Naked Lunch----Drugs and Addicts

This is the 4th in a series of essays about the novel Naked Lunch. This essay will deal with the issue of Drugs and their portrayal in the novel.


Perhaps the least understood area in the Burroughs story is the issue of drugs. In one sense, Naked Lunch is entirely a story about drugs and drug use, the life of the addict and the struggles of overcoming addiction, but this only on the surface. In another sense it is not about drugs at all. Drugs only become the medium to portray a repetitious essay about the dangers of unchecked organizational power. At the same time, though, the fact cannot be ignored that many of the events in the book are only embellished tales from Burroughs own personal experience. So, Naked Lunch treats the issue of drugs as a cautionary tale of pleasure and pain, and attempts to cut away the layers of dogmatic thinking that surrounded the world of drugs in the 1950's (as well as the present world) by presenting it as it was, at least for him. He neither glorifies nor completely demonizes the junkie, but presents him as a sick individual in need of a cure if he is to find relief.

What makes the issue of drugs in Naked Lunch confusing, or misunderstood, though, is not the detailed descriptions of the drug use, but the issue of Burroughs' constantly shifting morals about the problem. Burroughs never really makes a statement that the reader can take as a stance about the issue. In Naked Lunch the reader sees the junkie in action, and the picture shows both the comforts and the disadvantages of drug use, and in particular heroin use. But, in interviews and novels later on, drugs are deemed dangerous or useless, though they continue to play a part in the novels.

So, why the constantly shifting viewpoint?

It's not as if he suddenly became an advocate for anti-drug laws. He certainly didn't speak out against them in an overly aggressive way. His 'Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness', which was included as an Introduction in the first American edition of Naked Lunch (by Grove Press in 1962), spends quite a bit of time on the drug issue, but (as this essay notes) equates the issue of addiction to government control and not as an inherent quality of the drugs themselves. In interviews he seems almost subdued, or trying to avoid the subject, knowing that legions of drug-using counter-culture thinkers would be reading the underground press-type magazines he usually gave interviews to. As with nearly all things in Burroughs life, there is strong evidence of a serious inner conflict over the issue of drug use and expanded consciousness. He seems to have seriously doubted the merits of using drugs for any purpose but to feel different, often commenting that any experience a person had while under the influence of drugs could be replicated without them, if the person knew how. While this has the feeling of an attempt to deter people from drugs through a slightly falsified statement, it certainly shows an aversion to the idea that a chemical has the power to make the mind more open to new ideas. His views on Timothy Leary's experiments with LSD are a case in point.

Burroughs tended to skirt the issues of saying what he really thought about Leary's experiments, though the question was often put to him during interviews in the 1960's. Usually he hinted at finding them silly, but more often than not just assumed them to be pointless. His own experiments, though never detailed in any elaborate way (certainly not in the way that Leary's experiments were written about by Tom Wolfe in "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"), were included as evidence in the essay Letter From a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs, written in 1956, before Naked Lunch, and published in the British Journal of Addiction. In it, Burroughs details all of his experiences thus far, which is fairly extensive if ones remembers he wrote the essay when he was 42. However, he was still using drugs on and off in the years immediately after writing the essay. Perhaps it is best to say that his view on drugs was that they were fun, but only offering limited means to ends for the user.

The issue of drugs could easily have been dealt with under the subject of societal control, since Burroughs often commented that drugs were just another control mechanism used by governments and underground governments to maintain a money-making system over uneducated, easy prey. In some senses, he seems to have certainly been right. He would not be the first to suggest that government agencies in America used illegal as well as legal drugs as a tool to maintain a status quo among both the rich and the poor. Civil rights leaders in the 1960's hinted that the abundance of liquor stores and easy access to illegal drugs in black neighborhoods in the United States was not going unnoticed by legislators and lawmakers. Perhaps the abundance of access to addictive substances was a ploy to keep people focused on drinking or shooting up rather than gaining positions of power and prominence. This idea would definitely have appealed to Burroughs' acute sense of distrust with the American government and its power-elite.

So, in Naked Lunch we see an endless parade of junkies, pushers and police officers devoted to maintaining and profiting from drug abuse. Burroughs' equation for this idea was called the Algebra of Need, a symbiotic relationship whereby the junkie, pusher/dealer and cop all work in unison to make sure that the other exists. Each part relies on the other for its own existence. If the junkie stops using, then the cop has nothing to do, so laws are created that will put people in situations to find themselves disposed to using drugs. For instance, arresting someone of suspicion of drug possession and then putting them in jail where they are likely to encounter drugs. Once they are out on the street again, they have experienced drug use and crave it, giving the police added incentive to maintain a situation where their work is required.

The equation is both simple and paranoid. It runs throughout Naked Lunch (and much of Burroughs' work of the 1960's) as a common theme that is returned to again and again. As has been mentioned, most of the characters in the book are junkies, addicted to one type of drug or another. Some, like Lee, use heroin or heroin/morphine derivatives, while others use imaginary drugs, such as the Black Meat or Mugwump Fluid, which Burroughs invents as an illustration of issues concerning control. Sometimes, the opiates and imaginary drugs are required by the agent to complete his mission. Marijuana is present, but Burroughs' opinion of marijuana was that it was not much of a drug, and much closer to alcohol in its effectiveness. Because of this, it does not take a prominent place among the drug anecdotes in the book.

The opening chapter of the book is a narrative from Lee's point of view as a junkie in New York, running from the law and relating 'trade' stories from the lifestyle of a heroin addict. The early section of the novel has a few different anecdotes from an anthropological perspective about how drug addicts live. It reads like a disjointed monograph on a foreign race, interspersed with bracketed mini anecdotes to clarify certain points. The tone is ironic, the narrator relating how a junkie caught in jail will often prepare for such a mishap by always squeezing one drop of heroin into his shirt pocket every time he administers the drug, over and over, just in case he finds himself in such a situation. In the event that he does find himself in jail, the junkie is able to add water to the pocket and get a fix that can tide him over until he is released. The narrator also describes the way a junkie will use a pin hidden in his shoe to make a small hole in his calf, just large enough to drip the reinvigorated heroin into.

Provident junkies, known as squirrels, keep stashes against a bust. Every time I take a shot I let a few drops fall into my vest pocket, the lining is stiff with stuff. I had a plastic dropper in my shoe and a safety pin stuck in my belt. You know how this pin and dropper routine is put down: "She seized a safety pin caked with blood and rust, gouged a great hole in her leg which seemed to hang open like an obscene, festering mouth waiting for unspeakable congress with the dropper which she now plunged out of sight into the gaping wound. But her hideous galvanized need (hunger of insects in dry places) has broken the dropper off deep in the flesh of her ravaged thigh (looking rather like a poster on soil erosion). But what does she care? She does not even bother to remove the splintered glass, looking down at her bloody haunch with the cold blank eyes of a meat trader. What does she care for the atom bomb, the bedbugs, the cancer rent, Friendly Finance waiting to repossess her delinquent flesh...Sweet Dreams, Pantopon Rose."

The real scene you pinch up some leg flesh and make a quick stab hole with a pin. Then fit the dropper over, not in the hole and feed the solution slow and careful so it doesn't squirt out the sides...(NL, 10)

In this instance, the description of the way to administer the shot without a needle while stuck in jail (or any other equally indisposed situation) is repeated so that the reader sees both sides of the story. First Burroughs delivers a typical ironic speech of the type usually heard in lurid stories from crime magazines or government 'testimonials' in propaganda films designed to frighten the potential user. The second description is of the actual method, which seems less exciting following the lie. This kind of dual description method follows Burroughs' idea that the problem of drug addiction does not begin and end with the junkie, but encompasses the authorities in a situation that forces a junkie to hide a dropper in his shoe and stab his leg with a pin just to take his drug. His correction of false information, the type that is more likely to be heard by the public at large, paints a less gruesome, less interesting picture.

The purpose of this 'shop talk' is to build the illusion of the junkie lifestyle, to force the reader into the place of the `square' from the opening page of the novel, pulling the reader into the lifestyle, but always keeping them at a safe distance on purpose. As well, the narrator is always mocking the reader just a little bit, hinting at how much the reader doesn't know and does not really want to know about Lee's lifestyle. Lee/Burroughs is just a like an animal in the zoo for the reader, at least in the opening sections of the novel.

I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch uptown A train...Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising executive type fruit holds the door back for me. I am evidently his idea of a character. You know the type: comes on with bartenders and cab drivers, talking about right hooks and the Dodgers, calls the counterman in Nedick's by his first name. A real asshole. (NL, 3)

This is one of the better tricks in Naked Lunch, taking the reader and setting him/her at odds with the book itself. The author purposely creates a situation that mimics the opening passage, knowing that most readers would not know any more than the 'square' in the subway that holds the door open for Lee. As the book progresses, they are more likely to become part of the world that is evolving on the page, now that they have come into contact with the drugs and the lives of the seedy characters of Interzone. This shows the complexity at which Burroughs was operating in writing the novel, and hints at his ability to create a far more layered work than the average narrative. He was not simply detailing pornographic elements and glorifying drug use, but purposely inventing a very self-reflective world of drugs and secrecy: the world of agents and addicts that is Naked Lunch.

The imaginary drugs in the book are the most colorful, as they introduce a unique science fiction-like element to the story. They are almost asides in the novel, not exactly serving a specific purpose, but they add to the tone of the world surrounding Interzone. They add texture and allow for different views of drugs as tools to control, though they don't actually exist. (It should be mentioned here that these element are the kind Burroughs most likely took from the pulp Science-Fiction he loved and always read, as well as being the elements most influential to later Science-Fiction writers and film-makers.) The Black Meat is one of these drugs, though its effect is not explicitly stated, other than to say that it causes sickness in the users.

