Naked Lunch
Naked Lunch is a 1959 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. The novel does not follow a clear linear plot, but is instead structured as a series of non-chronological "routines". Many of these routines follow William Lee, an opioid addict who travels to the surreal city of Interzone and begins working for the organization "Islam Inc."
Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch while living in the Tangier International Zone, which inspired the book's Interzone setting. There, he witnessed escalating tensions between European powers and the Moroccan Nationalist Movement, which are reflected in Interzone's fictional political struggles. Burroughs also struggled with opioid addiction, which the novel describes extensively, although critics disagree whether the novel uses opioids as a metaphor for broader forms of control.
The novel was highly controversial for its depictions of drug use, sadomasochism, and body horror, including a famous description of a man's talking anus taking over his body. The book was considered obscene by the United States Postal Service, the state of Massachusetts, and the city of Los Angeles, each leading to separate legal challenges. In the Massachusetts trial, now recognized as a landmark censorship case, defense attorney Edward de Grazia called writers such as Allen Ginsberg, John Ciardi, and Norman Mailer to testify to the book's literary merit. Although the court initially ruled the book was in fact obscene, this decision was overturned by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which allowed the book to be sold.
Naked Lunch has received a divided critical response. The book's admirers have compared it to the satires of Jonathan Swift and the religious works of Dante Alighieri and Hieronymous Bosch. Its detractors have compared it to pornography, often calling it monotonous and boring. The book has been considered dystopian science fiction, postmodern, parodic, and picaresque. Its experimental techniques have been highly influential on rock music and the cyberpunk genre. Naked Lunch is considered one of the defining texts of the Beat Generation.
Background
In 1923, European powers established the Tangier International Zone in Northern Morocco. To ensure the area's neutrality, the Zone was overseen by representatives from multiple European nations alongside the sultan of Morocco. This government was unable to effectively regulate drugs or prostitution, and American residents were not subject to Moroccan laws.William S. Burroughs moved to the Tangier International Zone in 1954, shortly after the publication of his first novel Junkie. Burroughs was attracted by the zone's reputation for allowing drug use and homosexuality, as portrayed in the works of Paul Bowles, and declared his intention to "steep myself in vice". In Tangier, Burroughs became severely addicted to Eukodal, eventually using the drug every two hours. He had previously been addicted to heroin while writing Junkie. Burroughs also began a sexual relationship with a teenage boy named Kiki, which would last until Kiki's death in September 1957.
In May 1954, Burroughs began work on what would become Naked Lunch. He mailed his early drafts to his friends Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who were the core members of the Beat generation along with Burroughs himself. In a letter to Ginsberg, Burroughs explicitly identified Interzone as a stand-in for the Tangier International Zone. However, the novel's Interzone is also closely related to the fictional "Composite city" Burroughs described in his earlier The Yage Letters, which he wrote before visiting Tangier.
While living in Tangier, Burroughs witnessed violent clashes between Moroccan nationalists and French authorities over its political status. Burroughs did not take a strong stance on the conflict, at one point calling himself "the most politically neutral man in Africa". He defended the riots as just and denounced the brutality of European imperialism, but worried about the impact of Islamic rule on individual freedom.
In 1955, Burroughs attempted to quit Eukodol by checking himself into Benchimol Hospital, where his experiences helped inspire the character of Dr Benway. In 1956, Burroughs successfully mitigated his drug dependency using apomorphine. Burroughs replaced his opioid use with cannabis, and continued writing sections of the novel and mailing them to Ginsberg. Burroughs later stated he "wrote nearly the whole of Naked Lunch on cannabis".
In early 1957, Kerouac and Ginsberg visited Burroughs in Tangier, where they helped Burroughs type his manuscript and assemble the fragments he had mailed them over the years. In the recollection of Paul Bowles, who met Burroughs in 1954, However, Ginsberg worried the lack of character development or a clear narrative would make the book impossible to publish. That summer, Burroughs spent three weeks in Copenhagen, which inspired additional sections of the novel set in "Freeland".
