Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Bc. Antonín Zita

“The Exterminator Does a Good Job:” The Discourse of Naked Lunch Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr.

2011

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Bc. Antonín Zita

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank my supervisor, doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr., for his valuable comments and suggestions during the writing of the thesis.

I. Introduction ...... 1

II. Biography of William S. Burroughs ...... 3

III. Discourse Analysis of Naked Lunch ...... 9

III.A Introduction ...... 9

III.B Narrative and Narrative Voices ...... 13

III.C The Structure of the Discourse ...... 30

III.D The Treatment of Time and Setting ...... 38

III.E: The Characters of Naked Lunch ...... 56

III.F The Tone and Language of Naked Lunch ...... 67

III.G Conclusion ...... 91

IV. The Interpretations of Naked Lunch ...... 94

IV.A Introduction ...... 94

IV.B Naked Lunch as a Humorous Work ...... 97

IV.C Naked Lunch as a Moral Metaphor ...... 101

IV.D Naked Lunch and Literal Meaning ...... 112

IV.E Naked Lunch as an Indeterminate Work ...... 122

IV.F Wising Up the Marks: A Commentary on the Discourse ...... 128

V. Conclusion ...... 135

VI. Bibliography ...... 139

VII. Résumé/Resumé ...... 145

VII.A Résumé ...... 145

VII.B Resumé ...... 146

I. Introduction

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the discourse of the book Naked Lunch by the

American writer William S. Burroughs and to comment on the possible interpretations of the text. There are several reasons I have chosen to analyze Naked Lunch. First,

William S. Burroughs was a part of the Beat Generation which is credited for challenging the social values of their time and experimenting with new forms of writing. Secondly, Burroughs himself was undoubtedly a highly influential figure, being a direct influence on numerous artists and it is Naked Lunch that is considered his most famous work. Thirdly, the last ten years have seen an increased interest in Burroughs which is reflected in the number of publications related to the author. Not only has the last decade seen the release of anniversary and/or revised editions of his early work, namely Junky, Queer, The Yage Letters and Naked Lunch, but also numerous critical and biographical writings on Burroughs and his work have been published, the most important being a collection of critical essays titled Naked Lunch@50 and William

Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination, a study of the early texts and their genesis by

Oliver Harris. In other words, these and other recent publications often unveil new facts and perspectives which in effect might lead to new interpretations. Lastly, the discourse of Naked Lunch is not only an interesting subject for a comprehensive analysis, but it also provides an insightful commentary on critical interpretations and the shortcomings of interpretations in general. To sum it up, I consider Naked Lunch more than worthy to be the subject of my thesis.

Before I start the analysis, I will provide a brief biography of the author to secure a background for the discussed work. In the next section I will perform the analysis of the work‘s discourse that will provide the necessary information for the commentary on the text‘s critical interpretations. The analysis will take into account

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several aspects of the work, namely its narrative voices, structure, handling of time and setting, treatment of characters, and the language used throughout the text and its overall effect on the discourse. The analysis will show that the work is highly indeterminate and it is often up to the reader to decide on an interpretation. Naturally, openness and indeterminacy is present in more or less every text; however, Naked

Lunch is an extremely indeterminate—and therefore interesting—piece of writing. This section of the thesis will use several critical approaches to describe the various aspects of the work, the most prominent being the insights and thoughts of Roland Barthes,

Franz Stanzel and Umberto Eco. An evaluation of the discourse as a whole will be also present in this section.

The following part of my thesis will provide an overview of Naked Lunch interpretations by various literary scholars. However, it will not be a simple overview of past and present criticism as I will use the information obtained by the discourse while describing the various interpretations. Furthermore, I will evaluate each interpretation by using the results of the analysis and comparing them with the criticism in question.

In other words, the interpretations will be assessed according to their actual understanding of the nature and mechanics of the discussed text. Moreover, the results will be contrasted with each other and a commentary on the interpretations of Naked

Lunch will be made. This commentary will not only touch upon the issue of interpreting

Naked Lunch but also on interpretation of a literary text in general and on the alternatives the work in question offers.

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II. Biography of William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs has had several monikers during his life: el hombre invisible, the godfather of Punk (Miles 1), literary outlaw (as in the title of Ted

Morgan‘s biography); J.G. Ballard called him ―the greatest author in post-war America‖

(qtd. in Stevens 7) and Norman Mailer‘s blurb that Burroughs is the ―only living

American novelist who may conceivably be possessed by a genius‖ appears on most of his books. Burroughs has been undoubtedly central to the Beat Generation, yet his classification as a Beat writer is not without difficulties: he differs from the other Beats in style and Burroughs himself did not consider himself a part of the literary movement

(Harris, ―Burroughs‖ 31-32). Burroughs was certainly a controversial persona for the most part of his life: not only he was a homosexual and drug addict, but also talked and wrote about it openly and these experiences greatly influenced his writing. Due to the themes above and the often shocking nature of his writing, his writing was often condemned: a British tabloid once had a picture of Burroughs in a suit with the accompanying text saying ―he has the appearance of a Protestant minister or a banker, but actually he‘s very subversive, dedicated to subverting all decent values‖ (qtd. in

Baker 118). Nevertheless, Burroughs had a significant impact on popular culture, perhaps even bigger than on literature: ―It was the idea of Burroughs that appealed, not the man [. . .]. This Burroughs was the man who saw the abyss and came back to report on it‖ (Miles 1).

Burroughs was born on 5 February 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri, to a rather well- off family. Some of his relatives achieved fame during their lives: Burroughs was named after his grandfather who invented the adding machine and his uncle Ivy Lee was a pioneer in the then-beginning public relations—among his clients was IG Farben, the German firm that manufactured Zyklon B, which paid Ivy Lee to improve Hitler‘s

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image in the United States in the 1930s (Baker 8). In 1932 he went to Harvard, where he majored in English Literature. During his Harvard years, he attended lectures on

Shakespeare and took a course on Coleridge by John Livingston Lowes.1

His parents gave him as a graduating present a $200 monthly allowance and sent him to Europe. Burroughs briefly studied medicine in Vienna and there he also met Ilse

Klapper, a Jewish woman that wanted to get out of Europe to escape the Nazis. In order to help her, Burroughs married her.2 The several years following his return to the United

States were marked by his search for a purpose in life as well as reacting to a rather unexpected turn of events: he studied anthropology at Harvard, applied for the service in the OSS,3 then moved to New York where he briefly worked in advertisement only to be drafted after the Pearl Harbor attack into the infantry at Jefferson Barracks near St.

Louis; however, several string were pulled and Burroughs moved to Chicago where he worked in a detective agency and later as an exterminator.4 Finally, he again moved to

New York where he through a mutual friend met Allen Ginsberg and later Jack

Kerouac. The three quickly became friends and their future writing established them as the most influential figures of the Beat Generation.

The influence Burroughs had on the two was significant as he introduced them to numerous writers they had previously never heard of, such as Franz Kafka, Oswald

Spengler or Jean Cocteau (Baker 35); Baker notes he was ―the wise man of the group.‖

Through Kerouac he also met Joan Vollmer, a student at Columbia University School of

Journalism, and they soon became intimate; it was Burroughs first and only serious

1 John Livingston Howes is the author of The Road to Xanadu, an important writing on Coleridge (Baker 21). 2 The union was a marriage of convenience from the very beginning and it most probably saved Ilse‘s life—she lived in New York and returned to Europe after the war (Miles 31-33). 3 The OSS (Office of Strategic Security) was the precursor to the CIA. The job interview was going well until the interviewer introduced his colleague James Phinney Baxter. Baxter was Burroughs‘ housemaster from his Harvard days and he disliked Burroughs for keeping a ferret and a gun in his room (Baker 31). 4 As Barry Miles writes, Burroughs enjoyed the work; furthermore, his experience as an exterminator often appeared in his texts (38). 4

relationship with a woman (Miles 44). It was also around this time that Burroughs tried hard drugs for the first time and he soon developed a small habit; although he tried several times to stop doing drugs and tried numerous addiction cures, he was never entirely clean from now on and spent most of his life on heroin or its substitute used for the treatment of heroin addiction, methadone. In addition, he got introduced to numerous pushers, addicts, thieves and petty criminals during his stay in New York, learning many tricks of the trade in the process and references to the junk industry formed one of the staples of Burroughs‘ writing. In 1946 he was forced to leave New

York because of a forged narcotics prescription and after moving several times with

Joan, her daughter from previous marriage Julie, and their newborn son Billy he tried to become a farmer near Pharr, Texas. Nevertheless, firearms and drug offenses forced

Burroughs to move again; he chose Mexico City as his next destination and moved in with his family. In Mexico City he started writing what later became Junkie. However, an incident that forever changed Burroughs‘ life happened during his Mexico City days: in the evening of September 6, 1951, he shot and killed Joan in a drunken game of

William Tell.5 This unfortunate event, which he greatly regretted, lead to Burroughs‘ travels through Latin America in the search of the drug yagé.6 He wrote his next novel

Queer during this period; however, its subject matter—homosexual attachment—

5 There was–and still is–a lot of confusion about this incident. According to several witnesses, Burroughs said to Vollmer: ―It‘s about time for our William Tell act.‖ (Miles 57). Barry Miles subsequently comments, ―[t]hey have never performed a William Tell act‖ before. However, Ted Marak, who knew Burroughs from his farming days in Rio Grande Valley, claims that ―Billy used to shoot pieces of fruit off Joan‘s head in the Valley. […] [He] was a hell of a shot.‖ (Johnson 155) Marak‘s evaluation of Burroughs‘ shooting skills can surely be trusted, since he qualified ―as an expert marksman during his time as a member of the army cavalry in the late 1930s‖ (33). Burroughs‘ statements about this incident were often contradictory: in a 1965 interview with Conrad Knickerbocker, Burroughs states that he was merely inspecting the revolver ―and it went off – killed her‖ (41); however, that was merely the version invented by his Mexican lawyer Bernabé Jurado (Johnson 1, 156). Since Burroughs later changed his version of the story and admitted that he actually suggested the William Tell act but that they never performed it before (Grauerholz 2), it may very well be true that Burroughs and Vollmer actually did practice the William Tell act on numerous occasions. 6 It should be noted that Burroughs‘ journey in search of yagé was a novel effort because it was at ―a time when yagé (aka Banisteriopsis Caapi, ayahuasca, natema, pinde) was only of emerging interest to a few professional ethnobotanists, principally Richard Evans Schultes [. . .], the Russians, and the CIA‖ (Harris, Secret 165). 5

deemed it impossible for publication at that time. In December 1953 Burroughs decided it is time to move again and traveled to Tangier.

The port city of Tangier was at that time an international zone administered by

France and Burroughs managed to live a rather comfortable lifestyle of an expat due to his monthly allowance. During his long stay in Tangier he started writing what would later become Naked Lunch. The process of writing was complicated one: not only it was troubled by Burroughs‘ addiction reaching a new high, but he also struggled with the ideal literary form for the work (Harris, ―Burroughs‖ 36). In January 1958 Burroughs moved to Paris where he met with Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso at the so-called Beat Hotel and there he also continued working on the text. Naked Lunch was finally published in 1959 by Olympia Press, although, as Harris notes, ―it took a legal battle and another six years for it to go on sale in the United States.‖ It was also the first work published under his real name, as Junky was released under the pseudonym

William Lee and Queer as well as The Yage Letters, although written several years earlier, were published only after the release of Naked Lunch. In the end, the text ranks together with Ginsberg‘s ―HOWL‖ and Kerouac‘s On the Road as the most important text of the Beat Generation.

During the next decade he lived in London where he worked on his experimental

―cut-up‖ trilogy. The technique was accidentally discovered by his Tangier friend and painter Brion Gysin and Burroughs felt it is precisely what his writing needed, employing it to a larger or smaller extent in all his future work.7 Furthermore, he also experimented with cut-ups in film, photography and audio recordings. In early 1974,

7 As Barry Miles writes, cut-ups ―free the writer from the tyranny of grammar and syntax. [. . .] Cut- ups create new juxtapositions, breaking down ‗either-or‘ logic and providing a way of thinking in association blocks‖ (128-29). The technique is employed by literally cutting a page of text with a pair of scissors into several parts and then putting these parts together in different combinations, possibly even including cut-ups from different sources; as Burroughs confessed to Conrad Knickerbocker, Nova Express, the last book in the trilogy, contains cut-ups of Joyce, Rimbaud, Shakespeare and several other writers (28). 6

Burroughs returned after 25 years to the United States, settling first in New York and moving after several years to Lawrence, Kansas, a small university town. Although he was almost sixty years old when he arrived to New York, he remained extremely prolific: he continued writing, went on successful reading tours organized by his new secretary James Grauerholz, took up painting, recorded numerous spoken word albums, and collaborated on a vast number of projects with such artists as Gus van Sant, Kurt

Cobain or Tom Waits and the bands U2, Ministry, and R.E.M.8 Interestingly, Burroughs probably had more direct influence on musicians than writers.9 During his stay in New

York he lived in the downtown punk centre only two blocks south of CBGBs, the music bar that was the center of the punk movement, and all the musicians regarded him as the father of the punk scene (Miles 217). Furthermore, David Bowie and Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra both used Burroughs‘ cut-up technique in order to write lyrics for their songs and the musicians Patti Smith and Lou Reed claim to be directly influenced by the writer (Miles 9; A Man Within). However, Burroughs influence upon literature should not be overlooked; among other things, he is credited as of utmost importance for the development of the ―cyberpunk‖ sci-fi genre founded by William Gibson‘s

Neuromancer (Miles 16).

Burroughs remained in Lawrence until he passed away in early August 1997 and he was extremely saddened to hear about the death of Allen Ginsberg earlier the same year; his other friends Timothy Leary, Terry Southern and Herbert Huncke died the year before. These were some of the last surviving members of a generation of artist and thinkers Burroughs belonged to as well. Nevertheless, his last journal entry says:

8 Rob Johnson explains Burroughs‘ influence on popular culture: ―His gaunt, erudite person was so well known that Nike paid him to hawk sneakers in a controversial 1994 commercial‖ (Johnson 1, 7). 9 Miles further comments on Burroughs and music: ―One of the earliest, and perhaps the most enduring, proofs of Burroughs‘ prestige in rock circles is his presence on the front sleeve of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band which shows the Beatles standing before life-size cut-out photographs of people that they personally liked and admired. Burroughs was chosen by Paul McCartney‖ (7). 7

―Love? What is it? The most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE‖ (qtd. in Baker

198).

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III. Discourse Analysis of Naked Lunch

III.A Introduction

Naked Lunch begins in its first part ―And Start West‖ as a first person narrative:

―I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves‖ (3). The narrator, thanks to a ―[y]oung, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit,‖ boards a subway train just in time to evade capture by a ―narcotics dick in a white trench coat,‖ then begins talking to the fruit, telling him about some of his acquaintances such as the Gimp or the Shoe Store Kid. After meeting Old Bart and mentioning some junk beliefs (―Junk is surrounded by magic and taboos, curses and amulets. I could find my Mexico City connection by radar‖ [6].) and rather strange characters (such as Willy the Disk, a blind police informer with ―a round, disk mouth lined with sensitive, erectile black hairs‖ [7]), the narrator concludes this part of Naked

Lunch with the following: ―So we stock up on H, buy a secondhand Studebaker, and start west‖ (8). Naked Lunch thus, at first, appears as a story told from a point of view of a police-evading drug addict, in effect offering to the reader a possible cornerstone of the discourse. Franz Stanzel explains that a first person narrator who begins the discourse is an assurance of revealing in the right time all the necessary information needed to understand the work to the reader (196); in other words, Naked Lunch should continue in the tone set by the first couple of pages.

However, the further one continues reading Naked Lunch, the more deconstructed the discourse becomes. It becomes invaded by obscure characters such as the aforementioned Willy the Disk, ―blind from shooting in the eyeball, his nose and palate eaten away sniffing H, his body a mass of scar tissue hard as dry wood‖ (7), or the Vigilante, an addict who ―winds up in a Federal Nut House specially designed for the containment of ghosts‖ (9). Furthermore, the Vigilante subsequently undergoes

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some vast physical changes: ―[N]o organ is constant as regards either function or position . . . sex organs sprout anywhere . . . rectums open, defecate and close . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments . . .‖ In addition, not only are many slang words such as ―heat‖ or ―pigeon‖ present in the discourse, 10 but the discourse soon shifts from the familiar setting of the United States or Mexico to imaginary countries of Freeland Republic or Annexia. Importantly, the text as a whole does not seem coherent at all: the tense of the discourse changes back and forth from present to past and the language abruptly switches from a straightforward first-person account (―I cut into the Automat and there is bill Gains huddled in someone else‘s overcoat looking like a 1910 banker with paresis‖ [5]) to a poetic stream of images (―Chicago: invisible hierarchy of decorticated wops, smell of atrophied gangsters, earthbound ghost hits you at North and Halsted, Cicero, Lincoln

Park, panhandler of dreams, past invading the present, rancid machines of slot machines and roadhouses.‖ [11]). In addition, the narrative voice, which often disappears in a multitude of monologues by various characters entering the discourse only to later disappear without a trace, is on numerous occasions replaced by several other narrative voices and time seems simply non-existent. Michael Sean Bolton explains Burroughs‘ discourse strategy:

Burroughs‘s novels destabilize chronology to such a degree that time no longer provides firm context. Distortions of temporality in the novels include the destabilization of the present time of the narrative, the inclusion of characters who are not bound by time, and the blending and blurring of genres, all resulting in anachronisms and temporal instabilities that sabotage attempts to make historical connections. (57)

Burroughs‘ destabilizing of discourse can be further portrayed by the following excerpt of Naked Lunch synopsis found in the Encyclopedia of Beat Literature:

10 Meaning ―the police‖ and ―informer,‖ respectively. For the translation of problematic slang words, see the ―Glossary‖ section of Junky. 10

The narrative jumps to the next section, ―Joselito,‖ where Carl watches a German doctor examine a young man named Joselito, who is diagnosed with lesions in both lungs. Carl asks if he will receive ―chemical therapy,‖ and the words and the doctor‘s manner (―seedy and furtive as an old junky‖) create an intersection or digression [. . .] with a separate storyline involving a junky [. . .]. ―The Black Meat‖ section begins with The Sailor [. . .] looking to score, and it is written in the hard-boiled style of Junky. However, the setting – a Times Square cafeteria – transforms into a surreal, other- worldly setting where the addicts are ―Reptiles‖ and ―Meat Eaters,‖ and the pushers are creatures called Mugwumps [. . .]. The Mugwumps produce an addictive substance that they secrete from their penis [sic] and that addicts the Reptiles by slowing their metabolism and thus prolonging life [. . .]. Periodically the Dream Police create a panic among the Heavy Fluid addicts, and the Mugwumps go into hibernation until the scene is clear. (Johnson and Hemmer, 220-221)

While the above-mentioned summary of two Naked Lunch sections might seem clear, understanding of the work from such a summary is quickly muddled for the two sections are only a small part of Naked Lunch and the summary in the encyclopedia continues in similar fashion for a total of seven pages. Furthermore, characters only rarely reappear in the subsequent sections, thus each new paragraph of the summary usually introduces new characters and even if they do reappear—such us the above- mentioned the Sailor and Carl—they are neither affected by the previous events nor do they in any way reflect on them. In addition, frequent explanations in parentheses made by the authors of the article (for example, ―digression‖ mentioned in the first paragraph is ―the major plot device in the book‖ or the Sailor is ―based on Phil White‖) only further portray the complex nature of Naked Lunch, a novel in which ―randomness is the principal of organization‖ (219). Of course, it might be objected to using a synopsis as a proof of discourse complexity. As Anderegg points out, there are only few works of art that do not look ridiculous or absurd in a synopsis (qtd. in Stanzel 36). However,

Stanzel quickly explains that reduction to mere synopsis often shows the text‘s discourse techniques and the way they contribute to the content of the work and it is

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already apparent that the traditional prose elements such as characters or time setting are employed by Burroughs in an innovative and radical way (Stanzel 36).

However, before the discussion of discourse techniques of Naked Lunch begins, it is important to mention the genesis of the work, since it not only explains many of its stylistic features, but also shows that all efforts to write an understandable synopsis must end in vain. Originally, as Oliver Harris points out, Naked Lunch was conceived as a triptych made up of ―Junk,‖ ―Queer,‖ and ―Yage‖ (―Beginnings‖ 17), that is manuscript versions of what later became Junky, Queer, and The Yage Letters, respectively.11 Therefore, even if Naked Lunch had been published as the intended triptych and not reworked into its current form, the resulting work would still be rather peculiar, since Junky is written in the first person, Queer in third person, and The Yage

Letters is a hybrid mixing travelogue, letters to Allen Ginsberg, and other material into epistolary form (Harris, Yage Introduction xxvi). Although the idea of a three-volume manuscript was later abandoned, elements of the concept survived into the final shape of the work; nevertheless, instead of neatly separating the stylistically different parts,

Naked Lunch mixes all the elements of its predecessors into a great and complex text that ignores many traditional ways of writing.

With the above being said, I can move to a more detailed discussion of Naked

Lunch and since it is a complicated work, I must begin the discussion of its discourse in a more general way—only then, after the outer layers of the work are ―peeled off,‖ can one truly see its textual strategy. Therefore, my analysis of the work‘s discourse is separated into five parts: first, the description of the work‘s narrative voices; second, the structuring of the work and its effect on its interpretation; third, the treatment of time

11 While originally published as The Yage Letters, it is currently available as The Yage Letters Redux, an edition revised and edited by Oliver Harris which includes several texts that were originally intended to be included in the work but were omitted from the first editions. However, for the sake of clarity, the diploma work uses the original title. 12

and setting; fourth, a commentary on the characters present in the work; and fifth,

Burroughs‘ usage of language, its dynamics, and the way it affects the discourse. The discussion contained within these five parts will be then summarized in a conclusion. In addition, it must be explained that because the discourse of Naked Lunch is complex, I will often comment on one textual element several times throughout the analysis as well as provide detailed examples for each element. One may consider my thesis lengthy and perhaps even repetitive; however, I believe that that the approach I have chosen is not only valid but even necessary when dealing with a complex work such as Naked Lunch.