All streets of the city slope down between deepening canyons to a vast kidney-shaped plaza full of darkness. Walls of streets and plaza are perforated by dwelling cubicles and cafés, some a few feet deep, others extending out of sight in a network of rooms and corridors.

At all levels, criss-cross of bridges, cat walks, cable cars. Catatonic youths dressed as women in gowns of burlap and rotten rags, faces heavily and crudely painted in bright colors over stratum of beatings, arabesques of broken, suppurating scars to the pearly bone, push against the passer-by in silent clinging insistence.

Traffickers in the Black Meat, flesh of the giant aquatic black centipede - sometimes attaining a length of six feet - found in a lane of black rocks and iridescent, brown lagoons, exhibit paralyzed crustaceans in camouflaged pockets of the Plaza visible only to the Meat Eaters...

Several Meat Eaters lay in vomit, too weak to move. (The Black Meat is like a tainted cheese, overpoweringly delicious and nauseating so that the eaters eat and vomit and eat again until they fall exhausted.) (NL, 45, 47)

Though the actual effect and attraction of the Black Meat seems to be more taste than biological changes or euphoric feelings, it is never actually stated. Only the fact that this substance produces cravings to ingest it over and over again makes it a drug, despite making the user violently ill and causing vomiting. The drug seems to be an image of desire and craving more than anything else. It foregrounds the idea that drug use is more about desire and the fear of not having something than it is about the effects the drug has on the body. The Meat Eaters only want to eat over and over again, even though they know that they will feel worse after eating the Black Meat. But, desire holds them in check and they have little ability to refuse because of the effects of the drug. This is an example of Burroughs' concept of Total Need, the desire that takes over a body entirely when constant drug use is introduced. No adverse effect caused by the drug can turn the user off of finding more. Obviously the associations to be made between the Black Meat and actual opiates are obvious, but Burroughs uses many devices such as this to illustrate the idea.

The picture he paints of a world totally in service to the substance that the Meat Eaters (and the other types of addicts in the scene, as well) crave is meant to mimic our world. In some ways, it is meant to be a model of Tangiers at the time he lived there, where, in the wake of WWII, the rule of law seems almost to have been eliminated in the bustle and confusion of country coming back into its own sense of self after decades of French rule. On the other hand, this is also an alternate universe, the world of the junkie, so not everything is strictly a metaphor for real life. However, as is the case for everything in Naked Lunch, it can be used as an example of what not to do. Interzone is the end result of a world held in check by the Algebra of Need. People are utterly controlled by substance abuse and the economic conditions. The residents can do little except sit back and be taken in by its equation.

Of course, the Algebra of Need goes beyond the issue of drugs and runs over into all areas of control and dominance. The need for laws to control people, though there were no issues to control previously, is a continuous storyline in Naked Lunch. The desire to be sure of total dominance, or the illusion of total dominance by a ruling power is also present. Ultimately, the Algebra of Need describes the futility of laws and control that have gone beyond the most basic human functional society. As Burroughs saw it, people need only a modicum of rule-making and supervisory control to operate perfectly well as a society. The novels he would write in the latter half of his career would always revolve around fantasies of near-anarchic societies that don't require a massive organizational complex for their success. Naked Lunch is a demonstration of the world when it has gone the other way, when the rules and laws have multiplied to such an extreme that no one is guiltless of breaking a law, as all laws have been created solely to put people in a position of guilt. Yet, there is no one to maintain these laws, so everything is a legal stasis. There are only random arrests and secret meetings to determine punishment.

Again, Benway is the best character in the book to use in examining the issue of control, specifically through the use of consciousness-altering narcotics. His work in the Reconditioning Centre uses drugs as a main ingredient in the control regimen he has designed to 'recondition' those interred there.

I digress as usual. Pending more precise knowledge of brain electronics, drugs remain an essential tool of the interrogator in his assault on the subject's personal identity. The barbiturates are, of course, virtually useless. That is, anyone who can be broken down by such means would succumb to the puerile methods used in an American precinct. Scopolamine is often effective in dissolving resistance, but it impairs the memory: an agent might be prepared to reveal his secrets but quite unable to remember them, or cover story and secret life info might be inextricably garbled...

There are other procedures. The subject can be reduced to deep depression by administering large doses of Benzedrine for several days. Psychosis can be induced by continual large doses of cocaine or Demerol or by the abrupt withdrawal of barbiturates after prolonged administration. He can be addicted by dihydro-oxy-heroin and subjected to withdrawal (this compound should be five times as addicting as heroin, and the proportionately severe.) (NL, 23)

This passage highlights the more institutionalized use of drugs as a tool for control, though the theme is the same throughout the book. Benway hints at the fact that many of the people in the Reconditioning Center are agents that have been caught and must now be interrogated for useful information. The use of drugs to extract that information is a key element in the procedures of the R.C. Benway is complacent about the torture and talks about the patients in terms of lifeless objects. They are merely tools to practice on. Burroughs pointedly uses a control figure as the initiator of drug use with the specific purpose of confusing and emotionally tearing down the patient. He has very little concern for the feelings of those he works on and the use of drugs fascinates him, so he tries as many different methods as he can. This is all done, purportedly, in the name of science. The presentation of a doctor figure as completely callous and disinterested in the patients is interesting, as Burroughs seems to have had great respect for doctors, in general, especially since he trained to be a doctor at one time. Yet, in Naked Lunch, doctors are often presented as cold, and more interested in the scientific results of experiments than in the condition of the patient.

The Algebra of Need is Benway's weapon of choice. He provides the drugs and punishes the addict for becoming addicted. In the case of Benway, the equation is much smaller than the scale of junkie, cop and pusher, but it is still evident. For Burroughs, this was a logical situation that any control-minded government would be sure to maintain as a device to keep resistance to a minimum through scare tactics and skewed media stories. To ensure the public at large that the government has a plan to eliminate the junkie on the street, though, unbeknownst to the public, they themselves are the main cause of the problem, keeps the faith of the people firmly placed in the hands of the government.

In "Deposition: A Testimony Concerning a Sickness" Burroughs writes extensively about the Algebra of Need. When he wrote the "Deposition" article he was currently elaborating on the subject of the Algebra of Need at the time, as he was in middle of forming his next book, The Soft Machine. So, though he was including the essay as an appendix to Naked Lunch, the ideas found in The Soft Machine were present in his mind.

Junk yields a basic formula of 'evil' virus: The Algebra of Need. The face of 'evil' is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control...

If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street, and stop tilting quixotically for the 'higher-ups' so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to but junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it. (NL, 201 - 202)

He outlines the simplicity of the equation here, but also hints at the nearly impossible mission of eliminating the need, Total Need. Burroughs suggestion that the junkie's need be eliminated, thus breaking the chain or crumbling the pyramid from below, is an overwhelming proposition. As he mentions, as long as there is a product to be had and a profit to be made, there will be those who will use them. Essentially, in the quote above, Burroughs more or less proves that there is no way to eliminate the Algebra of Need, showing the concept to be essentially defeatist at its core. By the 1970's, Burroughs would realize that there is very little anyone can do to resist such overwhelming opposition, and he turned his attention to other issues. Yet, at the time, he felt what that what he was writing in Naked Lunch was an active stance against the futile systems being established to punish addicts by those who clearly didn't even understand the problem.

Drug addiction in the late 1950's and early 1960's was always treated as a moral problem, rather than recognizing the legitimate chemical imbalances in the individuals that often used the drugs most heavily. Typical of the time, Burroughs did not necessarily ascribe to the idea of drug addiction as a chemical imbalance, but saw it as a disease to be treated. Yet, the causes of drug addiction to him seemed mostly to be an issue of supply and demand rather than medical. If there was a supply, more people would be likely to use it. Cut off the bottom rung of users and the supply runs out. Nonetheless, he was ahead of his time in indicating that addiction was a disease and should be treated as such, instead of being punished as a moral issue to be despised.

Burroughs' Algebra of Need is an interesting concept and provides insight into the message of his early novels, but in the wake of the 20th century it seems somewhat trite. In essence, it is true, and there are many possible demonstrations of the reality of it, but even he knew that the ability to turn the control mechanisms of the world around had been lost long ago. He also knew that there was no stopping the use of drugs or the control they had/have over people. As Naked Lunch grew in popularity throughout the 1960's, more and more people began to use drugs recreationally. It is as if the dispersion of the idea also signaled the increase of the problem, or at least coincided with it. So, it seems both consistent with Burroughs' character and inconsistent with reality for him to maintain the idea that governments used drug-addicts to simply further their purposes. Yet, this is not an uncommon conclusion for Burroughs, whose paranoia was legendary, and his self-insulated views colored these kinds of accusations.

What is probably closer to the truth is that governments looked the other way for quite a long time and employed a small amount of police officers to do enough to say that they are attempting to tackle an issue that the public was becoming more and more conscious of as the century went by. In the intervening years between the publishing of Naked Lunch and the present day, drug control and issues surrounding the enforcing of drug laws have become huge in North America, and especially in the United States. It is no wonder that Burroughs tended to target the U.S. in his novels, as the reality of the life of a drug user has actually gotten worse in the U.S. than when Burroughs was writing. Since authorities no longer look the other way, the problem has been increasingly confronted with jail sentences, which Burroughs noticed in later years, and commented on repeatedly.

