What do you think of Naked Lunch /lit/? I've heard very mixed reviews of it. I for one find it incredible.
>>7374885
It's gay.
>>7374885
>>7374900
I mean, you're not wrong...
>>7374900
True, but the book also has its bad points as well.
>>7374885
>I for one find it incredible
>>/backtoreddit/
>>7374885
Yes, it is incredible. Pure visceral energy. Whenever I see people on here or elsewhere telling me they don't like it, I can safely assume they lack proper aesthetic sensibility. They're Neoclassicists looking at modern art for the first time. Naked Lunch is, like much modern art, anti-interpretation.
Oh, and I was reading Henry Miller's "The Colossus of Maroussi" the other day (Miller was a major influence for Burroughs and the Beats) and there's a part where Miller adopts a sorta surreal-freejazz style when he's talking about Louis Armstrong (as the hero-artist par excellence, raising humanity up from their base violent ways, blah blah blah read it, it's fantastic too) and it's premonitory of Burrough's own style that it could have been an excerpt from Naked Lunch.
>>7375259
>blah blah blah I'm a faggot
Naked Lunch is his only good cut up novel. His pseudo-cut ups are stronger, like the Wild boy and the red night trilogy.
>>7375282
quality post anon
>>7375259
>They're Neoclassicists looking at modern art for the first time.
This is pretty much /lit/ in a nutshell.
>>7375259
Good post.
Can anyone explain to me how exactly cut-up works? I read the wikipedia page and get that it's a way of remixing texts but do you only cut whole paragraphs or pages or do you even cut through sentences? Is there a system to it? How did burroughs do it?
Also I read Junky, Naked Lunch, and The Soft Machine. Liked all of them. I think burroughs has great ideas, a lot of the times his works are just not exactly pleasurable to read, still enjoyable though.
Should I translate it into my language?
>>7374885
I thought it was alternately
1. a boner inducing machine
2. pretty goddamned disgusting
3. disturbing
4. pretty fucking funny
5. incomprehensible gibberish
6. poetic, maybe even a little bit beautiful in small stretches
7. crackpot tinfoil hat conspiracies and batshit insane medical theories
>>7375259
>They're Neoclassicists looking at modern art for the first time.
That's a really cool euphemism for undergrads who're trying to fool themselves into believing they're smarter than the rest because they prefer Shakespeare or Dante over anything that's been written during the last 300 years.
>>7375425
>Is there a system to it?
No.
>How did burroughs do it?
He was so high at the moment not even himself was sure about this.
>>7375425
>Can anyone explain to me how exactly cut-up works?
It's pretty hit and miss. I found it more annoying than interesting. The Soft Machine is where he first started using it (not Naked Lunch, contrary to popular but misguided belief).
He basically just changes word orders and inserts words from the "word hoard" (he had about 1000 pages of fragmentary text he wrote around the time of Naked Lunch. He took bits and pieces from and re-assembled into Naked Lunch and later books) and he sees what happens. Sometimes it's interesting, most times it isn't. Burroughs claimed at times that he wrote as if he were a medium channeling alien intelligences onto the page. Whether he meant that literally, or just as a metaphor for the subconscious is debatable.
>>7375461
But he meant the opposite, you faggot.
>>7374885
its a masterpiece
First time I tried at it I had a very difficult time following. A few years later I revisited it and found the experience spectacular. To me it represents the world as seen by a drug-addled maniac, with it's choppy and bizarre style enhancing this. A great aesthetic experience.
