insight into the craft. he speaks highly of The Shining by Stephen King at one point, which is funny, and also mentions Michael Crichton, extending the same consideration to these as to Bowles and other authors, w/out any distinction of Crichton/King as plebtier.
>>7364142
l i n k
>>7364152
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dymsKE_N3A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d3fDtxCiAQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNKR6jNumVQ
>>7364157
thank you based anon :')
How do you guys feel about the 'routine'. Reading Naked Lunch and then Queer it seems like a post-modern development on the stream of consciousness. I'm unsure if I fully comprehend ta significance though. What do you guys think?
The Soft Machine is really good.
>>7364295
I think the way Burroughs writes sections is personal to him. He sees it fit to write "routines" that loosely connect to the overall book because that's how he perceives his life. Vignettes stuck together with no rhyme or reason in their order or meaning.
>>7364040
pretty sure he was just cooked af when he wrote GR. he just cleaned it up later. NL was cleaned up by having Ginsberg and Kerouac come over and stick a bunch of random pages in "order".
>>7364437
Maybe. There are different versions of NL out there, some are more edited that others. The cleaned up version I read was shit. It's more fun struggling to make sense of those unconjugated verbs.
>>7364452
That's true, but originally that was how the book came to existence. Also, hash. Alot of it.
>>7364468
Btw I didn't mean G/K edited the grammar. Far as I know they just organized the chapters.
>>7364015
I met with -stein something -- told him there's a brown asterisk that hasn't felt the cold touch of saliva recently. Told him I knew all about their ruse on "puritan women" they like to call it. Says he likes em young too. Too young.
>>7364058
Burroughs didn't actually use the cut-up method on Naked Lunch.
>>7366031
Not THE cut-up method, but he certainly used something similar and even more 'cut up'. Too much of [the real] NL is grammatically mismatched.
>>7366046
prob just the drugs desu
>>7366107
Well, I think he was trying to get around 'natural language' —something that just drugs wouldn't do.
Currently reading Place of Dead Roads. I miss the chaos of NL and the Nova Trilogy
>>7364005
Fucking awesome author; he is imaginative and unconventional at the best of times but repetitive at his worst.
AJ and Benway are great characters.
>you will never walk a leashed baboon into a club before pouring piranha into the swimming pool
>>7366578
He can be a normal writer. It's weird, isn't it?
I found Queer to be one of his most interesting books - it's half way between the pulp drug confessional of Junky & the full hallucinations of NL. It still has a plot, but transitions more smoothly into the routines. Also the main character is 'hard boiled' but deeply conflicted & vulnerable.
>>7366734
*isn't
>>7364005
i've been wanting to read it for a while, college is makes recreational reading a bitch. Anything i should know before going in?
>>7366768
It helps to be stuck alone in an airport for 6 hours when reading it. :')
>>7366768
Op
Burroughs writes in a style that is confusing. He doesn't stick to one setting or character or timeline for too long. I like to keep in mind that he's going to change topics soon while i'm reading. That's really all you should know.
Have fun reading one of the most grotesque novels ever written.
>>7366821
Not OP but some people find his lack of punctuation assaulting also. You'll get the flow of it eventually and (if youre a subvocaler like myself) naturally fill in the gaps
>>7366734
I find Queer to be a great read because it shows the transition he was making between Junky and NL. If I had have read it before Naked Lunch I don't think I would have enjoyed it.
>>7366768
Don't really expect to understand what's happening in terms of a coherent sequence of events. Think of it more like reading some obscure topic on wikipedia where you're slow-dripped random pieces of different stories in different places.