The problem of drugs, then, is always made into an essentially legal one by Burroughs, and is pushed back into the hands of those who make the laws. The actual users of the substances are victims, in a sense, and they can only follow the option they are given and which has been constructed for them by the law-makers with the power to control drug use in the Western world. This is somewhat afar-fetched, almost an allegory for abuse, rather than a logical indictment of an obviously more complex problem. However, Burroughs generally points to the ultimate decision makers when he seeks a guilty party, and that person has the ability to create and enforce the law when it comes to the issue of drugs. For early readers of Naked Lunch the concept of a power-structure that was nearly untouchable and unbending was not foreign. It was becoming clear enough to the youth of the early 1960's in the Western world that their governments were not necessarily representative of their views for the future. To make the connection between a government policy to allow the problem of addiction to increase while publicly countering it in official literature was simple enough. The disconnect seems to come in that many readers of Burroughs' book also identified with the misunderstood notion that he was advocating drugs as a way to see the world differently. Though he may have acknowledged the use of drugs as way to see the world in a different way, the idea more describes his desire to dismantle old notions of 'proper' living than it does his prescription for lifestyle. To experience something and to live it as a lifestyle are two very different paths.

So, in the end, Naked Lunch is basically a warning against drugs and using any truly addictive substance on a continual basis, though its depiction are not meant as propaganda, but as satire. This is usually missed, it seems, and for that reason Naked Lunch has been praised or criticized for its rampant drug use ever since it was first published, focusing all attention on the fact that Burroughs himself was an addict, rather than the message of the book. This is unfortunate, since Burroughs was clearly not in favor of people beginning an addictive drug habit. Nor was he an addict for most of life as a writer. He constantly stressed that a writer cannot write well on heroin. The reason many have missed this fact seems to come from the nature of Burroughs protest against drugs. He is not evangelical or dogmatic in his approach to warding people off. While he is content to rail against the dangers and abuses of controlling elements in society, he does not take the same approach to drugs. Instead, he demonstrates the danger and futility of the lifestyle in an anthropological way (if allowances can be made for artistic merit), and perhaps even a somewhat nostalgic way. Yet, he is not advocating the use of heroin as a habit, and certainly paints a picture of the dangers inherent in any addiction, whether it be narcotics or something else. How could he when the entire novel describes the drug addict as a figure of slave-like mentality, without the ability to function by his own will?

Nonetheless, the aspect of control through drug use and addiction is the most tangible of all the messages Burroughs tries to convey in the book, though the issue of drugs in the book is not. There is no denying the control a substance can have over an individual. For Burroughs, as this experience was first-hand knowledge (and fresh in his mind, as he published the book only months after kicking his recurring heroin habit), it was very real and powerful. That any substance can render a person so incoherent as to desire to stare at the end of their shoe for eight hours in a daze, only to come out of it and then run out to find more of the substance is to be put in a prison. The only real question, then, despite Burroughs claims, is whether or not this situation was a result of too much or too little government intervention.

Naked Lunch----Social Criticism

This is the third installment of a series of essays on the novel Naked Lunch. This essay will deal with the concept of Control and Social Criticism, the constant underlying themes of Naked Lunch.

hough it would be hard to argue that Naked Lunch was written with any sort of premeditated goal in mind when Burroughs began to work on the novel, the end result was a clear indictment of the typical, middle-class American lifestyle that he grew up with. Though his family would be considered well-off by present standards, Burroughs actually thought himself to be middle-class, and was very conscious of the fact. He came from a time when the desirable place in society looked down on the middle-class as not knowing their place enough to stay put among the poor. His disdain for the conservative, stuffy atmosphere of early 20th century America bleeds through Naked Lunch on nearly every page, revealing one definite purpose in the book: social criticism.

As has been mentioned, Burroughs' usual targets are social conservatives and those in positions that allow them to exert undue amounts of control over a given society; i.e. religious and political leaders, business people, industry leaders, etc. Every Burroughs novel is essentially a story about control and power, and their abuses. However, his later novels are far more crafted. Naked Lunch was not nearly as planned out, so it is a much clearer snapshot of what Burroughs thought on a day-to-day basis. As much of the novel was taken from letters he wrote to friends back in the U.S. (especially Allen Ginsberg), the book has an immediacy that his later novels lack. In the letters and narratives that were eventually pieced together to form Naked Lunch (as well as parts of his three following novels, The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express), we see a constant barrage of vitriolic attacks against religion in all forms, conservative social values, governments and the culture of institutions. If Burroughs' use of satire and irony was the Method, the Purpose was clearly to chip away at control systems and comment on the illusory social constructions at work in the West.

It is important to point out that Burroughs was not a Marxist, though he obviously knew some of the rudimentary elements of Marx's work. When Marx's work became fashionable again in the 1960's, Burroughs was often asked whether or not he followed that school of thought, but he always denied it. It would be hard to attach Burroughs to any formalized political/spiritual system, for the basic reason that he found all institutionalized thinking to be both dangerous and inherently controlling.

However, he did have his favorites among thinkers. In interviews he would often refer to and quote Alfred Korzybski, a writer and philosopher that had been popular in the 1930's, but then had quickly fallen out of fashion. (As an aside, he was also a Count, and part of the diminished Polish aristocracy.) His ideas were varied and his books were gigantic in size, but the main idea Burroughs latched on to was Korzybski's semantic concept of the `third'. This idea is simple enough, and can be found in the work of both Roland Barthes and Kenneth Burke (who probably attended the same lecture series given by Korzybski at the University of Chicago in the 1930's that Burroughs did). It takes opposition with the either/or dichotomy of Aristotle and says that there is always a third option available in all choices. For instance, there is not always black or white: there is often gray; there is not always good or bad: there is often good and bad; etc.

While sounding simple, the idea is quite complex when applied, and Burroughs invested a lot of time in developing it in his work. He felt that by investing an object with a verbal value, such as calling a `chair' a chair, you deceive people because it is just a construct designed to fool you. The word itself is nothing but an agreed upon phonetic sound. Instead, in reality the chair is an object in and of itself, and by attaching illusory names to real, physical objects you undermine logic. This established a world of arbitrary meanings attached to definite objects, in the minds of some theorists, such as Ferdinand de Saussure. This doesn't mean that Burroughs did not believe that there was such a thing as reality. (It is highly unlikely that he really had an opinion on the matter, since his answers in interviews would change like the tides. He was notoriously inconsistent, revising his ideas after reading one thing or another, and often given to huge swings in feeling on a subject. His only truly consistent idea was that he distrusted women and all control systems.) What he did see as illusory were the meanings behind words, since they changed rapidly, as fashion warranted. In this, he saw that governments and controlling institutions could change words to mean whatever they decided the words would mean, since they had the tools to disseminate the ideas to the larger public, and the money to be sure the ideas stayed in the minds of people.

For Burroughs, the option Korzybski's third choice cuts through the calcified thinking of religious and government bureaucracies, blowing open the doors of possibility and ideas. Without a simple, Aristotelian approach to life, institutions would be forced to deal with issues less efficiently, but more realistically. Yet, he also knew that any power's goal is to maintain its power, and so he postulated that all power structures had to be dismantled before they could be properly set up again. (In fact, in later interviews, Burroughs saw that there was no stopping the world powers, and more or less adopted a fantasy approach to his writing, since he could do nothing to change the world, in his view). Because words are the tools used by most power structures to maintain control, he saw his novels as tools to dismantle the power-structure. All people needed were the introduction of new words with new meanings. This could be done through shocking them with images that they all thought about, but refused to acknowledge as acceptable. Why hide behind formality and false pretences, he asked. While these ideas are developed at length in his later work, the basic elements are present in Naked Lunch, also. Near the end of the book, when he describes the opening of his `word hoard' it describes a virus-like idea that has the power to physically assault someone.

Now I, William Seward, will unlock my word hoard...My Viking heart fares over the great brown river where motors put put in jungle twilight and whole trees float with huge snakes in the branches and sad-eyed lemurs watch from the shores...Gentle Reader, The Word will jump on you with leopard man iron claws, it will cut off fingers and tows like an opportunist land crab...(NL, 192)

This was the ammunition Burroughs brought with him to battle against institutions and governments.

Burroughs saw all institutions as basic agreements between small groups of people in power to control the masses. He often pointed out that the masses are always controlled by small groups of wealthy people with controlling interests in a country. The only reason for them to do this, in his mind, was to benefit from the work of many hands, confused into thinking that their lives were `real' and `meaningful'. Despite the fact that the public were being duped through the main sources of message dissemination - media, schools, television, movies, words - they were still likely to be happy about their situations, because the control was so total that it became reality for the controlled masses. It must have been hard to ignore the effects of this on a country like Morocco, drenched in post-war colonialism and confusion, as it was when he lived there. As the power of the French began to recede, the power of the emerging Muslim governments quickly replaced it. For the average citizen, though, this was just another ruling power whose goal was only to continue maintaining its power. As Burroughs wrote, "...You see control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control..." (NL, 137)

In Naked Lunch imaginary feuding powers are everywhere. They form the basis of the intangible storyline throughout the novel. All of the characters belong in some way or another to a special institution/corporation with its set of rules and ideals. Many of the characters are secret agents for these groups, sometimes with missions and goals, sometimes not. There is a constant confusion as to purpose, hinting at the futility of these Institutions, but they carry on, nonetheless. The Liqufactionists, Islam Inc., The Narcotics Squad, Dr. Benway and the Reconditioning Center; these are all named as groups working within Interzone (`The Parties of Interzone' is the name of a chapter in the book) to promote their own interests. As well, there are independents like A.J. and Hassan. In some ways, Benway is even an independent. Their goals are not stated, exactly, but the various groups are working against each other to maintain dominance and defame the others.

The world of Interzone, a place in constant confusion, with ever-changing rules and regulations was modeled on Tangiers after World War II. According to Burroughs, there was a continual influx of different stake-holders trying to dominate the country in the wake of the war's destructive results. This is where the images of warring internal factions comes from in Naked Lunch. The unstated goals and intrigue was real, with the spy agencies of many countries present in the International Zone of Tangiers. In Naked Lunch, this is mimicked in the character of A.J.

