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/lit/ - Literature

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3468760 No.3468760 [Reply] [Original]

What makes this book so special? I read it, I admire Burroughs style of writing, but I cannot seem to find a deeper meaning , anything profound really. Why is this rated so highly? Please help me, /lit/!

>> No.3468777

>Hey /lit/ I cannot seem to find a deeper meaning, anything profound really? Can you please do my homework for me???

>> No.3468784

>>3468777

We only read German books in school :)

>> No.3468785

>>3468777

are you imlying there is a deeper meaning?

>> No.3468795

NL (no "The") gained its initial notoriety from the obscenity trials it instigated in the U.S. This caused a nationwide discussion about what constitutes pornography and broke down many remain censorship laws.

Later, when the Beats were codified as a literary movement and blamed/praised for starting the countercultural shift that ushered in the 60s and 70s (civil rights/sexual revolution/anti war/drugs/groovy music), it became a kind of litmus test for whether you were hip enough. That's pretty much the function it still serves today, for most who read it or try to.

Me? I dig it for the same reasons I dig all Burroughs: wicked humor; hallucinatory, apocalyptic excess juxtaposed with an almost mathematical/medical exactitude with language; a non-linear "cut-up" technique that frees writing from the prison of plot and artificial device and, like the poetry of John Ashbery, more accurately mimics postmodern human consciousness than traditional narrative.

How's that for a one-cup of coffee answer?

>> No.3468804

>>3468795
This

>>3468760
If i was gonna analyze this book i would do it either through a Marxist, formalist or Genus perspective. But i would not search for a deeper meaning.

>> No.3468851

I love when /lit/ posters can't even bullshit their way through a paper. Give me ANY book and I'd be able to whip up at least a 9/10 paper on it. Do you guys even read?

>> No.3468859

>>3468851

It wasn't for a paper, I'm just interested in literature ya dingus

>>3468795

That's actually a really cool answer

>> No.3468860

>>3468851
>implying homework threads are /lit/ regulars
>grading papers out of ten

>> No.3468862

>>3468860
>grading papers out of ten

I'm on the internet too much.

>> No.3468868

>>3468851
4/5 who are coming here asking for help about a paper aren't usually residents of /lit/.

>> No.3468939

Some critics argue that there is no literary value in it, that it's just nonsense and obscene, I don't agree with them but still

>> No.3468991

>>3468795
>I dig it for the same reasons I dig all Burroughs: wicked humor; hallucinatory, apocalyptic excess juxtaposed with an almost mathematical/medical exactitude with language; a non-linear "cut-up" technique that frees writing from the prison of plot and artificial device and, like the poetry of John Ashbery, more accurately mimics postmodern human consciousness than traditional narrative.

This. You've summed it far better than I could.

>> No.3469050

h...here i go:

Not all writing has to have a deeper meaning to be literature.

>> No.3469057
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3469057

I liked it because it gave me erections and made me laugh. Constantly.

>> No.3469107
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3469107

Because mugwumps.

>> No.3469123
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3469123

>>3468760
There's at leas two big lies in that title.

>> No.3469126
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3469126

>>3469123
I laughed a little.

>> No.3469224

>>3468760
>Why is this rated so highly?
Because Burroughs was a junkie, and the '420 blaze it' idiot crowd thinks that this makes him somehow extra-extra special.

>> No.3469249

>>3468795
>a non-linear "cut-up" technique that frees writing from the prison of plot and artificial device and, like the poetry of John Ashbery, more accurately mimics postmodern human consciousness than traditional narrative.
Could you explain what you mean by this? I haven't read the book, but I'm very interested in this technique in general.

>> No.3469260

>>3469249
write something. now cut it up in to pieces and put them back together in a different order. dont forget to add snippets of other random stuff to it as well.

it's like a word collage

>> No.3469286

>>3469260
I see. But doesn't that affect the meaning of what you are trying to express? It seems a little counter-productive to the overall thesis.

>> No.3469292

>>3469249
Read it then faggot.

>>3469224
You're an idiot.

>> No.3469331
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3469331

>>3469286
No. If you're trying to make a collage to express yourself then it is exactly productive.

>> No.3469353

>>3468795
>an almost mathematical/medical exactitude with language

That's a fucking gigantic exaggeration if I've ever read one.

>> No.3469373

>>3469292
I will, but I'm not into post-modernism yet. Do you recommend it as an introductory piece or is it something that should be saved till later?

>>3469331
I thank you, sirrah.

>> No.3469393

>>3469286

I run screaming from any fiction that has an "overall thesis."