III.B Narrative and Narrative Voices

As it was already mentioned, the discourse of Naked Lunch is complex and often destabilizes itself; however, such destabilizing is not apparent at first. For example, the

―Islam Incorporated and the Parties of Interzone‖ section begins as a first person account describing the narrator‘s experience with one of the many reappearing characters, A.J.:

I was working for an outfit known as Islam Inc., financed by A.J., the notorious Merchant of Sex, who scandalized international society when he appeared at the Duc de Ventre‘s ball as a walking penis covered by a huge condom emblazoned with the A.J. motto: ―They Shall Not Pass.‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 121)

However, as the reader continues in reading the section, the first person perspective seems to disappear, since the narrative voice only routinely describes several episodes forming the section without actually showing personal relationship to the events described. Such is the case in the Chez Robert or Clem and Jody episodes included in the ―Parties of Interzone‖ section: in the former A.J. asks for ketchup in a restaurant so luxurious that ―many a client [. . .] has rolled on the floor and pissed all over himself in convulsive attempts to ingratiate‖ with the chef (124); in the latter Clem and Jody,

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―two-old time vaudeville hoofers, [who] cop out as Russians agents whose sole function is to represent the U.S. in an unpopular light‖ are introduced (132). The following section, ―The County Clerk,‖ is on the other hand narrated from a third person perspective, describing the efforts of a character named Lee to ―file an affidavit that he is suffering from bubonic plague to avoid eviction from the house he has occupied ten years without paying the rent‖ at the desk of a racist County Clerk (142). In other words, the narrative point of view switches without further notice from one person to another. Stanzel explains that discourse can be developed either by a narrator who is presented as an individual person or by a narrator who hides behind the discourse to such degree that he/she becomes practically invisible (65). Therefore, one may be tempted to simply conclude that both narrating types are present in Naked Lunch; however, the issue of the work‘s narrative voices is much more complicated and needs to be discussed in a more thorough manner.

Now it is important to introduce Franz Stanzel‘s theory of narrative analysis. He explains that narrative is formed by three elements—modus, person, and perspective12—and each element is constituted by a binary opposition. Modus is by

Stanzel explained through the term ―reflector‖ as opposed to ―narrator‖ (65): while narrator not only tells the story, but also reflects upon it and often addresses the reader, reflector thinks, feels, and perceives, but as opposed to narrator reflector never addresses the reader nor comments upon the narrative itself (180); the reader merely looks through the eyes of the reflector on the events of the plot—the plot is not told directly, only reflected upon (13). The second element, person, consists of a character living in the discourse as opposed to a character outside of the discourse—the opposition is described by traditional terminology as first person and third person

12 My translation. 14

narrative—and Stanzel uses the words ―I‖ and ―he‖ to distinguish the person of a text

(66). Lastly, perspective is the opposition of ―inner‖ and ―outer;‖ in other words a narrative is shaped either through the perspective of a certain person or through the mind of an omnipotent being (67).13 Simply put, narratives are formed by using one of the elements forming the binary. That of course does not mean that only one of the opposites can be used throughout a discourse: a writer might, for example, choose a minor character to comment in the first person on the actions of the given work‘s main hero, who might happen to be a reflector for the most part of the work. It must be also noted that Stanzel‘s categorization of the narrative elements is based on ideal models and therefore some overlap between the elements is possible (69). Stanzel‘s narrative theory is perhaps more of a theoretical model and as Stanzel himself points out, the narrowly defined narrative elements can sometimes cause problems and a critic using

Stanzel‘s model might feel being forced to develop a detailed, yet impractical systematization (68). On the other hand, the categorization is certainly useful, since it allows defining in depth the particulars of a given narrative.14

Naked Lunch features many various narrative voices. For example, the first section of the work, the already mentioned ―And Start West,‖ is written in the following way: modus narrator, person I, perspective inner. On the contrary, ―The Examination‖ section, in which Carl is subjected to a humiliating interview concerning his sexual orientation by Dr. Benway, an immoral and unscrupulous person ―who became one of

Burroughs‘ best-loved characters‖ (Miles, El Hombre Invisible 32), uses: modus narrator, person he, perspective outer. Therefore, it is now evident that the narrative is

13 For a more complex discussion of the narrative elements, see Stanzel. 14 It must be also noted that ―narrative‖ in Stanzel‘s terminology is connected only to narrated passages, that is only to parts of a text which can be identified in terms of Stanzel‘s narrator or reflector. Therefore, I will use the term ―narrative‖ only in connection with Stanzel‘s narrative theory from now on. Furthermore, in order to distinguish between the different variations of the binaries present in the discourse, I will use the term ―narrative voice‖ to describe a combination of the three binaries. 15

complicated, yet may not seem too difficult for a modern reader. However, Burroughs employs many techniques beyond mere change of person or perspective that greatly affect the text.

In the ―Atrophied Preface‖ section that closes the work the reader is offered an explanation of the discourse: ―Lee The Agent [. . .] is taking the junk cure‖ (182). Such statement might seem plausible at first—after all, if ―Atrophied Preface‖ is not taken into account, the discourse is framed by two first person sections, ―And Start West‖ and

―Hauser and O‘Brien‖ respectively. The latter clearly identifies its narrator as William

Lee: Hauser and O‘Brien are two detectives sent to ―pick up a man named Lee, William

Lee‖ and to ―bring in all books, letters, manuscripts. Anything printed, typed or written‖

(175); unfortunately for the policemen, the narrator shoots them both and escapes.

Furthermore, in a different section its narrative voice confides his secret to the reader:

―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)‖ (122-23). In other words, the reader is tempted to believe the discourse‘s main narrator is an agent for the

Factualists—―who resist the reductive operations of the others in favor of an uncontrolled, multiple society‖ (Murphy, Wising 70)—and fights the remaining parties of Interzone: the Liquefactionists, the Divisionists, and the Senders.

However, such interpretation falls apart upon closer inspection, since there are many sections of Naked Lunch that refuse and challenge such reading. For instance, a part of ―The Hospital‖ section is named ―habit notes‖ and is supposedly written by Lee during his cure; one of the notes describes the process of finding the right vein for a heroin dose:

Sometimes the needle points out like a dowser‘s wand. Sometimes I must wait for the message. But when it comes I always hit blood.

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A red orchid bloomed at the bottom of the dropper. He hesitated for a full-second, then pressed the bulb, watching the liquid rush into the vein as if sucked by the silent thirst of his blood. [. . .] He reached over and filled the dropper with water. As he squirted the water out, the shot hit him in the stomach, a soft sweet blow. Look down at my filthy trousers, haven‘t been changed in months . . . (56)

In other words, the person unexpectedly switches in a piece of writing that at its beginning seemed to be a rather straight-forward text—modus narrator, person I, perspective inner—and then it switches back to its original position. Therefore, a serious issue is presented: is the change in person a mere stylistic device by Lee the narrator that emphasizes the detachment of a drug addict, or is there another narrating voice, a voice that usually lies outside the frame of events and that from time to time claims the discourse for itself? The answer to the question is an important one, since if the latter is true, then the interpretation of the excerpt varies greatly because the work offers three conflicting interpretations of the narrative: either modus—and perhaps even perspective15—changes and Lee becomes a reflector; or the modus stays unchanged and only the perspective changes, therefore revealing to the reader a distant narrator who only sometimes comments on the events of the work; or modus, person, and perspective remain the same as at the beginning of the part in question, with the important difference that it is not Lee but another character of the text, perhaps A.J. or the Sailor, who is able and willing to continue the discourse in the case of Lee‘s absence. In other words, if such a change in the narrative voice is possible, the reader must realize that he or she is faced with a more indeterminate text than previously thought. Another similar destabilization of the narrative voices occurs later in the work: ―The danger, as always, comes from defecting agents: A.J., the Vigilante, the Black Armadillo […], and Lee and

15 It is difficult to tell from the short text forming the habit notes; Burroughs‘ usage of short narratives forming many parts of Naked Lunch and the way they influence the overall discourse will be discussed shortly. 17

the Sailor and the Benway. And I know some agent is out there in the darkness looking for me‖ (172). As in the example mentioned before, the reader is again faced with a highly indeterminable narrative, since the discourse suddenly distances from Lee who was until now perceived as the actual narrator (or at least a reflector) of the work.

The narrative shifts may be regarded as mere stylistic devices and, in the end, not crucial for the overall experience of reading Naked Lunch. However, it must be understood that these changes in narrative take place in a text in which one narrative voice is often interrupted by another one. For example, the work is full of parenthetical explanations that provide further information on a particular subject mentioned in the text:

―Grassed on me he did,‖ I said morosely. (Note: Grass is English thief slang for inform.) I drew closer and laid my dirty junky fingers on his sharkskin sleeve. ―And us blood brothers in the same dirty needle. I can tell you in confidence he is due for a hot shot.‖ (Note: This is a cap of poison junk sold to addict for liquidation purposes. Often given to informers. Usually the hot shot is strychnine since it tastes and looks like junk.) (4)

While these textual intrusions may be still considered to be made by the drug addict

Lee, it is important to note that these explanations are not restricted to information about drugs. On the contrary, subjects of these intrusions vary greatly—from the effects of curare poison to Pen Indef, the ―longest term possible under New York law for a misdemeanor conviction‖ (132)—and since there are more than 50 of these explanations in the text, they must be taken into account when explaining Burroughs‘ narrative strategies.16 Furthermore, while such intrusions may not seem important for the interpretation of the narrative, there are many other narrative intrusions employed which further question the interpretation of all these intrusions as made by Lee. For example,

Dr. Benway‘s monologue on drugs and their effects on human body is interrupted by

16 Importantly, of all the major Burroughs critics only Lydenberg pays at least some attention to these intrusions. 18

the following in parenthesis: ―Interested readers are referred to Appendix‖ (30). The note refers to ―Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs,‖ Burroughs‘ seventeen-page, first person description of the effects of a vast number of drugs originally printed in The British Journal of Addiction in January 1957 (Miles and

Grauerholz 241).17 In other words, the parenthetical note refers not just to a real-life fact, but also to a fact outside the discourse itself, a fact that lies outside the available knowledge of the characters of the work. Therefore, it can be only made by the author himself and such direct authorial intrusion should not be overlooked, especially when it is repeated throughout the discourse. To provide another example of such intrusion,

―The Market‖ section ends by the following in parenthesis: ―Section describing The

City and the Meet Café written in state of yagé intoxication . . . yagé, ayahuasca, pilde, nateema are Indian names for Banisteriopsis caapi, a fast-growing vine indigenous to the Amazon region. See discussion of yagé in Appendix‖ (91). While Lee the Agent might certainly write an account of his yagé state, he could not refer to an appendix of the book he is present in. In other words, these notes must belong to the author himself and in effect help to question the narrative voices: while they due to their clear demarcation as an authorial insertion do not deconstruct the narrative themselves, their very presence questions the authorial voice of other passages. To put it differently,

Burroughs employs the use of parentheses on a large scale and while some are clearly inserted into the discourse by the author, the authorship of other parenthetical notes and references is difficult to decide. For example, a parenthetical note saying ―[t]he author has observed that Arab cocks tend to be wide and wedge shaped‖ is most probably an authorial intrusion (65); however, the author of the parenthetical comment on the

―narcotics dick in a white trench coat‖ from the beginning of the book—―imagine

17 Burroughs‘ publishing in a medical journal should not be surprising: after all, Allen Ginsberg urged Timothy Leary to get Burroughs interested in psilocybin by saying that he ―knows more about drugs than anyone alive‖ (qtd. in Baker 135). 19

tailing somebody in a white trench coat. Trying to pass as a fag I guess‖ (4)—is substantially more difficult to trace. As the discourse begins, the reader probably suggests that Lee is the author of the comment; however, the mere existence of numerous notes and intrusions by the author himself makes such a reading indecisive at best. Another example of such intrusion can be found in the ―Benway‖ section where

Dr. Benway is corrected during his monologue: ―Doc Brubeck was party inna second part. A retired abortionist and junk pusher (he was a veterinarian actually) recalled to service during the manpower shortage‖ (26). Again the reader is faced with the issue of authorship: Is it William Lee correcting Benway? Or is it someone else in the story? Or is it the author himself? As it is already apparent, such question cannot be properly answered—that is, there is no correct answer to the question as the discourse makes such answer impossible.

Of course, one might be tempted to read all narrative intrusions and deviations as the work of Burroughs himself. In other words, the habit notes discussed several pages above become notes written by William S. Burroughs as opposed to William Lee, a Factualist agent. However, there are several instances that oppose such reading. For example, among the numerous notes most probably made by the author himself are several parenthetical notes in the text that refer to facts and places taking place only in the imaginary world of Naked Lunch. ―The Black Meat‖ section, for instance, describes the effects of the Black Meat, which is actually ―flesh of [a] giant aquatic black centipede‖ (45), in the following way: ―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.)‖

(47). Other notes in the text which refer to the reality of the discourse itself deal with liquefaction, selling merchandise in Interzone, and the inhabitants of the Island (found

20

on pages 69, 154 and 155, respectively). Therefore, reading parenthetical explanations and notes as authorial intrusions—or, more precisely, only as authorial intrusions—is not valid: the narrative voices constantly changes and shifts thus avoiding any stable interpretation and whenever the reader decides on a specific reading, the discourse sooner or later challenges the adopted reading, therefore dismissing the chosen reading as inappropriate. To provide an example, the following parenthetical comment informs the reader about the use of nutmeg as a drug: ―Nutmeg. I quote from the author‘s article on narcotic drugs in the British Journal of Addiction (see Appendix): ‗Convicts and sailors sometimes have recourse to nutmeg. About a tablespoon is swallowed with water‘‖ (26). Simply put, some of the comments are clearly made by the work‘s narrative voices while several others are made by Burroughs himself. Therefore, the authorship of the remaining commentaries is indeterminable, since there are numerous possible authors of these passages that might claim credit for these parts.

While the insertions in the text certainly help in destabilizing the identity of the narrative voices, they are not a major feature of the text itself; on the other hand, these insertions, while innocent at first, reflect the strategies of the discourse as a whole. For instance, there are several passages which actively question the truthfulness of the discourse, among them the following part in ―The Hospital‖ section:

Reading the paper . . . Something about a triple murder in the rue de la Merde, Paris: ―An adjusting of scores.‖ . . . I keep slipping away . . . ―The police have identified the author . . . Pepe El Culito . . . The Little Ass Hole, an affectionate diminutive.‖ Does it really say that? . . . I try to focus the words . . . they separate in meaningless mosaic . . . (58) (emphasis added)

Of course, it might be said that the above part merely portrays the stream of consciousness of the part‘s narrator; however, there are several other passages in the text that bring attention to their own content, therefore dismissing the above part as of

21

no importance may not be entirely valid. Another instance of self-examination can be found in ―The Exterminator Does a Good Job‖ section, where the Sailor with a boy in tow enters his apartment: ―The boy‘s peeled senses darted about in frenzied exploration.

Tenement flat, railroad flat vibrating with silent motion. Along one wall of the kitchen a metal trough—or was it metal, exactly?—ran into a sort of aquarium or tank [. . .]‖

(169). Of course, both sections could be easily dismissed as parts which do not question the authority of all narrative voices, only the perception of the characters in question: the former on the grounds that Lee‘s withdrawal cure causing hallucinations, the latter because the discourse uses the boy as a reflector, therefore showing to the reader his perception of the Sailor‘s flat. However, several other passages, when analyzed closely, reveal the efforts of the text in questioning itself. A.J., as it was already mentioned several pages above, is a Factualist: ―I believe he is on the Factualist side (which I also represent)‖ (123). The narrator—whoever that might be—does not stop the discussion of A.J.‘s allegiance here; on the contrary, he or she continues by saying: ―[O]f 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.‖ Here the text reflects on the issue of narrator reliability—Lee is, just like A.J., an agent. However, since the reader ―can never be sure of anyone in the industry,‖ the discourse offers only two choices and none of them helps the reader in evaluating the truthfulness of the narrative voices: one is either supposed to distrust Lee because he is a part of the industry—and therefore distrust the parts of the work Lee narrates as well—or one can distrust the statement itself as unreliable.

Nevertheless, the result is the same, since one is forced to disbelief the accuracy of the accounts presented by the work‘s narrative voices. In other words, the narrative voices directly challenge the reader by implying they cannot be trusted. Such distrust towards

22

narrative voices by the text itself is even more apparent later in the work: ―The Danger, as always, comes from defecting agents: A.J., the Vigilante, the Black Armadillo [. . .], and Lee and the Sailor and Benway. And I know some agent is out there in the darkness looking for me. Because all Agents defect and all Resisters sell out . . .‖ (172)

(emphasis added). Although the above-mentioned part was discussed earlier in the context of narrator indeterminacy, now it is clear that it actually goes even further: instead of only questioning the author of the given narrated part, the text also questions itself. One has to decide—again—between not trusting William Lee (because he is an agent and all agents defect), in effect disbelieving the accuracy of the parts of the discourse narrated by Lee, or the statement about the Agents and Resisters should not be trusted instead, which, of course, is virtually the same decision. The reader might try to find answer in the lines preceding those quoted above:

They call me the Exterminator. At one brief point of intersection I did exercise that function and witnessed the belly dance of roaches suffocating in yellow pyrethrum powder. [. . .] My present assignment: Find the live ones and exterminate. Not the bodies but the ―molds,‖ you understand—but I forget you cannot understand. (171-172)

Instead of finding explanations, the reader is assured by the Exterminator that he or she cannot understand the given passage. Even knowing that Burroughs worked briefly as an exterminator does not truly help (Miles, El Hombre Invisible 37), since such knowledge does not contribute to evaluating the trustworthiness of the narrative. As

Murphy comments, the machinations of the parties of Interzone and their agents remind the reader that one ―can never be sure what cause or organization one is serving‖

(Wising 70), and similar statement applies to the narrative voices of Naked Lunch.

Throughout the work, the reader receives numerous invitations from the various narrative voices to doubt all the other narrative voices. Naturally, that is a problem without an acceptable solution: the reader is left with the conclusion that more often

23

than not the narrative voices of Naked Lunch are not only indecisive but also unreliable.

Burroughs in a letter to Ginsberg explains his philosophy of ―factualism,‖ which indirectly comments on indeterminate nature of the narrative:

Myself I am about to annunciate a philosophy called ―factualism.‖ All arguments, all nonsensical considerations as to what people ―should do,‖ are irrelevant. Ultimately there is only fact on all levels, and the more one argues, verbalizes, moralizes the less he will see and feel of fact. Needless to say, I will not write any formal statement on the subject. Talk is incompatible with factualism. (24)

To put it simply, the reader cannot often decide on the origin and reliability of the work‘s narrative voices because the more he or she examines them, the more suspicious and contradictory the results are (―I try to focus the words . . . they separate in meaningless mosaic . . . .‖ [58]). Moreover, the narrative voices are contradicting one another in such way that a precise determination of the narrative voices is impossible: if the nature of the narrator cannot be often decided—William Lee/another person from

(or outside) the discourse/the author himself—then modus, person, and perspective of a given narrative voice are not determinable. One might, of course, describe all the possible variations of the narrative voices; however, if subsequently asked to specify the narrative voice of a particular passage, the person would often have no other choice that to conclude there is no way to precisely determine the narrative voice in question.

One might object to the conclusions of the preceding paragraph: after all, only a small portion of the text was analyzed and drawing such a conclusion about a book- length work might be rather premature. However, it must be understood that beside the narrated/reflected parts are also parts in the work where narrative voice is practically invisible or not present at all. Franz Stanzel explains that there are two basic forms that constitute a written work: narrative forms (including reports, descriptions, or commentaries) and dramatic forms (including dialogues or scripted scenes) (86). In

24

other words, while the profile of a narrative text is created through the way its narrative and dramatic forms are successively ordered, dramatic forms such as monologues or scripted dialogue do not comment on the way narrative is being developed because they are not narrated in the narrow sense of the word (90). However, that does not mean such parts do not affect the overall impression of the discourse as a whole, since they constitute one of the many parts forming the discourse as a whole (65). Simply put, narrative in its strict sense—that is narrative forms which can be described by modus, person, and perspective—is constituted by a narrator or a reflector, not by long monologues or scripts, which cannot say anything about the way the narrative develops.

As it was mentioned above, a rather large amount of the text does not contain any or almost any narrative elements; however, it is also important to note that these parts often belong to the most quoted and examined sections of the book. As Oliver

Harris in William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination explains, there are certain passages in the text ―that present the reader, weary from the teeming heterogeneity of

Naked Lunch, with what appear to be master keys to the text‖ (216), and these passages are often constructed primarily from long monologues or scripts.18 For instance, ―And

Now the Prophet‘s Hour‖ part of ―The Market‖ section, most of the ―Benway‖ section, and almost the whole ―The County Clerk‖ section are virtually long monologues which contain almost no narrated passages: while ―Benway‖ employs monologues rather sparingly, ―Prophet‘s Hour‖ is a more than three pages long monologue and ―The

County Clerk‖ is—without the introductory two pages—a five-page long monologue interrupted by only nine sentences of actual narrative such us ―Lee cleared his throat‖

(147). Burroughs seems to be aware of the non-narrative aspect of monologues because they are often included within another monologue or a dialogue, and the above-

18 I will discuss the ―master keys to the text‖ and their importance for the interpretation of the text later in the thesis. 25

mentioned ―The County Clerk‖ section is a prime example of such usage. In the following part the County Clerk is talking to his six assistants:

―So I says to Doc Parker: ‗My old lady is down bad with the menstrual cramps. Sell me two ounces of paregoric.‘ ―So Doc says, ‗Well, Arch, you gotta sign the book. Name, address and date of purchase. It‘s the law.‘ ―So I asked Doc what the day was, and he said, ‗Friday the 13th.‘ ―So I said, ‗I guess I already had mine.‘ ―‗Well,‘ Doc says, ‗there was a feller in here this morning. City feller. Dressed kinda flashy. So he‘s got him a Rx for a mason jar of morphine . . . Kinda funny looking prescription writ out on toilet paper . . . And I told him straight out: ―Mister, I suspect you to be a dope fiend.‖ ―‗―I got the ingrowing toe nails, Pop. I‘m in agony,‘‖ he says. ―‗―Well,‖ I says, ―I gotta be careful. But so long as you got a legitimate condition and an Rx from a certified bona feedy M.D., I‘m honored to serve you.‖‘‖ (144-145)

Through parts of the work such as the above Burroughs not only confuses the reader with its several layers, but also introduces narrative into monologues. After all, the

County Clerk tells—that is narrates—a story to his six assistant, in effect becoming the passage‘s reflector: ―Well, later on I went down to Doc Parker‘s again to get me a rubber . . . and just as I was leaving I run into Roy Bane, a good ol‘ boy too. There‘s not a finer man in this Zone than Roy Bane . . .‖ (146). Similar instance of a reflector entering a given narrative can be seen in the already mentioned ―Prophet‘s Hour:‖

―Buddha? A notorious metabolic junky . . . Makes his own you dig. In India, where they got no sense of time, The Man is often a month late . . . ‗Now let me see, is that the second or the third monsoon? I got like a meet in Ketchupore about more or less‘‖ (95).