A.J. - he is actually of obscure Near East extraction - had at one time come on like an English gentleman. His English accent waned with the British Empire, and after World War II he became an American by act of Congress. A.J. is an agent like me, but for whom or for what no one has ever been able to discover. It is rumored that he represents a trust of giant insects from another galaxy...I believe he is on the Factualist side (which I also represent); of course he could be a Liquefaction Agent (the Liquefaction program involves the eventual merging of everyone into One Man by a process of protoplasmic absorption). You can never be sure of anyone in the industry.

A.J.'s cover story? An international playboy and harmless practical joker. It was A.J. who put the piranha fish in Lady Sutton-Smith's swimming pool, and dosed the punch with a mixture of yagé, hashish and yohimbine during a Fourth of July reception at the U.S. Embassy, precipitating an orgy. Ten prominent citizens - American, of course - subsequently died of shame. (NL, 122-123)

Here the leader is portrayed as easily moving from one allegiance to another very freely, trusting no one and taking whatever measure is required for survival. He is a chameleon with no emotional attachments or loyalties to a particular country. It is not clear what country he even originally came from, just the ones he adopted at different times. He is also a prankster, using humiliation and mind-games to demoralize the enemy. He shows that the war has to be fought on all fronts; even those that look more like having fun at other's expense. In reality, this is Burroughs taking easy shots at the uptight tradition of the ruling parties of the U.S., more than anything. A.J. is both part of the world, and able to turn on it because he is an agent.

Burroughs dislike of aristocratic, 19th century ideals is interesting. He writes elsewhere that the reason he wanted to become a writer was so that he could live the life of an aristocrat. His view of the rich is inconsistent, though, because he seems to have wanted to be rich, more or less, and was always disappointed that he was not. He claims he could have made four or five times the amount he did as a writer if he were to be employed in any other industry. So, while taking small jabs at the rich and powerful, there is always the feeling that Burroughs would be perfectly comfortable in the same role, that he finds the lifestyle both wrong and desirable.

The above passage also introduces one of the most striking images in the book: insects with human intelligence. David Cronenburg made quite a bit out of the insect imagery in the film of Naked Lunch, using it fairly extensively throughout. Burroughs doesn't use it quite so much, but does include one episode in which a giant insect is introduced. It demonstrates the idea that medical research can take away the soul of people in the pursuit of eliminating the human body's inefficiencies.

Doctor "Fingers" Schafer, the Lobotomy Kid, rises and turns on the Conferents the cold blue blast of this gaze:

"Gentlemen, the human nervous system can be reduced to a compact and abbreviated spinal column. The brain, front, middle and rear must follow the adenoid, the wisdom tooth, the appendix...I give you my Master Work: The Complete All-American Deanxietized Man..."

Blast of trumpets: The Man is carried in naked by two Negro Bearers who drop him on the platform with bestial, sneering brutality...The Man wriggles...His flesh turns to viscid, transparent jelly that drifts away in green mist, unveiling a monster black centipede. Waves of unknown stench fill the room, searing the lungs, grabbing the stomach...(NL, 87)

Here we see medical science as an authority not unlike religion, taking the initiative to eliminate all parts of the human body in an attempt to speed evolutionary processes. By choosing a large insect with presumably human traits, we see the influence of Kafka's "Metamorphosis", a story Burroughs cited from time to time as an influence on his work. The Deanxietized Man is void of anxiety because he is void of all human traits. The stripping away of inefficient humanity lends itself to the mindset of many early 20th century scientists and government-funded projects carried out through industry. Though one might be hard-pressed to find Burroughs concerned with saving the environment in his work, the message is clear enough: more efficient is not necessarily better.

The giant centipede is imagery that will surface again in later novels, especially as Burroughs would later begin drawing on some of his bigger career influences, such as ancient Mayan codices and control systems. But, in Naked Lunch, the centipede is an image of total control through science. Knowledge takes on the appearance of truth, and has the power to manipulate people to follow mindlessly the voice of those that seem more knowledgeable. The Deanxietized Man is the victim of this crime, but he is no more enslaved that the two black attendants that carry his insect body into the room. Burroughs uses the attendants to comment on race and control in America, as well. Race was never a big issue in Burroughs work, but he had a distinct distaste for people who illogically despised other s only for their skin color.

This passage comes from a chapter entitled, "Meeting of International Conference of Technological Psychiatry", yet another group devoted to maintaining itself for the purpose of existence alone. It, as do all the power hungry organizations of Naked Lunch, does not have a stated agenda. By not announcing the goals each group has, the various groups blur together into a picture of control mechanisms as the common theme for each power. The only real goal for any group, then, becomes the removing of other group from power. Power for power's sake becomes the ultimate end. Yet, no one group really dominates the scene. They are all as depraved as the next. The Muslim-like groups are no more or less immoral than the Americans, or the British. They all seem as enslaved to drug use and violent sexual practices as the next.

The purpose is both to demonstrate that drugs and addiction are forms of control in and of themselves. In Naked Lunch, drugs are often the bait and the reward, dangled like a carrot before the dull, mule-like eyes of the addict to force him into actions against his will. Burroughs suspected that many governments were allowing drugs to find their way to the street on purpose so that they could have an opportunity for frightening the public. He speculated (with somewhat dubious statistics in mind, it seems) that the world before serious drug control was a better place. Only middle-aged men were addicted to heroin in the 1930's, he often remarked, in an attempt to establish that the introduction of government drug controls exacerbated the problem, instead of solving it. When you create laws that make being an addict a crime, rather than possessing an illegal substance, you create a police state where beliefs are controlled instead of actions. This is the epitome of a controlling power: when they have the power to regulate your personal beliefs, they have the power to use your body for everything. This is the constant practice of the bumbling parties of Interzone.

Sex is also used in this way. It becomes a tool for manipulation and blackmail. Sometimes it is even taken further, when a person literally takes over the body and mind of another. In Naked Lunch sex is always mainly concerned with power. To have sex is to exert control over the body of another, whether it is willingly or unwillingly. If the control can be maintained, sometimes it even goes further, becoming all-pervasive. His introduction of the Latah is an example of this kind of control. A Latah is a person with a compulsion to imitate every action of the person it is enslaved to, like an emotional doppleganger. They have no personal will, due to their affliction, and must do everything the person they are in thrall to would do. The other person literally becomes the addiction, maintaining total control over the mind and body of the Latah. In Naked Lunch the Latah is always referred to as a figure of complete demoralization. It is someone who no longer has the ability to feel shame or its own will, so it does whatever it is instructed, and continues to imitate even if it is not instructed.

The Latah could also be a figure for a mindless kind of enslavement through contentment, as well. The apparent complacency to the seriousness of their situation makes them willing volunteers for mental and physical manipulation. In the same way that we are often slaves to cultural influence through movies and media, the Latah craves the introduction of ideas that will force him to look the other way and live outside of reality. It craves distraction. Burroughs was very conscious of the way that media can manipulate and influence people in negative ways. His uncle literally invented the modern concept of Public Relations when he worked for both John D. Rockefeller and Adolf Hitler, before World War II. The ability of words and mass media to manipulate a large audience was engrained in him through the work of his uncle. He symbolized the ability of creative thinking to cause social change for the negative by manipulating even the worst historical figures to make them more appetizing to a public that, by and large, does not want to see the ugly truth. The Latah is a thoughtless animal, though it once was a thinking, reasoning human.

A figure in the novel that seems to mimic Burroughs' uncle in many ways is Dr. Benway, who takes a prominent role throughout the novel because he is both political and medical in his abilities. Benway's role is not clearly stated, but he is often used by higher powers to eliminate all resistance in certain areas. He appears to be for hire, as opposed to being the initiator of control for a specific organization, like A.J. He is a master propagandist and an efficient demoralizer, adept at using `science' and `reason' to crush the will of entire countries. His methods are always medical (more or less), but the purposes are never for rehabilitation of a patient. His `patients' are always individuals that he has deemed too powerful and so must be brought down.

So I am assigned to engage the services of Dr. Benway for Islam Inc.

Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, cooperative, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind the façade: Benway is a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control. I have not seen Benway since his precipitate departure from Annexia, where his assignment had been T.D. - Total Demoralization. Benway's first act was to abolish concentration camps, mass arrest and, except under certain limited and special circumstances, the use of torture.

"I deplore brutality," he said. "It's not efficient. On the other hand, prolonged mistreatment, short of physical violence, gives rise, when skillfully applied, to anxiety and a feeling of special guilt. A few rules or rather guiding principles are to be borne in mind. The subject must not realize that the mistreatment is a deliberate attack of an anti-human enemy on his personal identity. He must be made to feel that deserves any treatment he receives because there is something (never specified) horribly wrong with him. The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by and arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct." (NL, 19)

The control addict is almost identical in Burroughs mythology with the drug addict. Both types of addicts must feed off of something to fulfill their place in the world. However, the drug addict injures only himself, while the control addict creates elaborate structures to confuse the victim and, as Benway says, make it "so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct." The purpose of the institution, then, is not to organize for benefit to humanity, but to hide the injustice done to the victim it comes in contact with. All organizations, in Burroughs' mind, are set upon this purpose, and all organizations devolve into a simple set of goals for personal gain.

Benway is the master planner in all of this. As head of the Reconditioning Center, where people are sent for realignment of purpose and needs, stripping away all `undesirable' character traits, he is given the task of making sure that total control is maintained over people. They are unable to see clearly and cannot decide who is really at fault for their pain, so they eventually give up, and go about their business, slightly more depressed and defeated than they were before. For Benway, this is victory.

