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289 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1959
There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing … I am a recording instrument … I do not presume to impose “story” “plot” “continuity” … Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function … I am not an entertainer … (p. 184)
The Word is divided into units which be all in one piece and should be so taken, but the pieces can be had in any order being tied up back and forth in and out fore and aft like an innaresting sex arrangement. This book spill off the page in all directions, kaleidoscope of vistas, medley of tunes and street noises, farts and riot yips and the slamming steel shutters of commerce, screams of pain and pathos and screams plain pathic, copulating cats and outraged squawk of the displaced bullhead, prophetic mutterings of brujo in nutmeg trance, snapping necks and screaming mandrakes, sigh of orgasm, heroin silent as dawn in the thirsty cells, Radio Cairo screaming like a berserk tobacco auction, and flutes of Ramadan fanning the sick junky like a gentle lush worker in the grey subway dawn feeling with delicate fingers for the green folding crackle … This is Revelation and Prophecy of what I can pick up without FM on my 1920 crystal set with antennae of jissom … Gentle reader, we see God through our assholes in the flash bulb of orgasm … Through these orifices transmute your body … The way OUT is the way IN … (p. 191)
You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point … Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To Book … Black insect lusts open into vast other-planet landscapes … Abstract concepts, bare as algebra, narrow down to a black turd or a pair of aging cojones … How-To extend levels of experience by opening the door at the end of a long hall … Doors that only open in Silence … Naked Lunch demands Silence from The Reader. Otherwise he is taking his own pulse … (p. 187)
Like I say The Reader will frequently find the same thing said in the same words. This is not carelessness nor is it for The Infatuation With Sound Of Own Words Dept…. It indicates space-time juxtaposition … a folding in and back (the universe is curved, feller say) … point of intersection between levels of experience where parallel lines meet … (p. 287)
"Nothing is true; everything is permitted,"
- Vladimir Bartol