This is unreadable bull shit.
I got in trouble for reading this back when I was a freshman in high school. I was on the Rumpus Room chapter and that's what the teacher saw. Lucky I didn't get expelled.
>>7689853
>in trouble for reading a book
hahaha what a cunt
>>7689847
all pomo is homojew degenerate art to be honest. better to keep to the greeks shakespeare and so on
>>7689853
Did you go to a Catholic school or something?
>>7689847
This book is hilarious
Plebs need to leave /lit/ forever
>>7689865
Don DeLillo is a great writer, you fiend.
No I mean I read past the preface where he's like "when the aztecs want to drink blood sacrifice, show them what is on the end of the fork" or something. Then the very next page, it's just completely incomprehensible gibberish.
>>7689875
Not him, but white noise is a stylistically awful and contextually mediocre essay in form of a novel.
>>7689871
speaking of hilarious, here's a funny scene from it
"Dr. Benway is operating in an auditorium filled with students: “Now, boys, you won’t see this operation performed very often and there’s a reason for that…. You see it has absolutely no medical value. No one knows what the purpose of it originally was or if it had a purpose at all. Personally I think it was a pure artistic creation from the beginning.
“Just as a bull fighter with his skill and knowledge extricates himself from danger he has himself invoked, so in this operation the surgeon deliberately endangers his patient, and then, with incredible speed and celerity, rescues him from death at the last possible split second…. Did any of you ever see Dr. Tetrazzini perform? I say perform advisedly because his operations were performances. He would start by throwing a scalpel across the room into the patient and then make his entrance like a ballet dancer. His speed was incredible: ‘I don’t give them time to die,’ he would say. Tumors put him in a frenzy of rage. ‘Fucking undisciplined cells!’ he would snarl, advancing on the tumor like a knife-fighter.”"
>>7689884
You're a stylistically awful and contextually mediocre faggot in the form of a faggot.
When I say unreadable, I mean FUCKING INCOMPREHENSIBLE! Am I the only one that got that impression?
>>7689901
There are parts where he goes on stream of conscious rants but that's only a small part of the book
Are you new to reading?
>>7689914
stop trying to pretend like you understood the book. it's a fucking mess.
I loved the book but I don't get how it became famous in any way
>>7689887
This is amazing. Thanks for convincing me to read it, anon.
>>7689915
Books might just not be for you. Maybe try Hop on Pop or the Hunger Games and see if one of those is more your speed. I'm sure you have a TV. Or buy a comic book so there's lots of pretty pictures to help explain the plot for you. Go back to pretending you've read 1984 on arbooks.
>>7689966
if you don't understand it, you don't have to pretend. it's okay.
>>7689975
Look, I get it, your momma told you that you wuz smart, and if you can't understand the book, nobody else can, right? It's not like tens of thousands of people, including scholars, have read the book and found it difficult, but completely comprehensible, right? No, they must all be pretending.
Illiterate.
It wasfun.
>>7689992
So this is what shit posting looks like on /lit/. I come from /mu/ where we have our own special version of assholes like you. I'm just getting into reading. So far I've read story of the eye, the metamorphosis, the wasp factory, and in the miso soup. This book is pretty incomprehensible. If you want to try to piece together what he's saying, good on you man. You really do look like a pretentious asshole if you expect others to actually give a flying fuck about trying to paste together garbled gibberish.
>>7689992
ah the good old appeal to authority. it must be great living life like a braindead vegetable.
I like the story about the father bringing his son to a prostitute for his first piece of ass and the son goes in and cuts her ass cheek off.
>>7690000
>I'm just getting into reading.
So you're outright admitting you have no basis for argument? How about reading more before you post, and start with the fucking greeks instead of trying to tackle the "cool" texts which are obviously beyond your grasp at the moment.
>>7690000
This book is difficult, but it really is comprehensible.
Just read some other stuff and maybe try again in a year of so, it is definetly nothing for beginners.
>>7690018
>start with the greeks
ummmmmmm okay, how about no. I don't wanna waste my fucking time. I am sort of interested in reading dante's inferno though, because fuck yeah satan.
>>7690034
3/10
>>7690037
More of a 5/10 in the beginning but a plain 1/10 towards the end.
>Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard.
>This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.
>This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?”
>“Nah I had to go relieve myself.”
>After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.
>Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we dont need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.”
>After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole’s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes you dig. Thats one thing the asshole couldn’t do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eyes on the end of a stalk.
This book is 5/5
>>7690000
>Quads
Listen, bud, I'm sorry for acting like a douche. I get emotional about this book because its the book that convinced me to finally kick opiates. It's not incomprehensible, but it's very difficult, and it requires a little bit more reading experience than it looks like you have. Again, sorry for lashing out. If you'd like a Burroughs text that explores a lot of the same themes and has a similar aesthetic but it a lot easier for the neophyte, you should check out Cities of the Red Night. It's not a breezy read, but with some work you can piece it together and it's a great experience.
>>7690045
that was literally the only funny part in the novel. the rest of it was aids.
>>7690045
Agree. It is fucking hilarious and at the same time extraordinary poetic.