Benway's method is to confuse. By systematically creating institutions and miniature governments within governments, he is able to wear away the will of the individual citizen through paperwork and laws. The purpose of laws to serve the citizen is turned around so that the citizen serves the laws, becoming a necessary piece of maintaining an overblown collection of rules. Through inefficient, but voluminous legalities, the citizen of Interzone or Annexia is kept from having time to think - Total Demoralization.

Every citizen of Annexia was required to apply for and carry on his person at all times a whole portfolio of documents. Citizens were subject to be stopped in the street at any time; and the Examiner, who might be in plain clothes, in various uniforms, often in a bathing suit or pajamas, sometimes stark naked except for a badge pinned to his left nipple, after checking each paper, would stamp it. On subsequent inspection the citizen was required to show the properly entered stamps the last inspection. The Examiner, when he stopped a large group, would only examine and stamp the cards of a few. The others were then subject to arrest because their cards were not properly stamped. Arrest meant "provisional detention"; that is, the prisoner would be released if and when his Affidavit of Explanation had to be presented in person, the explainers spent weeks and months waiting around in unheated offices with no chairs and no toilet facilities.

Documents issued in vanishing ink faded into old pawn tickets. New documents were constantly required. The citizens rushed from one bureau to another in a frenzied attempt to meet impossible deadlines. (NL, 19-20)

The situation of Annexia describes what Burroughs would often talk about as the real issue behind making laws and the citizen's duty to follow those laws. In Annexia the administration that takes care of ensuring people are following the laws that have been created is so confused and disorganized, that it is incapable of working correctly. This is its purpose, however. If it worked properly, then it would cease to be profitable for the controlling purposes. When people are constantly in a situation of illegality, then you have the ability as a government to direct their actions. Burroughs saw this as the problem for many laws. The contrary nature of laws and humans need each other to survive: the laws and the punishments would not exist if there were not people in a situation that allowed them to be punished. There is no need to punish someone who is not guilty. However, if you create laws and a system that puts a person in jeopardy of punishment on a constant basis, the government has the right to do with them what they will.

He often used this analogy in regards to drug laws and the sometimes arbitrary nature of them. At times one drug would be more popular with authorities than others. He reasoned that the governments would only allow drugs to find their way in such volume onto the streets so that addicts and users could be used by authorities. As has been mentioned, the only result of control is the pursuit of more control. There is no real logical end to it. Take away an arbitrary law and suddenly many criminals are now free citizens. This, Burroughs maintained, is beyond the conscience of most governments, who only seem to see a purpose in exerting power over a large group of mostly ignorant people. So, instead, the symbiotic relationship of the junkie and the cop would live on through a set of rules designed to allow both parties to flourish only for the purpose of existing, and nothing more. If the cop went away, so would the junkie, and vice versa. In this, the control mechanism has its life maintained.

In essence, though, Burroughs most serious purpose in Naked Lunch is to dismantle and eliminate all control through words, by releasing his `word hoard'. His belief in the power of words is a constant theme throughout his career, coming up again and again in interviews and articles well into the 1990's. As a result of Korzybski's influence, the idea that a war can be waged with the most basic instruments of any battle, words, was always at the forefront of his mind. And, he appears to truly believe this idea. By offering different words to the public he was introducing a `word virus' into the consciousness of a public being steadily duped by the ultra-conservative governments of the Western world in the wake of World War II. By shocking people with images of sexual degradation (literally, in the scenes in Hassan's Rumpus Room and A.J.'s Annual Party), unabashed drug use and comical interpretations of the very concept of moral public leadership, Burroughs provided options for an alternative reality to people who knew something different than their own experiences existed. Naked Lunch, in many respects, was an all-out attack on the values of the time, and those who controlled the information that maintained and established those values.

Ultimately, though, Burroughs' verbal attack on the control systems of the world are nothing more than fiction. It is interesting to speculate on whether or not he felt that his mission to dismantle the `establishment' through the use of words was anything he could call successful. In one sense, yes, it seems to have been. As has been mentioned earlier, Naked Lunch undermined the ability of the American Government to censor material that the general public felt was distasteful through the 1965 censorship trials of the book. Or, at least, it was the last case with a lot of attention given to it, resulting in a victory over previous conservative feelings on what the public could buy and keep in their own homes. This was a clear victory using words to battle institutions. Yet, it is more than likely that another book would have come along to do the same thing, sooner or later. It is ironic, and fitting, though, that the book that finally did push the issue in the face of the Western world's most influential government was one with the purpose of actively working against the system it ultimately defeated.

If nothing else, Burroughs idea that words be used as the battleground is interesting. His commitment to what he wrote is unquestionable, and the fact that he seemed to not care what publishing such inflammatory work would do to his reputation or place in society shows that he meant business when it came to staging his lone protest against combined systems of control. One must only ask, in the wake of a lifetime of writing that began with a book of such power, how much progress did he really make? He carved out a career and waged a war of words against essentially invisible powers-that-be, but does not seem to have really won the war. If nothing else, the establishment that he envisioned himself fighting against eventually bought up all his work and released it in very readable, scholarly Penguin editions. In the end, one has to wonder if all the posturing against control and the social criticism was nothing more than a way of telling stories and creating literary worlds.

Naked Lunch----Nausea and Irony

This is the second in a series of essays about the book Naked Lunch, designed to introduce the book properly to new readers. Generally, people hear about the life of William Burroughs before they read any of his work. The goal of these essays is to point out the more important aspects of the work, rather than the man.

This essay will deal with the use of irony and satire in Burroughs' work, and the way he uses them to highlight the hypocrisy of his time.

If there is one element that is always present in Naked Lunch it is irony. In place of a linear storyline, Burroughs opted to use irony as the one consistent ingredient, quite at odds with the world of the 1950s (think Eisenhower and a positive, can-do spirit), if not also at odds with the present world.

There are no heroes in Naked Lunch. But, then, there are no real villains, either. There are certainly characters that could be seen as villains, but the question of polar morality in Naked Lunch is a lost cause, since no one is guiltless, and everyone has already been incriminated in some way or another. To be truly accurate, one could only say that Naked Lunch has 'guilty' and 'guiltier' characters. The protagonists are just as mired as the antagonists, and it leaves only a moral vacuum where real life is left as an answer to dealing with the issues raised by an always present, but invisible author.

Burroughs didn't see himself as someone who could afford to take sides in his work. Interviews after the writing of Naked Lunch record him as saying that he thought of himself as a kind of ghost on the sidelines watching his characters, some of whom he hated, some of whom he liked and some of whom he respected. He was only there to record, so the world of good vs. evil is more or less thrown out in favor of a world wrapped in ironic portrayals of authority and conventional thinking, both subjects that he was obsessed with changing (sometimes, literally attacking) throughout his career as a writer. He becomes 'El Hombre Invisible' again (the name given to him by street kids in Mexico), even referring to himself by this name in the text. He is a silent presence, observing on the contextual sidelines of his own work.

Burroughs' satire can be vicious, at times. His grotesque images are designed to create allegories/parables for the real world designed to strip away the lies of what he believes to be a calculated, constructed world of images to reveal the naked person underneath. It is something akin to that old saying that we are all naked underneath our clothes. At times, it appears his duty is to strip away not just clothes, but skin and bone as well, if need be. The ones calculating the images are doing it for their own nefarious benefit, so it is Burroughs' duty to retaliate with the only weapon they respect, fear and know: words. His writing is a glimpse at a private war against corrupt forces at work around us and Burroughs is not anything if he is not relentlessly militant in his approach to writing.

However, the ironic only works because what the novel espouses is not what the author wants to see. As Wayne Booth noted about Naked Lunch in his book, 'A Rhetoric of Irony', "...the irony is limited still by a genuine revulsion, which means a genuine regret that life is so awful. If nothing really mattered, nothing portrayed in words could nauseate me, and what is more, I would not try to nauseate others with a picture of how things are." (RI, 211) Booth points out that the whole purpose of irony in Burroughs' work is to point to problems and issues that 'nauseate', in Booth's words. Burroughs wants to highlight problems through situations that are obviously undesirable. Most of the undesirable situations for him fall under an umbrella of religious conservatism and hypocrisy. It appears that his best weapon was satire and irony as tools to expose lies in the figures he despised, even going so far as to include himself, at times.

One of the better methods he utilizes to accentuate the absurd situations that conventional thinking and conservative religious values lead to is through grotesque satires that border on surrealism. Burroughs will often take a normal, almost scripted situation normal to life (such as a visit to a doctor, or an interview with a prospective employer), and then find a way to turn it on itself. Take one of his most famous images for example, the story of the man who teaches his rectum to talk. The man is delighted, at first, to find that he has a special talent, only to find that the talking fundament takes over. The over-active rectum decides it doesn't need the body's original mouth anymore, since it can eat and defecate on its own, all through one convenient orifice.

"Benway: Why not one all-purpose blob? 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 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 feels sort of 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 ventriloquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called 'The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you...

After a while the ass started 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 incurving 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 that 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 don't need you around here anymore. 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...So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have amputated spontaneous...except for the eyes, you dig. That's 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, 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 eye on the end of a stalk. (NL, 110-112)

The image is humorous, as are many of Burroughs' images, but it also speaks to the reality of people's lies. The man is a vaudeville performer (an almost prophetic image of inherent subservience on its own) whose odd talent takes over and becomes the driving force in their strange relationship. This could easily describe the problem of any number of modern entertainers and politicians: the thing they try to mold and force to their own purposes takes over and ends up devouring them. They have no control over their creation, as they are only part of a greater whole, despite what they feel themselves to be. When his rectum becomes both his mouth and voice, leaving the brain to function on its own behind dead, insect eyes, the man's transformation is complete, leaving only a mindless automaton of a creature. The idea of being the victim of a greater power unleashed on the world is applicable in both the world of the early 20th century, when wars raged (Burroughs' generation), and in our world of ever-growing paranoia and control.