Put differently, parts such as ―The County Clerk‖ do not contain any narrative on the one hand, since they are long monologues and as such do not belong to narrative but dramatic forms, but on the other, through Burroughs‘ technique of adding layers of speech into the monologues, they contain a narrative voice who is at the same time the originator of the monologue in question. Stanzel notes that there is no clear-cut

26

definition of fiction and the distinction between its narrative and dramatic forms can be sometimes rather vague due to possible overlapping (87); he also explains that dialogues or monologues can in certain cases contain elements of narrative forms (89).

However, it must be understood that Stanzel assumes it is the main narrator or reflector of a given work that inserts narrative elements into its dramatic parts and such conclusion therefore does not take into account Burroughs‘ use of narrative elements in dramatic forms: the writer achieves the inclusion of narrative elements into monologues through adding additional narrative layers, therefore creating several narrated stories inside the main narrative frame. Importantly, Burroughs also indirectly questions the reliability of the narrative itself: after all, the additional layers of the monologues are told by their speakers who often have their own views—―There‘s not a finer man in this

Zone than Roy Bane‖ (146)—therefore not only reaffirming that there are numerous narrative voices in the discourse, but also stressing that these voices are not to be taken at face value due to their inherent bias. As the racist County Clerk says:

―So they burned the nigger and that ol‘ boy took his wife and went back up to Texarkana without paying for the gasoline and old Whispering Lou runs the service station couldn‘t talk about nothing else all fall: ‗These city fellers come down here and burn a nigger and don‘t even settle up for the gasoline.‘‖ (147)

In other words, the reader faces either narrated parts where the narrative voice is ambiguous and unreliable, or parts of the discourse that belong to the dramatic forms which are not narrated but show elements of narrative after a more thorough inspection, in effect questioning the reliability of the narrative voices in general.

Another important narrative irregularity in the discourse is Burroughs‘ usage of scripted dialogues; however, I will discuss these only briefly because the scripted dialogues use similar mechanics that apply to the long monologues mentioned above and their use is not as frequent as of the multilayered monologues. The script technique

27

is used throughout the novel in sections like ―Hospital,‖ ―Ordinary Men and Women,‖ or ―Islam Incorporated:‖

The Party Leader strides about in a djellaba smoking a cigar and drinking scotch. He wears expensive English shoes, loud socks, garters, muscular hairy legs—overall effect of a successful gangster in drag. P.L. (pointing dramatically): ―Look out there. What do you see?‖ LIEUTENANT: ―Huh? Why, I see the Market.‖ P.L.: ―No you don‘t. You see men and women. Ordinary men and women going about their ordinary lives. That‘s what we need . . .‖ (101- 102)

It might be argued whether the introductory information preceding the scripted text contains a hint of narrative or not: after all, Stanzel explains that a scripted dialogue that contains directorial advices or brief descriptions of stage and characters might be included either among narrative or dramatic forms, depending on the frequency of narrative elements in the scripted part (86). However, most scripted parts of the text clearly contain at least some narrative elements. In the following part the Party Leader discusses the possibility of a massacre committed by Latahs, persons who must imitate other persons‘ movements when given a specific signal:

LIEUTENANT: ―But, chief, can‘t we get them started and they imitate each other like a chained reaction?‖ The Diseuse undulate through the Market: ―What‘s a Latah do when he‘s alone?‖ P.L.: ―That‘s a technical point. We‘ll have to consult Benway. Personally, I think someone should follow through on the whole operation.‖ ―I do not know,‖ he said for lack of the requisite points and ratings to secure the appointment. ―They have no feelings,‖ said Doctor Benway, slashing his patient to shreds. (118)

As it is apparent, the ―he said for lack of the requisite points and ratings to secure the appointment‖ is a comment that could be possibly made only by a narrator or a reflector. Therefore, the reader is again faced with the fact that the narrator‘s (or reflector‘s) identity cannot be decided. To put it simply, Burroughs inserted a typical

28

prose narrative into the scripted part, in other words mixing narrative and dramatic forms together in a manner similar to the multilayered monologues; however, while the reader can identify the narrative voice in the additional layers of the monologues, the narrative voice at times present in the scripted parts is difficult to identify. The scripted parts with elements of narrative forms are few and far between to be properly identified in terms of their modus, person, and perspective, therefore contributing to the indeterminate nature of the text.

Importantly, while other scripted parts of the text are, in spite of the inserted narrative elements, quite clear in terms of character voices, the above-mentioned part taken from ―Ordinary Men and Women‖ section is muddled by additional voices of unknown origin. It continues by the following, starting by Benway:

―Just reflexes . . . I urge distraction.‖ ―The age of consent is when they learn to talk.‖ ―May all your troubles be little ones as one child molester say to the other.‖ ―It‘s really ominous, my dear, when they start trying on your clothes and give you those doppelgänger kicks . . .‖ Frantic queen trying to claw sport jacket off departing boy. ―My two hundred dollar cashmere jacket,‖ she screeches . . . (118)

There are three utterances without clear origin and at least four possible candidates for their ownership in the passage in question: the Party Leader, Lieutenant, the Diseuse, and Benway. Put simply, while in most scripted parts of the text the reader receives help from the inserted narrative elements, here there is none. The reader is sentenced to be forever puzzled by the origin of the voices, which in effect reflects the complications in determining the narrative of the work as a whole. Throughout the text, the reader encounters passages where the narrative voice is indeterminate, in effect forcing the reader to decide the identity and reliability of these voices on his or her own. In other words, it is probably becoming clear that Naked Lunch is a writerly text. Roland Barthes

29

in S/Z explains there are two kinds of text, readerly and writerly: while readerly is a text which only gives to reader ―the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text,‖ writerly manages to ―make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text,‖ therefore fulfilling the goal of literary work (4).19 In other words, a writerly text can be re-written by its reader and, as I have already shown, Naked Lunch more than invites such rewriting. By including multiple narrative voices and multiple layers of narrative, the reader is forced to interpret these often unidentifiable narrative elements on his or her own, in effect leading to a text that can be always different from one reading to another. Of course, the reader is always more or less required to interpret various elements of a discourse; however, as I will show throughout the thesis, Naked Lunch features so many indeterminable elements that the reader may often be ―lost in translation‖ of the text.

III.C The Structure of the Discourse

While the last quoted scripted scene is important in discussing the work‘s narrative voice, it is also valuable in pointing out the work‘s structure. Put differently, the three sentences whose origin is unidentifiable indirectly symbolize the overall arrangement of the work: it is not only, to certain extent, random, but also constantly interrupted right in the middle of a narrated scene by seemingly unimportant parts. The statement above becomes apparent when the ―talking asshole‖ part of the work, due to its outrageous humor probably the most famous section of the work (Johnson and

Hemmer 222), is analyzed in detail, since the disjointed nature of the part is reflected by the work as a whole.20

19 The definition and significance of Naked Lunch as a writerly text will be discussed later in the work in more detail. 20 While Harris refers to the part as ―Talking Asshole,‖ I will refrain from capitalization in order to distinguish it from the capitalized sections of the work. 30

The ―talking asshole‖ is a part of the ―Ordinary Men and Women‖ section and begins by a scripted dialogue between Dr. Schafer and Dr. Benway; however, it soon evolves into a monologue by Benway. As Harris points out, ―talking asshole‖ is clearly separated into five parts: part one is formed by the introductory dialogue between

Schafer and Benway; part two marks the beginning of Benway‘s monologue and concerns a carnival man who taught his anus to talk; part three is a paragraph of cultural criticism; part four presents to the reader a political allegory about bureaucracy; and part five mentions an Arab boy who could play the flute with his behind (Secret 218). The work itself is also separated into numerous sections which are not connected in terms of plot. As I have already mentioned, the initial ―And Start West‖ is a first person narrative of Lee, a drug addict running away from the police who decides to drive to Mexico. The next two sections, ―The Vigilante‖ and ―The Rube,‖ describe to the reader the narrator‘s view of Mexico as well as mention two rather unreal characters. In ―Benway‖ the reader sees the doctor‘s opinions on torture and control, but also witnesses the escape of all subjects from Benway‘s Reconditioning Center and the resulting chaos and obscenities taking place in the streets. In the following ―Joselito‖ section the discourse centers on a man named Carl and his attempt to find an appropriate treatment for his friend Joselito, who is suffering from lung lesions. The subsequent ―The Black Meat‖ section describes the Sailor‘s attempt to obtain a ―fix‖ but also the already mentioned Meat Eaters as well as the City of Interzone, while the following ―Hospital‖ section concerns Lee‘s addiction cure. The changing rhythm is kept even later in the work, for example represented by the already mentioned ―The Examination‖ or ―The County Clerk‖ as well as the two ―pornographic‖ sections of the work, ―Hassan‘s Rumpur Room‖ and

―A.J.‘s Annual Party,‖ ―which had more or less rendered publication in the United

31

States or Britain an impossibility‖ and lead to the book‘s famous obscenity trial (Miles,

El Hombre Invisible 103-05).

As Naked Lunch jumps from one section to another, the reader is disoriented by the constantly changing narrative voices and absence of plot: instead of expanding the initial premise—William Lee fleeing the United States—the discourse introduces

Benway as its main focus who is subsequently replaced by Carl and so on. While events do take place in the work, there is no apparent development of the text as a whole: For instance, although Carl appears in two sections of the work, in the above-mentioned

―Joselito‖ and ―The Examination,‖ there is no apparent connection between these two parts except the fact that they use the same main character: Carl does not reflect in ―The

Examination‖ upon any of the events from ―Joselito,‖ nor does he provide any hints that might connect the two sections together. In fact, the events of ―Joselito‖ do not necessarily precede those of ―The Examination.‖ Actually, the only reason one might consider ―The Examination‖ to take place after ―Joselito‖ is the fact it is presented later in the book. Burroughs further discomforts the reader: as he writes in the ―Atrophied

Preface‖ which provocatively appears at the conclusion of the work (Lydenberg 43): ―I do not presume to impose ‗story‘ ‗plot‘ ‗continuity‘ [. . .]. You can cut into Naked

Lunch at any intersection point‖ (184, 187). Put simply, the work eschews traditional plot development through its organization into plotwise rather unrelated parts and as

Harris points out, the image of the ―talking asshole,‖ that is the anus‘ slow gaining control over the carnival man, is ―an apt figure for so disorderly a textual body, where one part is continually being taken over and transformed by another‖ (Secret 220).

However, describing the work‘s sections as ―rather unrelated‖ should not lead one to think that there is no connection between the parts. Here I turn again to the

―talking asshole‖ as a means of reflecting on the textual strategies of the whole work,

32

since both the ―talking asshole‖ and Naked Lunch are comprised of several substantially different parts. Oliver Harris explains that the parts of the ―talking asshole‖ ―are all linked, but each is nevertheless formally or thematically quite distinct, which is why the material can only be mastered into coherence by being partialized—cut down for analysis—and naturalized—responsibility for it passed onto a familiar source‖ (219).

The same goes for Naked Lunch as a whole: the narrative voices change abruptly throughout the work, dramatic forms such as scripted scenes and monologues are introduced into the text, and the thematic scope is wide—from drugs and drug addiction to homosexuality and political control. The structure of the work—due to its non- existent continuous plot—actively resists basing the interpretation of one section of the text on another section. Therefore, the reader is often forced to either take into consideration only a fraction of the text while ignoring the rest—an important point in interpreting Naked Lunch, as I shall later point out—or develop a system that might help in understanding the work. The latter is the case of Timothy Murphy, who in

―Intersection Points: Teaching William Burroughs‘ Naked Lunch‖ devises interpretations of the work based on recurrence of characters, phrases, or specific themes; however, such approach is, naturally, a confirmation of the text‘s writerly nature.

I have already mentioned the issue of interpreting Naked Lunch. While it will be fully addressed only after all important elements forming the discourse are discussed, it is important to note that the structure of the work plays important part in ―deciphering‖ the discourse, in effect influencing the interpretation of the text. The ―talking asshole,‖ again, helps in the explanation of the work‘s structure and its strategy. As it was already said, the ―talking asshole‖ consists of five different parts and while the first two are rather humorous, the third and especially the fourth mark a significant reversal in tone.

33

The third part starts after the story of the carnival man and his talking anus is finished:

―That‘s the sex that passes the censor, squeezes through between bureaus, because there‘s always a space between, in popular songs and Grade B movies, giving away the basic American rottenness‖ (112). The next part is a scathing attack on bureaucracy and an argument for a cooperative organization: ―Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic

Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised.‖ As the reader moves through the ―talking asshole,‖ the third part appears in front of the reader suggesting it contains the real

―point‖ of the whole ―talking asshole‖ piece, but it is then replaced by the fourth part, which suggests the same (Harris, Secret 220). Then the reader reaches the fifth part and the tone changes again: the last part is about an ―Arab boy who could play a flute with his ass‖ and who, thanks to his disposition, was a great lover (Burroughs, Naked Lunch

113), in effect suppressing the cultural or political reading of the preceding two parts by offering to the reader an erotic reading (Harris, Secret 220). In other words, the structure of the ―talking asshole,‖ which moves from two comical parts through two

―main‖ parts back to a comical part, affects the way the section is understood and the same applies for the work as a whole. As the reader proceeds through Naked Lunch, it seems to demand different interpretation throughout the discourse: a tale of drug addiction, a statement against harassment of homosexuals, or a political statement.

Stanzel points out that reader is affected by inertia: once the reader decides on an interpretation of the discourse, it does not change until a significant shift in the narrative forces the change (88). Since none of the elements actually dominates the discourse, the reader has two choices: either repeatedly try to accommodate to the new elements constantly emerging from the text, in other words constantly update the interpretation of

34

the work, or decide on the first possible interpretation of the discourse, which is the interpretation offered in the ―Atrophied Preface:‖ ―Lee The Agent (a double-four-eight- sixteen) is taking the junk cure‖ (182). The second choice might appear at first as the road to follow: after all, not only is the actual discourse framed by sections with Lee in the role of their narrator, but also such interpretation explains many of the violent and sexual imagery in the text simply as Lee‘s hallucinations during his withdrawal period, in effect giving the discourse more credibility: such interpretation argues that the vast number of strange creatures or places present in the text—such as Mugwumps or

Interzone—are not real but only imaginations of a drug addict. However, there are two shortcomings to such interpretation, thus rendering it rather useless: first, the interpretation relies on an unstable and evasive discourse: after all, the above-mentioned

―Lee The Agent (a double-four-eight-sixteen)‖ suggests that Lee is an agent for

Factualist, in effect establishing Interzone and other aspects of the text as real and not imaginary;21 second, the result of such interpretation is, as it was already pointed above, a result of the text‘s structure and the reader‘s need to understand and explain as much of the work as possible. Furthermore, as Oliver Harris claims, such reading ignores the fact that Burroughs is being ironic in ―Atrophied Preface‖ as well as in the sections added by the editors, that is ―Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness‖ and ―Post-

Script . . . Wouldn‘t You?‖ (Secret 187). The reader‘s inertia and the work‘s structure are also the only reasons why should ―Joselito‖ be considered to precede ―The

Examination‖ and not vice versa. On the other hand, reading Naked Lunch as it is described in the ―Atrophied Preface‖ offers a safe haven for the reader who might be terrified by the indeterminate and constantly changing discourse.22

21 Lee is described as an agent also in the first-person ―Hauser and O‘Brien‖ section: ―I spent the night in the Ever Hard Baths—(homosexuality is the best all-around cover an agent can use)‖ (180). 22 The indeterminate nature of the discourse is why the most pervasive reading of Naked Lunch is that of ―William Lee quits drugs and therefore engages in a series of hallucinations‖ (Schneiderman 191). 35

As Robin Lydenberg comments on the ―talking asshole‖ section and the way it reflects the overall discourse, ―Burroughs‘ strategy of resistance is to open many orifices, many holes which would dissolve and disseminate the tyranny of the single hole‖ (29); these ―holes‖ are, as it is apparent, not only the narrative voices of the work but also its structure. Put differently, Burroughs‘ actively uses the elements of discourse in an untraditional way to move from the readerly to the writerly, from mere consumption to production of the text. Burroughs in an interview with Daniel Odier comments on his technique of discourse development:

When people speak of clarity in writing they generally mean plot, continuity, beginning middle and end, adherence to a ―logical‖ sequence. But things don‘t happen in logical sequence and people don‘t think in logical sequence. Any writer who hopes to approximate what actually occurs in the mind and body of his characters cannot confine himself to such an arbitrary structure as ―logical‖ sequence. (35)

In other words, not only there is no conventional treatment of narrative present in the work, but also the structure of the text is composed in a way to make the discourse even more indeterminate. As one section follows another and the narrative voices change between the sections, the reader is faced with a structure that further challenges a straightforward interpretation of the work: the sections succeed one another in a manner that forces the reader either to perceive each section separately or base the interpretation on a selection of sections that highlight some of the parts as important—that is, as containing reliable information about the world of Naked Lunch—while suppressing the rest of the work. Lubomír Doležel in Heterocosmica explains that the status of discourse‘s entities is usually portrayed through a ―dyadic verification,‖ that is through direct speech of fictional characters and the comments of the narrator (who might be, in

In other words, while interpreting the work according to the explanations in ―Atrophied Preface‖ might seem rather naïve, it must be understood that such interpretation is very common. 36

Stanzel‘s terms, also a reflector) (151).23 These two different sources of dyadic verification divide the factual area of the fictional world—that is the sum of all verified facts of the discourse—into two categories: those absolutely verified (through the authority of the narrative voice) and those collectively verified (through the agreeing accounts of the fictional characters) (154). Furthermore, the virtual area of the fictional world—the sum of all subjective entities, whether caused by belief, illusions, or mistakes of the characters—encompasses all entities/subjects excluded from the factual area. Burroughs achieves to blur the lines between the factual area and the virtual area by including multiple, often unreliable narrative voices but also through structuring the work into numerous rather unrelated sections: since little to no connection is provided between the sections, the reader is challenged by the fact that there are not many collectively verified facts in the discourse. Apart from such elementary facts like ―there is a person named Benway‖ or ―a place called Interzone exists,‖ the discourse often does not provide multiple views or descriptions of a particular place or character. After all, since both the setting and the narrative voices often change between the sections, it might be said that the text presents only a small amount of verifiable acts to the reader while most of the text belongs to the virtual area. Significant portions of the discourse are subjective and do not have to necessarily correspond to the reality of the fictional world: ―You can never be sure of anyone in the industry‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch

123). Put simply, Naked Lunch is, in the words of Ian MacFayden, ―not a ‗discourse‘ but an uncensored eruption‖ (―Dossier Two‖ 37) and its structure significantly contributes to such perception.

23 As I was not able to obtain the English original, all terms related to Lubomír Doležel‘s theories are my translations of his own Czech translation of the English text. For more information on verification of the narrative, see Doležel (149-169). 37

III.D The Treatment of Time and Setting

To summarize so far, the structure and the narrative voices of Naked Lunch constitute much of its textual strategy; however, there are other elements of the discourse which further underline the text‘s resistance to stable interpretation, and one of them is the work‘s treatment of time and setting. As Lubomír Doležel argues, it is important to take into account not only the development of the discourse, but also the world of the discourse itself; ―narrative world,‖ not ―plot,‖ is the fundamental term of narrative theory, since plots merely takes place in a particular world (45). A reader faced with unstable narrative voices and disorganized structure of Naked Lunch may hope to find explanations in its temporal and spatial aspects; however, such hopes must end in vain, since the work treats time and setting in a very indeterminate manner, thus further contributing to the writerly nature of the text.

While the narrative starts at Washington Square Station, it soon moves to a place called Interzone, ―[t]he Composite City where all human potentials are spread out in a vast silent market‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 89). The city is an amalgam of different cultures and races:24

All houses in the City are joined. Houses of sod—high mountain Mongols blink in smoky doorways—houses of bamboo and teak, houses of adobe, stone and red brick, South Pacific and Maori houses, houses in trees and river boats, wood houses one hundred feet long sheltering entire tribes [. . .]. (90)

Every street of the city slopes down to ―a vast, kidney-shaped plaza full of darkness‖ with a ―criss-cross of bridges, cat walks, cable cars‖ hanging above them (45). It is a

24 The description of Interzone in ―The Market‖ section is taken almost verbatim from a July 10, 1953 letter to Ginsberg describing Burroughs‘ notes from yagé state. However, the original letter stressed the multinational, multiracial nature of Interzone even further: ―The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad. Polyglot Near East, Indian, and new races as yet unconceived and unborn [. . .]. The Composite City, Near Eastern, Mongol, South Pacific, South American where all Human Potentials are spread out in a vast silent Market‖ (Letters 182-83). While the above quoted part appeared in some of the previous editions of Naked Lunch, it was cut from the restored version. 38

city that is always being rebuilt (196), ―a city so old that it had been rebuilt layer upon layer, one building upon another‖ (Miles, El Hombre Invisible 70). Importantly, the collage-like nature of the city is reflected in its inhabitants: ―Followers of obsolete, unthinkable trades doodling in Etruscan, addicts of drugs not yet synthesized, pushers of souped-up harmine, junk reduced to pure habit offering precarious vegetable serenity, [.