>>7690034
Before reading Dante you should read Virgil. Before reading the Verge you should read Homer. Start with the Greeks is a meme, but it's a good meme.
>>7690000
Man, it's just a grotesque, neon-colored cartoon filled with slapstick and grimy sex. More the kind of thing you let wash over you rather than trying to parse out explicit meaning phrase-by-phrase. If that's not your style, then fine, but don't act haughty because you dislike something; that's idiotic.
>from /mu/
>special version of assholes like you
Do tell. Are you the kind of guy who's flabbergasted by the idea that people could enjoy noise?
>>7689887
>‘Fucking undisciplined cells!’ he would snarl
awful
>>7690066
>Are you the kind of guy who's flabbergasted by the idea that people could enjoy noise?
noise is one of my favorite genres. I was inspired to read william s burroughs because genesis p orridge is one of the most inspirational people to me in my life.
>>7690082
Huh. Interesting that you can appreciate stuff like TG and have such a strong negative reaction to Naked Lunch.
But seriously, who are the assholes on /mu/ you were talking about? Noise is the genre with the biggest contingent of "the emperor has no clothes, you guys are just pretending to like this" naysayers as far as I'm aware
>>7690096
Well, the reason I'm not enjoying naked lunch, is because I read paragraph after paragraph and it seems like the paragraphs don't really connect to one another. I'm just left feeling with that awful nagging doubt that I missed some sort of meaning, which is my least favorite feeling when reading a book. So, often instead of going back and just trying to figure out what it was I don't understand, I just keep reading and taking in more and more incomprehensible text. I wouldn't compare text to noise, because listening to sound is simply a matter of letting what's entering your head in passively. There's no real skill to listening to music except being attentive to what you're listening to, it doesn't need to be deciphered in any way besides what it makes you feel, as a reaction to simply being attentive. So, it's not a fair comparison what so ever. I am interested to know what people actually enjoy about Naked Lunch.
>>7690152
Literally use the same exact approach to reading Naked Lunch. It's meant to be impressionistic.
>>7689887
absurdism is so fucking predictable and boring.
>>7690173
burroughs has nothing to do with camus, mang.
>>7690152
Yeah, what the other guy said (and what I said initially), it's meant to be impressionistic. Just take it in. Chances are you didn't miss anything, even if it makes literally zero sense. Focus on how you feel while reading it, and maybe look out for some recurring symbolism. Approach it like you would approach understanding a dream, or a drug trip if you do that sort of thing.
I enjoyed it for its strange sense of humor, the frantic, disordered way in which it moves, and the occasionally beautiful writing peaking out through all the ugly shit.
Also, I'd contest that music requires more than just being a passive vessel for what you're hearing, but that's not really relevant to the discussion at hand.
>>7690173
Naked Lunch is not absurdism you dumbbell
>>7690196
>Also, I'd contest that music requires more than just being a passive vessel for what you're hearing, but that's not really relevant to the discussion at hand.
Well, I suppose I'd even argue with myself over that. The thing is, music requires a lot of attention, because it is a meditative process. Often times when I want to enjoy an album fully, I close my eyes and lay on the floor, and only listen to the album. Music does require concentration in order to derive the emotional highs you get from the songs. If you break your concentration, you could lose the cold chill down your spine from listening to whatever it is you're listening to, or lose the immersion. So, I guess in some ways listening to music is actually like taking drugs, but I'm no music theorist and my guess is as good as yours. If you know any essays that are relevant to this topic please recommend them.
>>7689884
Point omega was gud tho
>>7689887
I actually laughed twice here and I don't tend to laugh when reading passages from books. Will read Naked Lunch after what I'm currently reading.
>>7690345
*obvious
>>7690345
You mean, "It's obvious I meant absurd humour," right?
>>7690370
>can't determine which posters are the same from posts
autismal
Does anyone know where I can get an audiobook for this?
>>7690446
what a loaded question. please do humanity a favor and fuck off back to the cave you crawled out of.
>>7690490
>ageism on my /lit/
oooooh I'm so pissed
IT'S 2016!!
>>7690490
under 20 then?
>>7690490
So below 18 then
>>7690634
We dont have to. You already proved your stupidity long ago.
>>7689887
holy fuck I forgot how funny this was
>AND THEN ANOTHER GAY SEX/DRUGS THING HAPPENED
I can't stand 300 pages of this shit.
>>7690827
The words anus and faggot never get old for me so I like it
Naked Lunch is fucking trash and every mewling little faggot itt is trying to way too hard. How do I know your taste is objectively shit? You're defending a beat writer on the internet ultra kek
>>7690173
>absurdism is so fucking predictable
: )
>>7690045
>le epin talking butthole XD
Fuck off back to ribbit faggot
I'm reading The Western Lands, and it's one of the best books I've ever read. Is all of Burroughs this good?
>>7690969
This is more chan humor than anything, reads like something out of Tundra.
>>7690069
Why did you screencap a bunch of pictures of Seth Rogen?
>>7690963
>trying too hard
>this response
started it today the same edition in op's pic actually. got through the first 40 something pages and i really enjoy it so far fuck you /lit/