>>3469260
That wasn't me (the anon who wrote the quoted line). Burroughs copped and improved upon the techniques of Bryon Gysin, a friend and collsborator who literally cut and re-arranged lines of type from newspapers and spliced audio/video together into random sequences. My understanding is that Burroughs seldom, if ever, went full random, and that the story of Naked Lunch in particular being the result of throwing pages into the air just apocryphal promo b.s. by Ginsberg (who was largely responsible for getting it a publisher). I think Burroughs understood the effect of the "cut-up" but used it deliberately.

>>3469353
"Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in an white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence--their speech centers are destroyed--except for the crackle of sparks and popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony."

"Liquefaction involves protein cleavage and reduction to liquid which is absorbed into someone else's protoplasmic being. Hassan, a notorious liequefactionist, is probably the beneficiary in this case." (p.75)

>> No.3469414

>>3469393
>I run screaming from any fiction that has an "overall thesis."
Explain. Is these even any aesthetic merit if the book has no 'point'? Toying with structure is interesting and innovative, but to wholly disregard it is just gibberish.

>> No.3469422

>>3469393
Were those quotes supposed to convince me?

>> No.3469428

>>3469414

Does modern art or abstract poetry have a point? Good books express things and make you feel, they don't lecture you or try to win an argument with you. They aren't term papers and those that set out to make a specific point, IMO, fail.

>> No.3469454

>>3469422

Depends what you think I'm trying to convince you of. They were chosen somewhat at random, with a few moments consideration, but if you don't hear in them, or Burroughs prose in general, a doctor's or a mathematician's fetish for esoteric "shop-talk" diction, then I guess we have to agree to disagree, my man.

>> No.3469834

It has no meaning. I can understand why some people may enjoy it's style, but overall it's just "edgy" and "cool" bullshit for faggot teenagers.

>> No.3469894

>>3469428

I would argue that the thesis of naked lunch is akin to that of Brotha Lynch, that mid century American life is actually obscene/brutal, and that by putting it is more cartoonish terms, the point is more easily understood.

also the cut up can work to expose meanings that the author was unaware of, it owes something to freud.

>> No.3470668
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3470668

Naked Lunch is the novel version of No. 5

It's about as drastic as it gets in how far you can get away with the medium without it being thrown away

>> No.3470682

>>3469331
What the fuck how did this even work are those real pages

>> No.3470687

Listen to Burroughs' reading it. You can find it on YouTube. It helps if you're lost.

>> No.3470897

>>3470687
I love listening to burroughs read anything. His voice is absolutely amazing.

>> No.3470913

>>3470897

my kids face when I put that voice reciting Curse Go Back onto a motion activated sound box every Halloween that trips at each trick or treater.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdqq9pCfU

>> No.3470988

maybe i'm just stupid but i got almost o narrative out of this book, not that i didn't enjoy it, i thought it was brilliant, but aside from that one part near the beginning with the doctor creating and experimenting on schizoid psychopaths and the otherworldly part with the black blood secreting creatures i remember not a thing, did everybody have the same experience or does my comprehension suck

>> No.3471010

>>3470988
It's not you. The narrative is next to non-existent. Burroughs said it was written so you could read the chapters in any order. Just treat each vignette as a crazy heroin addled dream

>> No.3471017
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3471017

>a girl in one of my undergrad classes told me she was about to read naked lunch
>having read it myself, I was curious why someone like her (christfag) would want to read it
>replies something to the effect of "I heard it was totally weird and random" xDDD
>decide to laugh it off and let her see what she's in for
>comes in the next time we have class
>gets mad that I didn't warn her what it was about
>she stopped reading after the third chapter
>mfw

>> No.3471030

>>3469353
It's really not. Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs all have some great fucking language at their disposal. They must have had brilliant editors.

>> No.3471049

>>3471010
well that's more or less what i did and i enjoyed myself,i'm a huge proponent of as much schizobabble as possible dhalgren is one of my favorites, the few sections i could make heads or tails of for more than a couple lines were damn near transcendant though

>> No.3471088

>>3471010

Even though he said there you can find a certain continuity if you read the chapters in order. For example the first chapter discussed the vigilante and the second chapter is about that vigilante.

>> No.3471149

>>3471030

That's a strange thing to say about a group of writers infamous for their lack of editing and antagonism towards editing. Whatever their contribution (and I'm in the camp that says it was substantial), I feel pretty confident it shouldn't be attributed to editors.

>> No.3471183

>>3471149
I was being tongue-in-cheek with the editors bit. I'm also of the opinion that editors don't really do shit.

>> No.3471279

>>3471030
How know big words?