. .] black marketers of World War III‖ (91). Interzone is the place where anything can be gained or lost:

Gaming tables where the games are played for incredible stakes. From time to time a player leaps up with a despairing cry, having lost his youth to an old man or become Latah to his opponent. But there are higher stakes than youth or Latah, games where only two players in the world know what the stakes are. (90)

Although imagined places like Freeland Republic, Annexia, or the Island prevail in the text, there are also some real-world places as well, such as the already mentioned

Mexico or Venice. However, the shifts in setting are abrupt and often occurring without any explanation. For example, the first-person narrative section ―The Rube‖ takes place in many US cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, or Houston, as well as some other places around the world; however, the following section, ―Benway,‖ which is also a first-person narrative, begins by the narrator saying that he is ―assigned to engage the services of Doctor Benway for Islam Inc‖ and the section itself is set in Freeland (19).

Such jumps are not exceptional and occur throughout the discourse. Importantly, not only are there several sections with unspecified setting, such as ―Lazarus Go Home‖ or

―A.J.‘s Annual Party,‖ but furthermore, the reader is constantly reminded that the discourse of the work—including the description of its setting—is often unreliable: ―In

Cuernavaca or was it Taxco? Jane meets a pimp trombone player and disappears in a cloud of tea smoke‖ (18). The narrative voices are not able—or willing—to provide the reader with a coherent description of the work‘s setting. On the one hand, as it was

39

already mentioned, ―[a]ll houses in the City are joined‖ (90); furthermore, the city contains ―[m]inarets, palms, mountains, jungle . . . A sluggish river jumping with vicious fish, vast weed-grown parks where boys lie in the grass, play cryptic games‖

(89). On the other hand, the following description of Interzone is offered later in the work:

The Zone is a single, vast building. The rooms are made of a plastic cement that bulges to accommodate people, but when too many crowd into one room there is a soft plop and someone squeezes through the wall right into the next house—the next bed, that is, since the rooms are mostly bed where the business of the Zone is transacted. A hum of sex and commerce shakes the Zone like a vast hive. (149)

The discrepancy between the two descriptions of Interzone is explained at the end of the work: ―‘They are rebuilding the city.‘ Lee nodded absently . . . ‗Yes . . . Always . . .‘‖

(196). Put simply, the main setting of the work, Interzone, is not only a place where virtually everything is possible, but also a place which constantly changes, thus reflecting the shifts in setting throughout the discourse. As the discourse takes the reader from one place to another, it is often up to the reader to determine the setting of a given section—whether the place of the setting or the place‘s actual visual representation. Doležel explains that not only failure to verify the accounts of narrator or characters, but also establishing contradictions of a fictional world into a text leads to creating an unstable discourse (164). Burroughs‘ ever-changing Interzone is surely such unstable place.

Before I continue the discussion of the sudden changes of setting and their significance for the discourse, it must be also noted that even the more ordinary locations of the text, such as the several US cities mentioned above, often embody many qualities of the ever-changing Interzone. For instance, the journey from Houston to New

Orleans is described in the following way: ―[We] start for New Orleans past iridescent

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lakes and orange gas flares, and swamps and garbage heaps, alligators crawling around in broken bottles and tin cans, neon arabesques of motels, marooned pimps scream obscenities at passing cars from islands of rubbish . . .‖ (13). Although ―marooned pimps scream obscenities at passing cars‖ refers to an existing two-lane Louisiana road

―lined with nightclubs, casinos, and whorehouses‖ (Johnson, ―Good Ol‘ Boy‖ 44), the whole sentence is one of the signs that mark the work‘s dissolution of the real—that is reliable—places into unreliable, indecisive places like Interzone. The work‘s setting is filled with a peculiar combination of familiar and peculiar, the normal and the obscene:

The Burroughs landscape is an unmistakable place, with its penny arcades and vacant lots, China blue skies, 1920 movies, a small woodsmoke and piano music down a city street, train whistles, frayed light from a distant star, rose wallpaper and brass bedsteads, ginger haired boys with red gums, deformed fish snapping lazily at jissom on the surface of a dark lagoon, and lesbian agents with penises grafted on their faces, sitting outside a café in white trenchcoats [sic], drinking spinal fluid from long alabaster cups. (Baker, 146)

Simply put, even the real-life places have the tendency to change into strange and sometimes even alien landscape. Burroughs superimposes familiar, at times almost nostalgic images of the landscape with phantasmagorical portraits, in effect creating a rather familiar, yet reality defying world.25 The usage of such landscapes as well as of the indeterminable Interzone and at times unspecified setting is Burroughs‘ move from readerly towards writerly. Roland Barthes in Image Music Text explains there are two main units constituting a narrative: functions and indices (92). While the former connect the elements of the narrative through a direct link, for example ―the purchase of a revolver has for correlate the moment when it will be used (and if not used, the notation is reversed into a sign of indecision, etc.),‖ the latter do not refer to ―a complementary and consequential act but to a more or less diffuse concept which is nevertheless

25 Kathryn Hume explains that Burroughs uses five different landscapes in his texts: the desert, the jungle, the city, America, and home—an unreachable place; see Hume for a further discussion of the landscapes. 41

necessary to the meaning of the story: psychological indices concerning the characters, data regarding their identity, notations of ‗atmosphere,‘ and so on.‖ In other words, while functions constitute the necessary skeleton of the narrative, indices are the flesh, skin and organs—that is additional layers—of discourse.26 It is also important to note that the units can be further distinguished: while functions are divided into cardinal functions (or nuclei) and catalysers, indices are composed of indices proper and informants (93, 96), and application of the latter pair to Burroughs‘ description of setting is important for understanding the work. As Barthes explains, indices proper always have implicit signifieds (96): for example, dark clouds on the horizon index a storm which in turn indexes the atmosphere yet to come. Informants, on the contrary, do not contain any signifieds, because ―they are pure data with immediate signification‖ such as age of the characters; informant ―always serves to authenticate the reality of the referent, to embed fiction in the real world. Informants are realist operators and as such possess and undeniable functionality not on the level of the story but on that of the discourse‖ (emphasis added). Put simply, indices proper help in foreshadowing the future events while informants provide a text with a sense of realism, and Burroughs refuses to use setting-related indices or informants throughout Naked Lunch. The absence of indices connected to the work‘s setting is best seen when considering its structure: because the structure of the work is seemingly arbitrary, there cannot be, for instance, any foreshadowing between the work‘s sections. As it was said several pages before, while ―The Rube‖ takes place in several US cities, ―Benway‖ jumps to Freeland

Republic; however, not a single hint of such jump nor any explanation is provided, the narrative voice simply states at the beginning of the ―Benway‖ section that he is

―assigned to engage the services of Doctor Benway for Islam Inc‖ (19). Furthermore,

26 Such description is, of course, a simplification. For more on information on the main units of a text, see Barthes Image 91-97. 42

there often are not any indices present even within a single section. To provide an example, ―A.J.‘s Annual Party‖ is comprised of several numerous sections: first, A.J.‘s introduction to his party; second, a ―blue movie‖ describing the copulation and subsequent death by hanging of Johnny, Mark, and Mary; third, the Beagle‘s last shot before the drug cure; fourth, the ―Meeting of International Conference of Technological

Psychiatry‖ featuring Doctor ―Fingers‖ Schafer (also known as the Lobotomy Kid) and his latest work, ―the Complete All American Deanxietized Man,‖ who later turns into ―a monster black centipede‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 86). While the first section provides a smooth transition—i.e. an index—for the second section, the subsequent parts are not related to each other in any way. The reader has to create a relation between the different, unrelated parts; however, any relation thus created is only arbitrary. The created connection is a manifestation of the reader‘s need to grasp the elusive discourse and a confirmation of the writerly nature of the text. The same applies to the use—or rather non-use—of place informants. As it was pointed out above, any information provided by the discourse can be—and often is—negated later in the work: not only is the Interzone an ever-changing place with conflicting descriptions, but even the ordinary places contain unreal elements, in effect changing the once-thought familiar place into unfamiliar, thus replacing a set of informants connected to one place with another one. In other words, the reader is constantly reminded that the real in the discourse is the unreal, in effect forced to create a setting of his own.

The usage of time in the work also often denies application of Barthes‘ indices and informants. First of all, the time setting of the work is not specified. One of the few time specifications in the discourse are the ―black marketers of World War III‖ (91); however, that hardly qualifies as a reliable informant since Naked Lunch does not feature any technology that might be considered unconceivable at the time of the

43

novel‘s publishing. For example, the characters in ―The Rube‖ section drive a 1942

Studebaker and Ford V-8. Furthermore, due to the indeterminable and changing nature of the text, the marketers may be only one of the many anomalies of the text—in other words, there may not have been any World War III at all. More importantly, though, there is also no apparent time relation between the work‘s sections. Neither the characters nor the discourse of a given section reflect on any of the events of the other sections. Even the at first rather unproblematic parts of the discourse show visible dents in their expression of time and continuity when examined more thoroughly. For example, there is no way to determine the chronology of the sections ―And Start West‖ and ―Hauser and O‘Brien.‖ If the former occurs first, the reader is puzzled by the narrator‘s sudden return to New York without any further explanation; after all, Lee should be staying in Interzone. On the contrary, if the latter precedes the former, then

Lee‘s actions do not make sense: although he kills the two detectives in the ―Hauser and

O‘Brien‖ section, he is concerned that the police may find his spoon and dropper he disposes of at Washington Square Station. In other words, there are no time-defining indices proper in the text because there simply is no coherent discourse to follow—

Naked Lunch ―only‖ offers many texts connected thematically, but not chronologically or in terms of plot. Importantly, such refusal of exact definition of time and setting should not be viewed as a fault; on the contrary, it is the text‘s another step towards the writerly. Bolton further comments on the issue exact definitions of time and place setting:

One of the most unique features of Williams S. Burroughs‘s experimental novels is the absence of any stable setting, any consistent geographical location or time period, through which to read these experimental texts. The material contexts of time and place shift, transmute, and turn back on themselves. Readers cannot find objective points of reference as the narrative perspective moves through time and space with no causal logic and no fully recognizable points of departure or arrival. (53) (emphasis added)

44

Bolton‘s comment is not only useful because it further explains Burroughs‘ defiance to use standard notions of place and time, but the highlighted passage also touches upon another important issue of the text, that of departing and arriving of the characters. As it was already mentioned, there are two main units of narrative according to Barthes, functions and indices, and the former are further divided into cardinal functions and catalysers. As Barthes explains, function is cardinal when the described action of the function opens, continues, or closes a possibility that directly influences the subsequent development of the story; in other words, cardinal functions are both logical and chronological (Image 94). On the other hand, catalysers are actions that occur between two cardinal functions and while they help to explain what occurred between the two functions, they do not bear any significance to the development of the plot; catalysers are chronological but not logical, they only fill in the blank spaces between the cardinal functions. Barthes provides an example of the functions: while

―the telephone rang‖ and ―Bond answered‖ (or, alternatively, ―Bond did not answer‖) are cardinal functions necessary for the development of the plot, the space between these two phrases can be filled with ―a host of trivial incidents or descriptions,‖ such as

―Bond moved towards the desk,‖ ―picked up one of the receivers,‖ or ―put down his cigarette.‖ To put it simply, while cardinal functions are the necessary basis for the development of discourse, catalysers help to ―smooth out‖ the given text by introducing phrases or sentences between two cardinal functions, therefore facilitating the work‘s progress.

The understanding of the difference between cardinal functions and catalysers is important, since Naked Lunch often refuses to use catalysers. While the more narrated parts of the text, such as ―The Examination,‖ contain a number of catalysers—―He sat

45

down and crossed his legs. He glanced at an ashtray on the desk and lit a cigarette‖

(156)—the absence of plot as well as Burroughs‘ use of language often makes distinguishing between cardinal functions and catalysers in many parts of the work impossible:

―Giggling rioters copulate to the screams of a burning Nigra. Lonely librarians unite in soul kiss halitosis.‖ [. . .] The vibrating soundless hum of deep forest and orgone accumulators, the sudden silence of cities when the junky cops and even The Commuter buezzes clogged lines of cholesterol for contact. Signal flares of orgasm burst over the world. A tea head leaps up screaming ―I got the fear!‖ and runs into Mexican night bringing down back brains of the world. (174).27

Of course, the above quoted text and other similar parts may be considered to belong among indices or informants instead of functions; however, the decision is difficult if not impossible to make. The above-mentioned part is taken from the section ―The

Algebra of Need,‖ which employs such language on two of its two and a half pages; therefore, the two pages might belong to indices (since they might allude to future events), informants (since they portray the world of the discourse), catalysers (since they might provide events that move the characters towards in the discourse), or cardinal functions (since they portray the setting in a discourse which often changes its narrators or reflectors, therefore the setting being the only stable ―character‖). Even if it is decided that categorizing the part as belonging to indices (since time is relative in the work and there is almost no existing relation between the different sections) or catalysers (the part does not enlighten any actions of the character for the reader, at least not directly) is rather improbable, such crossing out still leaves two possible categories of the part ―in play.‖ In other words, the reader has to decide how important for him or her is the setting of the work and, therefore, determine in an entirely writerly

27 Burroughs‘ style and its effect on the discourse will be commented upon in the part of the thesis dealing with the work‘s language. 46

fashion the actual function of the discussed part—and other similar parts—in the discourse.

However, the discourse avoids catalysers even in its more conventional parts.

For example, the discourse often does not display the way a character transports from one place to another, thus cutting the narrative to the bone of cardinal functions. For example, in ―The Rube‖ the narrator says: ―Came at last to Houston where I know a druggist‖ (13); however, no explanation of how the narrator appeared in Houston is given. One more example of such unexplained transition can be found in ―Joselito:‖ while in the first part of the section Carl inquires about the whereabouts of a sanitarium, the second part starts by description of Joselito‘s sanitarium room as seen through the

Carl‘s eyes. The discourse does not explain how Carl got to the sanitarium; he simply appears in the room. Burroughs explains his refusal to use such transitions in the

―Atrophied Preface:‖

Why all this waste paper getting The People from one place to another? Perhaps to spare The Reader stress of sudden space shifts and keep him Gentle? And so a ticket is bought, a taxi called, a plane boarded. [. . .] I am not American Express . . . If one of my people is seen in New York walking around in citizen clothes and next sentence Timbuktu putting down lad talk on a gazelle-eyed youth, we may assume that he (the party non-resident of Timbuktu) transported himself there by the usual methods of communication . . . (182)

In other words, not only Burroughs explains that his characters travel outside the discourse itself, but also the reader must make his or her own connections concerning the places of departure and arrival. Roland Barthes in S/Z further comments on arriving and departing, explaining that the readerly, as opposed to writerly, needs such transitions:

What would be the narrative of a journey in which it was said that one stays somewhere without having arrived, that one travels without having departed—in which it was never said that, having departed, one arrives or

47

fails to arrive? Such a narrative would be a scandal, the extenuation, by hemorrhage, of readerliness. (105)

To put it simply, the reader creates the transportation process to fill the gaps of the discourse, therefore again confirming the writerly aspect of the work.

In addition to omitting textual segments that would normally feature time or place transitions, the text employs several additional techniques that further emphasize

Burroughs‘ distortion of time and setting in Naked Lunch. For instance, the usage of multi-layered monologues throughout the discourse enables the writer to switch the time and setting of a given passage between sentences, as exemplified by ―The County

Clerk‖ section. The section is comprised of four different layers: the first is the initial layer of the section—Lee tries to file an affidavit at the Old Court House, a vast

Kafkaesque center of bureaucracy; the second describes the County Clerk‘s account of a

Friday; the third is comprised of a discussion between the County Clerk and Doc Parker during the one particular Friday; and fourth concerns Doc Parker‘s story of him selling morphine to a stranger that morning. While the first layer constitutes the initial discourse base, it is soon overtaken by the County Clerk‘s monologue that consists of the other three layers, in effect moving back and forth through the events of a single day; however, at the end of the section, Lee manages to stop the County Clerk‘s endless monologue, thus penetrating the section‘s layers once more.

Of course, instances such as the above have been for the most part already covered during the discussion of the narrative and narrative voices. However, apart from the multi-layered monologues that enable the discourse to shift the time and setting of a particular part without further notice, there is at least one more technique destabilizing time and setting of the discourse worth mentioning—the technique of numerous repetition. There are several passages throughout Naked Lunch that later

48

reappear verbatim to its original source but set in different contexts. As Burroughs once explained to Miles, these repetitions were in the text by mistake, caused by the rushed preparation of the text for its publishing (Miles and Grauerholz 245).28 Nevertheless, although accidental, these passages further destabilize the notion of concrete time and setting. For example, in the ―Hospital‖ section the narrator meets Marv with two Arab boys and is asked whether he would like to see the boys have sex with each other. When being told that the boys will ―perform for fifty cents. Hungry, you know‖ (50), the narrator answers: ―That‘s the way I like to see them.‖ The phrase reappears later in the text as the answer given by Clem to the Nationalist who complains that his people are hungry (119). In the ―Benway‖ section the text describes in a two-page long parenthetical commentary a venereal disease, saying: ―Until quite recently there was no satisfactory treatment. ‗Treatment is symptomatic‘—which means in the trade there is none‖ (37). The same answer is given to Carl by Benway in ―The Examination‖ section:

―‗Treatment of these disorders is, at the present time, hurumph, symptomatic.‘ [. . .]

‗Don‘t look so frightened, young man. Just a professional joke. To say treatment is symptomatic means there is none, except to make the patient feel as comfortable as possible‘‖ (158). To provide one more example of repetition in the text: ―‗Have you seen Pantapon Rose?‘ said the old junky . . . ‗Time to cosq,‘ put on a black overcoat and made the square . . . Down to Skid Row to Market Street museum shows all kinds masturbation and self-abuse. Young boys need it special . . .‖ (165). The above quoted part reappears later in ―Atrophied Preface:‖ ―The old queen meets himself coming round the other way in burlesque of adolescence, gets the knee from his phantom of the

Old Howard . . . down Skid Row to Market Street museum shows all kinds

28 However, it must be also noted that Burroughs recognized the possibilities of such repetitions in the text, since they are regularly employed in his subsequent work. It is also important to note that the restored edition of Naked Lunch removed some of these repeated passages while ―left others that seem to work well in both places where they appear in the text‖ (Miles and Grauerholz 245). 49

masturbation and self-abuse . . . young boys need it special . . .‖ (193). Although the sentences or phrases reappearing later in the work remain mostly the same, the context changes: while the anecdote of Marv and two boys concerns prostitution, the anecdote featuring the Nationalist and Clem and Jody, who are dressed ―like The Capitalist in a

Communist mural‖ (119), concerns nationalism and oppression:

CLEM: ―We have come to feed on your backwardness.‖ JODY: ―In the words of the Immortal Bard, to batten on these Moors.‖ NATIONALIST: ―Swine! Filth! Sons of dogs! Don‘t you realize my people are hungry?‖ CLEM: ―That’s the way I like to see them.” The Nationalist drops dead, poisoned by hate . . . (emphasis added)

The shift in context is also visible in the remaining passages provided as examples above: while the ―treatment is symptomatic‖ is related to a venereal disease in

―Benway,‖ it is connected to homosexuality in ―The Examination;‖ while the ―young boys need it special‖ part is at first connected to drug usage, it is later reattached to an

―old queen,‖ although the setting—Market Street—is left unchanged. In other words,

Naked Lunch uses segments of one particular text in two or more passages, in effect creating a sort of time-place travel: when the reader reaches the second instance of a particular part, he or she is not only immediately reminded of the previous time and place setting of the given part, but also faced with its new context. Through the usage of repetition, Burroughs tries to achieve simultaneity in the text—one event takes place at two different times and/or places.29 As he explains his tape recorder experiments to

Daniel Odier: ―There are all sorts of things you can do on a tape recorder that cannot possibly be indicated on a printed page. The concept of simultaneity cannot be indicated on a printed page except very crudely‖ (29). To put it simply, Burroughs‘ usage of

29 Also it might be argued that it is the other way round—two or more events happen in the same time and/or setting—as the reader is reminded of the first event while reading about the second event. 50

repetition of sentences and phrases in the text manages to further underline the unstable nature of time and setting in the work as well as show the writerly aspect of the text.

While the discourse is framed by the ―And Start West‖ and ―Hauser and

O‘Brien‖ sections, there is no apparent ―end‖ of the rather vague plot.30 As it was already mentioned, any of the two sections—or virtually any section of Naked Lunch— might serve as the conclusion of the plot. However, although stating that the work invites the reader to choose any of its sections as its conclusion would only underline the indeterminate nature of the discourse, insistence on such a statement in reality dilutes the actual strength and possibilities of the discourse. One of the greatest achievements of the work is its claim that there does not need to be any beginning or end: ―You were not there for The Beginning. You will not be there for The End . . .