Publication history and legal challenges
In 1957, Allen Ginsberg submitted the Naked Lunch manuscript to Olympia Press, which had a reputation for publishing controversial novels such as Tropic of Cancer and Lolita. Olympia rejected the manuscript, arguing that it was inaccessible and lacked structure. Ginsberg then sent the manuscript to Irving Rosenthal, editor of the Chicago Review. Rosenthal published excerpts from the novel in the Review's Spring 1958 and Autumn 1958 issues. Jack Mabley, a columnist for the Chicago Daily News, publicly criticized the Chicago Review for publishing "obscenity". In response, the University of Chicago insisted that material from Burroughs and Jack Kerouac could not appear in the upcoming Winter issue. Irving Rosenthal resigned from the Review and founded a new literary magazine with Pete Carroll called Big Table, which published the suppressed material in its first issue.Post Office hearing
Rosenthal and Carroll planned to mail the first issue of Big Table in March 1959. However, the US Post Office considered the magazine obscene, which made it un-mailable under the Comstock laws. On June 4th, 1959, the Post Office launched a formal hearing over Big Tables obscenity, with a particular focus on Burroughs' Ten Episodes from Naked Lunch and a short story by Jack Keruoac titled "Old Angel Midnight".Joel Sprayregen, Big Tables attorney, advocated for the magazine's literary value and insisted it was not obscene under the criteria established in Roth v. United States. Pete Carroll, the magazine's co-founder, testified that he considered Burroughs a satirist in the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Nathanael West and that his social criticism required vulgar language. William Duvall, the hearing examiner, admitted that Burroughs' work had some "intelligible satire", but felt its vulgarity outweighed any literary merit. He ruled that the magazine was in fact obscene and could not be mailed.
In February 1960, Big Table filed a federal complaint, arguing that the Post Office's decision violated the First Amendment. On June 30, 1960, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois overturned the Post Office's findings. The Post Office did not appeal this decision.
European and American publication
Inspired by the attention around Big Table's excerpts, Olympia Press reconsidered its rejection and published the novel. Olympia first published the English-language Naked Lunch in France in July 1959.Grove Press bought the American publication rights, and initially planned to exclude the chapters describing Hassan's "Rumpus Room" and A.J.'s party. Burroughs himself had called those sections "pornographic" and expected they would be cut from a US release, although he also felt they constituted a political argument against capital punishment. Ultimately, Grove decided to publish the novel uncensored, encouraged by the praise the book had received from Norman Mailer and Mary McCarthy. Naked Lunch was first published in the US on November 20, 1962, and sold over 14,000 copies in the first 4 months. The US edition included a new appendix by Burroughs titled "Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness". Burroughs originally wrote the deposition in response to a legal hearing in Paris; the text asserts that he and his novel do not promote the use of drugs. Allen Ginsberg criticized this appendix; he found it overly moralizing and felt Burroughs was avoiding responsibility for his own work.
In 1962, the novel was translated into German, but the publishers intentionally left the most explicit sections in untranslated English. In 1964, it was published in the United Kingdom by John Calder. Calder avoided selling the book to wholesalers and only distributed small print runs at a high price to avoid legal attention, and successfully avoided prosecution.
Boston Trial
Naked Lunch was banned in Boston, and in January 1965 the novel was tried in rem. William Cowin represented the state of Massachusetts, while Edward de Grazia represented Grove Press. Cowin argued the book's vulgarity overwhelmed any literary value it had, and that nearly every page contained something obscene. His prosecution emphasized the novel's lack of structure, arguing that the most explicit passages could be judged in isolation without considering the book as a whole.De Grazia called authors and professors to testify about the novel's social value and literary merit. Norman Mailer praised Burroughs' literary talent and defended the novel's structure by comparing it to Finnegans Wake. John Ciardi compared the book to a hellfire sermon akin to the works of Dante Alighieri and Hieronymous Bosch and argued its vulgarity was a key part of its effect. He also argued that Burroughs' uncontrolled writing process did not undermine the novel's artistry. Professor Norman Holland agreed with Ciardi's interpretation and suggested Augustine might have written a work like Naked Lunch if he were still alive. Professor Thomas Jackson also compared the novel's explicit passages to Dante Alighieri's scenes of cannibalism and scatology, and the novel's structure to Ezra Pound's Cantos and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Paul Hollander argued the novel showcased the depravity of addiction, and John Sturrock suggested it helped readers understand drug-induced psychosis. Allen Ginsberg discussed the book as a metaphor for addiction in general, analyzed connections between the novel's depictions of sexuality and drugs, and read his poem "On Burroughs' Work" from the stand.
In his cross-examinations, William Cowin suggested the novel was anti-Catholic, quizzed the witnesses on whether they could remember its characters, and challenged them to interpret provocative passages like the talking anus scene. He did not call any witnesses to testify against the book.
On March 23, 1965, the court ruled that the novel was in fact obscene. Grove appealed this decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. On July 7, 1966, based on new obscenity guidelines from the United States Supreme Court in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, the state supreme court overturned the ban, arguing that the testimony had demonstrated the novel's social and literary value. In a dissent, Justice Paul Reardon insisted the book was "literary sewage".
Grove Press exploited the trial as a marketing strategy. Grove compared Naked Lunch to Ulysses, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Tropic of Cancer, which had also been challenged for obscenity, and included transcripts of the court testimonies in a new edition of the book.