It is hard to decide whether or not this image is a figure of Burroughs himself. This is the most subversive element in this image, as the performer could as easily be Burroughs as any other performer. Inherent in his inability to trust authority, Burroughs must include his own advice in the net of lies that the reader should be wary of. As what could be a failed experiment of Benway, the unethical scientist and doctor, or simply one of his observed studies, the satirical image of the talking rectum could also be Burroughs as someone in thrall to those in the medical field, as he was often at the mercy of doctors to help him get cured from his addictions. Or, if we are to replace pharmacists with doctor as people in medical authority, he was often dependent on them to maintain his drug addictions. Either way, Burroughs as the victim of his own talking rectum is a possible location for the image in the author's (Burroughs) mind.

And, yet, beyond all of this, the image is plainly funny. It is the perfect grotesque image because it combines satirical humor and prophetic message, much in the tradition of Swift or Rabelais. Creating and utilizing the scatological image, like this one, is where Burroughs seems to feel most comfortable. He uses it over and over throughout Naked Lunch. Keeping in mind his conservative, Protestant-derived culture, it is definitely the most delicate area possible to joke about. This makes sense as Burroughs was often quoted as saying he deplored his severely bourgeois upbringing in St. Louis, with all of its false modesty and silly decorum.

The irony is central to the image, though. Without a clear message inherent to the construct, there would be nothing of note here, but because it is so easy to pick apart the image and derive the various possible targets for ridicule and judgment, and because the idea of a part of one's own body taking over the body as a whole is both so funny and so horrific that it becomes ridiculous, the image satisfies both elements of Burroughs' central purpose. His constant assault on mindlessly conservative values such as this image attacks is the ultimate goal of this novel. While it is also possible that he is poking fun at himself, the image still works as a tool for catharsis, allowing petty grievances over confusing value-systems to slip away in a wash of humor. Though catharsis seems to take a back-seat to much of Burroughs' intent, it is typical of Western ideology to produce an morally deplorable iconic figure which allows the audience to be both disgusted and nauseated at it, and even take out their anger on it, without doing harm to one another.

The introduction of Dr. Benway as an image of authority, and in his case specifically, medical authority, is an important part of Naked Lunch. Dr. Benway is one of Burroughs' more memorable characters, and one his funniest. A recurring character in later novels of Burroughs', he seems to be behind many elaborate schemes. Benway is absent-minded, careless, a drug addict (like most characters in Naked Lunch) and a master-schemer, endlessly thinking of ways to manipulate and coerce people. Above all, he is confident and arrogant, fitting the archetype of the typical 1950's doctor, a medical God who has power over the bodies and dignity of an entire hospital under his control. Though this is no longer the case in the medical field, this was certainly the message that doctors were told to deliver in the time that Burroughs was writing. Because he trained for a year as a pre-med student in Prague during the 1930's, Burroughs draws on personal experience in this particular creation. As part of his nebulously assigned mission, Lee is requested to get help from Dr. Benway to complete his goal.

So I am assigned to engage the services of Dr. Benway for Islam Inc.

Dr. Benway had been called in as advisor to the Freeland Republic, a place given over to free love and continual bathing. The citizens are well adjusted, cooperative, honest, tolerant and above all clean. But the invoking of Benway indicates all is not well behind the façade: Benway is a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control...

I reach Freeland, which is clean and dull my God. Benway is directing the R.C., Reconditioning Center...

"C'mon," says Benway, "I'll show you around the R.C."

"God damned matriarchy. All matriarchies anti-homo-sexual, conformist and prosaic. Find yourself in a matriarchy walk don't run to the nearest frontier. If you run, some frustrate latent queer cop will likely shoot you. So somebody wants to establish a beach head of homogeneity in a shambles of potentials like West Europe and U.S.A.? Another fucking matriarchy, Margaret Mead not withstanding...

"Spot of bother there. Scalpel fight with a colleague in the operating room. And my baboon assistant leaped on the patient and tore him to pieces. Baboons always attack the weakest party in an altercation. Quite right too. We must never forget our glorious simian heritage. Doc Brubeck was a party inna second part. A retired abortionist and junk pusher (he was a veterinarian, actually) recalled to service during the manpower shortage. Well Doc had been in the hospital kitchen all morning goosing the nurses and tanking up on coal gas and Klim - and just before the operation he sneaked a double shot of nutmeg to nerve himself up."

"I had a yagé hangover, me, and in no condition to take any of Brubeck's shit. First thing he comes on with I should start the incision from the back instead of the front, muttering some garbled nonsense about being sue to cut out the gall bladder it would fuck up the meat. Thought he was on the farm cleaning a chicken. I told him to go put his head back in the oven, whereupon he had the effrontery to push my hand, severing the patient's femoral artery. Blood spurted up and blinded the anesthetist, who ran through the halls screaming. Brubeck tried to knee me in the groin, and I managed to hamstring him with my scalpel. He crawled about the floor stabbing at my feet and legs. Violet, that's my baboon assistant - only woman I ever cared a damn about - really wigged. I climbed up on the table and poise myself to jump on Brubeck with both feet and stomp him when the cops rush in."

(NL 19, 25-26)

The ridiculous fight in the operating room between the assisting doctor and the baboon nurse and Benway is one of Burroughs' most acute uses of satire, hinting at the reality behind the fake décor of hospital professionalism. It takes a serious and austere situation and turns it on its ear. The irony of taking the baboon assistant seriously pokes fun at the way power is used by those who wield it, given that Benway has the ability to maintain that kind of a staff if he so chooses. Benway is Burroughs' strongest example of control and power gone awry. He crafts the character as someone that believes himself to be an expert, while constantly showing himself to be incompetent. Yet, he holds all the power, and in this case, power over the bodies of those in the Reconditioning Center (an ominous title in and of itself, hinting at the use of power to do with the weak what it will). People still listen to him and respect him as figure to be honored, even though it is clear that he is useless, and they know it. Burroughs' sets up a situation where the help of Dr. Benway is required to carry out his mission (though what the mission is exactly, and whether it was assigned to him by someone else or himself is unclear) though it is immediately obvious that Dr. Benway is of no help. In fact, as the head of the R.C., he may very well be working against Lee, in this pulp-fiction world of spies and intrigue. Nonetheless, Benway is a clear indictment of authority figures, for which Burroughs seems to have no end of animosity.

The mixed jumble of assignments and spying are another part of the ironic fabric of Naked Lunch. The `assignments' come from out of nowhere and they seem to evaporate just as quickly into the background. This is why it is unclear whether they are actually part of the dreams of a sick junkie, or the mission of someone who is too addicted to stay focused on the task at hand. Either way, they set a tone of intrigue against a backdrop of satire that Naked Lunch maintains throughout. The confusion is part of the plot, and it is required to reinforce the sense of paranoia and loneliness that Burroughs infuses into all his novels.

The setting of the pulp novel is also important to Burroughs. We see the pulp novel setting in at various points and it is used in a number of ways. Sometimes it is a Western (a mode of story-telling he adopts for a trilogy later in his career), sometimes a Crime novel or a Horror novel. Always, though, it is ironic and meant to point away from the text to something outside of it: generally a realization of how much in life is constructed rather than lived in reality. Much of the action and description in Naked Lunch takes place only in the consciousness of Lee. A good case could be made for the idea that nothing happens at all in Naked Lunch; that the entire novel is merely a drug-addicts dreams and illusions, with real life people taking the place of characters. But, the pulp novel often sets the stage for the description. While Burroughs uses many types of rhetoric throughout the novel, all them in a somewhat ironic posture, the pulp novel is the most consistent.

Though Burroughs claimed in interviews to never read very many books, most interviewers over the nearly 30 years he was writing usually noted the various books he kept in his immediate vicinity. They were often a mixture of traditional literature such as Joseph Conrad, a major on Burroughs, and the pulp novels of the genre variety he continually used as inspiration for writing his own books. He loved Science Fiction and Crime novels all his life, so Naked Lunch is rich with the language of pulp novels. For example, the characters of O'Brien and Hauser, two cops in the Narcotics Squad of an ambiguous city's Police Department (probably Interzone, but it is not stated) reappear from time to time.

Hauser and O'Brien. They had been on the City Narcotic Squad for 20 years. Old-timers like me. I had been on the junk for 16 years. They weren't bad as laws go. At least O'Brien wasn't. O'Brien was the con man, and Hauser the tough guy. A vaudeville team. Hauser had a way of hitting you before he said anything, just to break the ice. Then O'Brien gives you an Old Gold - just like a cop to smoke Old Golds somehow - and starts putting down a cop con that was really bottled in bond. Not a bad guy, and I didn't want to do it. But it was my only chance.

I was just tying up for my morning shot when they walked in with a passkey. It was a special kind you can use when the door is locked from the inside with a key in the lock. On the table in front of me was a packet of junk, spike, syringe - I got the habit of using a regular syringe in Mexico and never went back to using a dropper - alcohol, cotton and a glass of water.

"Well, well," says O'Brien..."Long time no see eh?"

"Put on your coat, Lee," says Hauser. He had his gun out. He always has it out when he makes a pinch for the psychological effect and to forestall a rush for toilet, sink or window.

"Can I take a bang first, boys?" I asked..."There's plenty here for evidence..." (NL 175-176)

As if it were right out of a Raymond Carver or a Mickey Spillane paperback, Burroughs creates a short episode that echoes the situation he introduces in the opening pages of the novel. It is the junkie running from the law, outwitting them as he seems to always do, despite the fact that he feels some kind of affinity for them, at least in this moment. They are not evil necessarily, just doing their job, as he is. They are as much a victim of a confused system as the junkie is, so the only question that remains is whether or not they will capture him. The rest is up to the wit and desperation of Lee, it seems.