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative . . .‖

(Burroughs, Naked Lunch 184). As Barthes explains, writing ―the end‖ ―posits everything that has been written as having been a tension which ‗naturally‘ requires resolution, a consequence, an end, i.e., something like a crisis‖ (S/Z 52). The scholar continues:

By participating in the need to set forth the end of every action (conclusion, interruption, closure, dénouement), the readerly declares itself to be historical. In other words, it can be subverted, but not without scandal, since it is the nature of the discourse which then appears to have been betrayed: the girl can not stop laughing, the narrator can never be aroused from his daydream [. . .]; curiously, we call the knot (of the story) what needs to be unknotted (dénouement), we situate the knot at the peak of the crisis, not at its outcome; yet the knot is what closes, terminates, concludes the action in progress, like a flourish below a signature; to deny this final word (to deny the end as a word) would in fact scandalously dismiss the signature we seek to give each of our ―messages.‖

30 I intentionally ignore the ―Atrophied Preface‖ section when stating that ―Hauser and O‘Brien‖ concludes the work. While ―Atrophied Preface‖ does feature few references to other sections and therefore might be considered by some as belonging among the other sections, I will later show that its primary importance lies in shaping the reader‘s perception of the work. 51

Simply put, a proper conclusion of a plot is necessary for a readerly text and such a conclusion is exactly what Naked Lunch deliberately avoids. Even if ―Hauser and

O‘Brien‖ is thought of as the last section of the work, it itself stresses the non- development of the discourse. After the narrator shoots Hauser and O‘Brien, he decides to call the Narcotics Bureau and ask for the two detectives; however, he is informed that there are no detectives of the two names in the department and later concludes the following:

In the cab I realized what had happened . . . I had been occluded from space-time like an eel‘s ass occludes when he stops eating on the way to Sargasso . . . Locked out . . . Never again would I have a Key, a Point of Intersection . . . The Heat was off me from here on out . . . relegated with Hauser and O‘Brien to a landlocked junk past where heroin is always twenty-eight dollars an ounce and you can score for yen pox in the Chink laundry of Sioux Falls . . . (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 181)

Once such a possibility of being frozen in time is taken into account, the reader must reevaluate his or her ideas concerning the chronology of the work, especially if the possibility of movement backwards in time is proposed. The narrator of ―Hauser and

O‘Brien‖ is ―moving into the past with Hauser and O‘Brien . . . clawing at a not-yet of

Telepathic Bureaucracies, Time Monopolies, Control Drugs, Heavy Fluid Addicts.‖ In other words, if one chooses to believe the narrator‘s account, he or she must reconsider the work‘s treatment of time; if, on the other hand, one chooses to disbelieve the claim as a mere delusion, he or she has to reconsider the narrator‘s credibility, and, in effect, the reliability of the discourse as a whole. Either way, the chronology and time relations of the sections are in question and it does not matter whether it is due to the unusual treatment of time or the inability of the narrative voices to perceive time correctly.

As it was already mentioned, a beginning—that is a starting point of a plot—is also excluded from the work. Since there are not many references present in the text that might help in chronologically structuring the discourse—or, in Doležel‘s terms, the

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factual area of the discourse is not verified enough to guarantee safe interpretation—the reader is forced to either choose one of the sections as the beginning of the discourse or accept the notion that there simply is no beginning. The acceptance of the latter leads to a conclusion that greatly changes the perception of the work:

[Burroughs‘] narratives are not simply nonlinear, as nonlinear narratives still operate in terms of a recognizable present and past, but are essentially atemporal. Though some nonlinear narratives may obscure which narrative strain represents present or past, the difference between the two is almost always discernible as the position of the narrator determines the present. However, the stable present of the narrator/narrative simply does not exist in Burroughs‘s novels. Narrators or, more to the point, narrative perspectives do not maintain stable temporal positions, do not hold onto or remain within a ―present of narration.‖ Readers are confronted with narrators and narrative forms that not only have no control of the narrated time, but do not occupy any fixed narrative present. (Bolton 61)

To put it simply, the events of Naked Lunch take place in a ―no-time,‖ that is in an atemporal zone. In other words, while there is certain development in time within several of the sections, there is no apparent progression between the individual sections precisely because such development is not wanted. The sections, while they often feature characters or places from other sections, do not show any sort of reference in regards to the events of each other. Umberto Eco explains that ―[s]ince in every state of a story things can go on in different ways, the pragmatics of reading is based on our ability to make forecasts at every narrative disjunction‖ (72); however, no such junctions take place between the sections and often within the sections themselves: for example, the ―Ordinary Men and Women‖ section is composed of several completely unrelated parts, mostly either long monologues or scripted parts. Put differently, events of Naked Lunch are not affected by the progress of time, as if its sections and their parts took place in separate realities, each containing roughly the same elements but connecting them in different order, thus creating all possible permutations of the world

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of Naked Lunch. Even the repetitions of the text seem to affirm the existence of different realities at the same time: encountering the copy of a particular sentence or a phrase later in the text is merely one of the many possible variations of the ―original‖ reality.

The world of Naked Lunch is a very specific place. While it starts as a fictional account of real cities and areas, it soon transforms into a world with its own principles.

It is a place which constantly changes and shifts from one form to another: ―[N]o organ is constant as regards either function or position . . . sex organs sprout anywhere . . . rectums open, defecate and close . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments . . .‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 9). Doležel points out that readers need to access the ―fictional encyclopedia‖ of a given work, that is the knowledge of a possible world created by a work of fiction (178); the ―encyclopedia of the actual world‖ is usually only basis for fictional encyclopedias, and sometimes even less than that. Naked Lunch starts in New York and Mexico, but it soon moves into imaginary places like Interzone or Freeland. The reader must in such cases gain access to the fictional encyclopedia while transgressing the boundaries of actual and fictional worlds (179). Doležel explains that the knowledge of the particular fictional encyclopedia—and its mastering—is necessary for the reader to understand the world of the discourse: while the knowledge of the actual encyclopedia can be, to some extent, useful, it alone is never enough and in the cases of many fictional worlds it leads the reader on the wrong track—the reader must be always ready to modify, complete, or even entirely scrap the encyclopedia of the actual world (181). In other words, the discourse must reveal its fictional encyclopedia so that the reader is not lost in an unknown world and that is one of the ways Naked Lunch challenges its readers in understanding the text. To explain, the reader understands that there are real and

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fictional places and/or creatures present, but the discourse does not offer any explanation concerning the mechanism of the world. The real in Naked Lunch is the unreal where everything is possible: as the discourse continues, characters reappear or disappear without further notice, places change spontaneously, and time seems to have no effect on the content of the discourse. Because the world of Naked Lunch works on different principles than our own, leaving and departing of characters is omitted and, in fact, unnecessary. Even when the discourse does explain something, the reader is continuously reminded that the narrative voices are not to be trusted, therefore the information presented to the reader may or may not be valid. To put it simply, there is a fictional encyclopedia of the world present in the discourse, but since constant change and atemporalness is the very nature of the displayed world, the encyclopedia does not help in understanding the discourse.

The world of Naked Lunch is, in Eco‘s terms, an instance of impossible possible world, a world ―that the Model Reader is led to conceive of just to understand that it is impossible to do so‖ (76).31 ―An impossible world,‖ the critic continues, ―is presented by a discourse which shows why a story is impossible. An impossible possible world does not merely mention something inconceivable. It builds up the very conditions of its own inconceivability‖ (78). Places and characters move back and forth in time without any regard for continuity or chronology. Nothing in the portrayed world is constant, everything can be different from one page to another. The discourse shows the results of actions or events while it leaves out the way these results were achieved—characters can appear or disappear, places can change from one description to another. In the end, the world of the discourse is a world which does not comply with the temporal or spatial rules of our own reality. Burroughs achieves the creation of such an impossible possible

31 Model Reader is Eco‘s term for an ideal reader of a text produced by the text itself; Eco also explains that many texts aim at producing two kinds of Model Readers: a naïve one and a critical one. For more information see Eco 52-60. 55

world through defragmenting (which leaves out informants and proper indices), omitting (thus leaving out catalysers as well as the functionality of the fictional encyclopedia), contradicting (forcing the reader to accept all, some, or none of the contradictory versions), and repetition (creating additional instances of the same event or character). As it was already mentioned (see footnote 31), Eco devises two Model

Readers: a naïve one and a critical one. While a naïve Model Reader reads a text for the first time and is surprised by its textual strategies, a critical Model Reader is able ―to enjoy, at a second reading, the brilliant narrative strategy‖ of a text (77). It is now clear that the world of Naked Lunch is created in a way to offer a reality substantially different than our own to the reader, a reality that is unique with each reading and that the critical Model Reader can revise and change with each rereading.

III.E: The Characters of Naked Lunch

John Fowles once said that the pleasure from writing novels lies in all the aspects that can be left out from every page and every sentence (qtd. in Stanzel 145). As it is already apparent, omission is one of the strategies the text employs to become a writerly text, and it is also one of the several textual strategies used to describe the work‘s characters. Not only do the characters transport themselves from one location to another, but the characters themselves are rather indeterminate.

To begin with, the description of a character‘s appearance is often ignored: while at least visual representation of clothing is provided for characters such as The Great

Slashtubitch, Mark, A.J., Hassan, or Carl, others are not described at all. For instance, the only information provided by the discourse about Benway (who is after Lee the most recurring character of the work) is the fact that he wears glasses, and even that may not entirely reliable information: Benway is a person who ―[m]ight do almost

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anything . . . Turn a massacre into a sex orgy‖ or ―a joke‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch

104), in other words a highly unstable person; since his glasses ―slid down onto his nose in parody of the academic manner‖ during his conversation with Carl (156), the only description of the character provided by the discourse might be questioned as well.

Naturally, the limited description of characters is not that unusual. However, the description of the other above-mentioned characters is usually either rather brief or, more importantly, unexpected. For example, Hassan wears a ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots, dark glasses, and a ―well-cut suit made entirely from immature high- denomination bank notes‖ (130). Interestingly, almost every detailed description provided by the discourse shows the elements of the unusual and the bizarre: The Great

Slashtubitch wears ―full evening dress, blue cape and blue monocle‖ (75) while the

Party Leader ―strides about in a djellaba smoking a cigar and drinking scotch. He wears expensive English shoes, loud socks, garters, muscular hairy legs—overall effect of successful gangster in drag‖ (101-02). To provide another instance of the unusual: the

Guard from the ―Hospital‖ section wears, apart from other things, ―a uniform of human skin, black buck jacket with carious yellow teeth buttons, an elastic pullover shirt in burnished Indian copper [. . .], [and] sandals from callused foot soles of young Malayan farmer‖ (49). Such descriptions are in sharp contrast with the more casual observations: when the main narrator of the ―Hospital‖ section ogles boys from the French school, he simply states that ―[t]hey wear shorts‖ (50).

The way of describing characters—that is accentuating the unusual the more detailed a description becomes—is reflected in the physical features of the characters, namely in the description of their faces. For example, Mark is described as having

―[c]old, handsome, narcissistic face‖ and ―[g]reen eyes and black hair‖ (78). On the contrary to such ordinary description, a more detailed description again hints at the

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unusual, the unreal: ―The Guard [. . .] has a Latin-handsome smooth face with a pencil line mustache, small black eyes, blank and greedy, undreaming insect eyes‖ (49).

Nevertheless, such descriptions of faces are rather rare; the discourse prefers to mention the way a face changes rather than its original appearance: Paregoric Kid‘s ―face swells and his lips turn purple like an Eskimo in heat‖ (5); Benway‘s face is ―subject at any moment to unspeakable cleavage or metamorphosis. It flickers like a picture moving in and out of focus‖ (25); The Sailor‘s face ―smoothed out like yellow wax over the high cheekbones‖ (44) and later dissolved (45); Hassan‘s ―face swells, tumescent with blood‖ (66); Jonny‘s face ―disintegrates as if melted from within‖ (81). It is important to note that the faces of all the above-mentioned characters are not described by the discourse, only the way they change; in other words, the reader is provided with the portrayal of the change but is not told from what exactly the faces changed. In other words, the discourse provides only few informants related to the work‘s characters (or, in Doležel‘s terms, it does not provide the reader with usable encyclopedia of the fictional world). Most of the provided information reflect the indeterminate nature of the text; furthermore, the more details the discourse provides, the stranger it becomes, in effect providing the discourse with informants after all, but subverting them at the same time: the more informants one obtains from the discourse, the more he or she understands that the real of Naked Lunch is the unreal where everything is possible. One might of course claim that the descriptions above are merely reflections of the narrators‘ skewed perception; however, since the narrative voices change throughout the discourse on numerous occasions, such claim would mean that most of the narrative voices are inaccurate in the descriptions they provide, therefore again highlighting the indeterminate and unreliable nature of the text.

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As I have already pointed out in the previous section of the thesis, the discourse avoids informants as well as catalysers when working with characters: they suddenly appear out of nowhere and without any explanation how they managed to transport themselves to the particular place. For example, in one part of the ―Ordinary Men and

Women‖ section, Party Leader discusses with his Lieutenant the question of a Latah‘s behavior when he is alone: ―P.L.: ‗That‘s a technical point. We‘ll have to consult

Benway. Personally, I think someone should follow through on the whole operation.‘ [.

. .] ‗They have no feelings,‘ said Doctor Benway, slashing his patient to shreds. ‗Just reflexes . . . I urge distraction‘‖ (118). There is no explanation provided to Benway‘s sudden appearance—he is present in the discourse when he is needed and the way he appears on the scene is to be decided only by the reader. The ―Ordinary Men and

Women‖ section is a prime example of such sudden appearances—not only do other characters suddenly appear in the Latah part of the section (the Junky, the Professor,

Chorus of Fags, to name a few), but also the section itself is a good example of

Burroughs‘ construction of the discourse and the way characters are introduced. The section is comprised of several parts, including (but not limited to) two parts centered around the Party Leader, the already discussed ―talking asshole‖ segment, Dr. Berger’s

Mental Health Hour part, a part dealing with a jeweler and the counterfeits he is forced to make, and a section which is dedicated to four different characters—the American

Housewife, the Salesman, the Male Hustler, and the County Clerk, respectively. In other words, not only do characters suddenly appear in a given section, but the section often shifts focus from one character to another without providing any explanation for the transitions. It must be also noted that although there are a few sections focused solely on one or more characters (such as the ―Benway‖ and ―Examination‖ sections), these sections still display the traits outlined above, although in a lesser degree.

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To summarize, characters of Naked Lunch are either highly indeterminate when it comes to their physical description or the description is such as to highlight the unreal nature of the work‘s world. In addition, the more recurrent a character is, the more uncertainty is employed by the discourse when working with these characters—they unexpectedly appear in the middle of a narrative and, although appearing in several of the work‘s section, these characters are still indeterminate when it comes to their visualization. More importantly, similar tendencies can be seen in the behavior of characters—most characters are either without personality or their behavior changes rapidly, as if having more than just one personality. To provide some examples of the latter, Benway is one of the more indeterminate characters. On the one hand, he is described in the ―Benway‖ section as ―a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems, an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control‖

(Burroughs, Naked Lunch 19).32 On the other hand, he uses ―one of those rubber vacuum cups at the end of a stick they use to unstop toilets,‖ after washing it by

―swishing it around in the toilet bowl,‖ to massage a patient‘s heart (51):

DR. LIMPF: ―The incision is ready, doctor.‖ Dr. Benway forces the cup into the incision and works it up and down. Blood spurts all over the doctors, the nurse and the wall . . . The cup makes a horrible sucking sound. NURSE: ―I think she‘s gone, doctor.‖ DR. BENWAY: ―Well, it‘s all in the day‘s work.‖

The character‘s ambiguity—that of a ―control addict‖ as well as of a rather humorous character—is underlined later in the work by Benway‘s ability to ―[t]urn a massacre into sex orgy‖ or ―a joke;‖ he is an ―[a]rty type‖ with ―[n]o principles‖ (104). A.J. is portrayed by the discourse in a similar manner: he is an agent, ―but for whom or for what no one has ever been able to discover. It is rumored that he represents a trust of

32 Benway describes himself in the following way: ―‗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‘‖ (19). 60

giant insects from another galaxy‖ (123). He might be on the Factualist as well as the

Liquefactionist side: ―You can never be sure of anyone in the industry.‖ A.J. is also an

―international playboy and harmless practical joker‖ who ―had at one time come on like an English gentleman‖ (123, 122). However, ―no one believes [his] cover story;‖ although he claims to be an independent, ―[t]here are no independents any more . . . The

Zone swarms with every variety of dupe but there are no neutrals there. A neutral at

A.J.‘s level is of course unthinkable . . .‖ (130). To put it simply, A.J. has—at least according to the narrative—two different personalities, one of the playboy and joker and the other of an unidentifiable agent. Throughout the work, especially in the ―Islam

Incorporated and the Parties of Interzone‖ section, the reader encounters several of

A.J.‘s practical jokes; however, it must be always remembered that behind the rather innocent façade of A.J. the prankster is another, completely different personality. In other words, the discourse describes both Benway and A.J. in one particular way only to provide conflicting descriptions later in the work: the more recurring a character is the more subject to changes of his or her personality he becomes later in the discourse.

Compared to the recurring characters like Benway, Lee, A.J., or the Sailor, other characters appear more stable on first sight. As Murphy puts it:

As [. . .] characters reappear throughout the novel, some (like Dr. ―Fingers‖ Schafer) are consistently associated with certain dominant themes (like economic and scientific control of individuals), while others (like A.J.) develop more ambiguous identities that cut across the book's already unstable epistemo-ethical categories. (―Intersection‖)

Interestingly, even the characters that appear more stable are not necessarily protected from the sudden changes throughout the discourse. For example, Mark in the ―A.J.‘s

Annual Party‖ section suddenly changes into Johnny, who was killed by Mark with the help of Mary only several moments earlier. Similar change occurs in the ―Meeting of

International Conference of Technological Psychiatry‖ part of the section mentioned

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above, in which Doctor ―Fingers‖ Schafer presents his ―Master Work: The Complete All

American Deanxietized Man . . .‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 87). Nevertheless, the presentation backfires after the Man—that is the Schaffer‘s creation—changes into ―a monster black centipede.‖

However, the above-mentioned sudden changes do not play a major part in understanding the discourse‘s treatment of characters; on the contrary, the way minor characters are treated does. Throughout the text, the reader encounters many characters with generic names: the Party Leader, the Lieutenant, the County Clerk, the American

Housewife, the Students, the Professor, the Sheriff, the D.A., and many more. These characters are usually not described because they are not important due to their personalities or character traits, but due to what they represent. As Murphy writes, these characters are ―molds,‖33 ―character templates or types (whether arche- or stereo-) [. . .].

They are prefabricated images rather than individuals‖ (―Intersection‖).34 These characters are similar to the previously mentioned Clem and Jody who ―sweep in dressed like The Capitalist in a Communist mural‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 119): replaceable when it comes to their individual qualities (which are not, with a few exceptions, shown anyway), but vital as a representation of a specific character type. In other words, these characters are important not for their inside personality, but for their outside status. In addition, these characters are not directly described by the discourse: it is up to the reader to write their visualization into the text, a visualization often based on the ―mold‖ of the character.

33 The reference to ―molds‖ comes from Naked Lunch itself: ―They call me the Exterminator. At one brief point of intersection I did exercise that function and witnessed the belly dance of roaches suffocating in yellow pyrethrum powder [. . .]. My present assignment: Find the live ones and exterminate. Not the bodies but the ‗molds,‘ you understand—but I forget that you cannot understand‖ (171-72). 34 It is important to note that Murphy identifies the ―molds‖ with the defecting agents and not the generic characters I discuss. 62

For instance, the discourse mentions sheriffs several times throughout the work; while the first mention is of ―soft-spoken country sheriffs with something black and menacing in old eyes color of a faded grey flannel shirt‖ (11), the discourse subsequently speaks of ―nigger-killing sheriffs‖ (14). Later in the work, the Sheriff in the ―A.J.‘s Annual Party‖ section receives more attention, overseeing a hanging of a boy and offering to the onlookers to lower the boy‘s pants so the onlookers can see the boy‘s involuntary orgasm while he is being hanged: ―I‘ll lower his pants for a pound, folks. Step right up. [. . .] Only one pound, one queer three dollar bill to see a young boy come three times at least [. . .] completely against his will‖ (86). As the discourse does not provide any description of the Sheriff, the reader working with the discourse‘s fictional encyclopedia tries to characterize the Sheriff somehow, in effect associating the Sheriff not only with his or her own preconceptions of a sheriff (such as: Caucasian, middle-aged, Southern accent, etc.) but also with the few details provided about sheriffs earlier in the discourse. Therefore, the Sheriff of ―A.J.‘s Annual Party‖ is also a

―nigger-killer‖ with ―old eyes color of a faded grey flannel shirt‖—after all, nothing in the discourse does not say that the Sheriff from ―A.J.‘s Annual Party‖ is not one of the sheriffs mentioned earlier.

Some might argue that the preceding paragraph is stretching the argument.

However, the point becomes clear when applied on the other minor characters of the work—majority of the minor characters are not only capitalized, but also do not appear in any other parts of the discourse in a lower case spelling (therefore the Sheriff is an exception to the rule, since mentions of sheriffs—no capitalization—appear earlier in the text). For example, the Technician—who is given a rather large amount of dialogue—appears in three sections of the work, namely in ―Hospital,‖ ―Ordinary Men and Women,‖ and ―Islam Incorporated and the Parties of Interzone‖ sections (plus a

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brief mention in ―Benway‖ section). The Technician might be one and the same person because in all the sections he appears in the text employs the same techniques to simulate the person‘s speech patterns, namely ellipsis and italics: in ―Hospital‖ he orders one of his men to ―[c]ut that swish fart off the air and give him his purple slip.

He‘s through as of right now . . . Put in that sex-changed Liz athlete . . . She‘s a full- time tenor at least . . . Costume? How in the fuck should I know?‖ (53); in a different section he says: ―Send in the cured writer . . . He‘s got what? Buddhism?‖ (116). In other words, the Technician might be the one and the same person, and although he dies in the ―Hospital‖ section (which precedes the other sections), his death does not pose any problem to the discourse, since, as I have already explained, Naked Lunch resists any attempts at chronological organization. However, it might be also explained by saying the Technician is only a character type, one of the many ―molds‖ in the discourse. The discourse even mentions such explanation: one of the parties of

Interzone are the Divisionists who ―cut off tiny bits of their flesh and grow exact replicas of themselves in embryo jelly‖ (137). Whether or not the Technician is one or several persons, the only informants provided directly by the discourse are found in the very name of the character (or, perhaps more accurately, of the character ―mold‖).

