/lit/ - Literature

master
/thread

Gravity's Rainbow does everything Naked Lunch does well, and does it better.

Masterpiece or overrated? Can't it be neither?

Brutal, usually brilliant writing. But it's hard to read Naked Lunch for anything other than enjoyment of the prose. Its story could be difficult to digest? What story? It doesn't have a story. It's just a mishmash of drug induced trips. I'm not saying there's nothing being said by that mishmash but it doesn't really have a story. And any semblance of a story it has isn't a very good or worthwhile one.

>>2275651
Take the advice of just remain silent

>>2275652
they actually made it into a film :/

>>2275665
Fine.

butyouknowi'mright

nigger

>>2275651

>Gravity's Rainbow does everything Naked Lunch does well, and does it better.

An article by a terrible hack in which the same opinion is expressed and which then receives the dutiful mullering it deserves in the comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/jan/05/william-burroughs-royal-academy
-art?commentpage=all#start-of-comments

It's the funniest book I've ever read. I've only read like 200 books and have a twisted sense of humor, but still.

I don't think it's a literary masterpiece, but it's a pretty good read.

>>2275680
>Everything he did was done better by others.
>Above all, I don't see how anyone's adolescent admiration for the Burroughs prose machine can survive an encounter with the novels of Thomas Pynchon - the true, dazzling titan of the avant garde novel in our time.
> Pynchon's marvellous sentences and immense, arcing fictions have all the wit, richness and humanity (even in their utter strangeness) that Burroughs lacks.

100% fact.

Also, Cronenberg's Naked Lunch is probably better than the book itself.

"Mmm that's my rich substance"

>>2275651

>Gravity's Rainbow tries in places to do what Naked Lunch does so well, but falls short due to Pynchon's intellectual stridence, sentimentality and magniloquent prose.

ftfy

>>2275680
>mfw the comments declined into faggots showing off their work

>>2275680

What is with all these people's obsession with Burroughs social life? There were more than a few comments based around the fact that he was in the public eye more than pynchon, and that for some reason the fact that pynchon wasn't a homosexual druggy leading a highly visible exciting life somehow detracts from his work as an author. What happened to judging a novel based on its content?

>>2275738
Pynchon smoked a lot of weed and partied with teenagers in Manhattan beach.

Didn't Burroughs let his son get gangraped by men when he came to visit him in Tunisia? That's fucked up.

>>2275738
To be fair the main scholars of Burroughs do spend an awfully large amount of time tracing his past (social life included) themselves.

>What is with all these people's obsession with Burroughs social life? There were more than a few comments based around the fact that he was in the public eye more than pynchon, and that for some reason the fact that pynchon wasn't a homosexual druggy leading a highly visible exciting life somehow detracts from his work as an author.

And the Graun hack OP said people regard Burroughs highly purely because they are impressed by his persona. Both are silly arguments.

>>2275740

Exactly, Pynchon was heavily involved in the drug culture, but he still managed to avoid a lot of publicity. I am not even saying one is better than the other, just that people seem unwilling to try to separate Burroughs work from the other parts of his life.

>http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/All-bark--no-bite-2506
Say what you like about Burroughs and the academics who study him, you have to admire his persistent ability to rile people up just by having existed

Unfortunately, it's difficult to reconcile the author and the value of his work when the author was a deranged, whiny homosexual with at least a forty year old umbilical cord attached to his mother and a startling (and darkly hilarious) disregard for human life.

Burroughs was a child rapist and practically let his own son get raped.

Fuck this guy and burn all his shitty books.

His writing is like the shit that seeps out of your ass uncontrollably after you've had too much gay anal sex.

Is that supposed to be good?

ITT: slanderous homophobes with no ear for poetry projecting their fear and incapacity

>>2275774

>>2275779
a flat dismissal of everything that has come into contact with "beat poetry" counts as the only way to prove you have an ear for poetry

Burroughs is shit. Deal with it. He's garbage.

Don't try and guilt trip me with your homophobe QQ bullshit. Burroughs is a niggerfaggot and I don't care. There are plenty of good faggots who also don't suck at writing.

>>2275779
>>2275774
>>2275772
>>2275766

His life should have jack shit to do with judging the value of his work though. If he was a shitty writer whose work had no influence on the medium than he was just another shitty writer.

>>2275791
well it just so happens he was a shitty writer and a shitty human being

>>2275799
>he was a shitty writer and a shitty human being

/thread

>>2275790

>Burroughs is shit. Deal with it. He's garbage.

If this is true, I have no feeling for literature.

It is highly unlikely that that is the case.

You're right about "beat poetry" - very wrong about Burroughs.

>>2275790

>Don't try and guilt trip me with your homophobe

Hey, no need to feel guilty about your homophobia. If that's you, enjoy it.

>>2275812
Suck more dick you whiny faggot ass fairy. Take your shit-tier faggot deep&edgy novelists with you.

I'll keep Proust and Rimbaud and Hart Crane and Whitman and every other faggot that isn't total shit.

> faggot faggot faggot
> gay gay gay
> stay mad

cumatmebro

>>2275812
I really think you're getting hung up on the one or two twats hung up about his sexuality as opposed to the detractors who are genuinely appalled that someone with as eroded a moral fiber as Burroughs had the tenacity to set his not even good drug-induced blather into type.

>>2275818

>cumatmebro

No thanks.

