Joan Mirò painting while hallucinating and starving
is art, Burroughs picking up a pen (or a typewriter) and rambling on a page
while under the influence of all sorts of substances, in my opinion, is not.
Why should Naked
Lunch be considered a seminal book in 20th century history, I
don’t know. Why couldn’t Burroughs just stare at a wall, or smash some things
while high as a kite? The fact that he dared to write in those conditions is
clearly not something condemnable, but there is a middle ground between that
and being praised and hailed as a great writer for it. He had every right to
write this book, but after 20 pages I really didn’t feel the need to read it
(despite the fact that I did, because I have issues with closure etc.)
What I found even more frustrating was the
fascinating final (relatively sober) report on various drugs and detox methods.
20 pages that, while maybe not a word of art, stimulate intellectual curiosity
and can actually be read. More of that, or a novel factually based on that,
would have been much appreciated.
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