Simply put, the Technician, the American Housewife or the Salesman represent through their very name a certain set of traits as dictated by the popular culture as well as by the specific experiences of the reader. The Housewife is concerned about domestic chores, the Salesman retells stories about making profit, and both Lieutenants that work for the

Party Leader are mere yes-men. In Doležel‘s terms, these characters are created by the reader through the reader‘s knowledge of the encyclopedia of the actual world, not through the work‘s fictional encyclopedia. In other words, these characters are fully

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developed yet empty, mere molds with no inside content provided by the discourse and supplemented only through the reader‘s knowledge of his or her own world.

The sameness of the characters in question and their importance in the discourse through their non-individualism seems to be further stressed by the frequent employment of the script technique in parts containing several of these characters. The individual person does not matter—the discourse does not need any name, description, or characterization of the specific person—only the ―mold‖ does.35 As long as a particular mold accordingly represents the specific character type, the given mold‘s personal characteristics are not relevant. However, it must be understood that the molds are featured in Burroughs‘ own world which is, as I have already shown, not only bizarre but also highly indeterminate. Simply put, these rather all-too-familiar characters are in opposition with the more unusual elements of the discourse such as the ever-changing city of Interzone or Mugwumps, the creatures that produce ―an addicting fluid from their erect penises which prolongs life by slowing metabolism‖ (46). For example, the American Housewife fights with household robots wreaking havoc on her house and herself: ―‗The Handy Man is outa control since Thursday, he been getting physical with me and I didn‘t put it in his combination at all. . . And the Garbage

Disposal Unit snapping at me, and the nasty old Mixmaster keep trying to get up under my dress‘‖ (104). Put differently, these and other molds present in the discourse are not only mostly characterized by the reader‘s encyclopedia of the actual world as opposed to the fictional encyclopedia of Naked Lunch, but also provide through their familiarity a sharp contrast to the nature of the displayed world, therefore accentuating the bizarre nature of the discourse.

35 Whether the usage of ―molds‖ is due to the work‘s satirical qualities or not is to be discussed later. 65

To summarize, the discourse employs several techniques concerning the characters that further contribute to the indeterminable nature of the text. Not only can the characters move effortlessly through the discourse‘s time or place settings, but they are also only rarely described: the reader has to create his or her own visualization of the character and the discourse does not provide much advice to such visualizing. In addition, the more detailed a description of a character‘s personality is, the more the discourse tries to undermine its own previous statements, since many important characters are described to the point of absurdness or contradiction. On the other hand, a vast number of minor characters are not described by the discourse at all: these characters are portrayed through their position in the reader‘s society (most often through their occupation). It is the reader, not the discourse, who ascribes certain characteristics to these characters through his or her own knowledge of the actual world.

No characterization is given to these characters, only their utterances somehow convey their personalities; however, these personalities fit into the preconceptions typical to the reader‘s reality. Put simply, characters of Naked Lunch are either non-descript, thus forcing the reader to create an image of a given character from the scratch, or they are

―overdescribed,‖ that is they have such detailed descriptions that they become conflicting or questionable at least. Through these techniques the reader has to shape the indeterminate discourse, in effect writing significant portions of the work instead of the writer, thus confirming the writerly nature of the text.

Before I move from this chapter on characters of Naked Lunch to the next one, it is important to note how the characters are affected by the work‘s structure and the usage of time and place. As I have already explained, both the structure and the time/place usage significantly contribute to the indeterminate nature of the discourse.

Since the text resists chronological ordering of the sections and continuity in general,

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different versions of one event can occur, and places constantly change, the discourse‘s characters are influenced as well. As Roland Barthes explains on the example of

Balzac‘s short story ―Sarrasine,‖ characters are dominated by the discourse itself:

Sarrasine is not free to reject the [. . .] warning; if he were to heed it and to refrain from pursuing his adventure, there would be no story. In other words, Sarrasine is forced by the discourse to keep his rendezvous with La Zambinella: the character‘s freedom is dominated by the discourse‘s instinct for preservation. On one hand an alternative, on the other and simultaneously a constraint. (S/Z 135)

Therefore, the characters of Naked Lunch enjoy significant freedom within the boundaries of the text as opposed to characters in more conventional discourses. Thanks to the indeterminate and often conflicting nature of the text, the characters are able to travel from one place to another without any restrictions, instantly appear in the middle of a section only to disappear few lines later, and ignore outcomes of the discourse‘s many events.

III.F The Tone and Language of Naked Lunch

To summarize so far, Naked Lunch employs numerous strategies in its treatment of the work‘s structure, characters, narrative voices, and the manipulation of time and setting, namely the textual strategies of indeterminacy, unreliability, absence, contradiction, and bizarreness. One more element certainly belongs among the above- mentioned aspects of the discourse: the element of language—or tone—of the work.

The style in which Naked Lunch is written is certainly at least as important as the other aspects of the discourse and perhaps even more. After all, the work‘s ―fantastic scenes of graphic violence and transgressive sexuality exceeded anything that had been published at that point‖ (Holton 27) and even today some readers might find these passages appalling. However, I will not limit myself to discuss only such passages; on

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the contrary, I will point out several stylistic features such as the use of humor on the one hand and the depictions of various brutal or shocking scenes on the other to explain that even the very style of the work reflects the literary techniques described in the previous chapters, techniques such as contradiction or absence, therefore greatly contributing to the writerly nature of the text.

As it is certainly clear by now, Naked Lunch is a highly indeterminable text, a writerly text which invites (perhaps even forces) the reader to create his or her own relations between the different parts of the text. The text‘s indeterminacy is what leads

Frank McConnell to say ―that Burroughs‘ [Naked Lunch] operates on probably the most severely minimal linguistic principles out of which poetry can be made at all, and that the critic approaching it is faced at the first turn with the book‘s internal hostility to the act of explication.‖ Concurring with the latter part of his argument, it is important to explain that the former part not only describes the various literary techniques I have already discussed in the preceding parts, but also the fact that there are numerous parts that, language-wise, stand out from the rest of the text. For example, the following scene occurs after Mark starts having intercourse with Johnny:

A train roars through him whistle blowing . . . boat whistle, foghorn, sky rockets burst over oily lagoons . . . penny arcades open into a maze of dirty pictures . . . ceremonial cannon boom in the harbor . . . a scream shoots down a white hospital corridor . . . out along a wide dusty street between palm trees, whistles out across the desert like a bullet (vulture wings husk in the dry air). (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 79)

There are numerous passages like the quoted above throughout the text, ranging from one paragraph to one or more pages. As Murphy explains, these passages not only help in holding the text together, but they also provide a way to establish and maintain connections among the fragmentary parts of the work (―Intersection‖). However, as

Murphy continues, ―such connections are more poetic or even musical than novelistic in

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that they operate through evocative, impressionistic, or imagistic intensity rather than logical or causal extension.‖ Murphy‘s claim is best seen on another example, an excerpt from the ―Have You Seen Pantapon Rose?‖ section:

The Mississippi rolls great limestone boulders down the silent alley . . . ―Clutter the glind!‖ screamed the Captain of the Moving Land . . .

Distant rumble of stomachs . . . Poisoned pigeons rain from the Northern Lights . . . The reservoirs are empty . . . Brass statues crash through the hungry squares and alleys of the gaping city . . . Probing for a vein in the junk-sick morning . . . Strictly from cough syrup . . . (166)

These parts provide significant challenge to the reader as they resist Roland Barthes‘ classification of discourse—that is organization of various parts of the text according to their roles. In other words, it is quite impossible to agree on interpretation of these parts as cardinal functions, catalysers, indices, or informants; on the contrary, the reader has to decide on the importance of these passages in the discourse. One might argue that these passages can belong to all four Barthes‘ narrative units: they might be cardinal functions on the grounds of the work‘s eschewing of traditional novel characteristics such as plot or continuity (and therefore these passages would play important role in the work because they further underline its indeterminate nature), catalysers due to their rather fantastic nature that—to some—might help in explaining the way one cardinal function follows another (by explicitly saying the world of Naked Lunch is a fantastic place where everything is possible), indices proper thanks to their ability to evoke particular feelings or moods in which following passages are read, or informants due to the fact these passages convey pure data about the world of Naked Lunch—a world in which the imaginary and the real collide. However, depending on the reading of the text the reader has chosen, any of these interpretations can be instantly challenged. The role of these passages as cardinal functions is disposed of in the case the reader searches for

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a character-oriented discourse, catalysers and indices proper can be ignored due to the work‘s complicated structure and atemporalness (in other words, the passages in question cannot explain or foreshadow something that is not at all related to the given passage). In addition, categorizing the discussed passages as informants comes under scrutiny whenever the reader decides to interpret these passages as hallucinations or mere tropes. Of course, stating these passages do not mean anything is not a remarkably good solution; however, the complicating classification of these parts further underlines the writerly aspect of the work as a whole. The reader has to decide the value of these passages based on his or her own reading of the remaining parts of the work and their interpretation and although these passages, as Murphy claims, help in connecting the fragmentary sections of the work, they also provide further contrast to the other sections of Naked Lunch, therefore tipping the scales towards ―indeterminate‖ rather than

―determinate.‖

In direct contrast to these ―meaningless‖ passages are numerous phrases, passages, or whole sections of the discourse that not only demand the reader‘s attention, but seem to have the authority to explain numerous elements of the work. As it was already explained, the ―talking asshole‖ part is one such passage; however, I have also already explained that the more ―talking asshole‖ seems to explain, the more it should be the subject of scrutiny. Another such part is the whole ―Campus of Interzone

University‖ section, which features the Professor explaining to his students the symbolism of the Ancient Mariner, the famous character from ‗The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner‘ by Coleridge. Since it is considered to be one of the most important parts of the work (as McConnell puts it, ―[t]he Professor‘s lecture on the Campus of Interzone

University is perhaps the stylistic matrix of the whole book‖), I will quote the

Professor‘s explanation at length:

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―[C]onsider the Ancient Mariner without curare, lasso, bulbocapnine or straitjacket, albeit able to capture and hold a live audience . . . What is his hrump gimmick? He he he he . . . He does not, like so-called artists at this time, stop just anybody thereby inflicting unsent-for boredom and working random hardship . . . He stops those who cannot choose but hear owing to already existing relation between The Mariner (however ancient) and the uh Wedding Guest . . . ―What the Mariner actually says is not important . . . He may be rambling, irrelevant, even crude and rampant senile. But something happens to the Wedding Guest like happens in psychoanalysis when it happens if it happens. If I may be permitted a slight digression . . . an analyst of my acquaintance does all the talking—patients listen patiently or not . . . He reminisces . . . tells dirty jokes (old ones) [. . .]. He is illustrating at some length that nothing can ever be accomplished on the verbal level. He arrived at this method through observing that The Listener—The Analyst—was not reading the mind of the patient . . . The patient—The Talker—was reading his mind . . . [. . .]‖ ―Gentlemen I will slop a pearl: You can find out more about someone by talking than by listening.‖ Pigs rush up and the Prof pours buckets of pearls into a through . . . ―I am not worthy to eat his feet,‖ says the fattest hog of them all. ―Clay anyhoo.‖ (73-74)

Apart from McConnell, several other critics interpret this section as the key part of the text, namely Edward J. Ahearn and Timothy S. Murphy. Ahearn includes the following riot scene from the ―Benway‖ section in his analysis of the above-quoted text:

Gentle reader, the ugliness of that spectacle buggers description. Who can be a cringing pissing coward, yet vicious as a purple-assed mandrill, alternating these deplorable conditions like vaudeville skits? Who can shit on a fallen adversary who, dying, eats the shit and screams with joy? Who can hang a weak passive and catch his sperm in mouth like a vicious dog? Gentle reader, I fain would spare this, but my pen hath its will like the Ancient Mariner. (34) (emphasis added)

By adding the above quoted scene to his analysis, Ahearn interprets Naked Lunch as a visionary text in the vein of Blake, Lautréamont, or the French surrealist, a text that directly addresses the reader in order to prepare him or her for ―a salacious and visionary, sometimes hilarious, universally frightening depiction of reality in America and the world.‖ Murphy goes even further: by stressing the ―You can find out more about someone by talking than by listening” passage from the ―Campus of Interzone‖

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section, the critic concludes ―that the reader will learn more about him/herself in reading Naked Lunch than s/he will learn about the narrator (or the author). The novel‘s success, as it itself insists, depends on the reader‘s active, shaping involvement in the process of reconstruction and interpretation‖ (―Intersection‖). In other words, the discourse offers numerous authoritative-sounding parts that seem to contain numerous ideas and interpretations apparently central to the work. As it was already stated, these

―central‖ passages may be of various lengths, from a couple of sentences to several pages, some of which have been already mentioned: ―A functioning police state needs no police‖ (31); ―You see control can never be a means to any practical end . . . It can never be a means to anything but more control . . . Like junk . . .‖ (137); ―[t]he broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell . . . Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus. The Human

Virus can now be isolated and treated‖ (141); ―all Agents defect and all Resisters sell out‖ (172). It must be stressed that these passages are located in a text that is extremely complex and that uses contradiction and absence as its weapons to achieve its indeterminacy. Oliver Harris notes these parts ―present the reader, weary from the teeming heterogeneity of Naked Lunch, with what appear to be master keys to the text‖

(Secret 216). The critic also adds that these passages—or keys to the text36—are the work‘s ―most seductive but also its most suspect parts, because they promise to save us from the reading experience itself, from its disorienting material contradictions and aggressive rhetorical self-subversions.‖ Simply put, one of the several techniques

Burroughs employs throughout the text is used when dealing with these passages and the ―meaningless‖ parts mentioned above, that is the technique of bringing into focus some parts of the discourse while ignoring others. However, since these passages are

36 Since these keys play a vital part not only in interpreting Naked Lunch but also in my own thesis, I will italicize them to set them off the text for clearer understanding from now on. 72

found in a text that directly challenges the reader‘s grasp of the work and, furthermore, are often produced by the characters of the discourse who are, as I have already shown, often unreliable or unstable as the discourse itself, these passages and the meanings they provide should be questioned by the reader.

Naturally, not every such passage is uttered by the work‘s characters; some, as the ―Atrophied Preface‖ section concluding the work or ―Deposition: Testimony

Concerning a Sickness,‖ the original introduction demanded by the editors that opened the Grove edition of Naked Lunch intended for the US market (Miles and Grauerholz

246), are written in the voice of the author himself. For example, ―Atrophied Preface‖ contains the following often quoted lines: ―There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing [. . .]. I do not presume to impose ―story‖ ―plot‖ ―continuity‖ [. . .]. I am not an entertainer . . .‖ (184). In

―Deposition‖ Burroughs explains the title of the work:

I have no precise memory of writing the notes which have now been published under the title Naked Lunch. The title was suggested by Jack Kerouac. I did not understand what the title meant until my recent recovery. The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch—a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork. (199)

Since these parts come directly from the author himself and not one of his characters, they are often attributed vital part in understanding the work. For instance, Frank

McConnell claims that the work‘s Introduction—that is the ―Deposition‖ segment—―is an essential and central part of the book [. . .] which without either Introduction or

Appendix would be immeasurably crippled, dull and ‗unpoetic‘ as those sections may be in themselves.‖37 McConnell is not the only critic that relies solely on these parts in interpreting Naked Lunch. Timothy Murphy in ―Intersection‖ considers the following

37 McConnell means by the Appendix section the ―Letter from a Master Addict to Dangerous Drugs‖ published in The British Journal of Addiction; ironically, the first edition of Naked Lunch published by Olympia Press did not have any of these parts (Miles and Grauerholz 241). 73

passage from ―Atrophied Preface‖ as ―the key to reading, and thus teaching, Naked

Lunch:‖

I [. . .] suddenly don‘t know where I am. Perhaps I have opened the wrong door and at any moment The Man In Possession, The Owner Who Got There First will rush in and scream: ―What Are You Doing Here? Who Are You?‖ And I don‘t know what I am doing there nor who I am. I decide to play it cool and maybe I will get the orientation before the Owner shows . . . So instead of yelling ―Where am I?‖ cool it and look around and you will find out approximately . . . You were not there for The Beginning. You will not be there for The End . . . Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative . . . (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 183- 84)

In other words, the keys in the text, whether coming directly from the author or indirectly through the work‘s characters, provide the reader with an understanding of the discourse. However, the reader has to choose which keys he or she uses, since there are too many keys present in the discourse and often conflict each other. Therefore, these passages in effect repeat the same textual strategy as the often contradictory or unreliable narrative voices: by choosing several particular keys as the explanation of the text, the reader must automatically dismiss the remaining keys as unfitting for the chosen explanation. For instance, ―Atrophied Preface‖ seems to offer a straightforward interpretation of the text: ―Lee The Agent (a double-four-eight-sixteen) is taking the junk cure . . . space-time trip portentously familiar as junk meet corners to the addict‖

(182). In other words, Burroughs himself seems to argue that almost everything in the discourse—from Interzone to various characters as Doctor Benway or A.J.—is a mere hallucination produced during the painful withdrawal period Lee undergoes in the

―Hospital‖ section. However, as I have pointed out previously, not only the reference to

Lee as an ―Agent‖ seems to contradict the assumption that most of the discourse occurs only inside Lee‘s mind during withdrawal, but also such interpretation can lead to dismissing the other possibly important keys found in the discourse itself as mere

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hallucinations—and therefore unimportant. To provide an example, while McConnell includes the discussion of Ancient Mariner in his essay, he reaches a very different conclusion then the other two critics relying on the same part. By stressing the drug elements of the text and ignoring the reader-writer keys mentioned by Ahearn and

Murphy, McConnell interprets Naked Lunch as ―a religious confession,‖ stating that ―it is not the journal of a cure, but is the cure‖ itself from addiction, whether to control or drugs. In addition, while Murphy and McConnell rely greatly on the keys present in the sections of the work containing the voice of the author himself (that is the ―Atrophied

Preface‖ section plus ―Deposition‖ and ―Post Script . . . Wouldn‘t You?‖ additions of the later editions), other critics claim that Burroughs is often being ironic in these sections and therefore not to be trusted (Harris, Secret 187; Lydenberg 7).38

Furthermore, highlighting the various keys as bearers of meaning fundamental for interpretation of the work ignores the previously discussed ―meaningless‖ parts of the discourse. Davis Schneiderman explains that these ―meaningless‖ passages, ―somewhat resistant to the critical readings that for the most part ignore the material surrounding and asphyxiating those few ‗straightforward‘ statements, remain for many readers fundamentally unknowable, extraneous, dangerous—excessive‖ (195). In other words, the text again forces the reader into choosing some of its passages while ignoring the rest as not fitting the explanation provided by the chosen set of keys, therefore changing its meaning with every reading and every interpretation.39

Of course, facing the reader with seemingly meaningless passages as well as with their authoritative-sounding counterparts is not the only language-related technique

38 The issue of irony present in these parts is an important one and to be dealt with in the following section of the thesis. 39 That being said, the keys of the discourse should not be thought of as unimportant; on the contrary, these keys are probably the most important part of the discourse, but ―only‖ because a different choice of a set of keys—parts of the discourse seemingly containing explanations of the discourse—often greatly changes the reader‘s interpretation of the work. However, this issue will be dealt with in appropriate time; now it is more than satisfying to conclude that the discourse again forces the reader to highlight some parts of the text while ignoring—or at least suppressing the meaning—of others. 75

Burroughs employs in the text. Apart from deciphering the importance (or unimportance) of such passages, the reader must be also able to unwrap the meaning of numerous slang and argot words present in the text. For example, the following dialogue takes place at the beginning of the work: ―‗Thomas and Charlie,‘ I said.

‗What?‘ ‗That‘s the name of this town‘‖ (14). As MacFayden explains, the actual name of the town, pronounced ―Thomas ‗n‘ Charlie,‖ is Tamazunchale (―Dossier One‖ 5); however, as MacFayden elaborates, the importance of the utterance lies in the fact that both ―Thomas‖ and ―Charlie‖ are slang terms related to narcotics: Thomas is derived from Tom Mix (therefore signifying a fix) and Charlie is a euphemism for Cocaine. In addition, the two words also have hidden sexual meanings, therefore causing the interlocutory ―What?‖ to have double meaning, ―pointing to the hidden significance of these two words, their multiple coded meanings encapsulating in an extraordinary way the operations of slang in narcotics parlance and sexual euphemism.‖ Naturally, not every usage of a slang word is concealed behind the discourse; actually, most of the slang terms are directly in front of the reader. Words such as ―pigeon,‖ ―chucks,‖ or

―burn down,‖ appear throughout the text and while some of these words are later explained (such as the word ―cowboy,‖ a word from ―New York hood talk [that] means kill the mother fucker whenever you find him‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 174), most are left unexplained by the discourse.40 As Burroughs explains, these terms come from various social groups: ―‗Jive talk‘ is used more in connection with marijuana than with junk. In the past few years, however, the use of junk has spread into ―hip,‖ or ―jive talking‖ circles, and junk lingo has, to some extent, merged with ―jive talk‖ (Junky

129). However, the discourse is not limited only to ―jive talk‖ or ―junk lingo;‖ as I have already mentioned, there are numerous explanatory intrusions in the text, therefore the

40 The terms mean, in the order they appear above: ―[i]nformer,‖ ―[e]xcessive hunger, often for sweets‖ (after ceasing to take drugs), and ―[t]o overdo or run into the ground‖ (for example a drug store by frequent visits of drug addicts in order to fill the scripts) (Burroughs, Junky 129-31). 76

discourse not only contains a vast number of slang terms, but also numerous foreign- language or scientific words. For instance, the discourse explains the word querencia as a ―bullfighting term . . . The bull will find a spot in the ring he likes and stay there and the bullfighter has to go in and meet the bull on his bull terms or coax him out‖ (72).