The irony of a situation that neither party is able to escape from is shown here with the language of a Crime novel, whose well-established rhetorical lines form a situation with only two possible outcomes: either the junkie dies or cops die. Perhaps Burroughs is hinting at the futility of such situations in real life, and the way that many things are almost set plots due to the prejudices of Western culture. Burroughs often remarked in interviews that the introduction of an authoritarian presence into a situation would inevitably cause a negative outcome, where there wasn't one before. The scripted reality of the events in the Hauser and O'Brien episode are a good illustration of this idea. The familiarity of cliché rhetorical methods such as the ones usually found in genre fiction are used by Burroughs to reverse the purpose of the archetype that we expect from a crime novel, and the language is used to present a comic scene in which the 'bad guy' wins.

If we are to think back to Booth's comments about 'nausea', this time in a literary sense, Burroughs is using the format of pulp novels as a method to speak in the language of a genre that is both familiar, but not taken seriously, to demonstrate that both the genre and the characters are indicative of a control center that must be avoided. The language of a crime novel finds familiar territory in the addition of two narcotics officers trying to bust a sick, but desperate junkie. The only untypical thing that happens is that the junkie makes his escape after killing the two seemingly able cops.

Burroughs was often strongly criticized for the pornographic sections of Naked Lunch, and especially for the homosexual scenes, which make up the majority of all the sex scenes. They were a shock to audiences when he wrote the book and they are generally shocking now. Some have called them nothing but perverted fantasies written only to amuse Burroughs' himself, but they definitely have a purpose beyond the scope of titillation, though that may be part of it. At the center of the sexual imagery, which is also violent and even distasteful, is Burroughs' constant purpose in Naked Lunch: control mechanisms. Much like the Marquis de Sade's portrayals of eroticism, sexual imagery in Burroughs is both flamboyant and grotesque to the point of offending the reader, but it is decidedly un-erotic.

There is an early scene in the book that involves a Mugwump, a non-human creature (or, at least, it is not human anymore) that is the actualized epitome of the drug and control addict. In it, during a party at the famous Hassan's Rumpus Room, he makes a violent sexual spectacle of having intercourse with and then killing a boy by hanging him. Hanging is Burroughs' favorite sexual/violent image as it demonstrates the physiological fact that males immediately have orgasms when they are hanged. Burroughs uses the situation over and over again, usually in situations where another is forcing the bizarre sexual/violent ritual.

The Mugwump slips the noose over the boy's head and tightens the knot caressingly behind the left ear. The boy's penis is retracted, his balls tight. He looks straight ahead breathing deeply. The Mugwump sidles around the boy goosing him and caressing his genitals in hieroglyphs of mockery. He moves in behind the boy with a series of bumps and shoves his cock up the boy's ass. He stands there moving in circular gyrations.

The guests shush each other, nudge and giggle.

Suddenly the Mugwump pushes the boy forward into space, free of his cock. He steadies the boy with hands on the hip bones, reaches up with his stylized hieroglyph hands and snaps the boy's neck. A shudder passes through the boy's body. His penis rises in three great surges pulling his pelvis up, ejaculates immediately.

The imagery is designed to both shock and unseat the reader, as an alien being takes total control and all dignity from a young boy. There is no disputing that Burroughs may well have found these images attractive and arousing, but the point goes beyond that to demonstrating the grotesque sensibility that can stomach atrocities such as public murders. Remember, Burroughs lived in Tangiers at the time, where public executions were not unheard of by the Islamic government of the time. Burroughs takes the idea even farther by adding the sexual element, which is often present in Western depictions of violence, and then makes it ironic by staging the scene in front of an audience. The Mugwump is an artist, drawing attention to his art-form - in this case sex and murder - as a kind of statement, though within the context of the story, the only statement available seems to be total depravity. It also highlights the total control over the boy that Mugwump has, a perfect example of Burroughs' concept of sex as a control device. The theme of control through sex echoes throughout Burroughs' work, and he sees this kind of act as a nightmare world of rape and, as he calls it, death through the Last Erection. After this scene, the party goes wild and mass orgies begin taking place.

Yet, none of this is explicitly condoned within the context of what Burroughs is setting up. He is an outsider looking in, and even if it a kind of fantasy for him as a writer, it is also a grotesque fantasy. As he does with all his characters, he is merely the observer, El Hombre Invisible, in this case, merely watching from the sidelines as things fall apart. Given that sex was a very complicated and confused subject for Burroughs, I would argue that he is both turned on and repulsed by the descriptions he gives in Hassan's Rumpus Room and later in A.J.'s annual Party. Both contain explicit sexual depictions of grotesque demonstrations of violent sexual activity presented before a depraved audience of characters designed to be seen as perverts. However, they are also free, so the image confounds itself, creating a disconnect between clear morality and the typically ambiguous morality of Naked Lunch.

Nonetheless, the sexual scenes in Naked Lunch are generally what most people remember, and often receive the most vicious criticism from those who dispute the value of the book. One has to wonder whether Burroughs summation of the uneasiness people of the time had with any conversation about sex is much different in our day. Certainly, people are more inclined to talk about sex in a pragmatic way, but reactions to Burroughs' work even in our day seems to be divided at times between the nausea Booth refers to, though not in an ironic context, and discomfort. Perhaps this is not a negative situation, since the images are clearly designed to evoke an uncomfortable feeling among readers, leaving them with a clear image of a depraved way of thinking. Typical of Burroughs, though, is the subversive element of leaving in the reader's mind a question as to what is, in fact, the more depraved image: bizarre sexual behavior, or the mass confusion of people from an authority that does not care.

Burroughs' overall purpose in creating this world of manic images and often violent humor is to make the reader laugh and to preach a straightforward message of confusion. (Given that Burroughs' grandfather was a circuit preacher for the Methodist church, one sometimes detects a religious-like stance in his writing.) His message is that nothing is as simple, pure or easy as it has been presented to you. Anything that seems to be simple and pure is probably a lie. Whether or not this is true is dependent on the reader. Much of Burroughs' conclusions are derived from his own jaded life, it seems, but nonetheless his book foreshadowed many events that took place in the years just after he wrote it. The war in Vietnam, the lies of Watergate, even the rumors that Kennedy had been shot and killed in a conspiracy all seemed to ring true to the prophetic sounding message he delivered in 1959.

A few years after the publishing of Naked Lunch, Burroughs' ironic view of the world also seemed to come to light in the Deconstructionist philosophies of the post-WWII French literary critics and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. Taken from early 20th century ontological philosophers such as Husserl and Heidegger, their main message was that whatever was being said to the reader could probably be dismantled into its separate parts and be shown to be false. Often, they said, the very words used to prove one thing could easily prove that very thing wrong. Words and ideas were considered to be transitory in meaning and not the fixed moorings of knowledge that earlier philosophers had tried to make them. Not everything was/is so easily, magically created from a simple combination of words and phrases owned by an intelligentsia that shuts out the less informed. Though he did not know it, in his later cut-ups and the jangled writing style of Naked Lunch, Burroughs was a perfect demonstration of many of the ideas espoused by the Deconstructionists, though there is basically no way Burroughs would have known about them until much later in his career, when their work became more popular in North America and England. Also, Burroughs seems to have been almost entirely ignorant and uninterested in Literary Criticism, though its growing popularity is almost synchronous with Burroughs' career.

Texts used in this essay:

Booth, Wayne C. A Rhetoric of Irony, University of Chicago Press. Chicago: 1974.

Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch: the Restored Text, Grove Press. New York:1959, revised 2001.

Naked Lunch

If you have never read Naked Lunch, this essay will serve as an appropriate introduction to the work of a man who was both a 20th century genius and a 20th century failure. The purpose is to color your viewpoint in the correct shade, so that often controversial antics in the real world (which usually precedes an initial reading of Burroughs) will be superseded by the respect for his important literary contributions to the canon of English Literature. Call it a preemptive strike on misguidance. That being said, the first essay is about his life, just to get that part out of the way right away, and to make a simple point: that his work and his life are different, and do not always influence one another. More than anything else in this essay, the point is to paint a portrait of a lonely man who wrote to escape from mistakes in life.


Some would argue that Burroughs makes no contribution to our language. However, his relevance over the years has rivaled that of Jack Kerouac, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Samuel Beckett (as far as his prose work is concerned) and Henry Miller, all figures that were seen as pushing the boundaries of what was considered to be acceptable Literature in their day, and does not seem to be fading. (One could also make a strong argument for his superiority to Bukowski, as well, but time will tell. My personal feeling is that he certainly does, as Bukowski only hoped to take up where the 'Sun Also Rises'-era Hemingway left off. Bukowski's concern in Literature is very different from Burroughs, though he garners a good deal of well-earned respect, in his own right.) Also, with Burroughs' terms constantly finding their way into mainstream use ('heavy metal', 'interzone', etc.), it is hard to argue that he has not had much impact on the English language, and pop-culture in general. Therefore, Burroughs deserves the attention that all great writers deserve, which is to say, his work should be constantly reviewed in light of the ever-changing world of Literature.

Part 1: The Life of Riley

Naked Lunch is often the only book cited by writers commenting on William Burroughs' work. There are numerous reasons for this (the difficulty of the language in his later novels, for one), but only some of it has to do with the actual work itself. Naked Lunch, published in 1959, is inevitably tied to his life at the time he wrote the book, while living in Tangiers, but it is not a documentary account. It is a pastiche of events, some that he experienced and some that he only imagined in 'routines,' a style of acting out a story that he developed mostly to amuse himself during his days at Harvard, in the early 1930s. Exaggeration and irony are at the center of this method, which can be seen all the way through Naked Lunch. Unfortunately, the stories and myths surrounding the time of the novel's writing, and what could easily be called an outrageous life, overshadow his body of work, generally at a loss to his novels.