>>2275829

>>2275829
HOMOPHOBE DETECTED DURR DURR

BZZZZZZZZZ

YAY BURROUGHS

>>2275822

>eroded a moral fiber

laughinggirls.jpg

>>2275837

Quality post. A+ Keep 'em coming.

>>2275842
>>2275837
I guess Burroughs was right. Shitty writing really is contagious. It's a word virus!

badumtss

Burroughs sux.

William S Burroughs: incredibly flawed as a writer, but much better than any /lit/fag ever will be, and much better than what most of them read, for that matter.

/thread

Finnegans Wake for druggies. Nothing more.

can anybody provide sauce for all the "Burroughs allowed raep on his son"?

never heard about it before

>>2275884

Off the top of my head, he wasn't the best father and was often distant to his son (bear in mind this is the same man who shot his wife by accident during a drunken dare), so the rape story wouldn't surprise me at all.
In fact, his son had severe daddy issues, and tried to emulate his father to gain his attention or approval, and ended up doing himself in prematurely through alcoholism and drug use.

>>2275891

well from my limited knowledge of Burroughs, I've heard both stories (the 'accidental' killing of his wife, plus his negligence of his own kids is described in On the Road) but I've never heard of allowing his son to be avused

>>2275900

abused*

>>2275903
>>2275900

Honestly, me neither, and I've read a few things about Burroughs' life, and none have mentioned that until this thread.

I tend to prefer novels with at least some sort of coherent narrative... there were parts of Naked Lunch that I really enjoyed, but other parts dragged on and with nothing to really tie it all together I honestly wasn't that impressed by it.

/lit/ I am disappoint. This thread stinks of many bad things. In reverse order of niffingness these smells are:

>Bigotry
>Prejudice
>Post-counter-culture hipsterism
>Stupidity
>Deafness
>"Literary"-ness

Here is another list. This one of things which are true, whether you appreciate them to be so or otherwise:

>Burroughs is the most greatest American writer of the C20th
>Burroughs is possibly the greatest English writer of C20th
> Burroughs > Pynchon by a long, long way. You think Burroughs is trailing Pynchon? No, he is coming up to lap him
> Burroughs > Joyce (deal with it English Majors)

I won't go into the literary reasons. Read and reread the books and look at the world about you. Look at the internet and what it is doing to The Word, to the narrative coherence of the modern subject, also to the cleanliness of your minds and morals. Go back to Burroughs and see that situation presaged with great depth and economy, humour and incisiveness.

Anyhow, for any neo-religious codeys, here is the symbologic proof of Burroughs importance:

>WW2 heralded the end of the old era
>in the previous era of literature the practice was for the poet to approach the muse and asked her to sing of the rage of Achillies, or Perseus or some other or whatever
>Burroughs approached his muse with rage (not his own rage - world historical rage) and fired a bullet that killed her.
>an age old symbolic personfication given a symbolic end through the end of a person
>this itself mirroing the transition from individualistic, humanistic narrative coherence to a new mode, of dead subjects and authors, a-historic becoming, decohrence of form and concretion of content
>their "William Tell" act, she called it.
>William Seward Burroughs was forced to tell and he submitted to this, err, rape - rape by the ghost of The Muse - with all the faggoty diginity he possessed. and that amount was considerable

>>2276041
>>2276041
>Burroughs is the best
>Go look to the Internet yourself for the evidence to support my claim
>Here is an allegory for Burroughs' superiority
>hurr durr

>>2276060

It wasn't an allegory.

I read Naked Lunch once, and I found it to be unintelligible, incoherent and aggressively misanthropic. It's not the worst thing I've ever read. I think my dislike of Naked Lunch has evolved over the years for dislike of the fans of the work, all of them druggies who think they are achieving a higher state of consciousness when they do drugs and dance in a sweat haze to bizarre drum circles. Fans of Naked Lunch can be identified by their Bob Marley posters on the wall or their weed leaf button attached to their canvas tote bag that contains a bong.

>>2276041
I know that you're convinced that Burroughs is the greatest American writer of the 20th century, etc...

I've seen you on here before championing this shit.

You are incorrect, and I apologise that you won't be able to convince many people of your belief.

Burroughs was what he was, and he isn't even in the top 25 top American writers of the 20th century. Kerouac could even be ranked above him...

>>2276041
>Post-counter-culture hipsterism
For some reason I'm inclined to believe you don't know what this means.

>Burroughs>Pynchon
Keep on keepin' on, for as long as you last.

I'm listening to Gravity's Rainbow right now as I type this and you can't stop me!

On an only slightly-related note, why did people keep giving this crazy fuck guns?

>>2276079
Motherfuckin' Klaxons up in this bitch.

>>2276041

Aren't you a prize specimen?

>>2276076
>For some reason I'm inclined to believe you don't know what this means.

I just made that phrase up AFAIK. What does it really mean?

>Keep on keepin' on, for as long as you last.

Thanks. You too.

>>2276078

>I've seen you on here before championing this shit.

Will have to stop then.

>You are incorrect, and I apologise that you won't be able to convince many people of your belief.

Possibly incorrect, don't believe so though really. I don't want to convince anyone of this, either.

>He isn't even in the top 25 top American writers of the 20th century. Kerouac could even be ranked above him

You'll have to troll harder than that

>>2275759

Thanks for the link. That is one of lowest quality mainstream reviews I have ever seen. Dalrymple is a bitter and useless faux-intellectual, isn't he?