The reader is bombarded by a barrage of unfamiliar words and phrases and although some of them are explained, the sheer number of such passages adds to the exotic nature of the text. It is valuable to note that the text is not limited to words or short phrases when employing the various vocabularies; on the contrary, the use of several vocabularies is reflected in the multiple voices of the numerous characters present in the discourse. Many characters—whether major or minor—have their own voices and own ways of expressing which is often very specific, as no other character contains such voice. Ian MacFayden sums up the usage of various languages for the characters of the work:

The voices are mediated, incorporating advertisements, popular songs, psychoanalytic and medical jargon, business spiel, hipster jive talk, junkie lingo, candy butcher and carny pitches, film and TV voice-over narration, radio announcer and newspaper columnist shtick, legal jargon and officialese, literary and anthropological references, viral and cybernetic terminologies, switching and combining quite different parlances while the source material shifts from old radio serials to dime- store comics and pulps, noir to sci-fi to horror and western film scenarios and teen gang flicks, characters flipping between quite different discourses and scenarios in a cultural hullabaloo which is all echoes — dubbed, spliced, ventriloquized, post-synchronized. (―Mouth Inside‖)

While the various character voices are worth mentioning, MacFayden‘s reference to pulp fiction is of primary importance because Burroughs employs the esthetics of the popular novel on such a scale that it leads Murphy to argue that

Burroughs ―makes use of the detective novel and science fiction in order to displace dogmatic structures of thought and transcendent structures of power‖ (Wising 7).

Whether Murphy‘s claim is true or not, Naked Lunch certainly contains too many pulp

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fiction references to be ignored. Not only it features the ―seedy‖ world of drug trade and addiction, but some of Burroughs‘ inventions, such as the creatures Mugwumps with their ―[t]hin, purple-blue lips [that] cover a razor-sharp beak of black bone with which they frequently tear each other to shreds in fights over clients‖ (Burroughs, Naked

Lunch 46), look as if coming directly from a pulp fiction (Murphy, ―Random Insect

Doom‖ 227).41 After all, the work is framed by two sections that more or less explicitly mention pulp fiction, that is by ―And Start West‖ and ―Hauser and O‘Brien.‖ While the latter belongs among the sections that directly uses pulp fiction language—―I felt the concussion of Hauser‘s shot before I heard it. His slug slammed into the wall behind me. Shooting from the floor, I snapped two quick shots into Hauser‘s belly‖ (177)42— the former, however, uses pulp fiction references in a slightly different way:

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 at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train . . . Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec 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. [. . .] ―So long flatfoot!‖ I yell, giving the fruit his B production. I look into the fruit‘s eyes, take in the white teeth, the Florida tan, the two hundred dollar sharkskin suit, the button-down Brooks Brothers shirt and carrying The News as a prop. ―Only thing I read is Little Abner.‖

41 Burroughs was a fond reader of pulp fiction, especially the hardboiled detective and science fiction genres, the former having influence on his early writing style (Stevens 20; Burroughs, ―William Burroughs, An Interview‖ 29). Furthermore, Burroughs‘ Junky was first published bound with a memoir of a narcotics agent by Ace Books as a paperback; at that time paperbacks ―were sold mostly from newsstands and railroad stations rather than through bookshops, but they had huge print runs and reached far more people than conventionally published hardbacks. They were never reviewed and tended to be downmarket novels: crime or westerns, or else cheap reprints of classics‖ (Miles, El Hombre Invisible 59- 62). 42 Naked Lunch was originally intended to contain a more straightforward, science fiction oriented narrative. As Burroughs writes in a 1955 letter to Kerouac: ―My novel is taking shape. Scientists have discovered an anti-dream drug that will excise the intuitive, empathizing, symbolizing, myth- and art- creating faculties . . . We—a few counter conspirators—are trying to obtain and destroy the formula. So there will be a lot of shooting, violence etc. In fact one beginning I kill two cops who have come to arrest me because I know I am slated to be used as guinea pig in experiments with the anti-dream drug‖ (Burroughs, Letters 266-67). ―The Conspiracy,‖ a section complimenting ―And Start West‖ and ―Hauser and O‘Brien‖ that was in the 1958 manuscript of Naked Lunch but did not survive into the final version of the work, contains the above-mentioned plot. For ―The Conspiracy,‖ see Interzone 106-111. 78

A square wants to come on hip . . . Talks about ―pod,‖ and smoke it now and then [. . .]. ―Thanks, kid,‖ I say, ―I can see you‘re one of our own.‖ His face lights up like a pinball machine, with stupid, pink affect. [. . .] And the fruit is thinking: ―What a character!! Wait till I tell the boys in Clark‘s about this one.‖ He is a character collector [. . .]. So I put it on him for a sawski and make a meet to sell him some ―pod‖ as he calls it, thinking, ―I‘ll catnip the jerk.‖ (Note: Catnip smells like marijuana when it burns. Frequently passed on the incautious or uninstructed.) (3-5)

In other words, the opening of Naked Lunch begins as a rather typical pulp fiction story—a drug addict running away from the law—but it also features a reflection of the esthetics of pulp fiction and their interpretation by casual readers. Murphy explains the relations between the narrator‘s ―pulp behavior‖ and the fruit‘s reaction as the interplay between Naked Lunch and its reader:

The fruit, conventionally bourgeois down to his Brooks Brothers shirt, gets involved because he is a prurient ―character collector‖ whose expectations of the junky are derived from ―B production‖ movies and their literary correlative, pulp fiction. Lee plays into the fruit‘s genre expectations and hipster aspirations by treating him as ―one of our own‖ in order to set him up for a later con. The fruit is clearly a surrogate for the reader of Naked Lunch, whose familiarity with the means and ends of pulp fiction is the hook that draws him into the novel‘s vast confidence game.43 (―Random Insect Doom‖ 223)

Harris explains that the ―And Start West‖ passage quoted above creates two audiences.

The first audience is the reader who is ―directly and knowingly‖ addressed through the

―you‖ in ―You know the type‖ and the second is the ―type‖ himself who is not only a reflection of a ―1950s model American‖ but also ―coincides with the reader‖ (Secret

50). In other words, by identifying the ―type‖ as the possible reader of Naked Lunch and at the same time dismissing him as a rather naïve person the reader is forced to re-

43 The passage also includes page numbers of the quoted Naked Lunch phrases; however, since Murphy uses the same edition as I do and the phrases he quotes are all included in the large excerpt above, I have omitted them for the sake of brevity. 79

evaluate his or her position on many elements of pulp fiction, such as the world of drug addiction.44

To put it simply, the work uses numerous pulp fiction elements on the one hand but often displays the very same elements as rather naïve and unrealistic. Such dynamic of the discourse is best seen in the following part of Naked Lunch:

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 [. . .] has broken the dropper off deep into 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 [. . .]. 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.‖ (10)

Lydenberg insightfully comments on the excerpt above: ―The description is ‗put down‘ in quotation marks, as a voice to be distinguished from the flat factual delivery which introduces it. This description is full of just the sort of moral rhetoric that demands the reader‘s disgust and righteous condemnation‖ (12). As the critic points out, the laments of the part in question such as ―What does she care for‖ are direct references to some of the numerous voices mentioned by MacFayden several pages earlier, namely references to ―the popular domestic genres of soap opera and tawdry modern romance adventure‖

(―Mouth Inside‖). The discourse of Naked Lunch immediately corrects the moralizing part above by the following: ―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 . . .‖ (10). To provide one

44 As Harris in the introduction to Junky notes, Nelson Algren‘s The Man with the Golden Arm, with its depiction of the main character, Frankie Machine, a ―low life, poker-dealing junkie,‖ had a large impact on the stereotyped image of the addict, who was due to the novel redefined as a ―hustling street criminal‖ (xx). 80

more example on the discourse‘s self-reflexivity: ―Will Jim go back to crime? Will Brad succumb to the blandishments of an aging vampire, a ravening Maw? . . . Needless to say, the forces of evil are routed, and exit with ominous snarls and mutterings‖ (109). In short, the discourse often uses pulp fiction elements, yet it also questions the perceived notion of many of these elements through either indirect references to pulp esthetics (as in the beginning of the work) or through direct corrections of given pulp fiction parts.45

The discussion of pulp fiction influences leads to another crucial element of the discourse already touched upon in the preceding chapters—that is to the presence of humor in Naked Lunch. Humor is in the work prevalent in such a way that some critics claim it is of utmost importance to the work; as Thomas Parkinson says, ―[people] read

Naked Lunch because it is outrageously funny.‖ George Gessert agrees with Parkinson on the importance of humor, saying that ―[Burroughs] is one of America‘s greatest humorists, comparable to Twain and Vonnegut. Naked Lunch may be one of the most horrifying novels ever written, but it is also one of the funniest, and anyone who can read it without laughing again and again has missed the point‖ (239). The discourse is filled with humorous phrases, sentences, and whole sections that make fun of anything at hand:

―Did any of you ever see Doctor Tetrazzini perform? I say perform advisedly because his operations were performances. He would start by throwing a scalpel across the room into the patient and then make his entrance like a ballet dancer. His speed was incredible: ‗I don‘t give them time to die,‘ he would say. Tumors put him in a frenzy of rage. ‗Fucking undisciplined cells!‘ he would snarl, advancing on the tumor like a knife- fighter.‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 52)

The humor in Naked Lunch is not restricted to scenes related to everyday life such as the operation scene above; on the contrary, there are many parts in the discourse that are visible social or political commentaries:

45 See Timothy Murphy‘s ―Random Insect Doom: The Pulp Science Fiction of Naked Lunch‖ for more information on pulp influences in Naked Lunch. 81

―Well,‖ [the Resident Governor] says with a tight smile, ―so you‘ve decided to let us stay another year have you? Very good of you. And everyone is happy about it? . . . Is there anyone who isn‘t happy about it?‖ Soldiers in jeeps sweep mounted machine guns back and forth across the crowd with a slow, searching movement. ―Everybody happy. Well that‘s fine.‖ He turns jovially to the prostrate President. ―I‘ll keep your papers in case I get caught short. Haw haw haw.‖ His loud, metallic laugh rings out across the dump, and the crowd laughs with him under the searching guns. (153)

The work‘s sense of humor often has, as visible from the scene above, satirical overtones. After all, the section ―Ordinary Men and Women‖ is for the most part an exhibition of a vast array of molds—ordinary and familiar characters presented in a non-familiar setting to further ridicule their personalities. In addition, numerous other sections of the text such as the whole ―Islam Incorporated and the Parties of Interzone‖ section or the ―talking asshole‖ and ―Meeting of International Conference of

Technological Psychiatry‖ parts only invite satirical readings and readers might be tempted to read Naked Lunch as a satirical work. As McConnell comments on the

―Deposition‖ section requested by the editors of the Grove edition, it ―gives the book its peculiar and brilliant satiric form.‖ However, many parts of the work refuse to be classified as such, which will become clear from Northrop Frye‘s explanation of satire and its use:

Two things [. . .] are essential to satire; one is wit or humour founded on fantasy or a sense of the grotesque or absurd, the other is an object of attack. Attack without humour, or pure denunciation, forms one of the boundaries of satire. It is a very hazy boundary, because invective is one of the most readable forms of literary art, just as panegyric is one of the dullest. [. . .] To attack anything, writer and audience must agree on its undesirability [. . .]. Humour, like attack, is founded on convention. [. . .] All humour demands agreement that certain things, such as a picture of a wife beating her husband in a comic strip, are conventionally funny. To introduce a comic strip in which a husband beats his wife would distress the reader, because it would mean learning a new convention. (Frye 209-10)

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Put differently, satire not only requires an object to attack but also a humor based on convention, and it is the latter that complicates the understanding of Naked Lunch as a satirical work. As the following excerpt told by the County Clerk shows, the humor of

Naked Lunch often goes against the grain of conventional humor and without any hint of restraint:

―So they burned the nigger and that ol‘ boy took his wife and went back up to Texarkana without paying for the gasoline and old Whispering Lou runs the service station couldn‘t talk about nothing else all Fall: ‗These city fellers come down here and burn a nigger and don‘t even settle up for the gasoline.‘‖46 (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 147)

In other words, the joke here—complaining that a couple who burned an African-

American to death did not pay for the gasoline used for the burning—is hardly an example of conventional humor. Furthermore, the discourse does not provide any feedback to the reader, no moral reevaluation or condemnation of what the reader has just read. To provide one more example, the following conversation takes place between Clem and Jody: ―‗So I shoot that old nigger and he flop on his side one leg up in the air just a-kicking.‘ ‗Yeah, but you ever burn a nigger?‘‖ (133). Rob Johnson notes that these and similar passages caused much of the controversy surrounding the book:

―Like the judge in the Naked Lunch trial [. . .] early critics couldn‘t see how a man could create characters like the county clerk and not be that kind of a person‖ (Johnson,

―Good Ol‘ Boy‖ 50).47 To sum up, the humor is often based on accentuating the horrifying or immoral to the point of absurdness. Naturally, the often extreme nature of

46 Lynching—whether burning or hanging—is a recurring image in the work; as Miles explains, hanging was the method of capital punishment in Missouri at that time and the media was filled with detailed descriptions of lynching (El Hombre Invisible 27). 47 The history of lynching is still clearly seen in the South; as Rob Johnson notes in an insightful essay that traces the influences of Burroughs‘ life and upbringing in the South on Naked Lunch— ―William S. Burroughs as ‗Good Ol‘ Boy‘‖—there is an advertisement for the ―Ol‘ Sparky‖ museum (―Ol‘ Sparky‖ being Texas‘ original electric chair) on the outskirts of Houston (46). The billboard is sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce from Huntsville, Texas. 83

the humor can be viewed by some as a criticism of the displayed event; however, many can be repulsed by the often grotesque and violent nature of the humor.

To sum up so far, while there are numerous rather satirical parts in the text, at least the same number of parts can be by some readers viewed as only disgusting and shocking passages without any intended critique. Of course, the preceding excerpts may be still considered satirical on the grounds that they are uttered by the molds that are parodies by definition. However, there are numerous non-narrated parts (that is parts of the work not narrated by any of the discourse‘s characters) that further sidestep Frye‘s categorization of satire, and there is no better example of such part than the ―Hassan‘s

Rumpus Room‖ section.48 In the section, an eager audience watches a boy being raped and simultaneously hanged by a Mugwump:

The boy crumpled to his knees with a long ―OOOOOOOOH,‖ shitting and pissing in terror. [. . .] The Mugwump slips the noose over the boy‘s head and tightens the knot caressingly behind the left ear. [. . .] 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. [. . .] 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 his 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. (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 63-64)

Not only the Mugwump then proceeds to further copulate with the corpse; the reader is reminded of the presence of an audience during this act—and therefore of the audience‘s approval—in the ―A.J.‘s Annual Party‖ section by the local sheriff: ―Step right up. [. . .] When his neck snaps sharp, this character will shit-sure come to rhythmic

48 ―Hassan‘s Rumpus Room‖ is one of the infamous sections that lead to the Naked Lunch trial, which concluded the work has ―redeeming social value‖ and therefore is not obscene, therefore marking the end of ―overt literary censorship in the United States‖ (Miles and Grauerholz 243). For an interesting analysis of the trial and its subsequent impact on censorship in the United States, see ―Still Dirty after All These Years‖ by Loren Glass in Naked Lunch@50. 84

attention and spurt it out all over you‖ (86). Both scenes of the ritualized hanging contain some humorous parts; for example, the sheriff describes the soon-to-be-hanged boy‘s penis by saying ―[t]his character has nine inches, ladies and gentlemen, measure them yourself inside.‖ However, the scene is rather distressing and some readers might be put off by the way the scene is handled. Frye explains, ―genius seems to have led practically every great satirist to become what the world calls obscene‖ (219). However, the critic also explains that satire needs apart from the grotesque also ―at least an implicit moral standard‖ (209) and it is precisely this ―implicit moral standard‖ Frye mentions that many of the violent and grotesque scenes of Naked Lunch lack: instead of condemning the scene through a reflector or narrator, the reader is only provided with a flat description of the scene; instead of commenting on the scene in a later chapter, the sheriff invites more people to form the audience of the act. As it was stated above, some might consider these passages satirical on the grounds that they are absurd and unrealistic; on the contrary, as it will be discussed later, there are several passages in the text that seem to be creation of pure fantasy without any other purpose that to make the reader laugh. Furthermore, the absence of any moral condemnation may be truly troubling for some readers. For example, David Lodge states that Naked Lunch fails as a satire; in his own words, the work ―suspends rather than activates the reader‘s moral sense‖ (qtd. in Lydenberg 8). In addition, even though Burroughs provides a reading of this part in the ―Deposition‖ section as an indictment of ―capital punishment as the obscene, barbaric and disgusting anachronism that it is‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 205), such statement is not enough for some critics: it is ―hogwash,‖ to quote Parkinson. The critic continues:

It boggles my mind to imagine any reader of the text, without Burroughs‘s intervention, stumbling unaided on the notion that those obscene, barbaric and disgusting passages are anything more than an exhibit of the kind of depravity that the human mind can sink to, and of

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which to the guilt and sorrow of humanity, we are all capable. But the text itself gives no clue to Burroughs’s intended effect. (emphasis added)

In other words, while the text contains satirical passages, there are also passages that do not possess such characteristics. Whether these parts are thickly-veiled satires or not satirical at all is difficult to determine, since there are very few elements of the text that might help the reader to decide for the former or the latter.

As I have noted several pages earlier, Frye claims that pure denunciation forms one of the boundaries of satire; the pure fantasy forms the other. The critic further explains:

The humour of pure fantasy, the other boundary of satire, belongs to romance, though it is uneasy there, as humour perceives the incongruous, and the conventions of romance are idealized. Most fantasy is pulled back into satire by a powerful undertow often called allegory, which may be described as the implicit reference in experience in the perception of the incongruous. (220)

Simply put, rich imagination coupled with allegory form the other boundary of satire and there are numerous parts in Naked Lunch that employ such rich imagination, often exaggerating a situation to a point it becomes almost unbelievable. That is the case in the passage describing the escape of INDs (Irreversible Neural Damage patients) from a

Reconditioning Center that covers more than six pages of the ―Benway‖ section. The part is an unrestrained, lurid—and hilarious—account of the patients harassing, molesting, and in general wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting public:

A contingent of howling simopaths swing from chandeliers, balconies and trees, shitting and pissing on passers-by. (A simopath—the technical name for this disorder escapes me—is a citizen convinced he is an ape or other simian. It is a disorder peculiar to the army, and discharge cures it.) Amoks trot along cutting off heads, faces sweet and remote with a dreamy half smile [. . .]. Arab rioters yip and howl, castrating, disemboweling, throw burning gasoline . . . Dancing boys striptease with intestines, women stick severed genitals in their cunts, grind, bump and flick it at the man of their choice . . . Religious fanatics harangue the

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crowd from helicopters and rain stone tablets on their heads, inscribed with meaningless messages [. . .]. A coprophage calls for a plate, shits on it and eats the shit, exclaiming, ―Mmmm, that‘s my rich substance.‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 32-33)

The passage ends by a message begging the victimized population to remain in the state, claiming that ―[i]t is only a few crazies who have from the crazy place outbroken‖ (38).

While it might be claimed the passage is aimed as a satire on doctors and their treatment of patients and/or general public, the allegory Frye requires for such a fantastical passage to function as a satire is difficult to trace. ―Burroughs‘ method, surrealistic exaggeration, forms part of the traditional repertoire of the political satirist,‖ writes

Murphy, ―but his goal of ‗nakedness of seeing‘ emphasizes the disturbing revelation of obscured truth (though that truth may turn out to be paradoxical or ambiguous)‖

(―Intersection‖) (emphasis added). Murphy touches, although probably unwillingly, on the use of satire—and humor in general—in Naked Lunch. The way humor is employed in the work reflects the discourse‘s tendency towards indeterminacy and unreliability— through the presence of often contrasting as well as complementing parts, the discourse often seemingly moves in one direction only to subsequently move in another.

Furthermore, the text does not provide many clues that might help in interpreting a given part, and when it does, they are more often than not contrasted later in the work by passages suggesting the exact opposite.

The constant indeterminacy and undermining of one discourse element by another is also the reason some critics consider Naked Lunch a satire while others do not see it as a satire at all, claiming that ―Burroughs and his readers are just having a good time‖ (Parkinson). The indeterminate nature of the Burroughs‘ style, and of humor in particular, is reflected in a 1955 letter to from the writer to Allen Ginsberg. In the letter,

Burroughs complains of the following: ―Why do I always parody? Neither in life nor in

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writing can I achieve complete sincerity [. . .] except in parody and moments of profound discouragement‖ (Burroughs, Letters 272). Now I must return to a passage discussed earlier in a different context.49 The following passage is inserted in the middle of the above-mentioned Reconditioning Center passage after the patients escape and proceed to terrorize the city:

Gentle reader, the ugliness of that spectacle buggers description. Who can be a cringing pissing coward, yet vicious as a purple-assed mandrill, alternating these deplorable conditions like vaudeville skits? Who can shit on a fallen adversary who, dying, eats the shit and screams with joy? Who can hang a weak passive and catch his sperm in mouth like a vicious dog? Gentle reader, I fain would spare this, but my pen hath its will like the Ancient Mariner. (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 34)

The reader, faced with the passage above, has numerous ways of interpreting it—as a sincere and direct address towards the reader, an emphasis on a hidden satirical message, or ―just‖ as a hilarious account making fun of anything at hand (possibly of the author himself).50 However, no matter which interpretation the reader chooses, it is only the reader‘s own interpretation. The text only rarely leans towards one or the other without actually restating its position later. In other words, the use of humor reflects the overall discourse‘s strategy of incompleteness, indeterminacy and contradiction, making a precise conclusion on the nature of a given part impossible.