This is disappointing, as his life and Naked Lunch are not as intrinsically connected as many writers would have them be. They are clearly separate entities, as much as a writer and his work can ever be. If anything, Burroughs' education, curiosity and an early voracious appetite for knowledge (later in life he claimed to never read) are the real center of Naked Lunch, while the life he lived only colors the background, making the picture more distinct, and somewhat more sad.

William Burroughs has the same Literary curse as writers like Baudelaire, Rimbaud (two writers to whom he was repeatedly compared), Jean Genet or Hunter S. Thompson: his life and mythos often overshadow the importance of his work. For many, in fact, this is all they know of Burroughs. His work goes unread, but the stories of heroin addiction, shooting his wife, and trips to the Amazonian jungle in search hallucinogens are all the elements of the soap opera anyone needs. This is his true Naked Lunch, for many people. Having not read the novel, it seems that the tales of his tumultuous life are good enough. In my experience, most people assume his life's escapades are also what the book itself is about.

It's hard not to be attracted by the life, though. This mostly due to it being a great story in and of itself. His biography reads like a tragedy, though there have not been any really good biographies of Burroughs written at this point. In this case, the fact is often far stranger than the fiction. His biographies, however, suffer from a star-struck tone, highlighting not the work, but the events. Needless to say, the story of an aristocratic Midwesterner who chooses a life of crime and drugs is both Romantic and silly, in the end. I would not call Burroughs a Romantic, but he definitely started out that way (or, tired to), as his biographies tend to point out.

However, this is not the writer, but the man. Burroughs has both gained and lost due his mythos, attracting fans who are ultimately seeking justification for a particular lifestyle instead of appreciating a remarkable piece of work. Often, those who have read Naked Lunch see it as an answer, an almost Biblical response, to contrary views-points held by the typical American Conservative. If anything, there is always a somewhat Biblical tone beneath the surface of his novels, a notion that something greater than yourself is controlling your life. The only difference in Burroughs' case is that he constantly warns the reader to steer clear of this controlling element. For this reason, it is unlikely that he would prescribe any particular way of living for anyone, though many of his later novels had the image of rallying the troops. Naked Lunch certainly does not. Its purpose is to point out the problems, not solve them.

The book was often hailed as a voice for the Hippy generation (though it was its very antithesis), like Richard Brautigan's less refractory, but still somewhat difficult novels of the late 60s (Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar, A Confederate General From Big Sur). This is surly due more to the inevitable connection Burroughs' had to the Beat writers than anything else. Though his place in that school of writing is questionable, it was easier to market him in this way, and as he could use the money it is unlikely that he would have cared about being linked to a group of writers he respected. So, where Brautigan actually was a Hippy, Burroughs was decidedly not.

He was not the ideal writer for the Hippy generation, but he was still strongly identified as someone doing something new in American Literature, pushing boundaries and changing minds; all qualities adored by the youth of the day. In his trademark fedora and gray suit, he was far from the vision of dharmic peace that Ginsberg had become, sitting in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco preaching to the masses while the Grateful Dead played in the background. Nor was he the lumberjack coat-wearing alcoholic Kerouac had become, who died at the height of the Hippy generation in 1969 after his star had begun to rapidly fade, though he might have been the most philosophically prominent driving force behind the ethics of the late 60s. If anything, Burroughs looked like a banker, showing himself to be the most subversive of the group since his personal politics fell far outside the circle of the average suit and tie wearing, responsible contributor to society.

This image of Burroughs alone should hint at the fact that he did not hold with very many of the ideals of the generation that first gave him fame. 'El hombre invisible,' as he was often called, hinted at his desire to almost disappear into the background, the safest place for a junkie to live. His Protestant-derived upbringing (his parents were not religious, but they were 'proper,' in the Midwestern American sense of the word) could not embrace completely the message of Peace and Love that the Hippies espoused. His novels of the late 60s and early 70s, when the Hippie ideal hit its peak and began to decline, are actually quite militant, in contrast to the tenor of the time. But, again, the stark homosexual elements of his work are also there, describing a world very different from the accepted norm, but placing him on the Left, where he felt more comfortable. (This is true for both the Hippies and the average public. He didn't fit into either category very well.)

Often, he is also mistakenly seen as the forefather of the Punk ethos (I'd prefer not to say Movement, as if it were some kind of organized affront on Conservative ethics) that would become popular in the 1970s, though any reasonable person can see that it was only a simple extension of the Hippies. How else can you explain self-righteous idealism and a clearly Romantic view that Art (read: music pared down to its roots) will liberate the soul? That is Punk in all its glory. The loud, message-heavy music, unusual clothing and a general disdain for outsiders was nothing if not the 60s turned on its head, the same idea made modern for the 70s. You could also probably make the case that the British (who really 'invented' punk) were never loopy enough to take the American version of what a Hippy was seriously, so they designed their own more wry, in-your-face version of it a few years later, at a time when the British economy was suffering and people looked outside of traditional ethics to find answers for their poverty (or, perhaps, pride in their poverty, since Punk and money do not suffer each other lightly).

Neither the Hippies nor the Punks could clearly identify with Burroughs, though. At least, not in a practical sense. Logic alone says that Punks and Hippies would not have been all that excited about guns, which Burroughs adored throughout his life. They seemed fine with heroin addiction, but not homosexuality (at least, for the most part; it's only in recent years that what we might call our counter-culture has become accepting of it, at least for the parts of the counter-culture that were not homosexual themselves to begin with).

And, while women were coming into their own in the 60s and 70s, making remarkable social gains in the workplace, politics and art, Burroughs' ardent anti-female stance seemed to be getting stronger and stronger, now that he had to actually deal with female fans that appreciated his work. Though he was becoming a little more conscious of needing to be politically correct in his responses to the constant accusations that he was a misogynist, his later novels are noticeably absent of females. Besides all of that, he had a serious fetish for teenage boys at the time he was writing most of his novels in the 60s and 70s. In later interviews, he even admits to paying young boys of 8 or 9 to perform sexual acts in front of him while he lived in Tangiers in the 50s. Though he is, in essence, a moral writer, he was clearly not an example of accepted morality.

So, why do so many feminists and counter-culture figures, from the time he wrote his books down to our own day, identify with Burroughs? He clearly lived in a world all his own. He had no use for most people, and the only people he really trusted were other gay writers; in other words, people just like him. What is it that has captured the imagination and attention of so many readers since Naked Lunch was published, especially when so little of the attention he received until lately has not been focused on his work, but on his life?

Burroughs's work clearly struck a chord with those generations of readers, despite obvious moral disconnects. I think his appeal has more to do with his refusal to be controlled than personal morality. The overall message of freedom and experimentation is highly attractive. Yet, Burroughs was very conservative and very xenophobic, which creates a complicated dichotomy of Liberal artistic liberation and Midwestern Protestant culture. In many ways, he was almost Libertarian. Certainly, he cared only to make his own rules for living.

It's hard not to think of Hunter S. Thompson and his own jangled version of life when one thinks of Burroughs, though they were two very different writers. His desire to push farther and farther to discover every dark place in the world seems to salve over most of his less social ideals for many readers. I think most readers just look past what they don't like, and point to the things they do. It's also important to remember the value of humor in all of this, as well, because Naked Lunch is a very funny book. Though I will elaborate on this later, it's important to see that many readers (myself included) can look beyond uncomfortable subjects if the writer is making us laugh.

But, there is no denying the less salable parts of his character, when you consider Burroughs. The easiest way to describe him, and the element that gives Naked Lunch its biting satire, is the uneasiness and divided nature of the writer. While he shoots heroin in a filthy room in Tangiers and writes the manuscript that will become Naked Lunch on equally filthy pieces of paper that are randomly spread out across his tiny room, he is both conflicted and guilty about his choice of lifestyle and, at the same time, exalted in what he is doing. Burroughs was very bothered by the lack of a relationship with his son but, ultimately, too selfish to do anything about it. He knew that his lifestyle was not a fit environment to raise a child in, yet he still wanted that relationship in the times when he wasn't addicted to heroin. As well, he felt very guilty his whole life about killing Joan, his wife, in a silly accident and then never serving any time for the murder. Though he rarely talked about it, when he did, it was always with great guilt. Even in his personal diaries, written at the end of his career, months before his death, the subject still comes up. This guilt drove much of the writing process, but did not always translate into biography. Often, his anger, which seems to have been vast, translated itself into almost unrelated satire about the hypocrisy of modern America and the control mechanisms of the society he lived in.

This battle within was what Ginsburg called Burroughs' 'Ugly Spirit.' They even attempted to have it driven out of him by a shaman when they were both very old, in a religious ceremony in the 1990s, by sitting for many hours in a sweat lodge. It seems to have worked, at least in their minds, but had it been driven out earlier in Burroughs' life, one has to wonder if Naked Lunch would even have been written. At the root of the book is a very angry, lonely and torn 'Ugly Spirit' that is both self-destructive and liberating. But, as the text itself often demonstrates, it is mostly confused, like a demon trying to escape but not wanting to at the same time.

[Note: This is the first in a group of short articles that will deal with a number of issues surrounding William Burroughs' career and, specifically, the novel Naked Lunch. I intend to look at the following: his celebrated life overpowering his work, Naked Lunch in particular; the innovative core of Naked Lunch as a document of critical social observation; traditionally un-literary language made Literary (the rhetoric of medicine, drug-use as a scientific experiment, pulp-novels made high-brow art, etc.); and, finally, the use of satire that is crucial to Naked Lunch, and often connected to all of his most unique approaches to language. Obviously, many of these issues will be tied to one another, so there will undoubtedly be some over-lapping.]