Importantly, while discussing the humor of Naked Lunch one must not forget to take into account the large number of non-humorous parts of the work. As it was already said, there are many parts of the discourse that do not appear to be humorous at all; on the contrary, they seem to insist on being taken seriously. I have already mentioned several of these passages during the discussion of the discourse‘s keys. To provide one additional example, the part on bureaucracies and cooperatives found in

49 For the original context, see p. 59. 50 Naturally, one might claim the passage embraces all three interpretations. This issue will be dealt in a thorough manner in the next chapter of the thesis. 88

Benway‘s ―talking asshole‖ monologue is another instance of the discourse‘s more serious tone, often interpreted as an explanation of the whole ―talking asshole‖ part:

Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotics Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand can live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principle of inventing needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus. (112)

As Lydenberg explains, Burroughs‘ ―scientific or technical voice often intrudes abruptly in Naked Lunch, breaking in on the tone of a passage or the development of some farcical and fantastic situation‖ (13). The latter part of the critic‘s argument is of significance: the above-quoted part is inserted into Benway‘s monologue which describes a man and his talking behind. In other words, the text‘s ―scientific‖ or serious- toned parts are often more or less explicitly contrasted with other, humorous passages, and the reader is faced with the difficulty of interpreting these passages. Naturally, one might use the above-quoted part as an explanation of the main ―talking asshole‖ part, thus interpreting the story of the man and his talking anus as an allegory on bureaucracy. However, as it was already pointed out, the narrative voices and the discourse‘s characters are rather unreliable and entrusting them with an explanation of the discourse is only another case of misunderstanding the textual strategies of the text.

Oliver Harris provides a further insight on the issue of the work‘s voices by explaining that Benway, ―a manipulator and coordinator of control systems‖ (Burroughs, Naked

Lunch 19), is forced by the discourse to ―speak against his own position‖ (Secret 221); at the same time, Burroughs forces his own position, that is his opinion on democracy

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and cooperatives, ―into a mouth that must render it suspect,‖ in effect employing ―a strategic art of self-subversion in which authority is not challenged directly but turned against itself.‖ The tendency of the discourse to question its key parts is repeated throughout the book. To provide one more example, the oft quoted passage from the

―Atrophied Preface‖ section—―You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point .

. . I have written many prefaces‖ (187)—is actually only the beginning of a whole paragraph; however, the tone of the passage changes dramatically: ―They atrophy and amputate spontaneous like the little toe amputates in a West African disease confined to the Negro race and the passing blonde shows her brass ankle as a manicured toe bounces across the club terrace, retrieved and laid at her feet by her Afghan hound . . .‖

Frye explains that irony is a sophisticated mode and the important difference ―between sophisticated and naïve irony is that the naïve ironist calls attention to the fact that he is being ironic, whereas sophisticated irony merely states, and lets the reader add the ironic tone himself‖ (38). Put differently, not only are the more serious-toned parts contrasted with the more humorous, but the importance of the former is often questioned through various means, whether by the tone or the narrative voice of a given passage. In addition, it is only up to the reader to decide whether these passages should be taken seriously or not, as the discourse does not provide any help in distinguishing the tone of the passages and their overall importance for the discourse as a whole.

To conclude, the language of Naked Lunch is highly diverse: the discourse offers humorous passages, parts that at the first sight contain the meaning of the text as well as parts that seemingly have no significance for the discourse. Furthermore, these different

―languages‖ often contrast with one another, in effect constantly changing the flow and, for the lack of better words, ―shape‖ of the text. The discourse flows unexpectedly and moves from a humorous part into a rather brutal one, from a seemingly scathing satire

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to an apparently meaningless and rather poetic passage only to substitute it with a dry, scientific-sounding statement. Through the contrast of the varying parts, the ever- changing ―shape‖ of the text emphasizes its different aspects, yet it never settles on one of the aspects as the central piece of the work. As the text never leans in favor of one or the other, readers have to balance on the razor edge of possible interpretations, and possibly move towards one or the other interpretation, on their own.

III.G Conclusion

As it is already clear, Naked Lunch is a text that strives—and I might add successfully—for indeterminacy and uncertainty. The work ignores traditional notions of organization, plot, continuity, and chronology in favor of indeterminacy and multiplicity of interpretations. Such textual strategy, however, should not be viewed as a negative aspect diminishing the power of the discourse. On the contrary, it should be seen as a liberating effort to free the reader from the constraints of conventional reading—and, in effect, thinking. Such conventions, as Burroughs shows, are not necessary: Oliver Harris notes that at almost exactly the same time as Burroughs was writing the manuscript of Naked Lunch, John Cage stated in his lecture ―Experimental

Music‖ that ―nothing was lost when everything was given away‖ because the creative control that seemed to be lost was a mere hindrance (qtd. in Harris, Secret 242).51

Bolton mentions Burroughs‘ ―dismantling of the material contexts of time and geography, both as points of orientation for readers and as a [sic] foundations for ideological interpretations‖ (54), as an example of the writers sidestepping of conventional literary techniques. However, as it is now clear, the literary strategies of

Naked Lunch that help in achieving its indeterminacy are not limited to those pointed

51 Burroughs was well aware of the connection between him and the composer; see The Job 33. 91

out by Bolton. Other strategies the text uses to reach its goal of refusing a final interpretation are: unreliable narrative voices, multiple layers of the discourse (that is, narratives within narratives), or numerous highly contrasting—at times even conflicting—passages.

In other words, the work is truly complex. Throughout the discourse are numerous keys offered to the reader—passages seemingly providing the reader with some stable footing. These keys are not necessarily just the serious-toned or self- explanatory passages present in the work; on the contrary, the discourse‘s apparent insistence on a narrator (―Lee The Agent [. . .] is taking the junk cure‖ [182]) or the insistence on setting might be also considered keys, since they help establish certain facts that the reader perceives as reliable. Importantly, falling for one or the other key presented by the text as ―the‖ explanation is a sign of the reader‘s inability to perceive the text in the terms of Eco‘s critical Model Reader, because the discourse presents to the reader a vast number of possible readings without actually commenting on reliability of these readings. Naturally, many different texts use similar strategy; however, only very few of them use the strategy on so many fronts and in such direct way as Naked Lunch does. Umberto Eco claims that an agreement about a text‘s interpretation can be reached, ―if not about the meanings that a text encourages, at least about those that a text discourages‖ (45). Since more often than not the various interpretations of Naked Lunch are vastly different and even conflicting, Eco‘s assumption on a text‘s interpretation might not be entirely without dents.

Simply put, Naked Lunch is a difficult text to tackle. It is a text that resists interpretation and analysis—which are the reasons it is noteworthy to analyze such text.

As Franz Stanzel noted in 1979, Burroughs—together with authors like John Barth or

Thomas Pynchon—managed to deviate from literary conventions and norms as much as

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possible (17); furthermore, Stanzel notes that some of these authors‘ experiments cannot be definitely interpreted or classified in terms of the critic‘s narrative theory. While he was probably pointing out Burroughs‘ work with the cut-up method, my analysis shows that even Naked Lunch resists interpretation, and not only of its narrative voice. In other words, it is a text that resists and defies literary conventions. Burroughs in a way truly is the Exterminator and through writing Naked Lunch he set forth to exterminate the molds—that is the conventions of writing.

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IV. The Interpretations of Naked Lunch

IV.A Introduction

Because more than 50 years passed since the work has been published, a large number of critical approaches and interpretation exists. However, although drawing a lot of media attention, the Beats were initially marginalized by scholars. Thomas

Parkinson recalls the following event illustrating the initial approach to Burroughs and the Beats in general:

When I was being considered for a promotion my then chairman asked for a description of recent publications and current research, and after I handed him a bibliography, I remarked that I was compiling an anthology on the Beat writers. He replied that it would be wiser not to mention it because there might be somebody on the Budget Committee who lacked a sense of humor. [. . .] That was the first critical approach to the Beat writers—ignore them, don‘t take them seriously, they are a bunch of clowns.

Naturally, the reception of the Beats changed greatly since the moment described above.

However, it was Burroughs that received the greatest amount of backlash from the critics and the society alike. After all, the publication of Naked Lunch in the United

States lead to the famous obscenity trial; 52 it‘s verdict—Naked Lunch is not obscene— marked an end in a period of literary censorship (Glass 178). Furthermore, the initial reaction of the press was not always favorable. While some praised the work,53 others outwardly condemned it, the most famous disapproval coming from John Willet‘s review titled ―Ugh:‖ ―Glug glug. It tastes disgusting‖ (qtd. in Baker 141).54

52 Baker notes that, among other things, ―[t]he prosecutor wanted to know why the book had so many baboons‖ (141). 53 Herbert Gold for the New York Times wrote: ―At its best, this book, which is not a novel but a booty brought back from a nightmare, takes a coldly implacable look at the dark side of our nature‖ (qtd. in Miles 110). Interestingly, the American press was much more favorable to the work than the British counterpart. For a summary of the work‘s reception, see Miles 109-113. 54 The review provoked the longest correspondence in the paper‘s history: after some initial attacks, defenses by Michael Moorcock and Anthony Burgees—as well as Burroughs reaction to the review— were printed as responses to the review (Baker 141). 94

It was probably not until Frank D. McConnell‘s critical essay ―William

Burroughs and the Literature of Addiction‖ published in 1967—eight years after the work‘s publication by the Olympia Press—that a critical and in-depth analysis of Naked

Lunch was attempted. Throughout the years, as Burroughs released more work that further explored the themes present in Naked Lunch and as literary criticism evolved,

Burroughs became more accepted by the academia and a small, but dedicated

Burroughs scholarship emerged. Naturally, the critical perception of the author‘s work—and of Naked Lunch in particular—has been changing constantly. However, since Naked Lunch is a highly indeterminate text, its interpretations vary greatly from one another.

I have separated the critical reception of Naked Lunch into four categories which correspond with the names of the chapters that follow: ―Naked Lunch as a Humorous

Work,‖ ―Naked Lunch as a Moral Metaphor,‖ ―Naked Lunch and Literal Meaning,‖ and

―Naked Lunch as an Indeterminate Work.‖55 It must be noted that while these categories and their ordering roughly correspond to the way Burroughs criticism has evolved over time, the categorization should not be interpreted as chronological. Instead, I have separated the various approaches according to rather different criteria. Eco proposes, as

I have already mentioned several pages earlier, that an agreement on interpretation can be reached: ―I shall claim that a theory of interpretation—even when it assumes that texts are open to multiple readings—must also assume that it is possible to reach an agreement, if not about the meaning that a text encourages, at least about those that a text discourages‖ (45). As it is clear, Naked Lunch is a highly indeterminate text and since the critics discussed use the source text—for the most part—duly and in a

55 Davis Schneiderman also separates Naked Lunch criticism into four categories; however, he chooses rather different categories than I did, basing them on the way they handle the drug element of the work instead on the number of discourse elements a given interpretation takes into account. Therefore, he distinguishes the interpretations into metaphorical, ironical, simple, and mythopoetical categories; see Schneiderman 191-93. 95

comprehensive way, the interpretations I will mention are not necessarily ―wrong‖ or

―bad.‖ In other words, the discourse of Naked Lunch, while perhaps not necessarily dismissing Eco‘s claim as invalid, certainly places the critic‘s argument on a shaky ground. Therefore, I have categorized Naked Lunch criticism in terms of the number of discourse elements—such as narrative voices, treatment of time and place, or the unstable characters—they take into account. I will start with criticism that tends to highlight only a limited number of these elements and finish with critical approaches that discuss the work in the most comprehensive way, i.e. consider the highest number of the discourse elements. Put differently, the more developed a critical interpretation is, the more keys will it discuss.

In other words, I will conduct a quantitative analysis of critical approaches.

However, it should be noted that the interpretations mentioning fewer discourse elements are not necessarily inferior to those with a larger number of these elements.

After all, quantity does not necessarily correlate with quality and a more focused approach can often lead to interesting conclusions: in the case of Naked Lunch, such highlighting can lead to discovering elements of the discourse that would be otherwise lost in a more general discussion. On the other hand, the criticisms discussed below that take into account a higher number of discourse elements show a more fundamental understanding of the work than the interpretations favoring a more focused approach.

Furthermore, a critical Model Reader should be able to understand a given text in the most comprehensive way possible, which again adds more weight to the critical approaches taking into account a larger number of textual elements. As I will argue, the comprehensive approach is especially important when discussing a complicated text such as Naked Lunch. While the previous part of the thesis has shown that there are numerous elements leading to the text‘s high indeterminacy, the following part will

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show that the difference in interpretations of Naked Lunch lies precisely in the number of discourse elements taken into consideration by the various critics: the more elements are discussed, the more indeterminate the work is in the eyes of the specific critic. More importantly, after the overview of Naked Lunch criticism is complete, I will claim that the indeterminacy of Naked Lunch is its greatest achievement. Such indeterminate text, as a handful of critics have concluded, has a great interpretative potential. I will further develop the idea of interpretative potential, showing that the text manages to evade the logic of dualism, the need to choose between one or the other, through insisting on the importance of each element of the discourse. Therefore, Naked Lunch often produces conflicting messages simultaneously, therefore constituting a radical discourse that directly challenges the reader‘s ability to interpret a literary text.

IV.B Naked Lunch as a Humorous Work

The first category is rather small: only a handful of critics mention the humor of

Naked Lunch and even fewer critics consider it actually important. It must be noted that the categorization of humor as the first category does not mean that humor is not vital to the work. On the contrary, I will later claim it is often Burroughs‘ sense of humor that greatly contributes to the work‘s indeterminacy and criticism of the logic of dualism.

However, insistence on humor as the only important thing of the discourse not only leaves many discourse elements unnoticed, but also diminishes Naked Lunch to a

―mere‖ humorous work, no matter how hilarious one might consider it to be. That is perhaps the reason such interpretation is unpopular among critics—it ignores most aspects of the work, thus reducing its potential almost to zero.

The staunchest advocate of interpreting Naked Lunch as a humorous work is definitely Thomas Parkinson. In his essay ―Critical Approaches to William Burroughs,

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or How to Admit an Admiration for a Good Book,‖ written in 1980, he offers a straightforward interpretation of the work: ―[W]e read Naked Lunch because it is outrageously funny.‖ Parkinson makes his point clear on only two excerpts from the work, the ―Deposition‖ introductory section and the Benway part of the ―Hospital‖ section. He comments on the latter that it is a humorous representation of real-life situations such as the reader‘s unconscious fear of doctors and the doctor‘s reliance and pride in their skill; however, he insists that the passage is certainly not ―an argument for socialized medicine.‖56 Parkinson further explains his interpretation of the work as a whole:

The appeal of Naked Lunch resides in the fact that it expresses the plight of a decadent capitalist culture in which the audience does not believe. The conventional and civilized values that it flouts are accepted superficially by the audience, and they delight in seeing them reduced to sexual and violent horror. (emphasis added)

Interestingly, although he mentions ―a decadent capitalist culture‖ and ―conventional and civilized values,‖ he insists that the work is not satirical; in his own words,

―Burroughs and his readers are just having a good time.‖ The argument above is closely connected to Parkinson‘s comment on the ―Deposition‖ section, namely on the following part that comments on the graphic imagery of ―Hassan‘s Rumpus Room‖ and

―A.J.‘s Annual Party:‖

Certain passages in the book that have been called pornographic were written as a tract against Capital Punishment in the manner of Jonathan Swift‘s Modest Proposal. These sections are intended to reveal capital punishment as the obscene, barbaric and disgusting anachronism that it is. As always the lunch is naked. (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 205)

As I have already mentioned earlier, Parkinson calls Burroughs claim ―hogwash,‖ saying that the graphic imagery in the two sections is a fundamental indictment of

56 I have already mentioned the discussed part in the thesis. For the sake of brevity, I will not quote the passage again; see page 81 for a short excerpt. 98

humanity rather than an attack on capital punishment.57 The critic closes the discussion of the two sections by stating that Burroughs is not a satirist but ―a nihilist intent on wiping out all conventional and civilized human values.‖

After a closer look, it should be apparent that Parkinson‘s argument is flawed.

First of all, although he claims that Burroughs‘ prose is targeting ―all conventional and civilized human values,‖ he still insists that the highest achievement of Naked Lunch is its humor. More importantly, such interpretation ignores numerous discourse elements and even whole sections. For example, ―The Examination‖ section does not contain anything that might be regarded as humorous or funny and the same goes for the

―Hauser and O‘Brien‖ section. Furthermore, Parkinson‘s approach seems rather superficial, because it ignores the way the discourse achieves its indeterminacy.

Unreliable narrative voices, the atemporal nature of the text, the way the work is structured—all is meaningless to the critic. In effect, Parkinson is similar to the ―real asshole‖ from the first section of the work in his shallow approach to reading: while the

―real asshole‖ reads The News just for Little Abner comic strips, the critic reads Naked

Lunch only for the laughs.

However, one should give credit where it is due and Parkinson makes a couple of interesting points. First of all, he points out that the humor of William Burroughs is a special one, therefore unknowingly hinting at the way how Burroughs‘ humor and its understanding can lead to different interpretations. Furthermore, he explains that a serious Burroughs criticism is needed, among it, interestingly, a ―good Marxist critique.‖ Most importantly, his conviction that Naked Lunch should be appreciated mostly for its humor is based on the fact other critics often tend to interpret the work as a moral allegory to the detriment of the humor present in the text. As Parkinson

57 See page 85 of the thesis for longer Parkinson‘s commentary on the section in question. 99

explains, since the appreciation of the humor ―means that we share low motives and are capable of being moved by gleefully unrestricted obscenity, we try to convince ourselves that we are reading a noble tract against Capital Punishment or the AMA or the judicial system.‖ In other words, while Parkinson ignores the more serious passages, other critics often leave out the humorous parts in their interpretations. Therefore, both approaches show an incomplete grasp of the text, resulting only in partial interpretations that further highlight the indecisive nature of Naked Lunch.

It must be noted that Parkinson has a point when saying that readers and critics should not be wary of appreciating Naked Lunch for laughs; however, as it is clear, appreciating it only for the laughs diminishes the potential power of the discourse. Only a handful of other critics beside Parkinson have commented on the role of humor in the discourse and none of them have done so in such a detailed manner as Parksinson did.

For example, Frank McConnell notes that the sections ―Hassan‘s Rumpus Room‖ and

―A.J.‘s Annual Party‖ are both ―brilliantly managed and uproariously funny subversions of two of our most cherished myths of escape, ‗party time‘ and promiscuity.‖ George

Gessert in Burroughs‘ obituary also mentions the importance of humor, stating that

―Naked Lunch may be one of the most horrifying novels ever written, but is also one of the funniest, and anyone who can read it without laughing again and again has missed the point‖ (239). Later in the obituary, Gessert touches on the specific nature of

Burroughs‘ humor by stating the following: ―Self-ridicule [. . .] is precarious: it leaves ample room for irony and extreme violence, but no room at all for self pity or other false notes‖ (emphasis added). Gessert‘s comment is a valuable one, since it highlights the unreliable—and almost dangerous—nature of Burroughs‘ humor: it is often difficult to decide when the author is joking and when not. More often than not, Burroughs‘ critics forget to mention the humor present in Naked Lunch and when they do, they

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usually do not realize that it is often precisely the humor and its style that often support two different—and sometimes even conflicting—interpretations at the same time.

To sum up, humor is certainly one of the central features of Naked Lunch. As I will explain later in my thesis, it is Burroughs‘ ―precarious‖ sense of humor that often achieves sending entirely conflicting messages to the reader. However, basing one‘s interpretation of the work solely on its humor is not a viable solution, since such reading ignores numerous discourse elements. On the other hand, most of the critical receptions of Naked Lunch often ignore the importance of humor, in effect showing that both approaches tend to leave out some aspects of the work.

IV.C Naked Lunch as a Moral Metaphor

While the critical approaches stressing the role of humor in Naked Lunch are scarce, the opposite is true for criticism aiming towards metaphorical, allegorical or satirical interpretations. Ron Loewinsohn, William L. Stull, Edward J. Ahearn, Timothy

S. Murphy, Frank McConnell (the classification of the last two into this group is not without problems), and many others understand the work in moral and metaphorical terms. Their interpretations vary greatly: for example, while Ahearn considers

Burroughs a visionary writer, Stull is looking for cosmology and myth in Burroughs‘ work. Nevertheless, all the critics have something in common: they think of the various discourse elements in terms of metaphors and symbols, and they all share an unshakable belief in the sincerity and importance of the ―Deposition‖ and ―Atrophied Preface‖ sections for the understanding of the work.

Edward J. Ahearn places Naked Lunch within the tradition of apocalyptic writing that includes many visionary (Blake, Coleridge) as well as surrealist writers. He achieves such classification by stressing the three following discourse elements of

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―fundamental import:‖ graphic language, exalted experience, and the frequent reference to drugs. Ahearn connects Burroughs‘ use of language with a tradition of ―sordid‖ writing rooted in the work of Baudelaire, Nerval, or Zola; the ―sordid‖ writing ―puts the reader in uncomfortable contact with all that is squalid in life: people, the body, the world around us, language.‖ The category of exalted experience—which can include any account of hallucination, dream, or prophetic inspiration—is represented by Blake or Breton. However, these exalted experiences are changed through the use of drugs, therefore connecting Burroughs also with Coleridge, De Quincy or Huxley. As Ahearn notes, ―there is a tradition of drug experimentation, ‗direct‘ accounts of visions, and explanatory, even scientific and moralizing, analysis,‖ and Burroughs is another segment of the tradition.

The critic supports his argument by saying that several other kinds of writing surrounding the main body of the text—in this case ―Deposition,‖ ―Atrophied Preface‖ or ―Master Addict‖ section—is perfectly in the vein of visionary writing. In addition, he mentions that the central part of Naked Lunch often refers to the appendix, thus further highlighting the importance of the ―other kinds of writing.‖ As it is already apparent,

Ahearn greatly relies on the ―Deposition‖ or ―Atrophied Preface‖ sections to provide explanations of the indeterminate discourse. For example, he quotes the following passage from the latter section: ―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‘‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 184).

Ahearn explains the passage by saying it is a well-known claim in which ―Burroughs generalizes from drugs to all sensuous experience.‖ Naturally, reliance on the above- mentioned part greatly changes the work‘s interpretation. For instance, the ―Hospital‖ section with its inserted parts (such as ―disintoxication notes‖ or ―habit notes‖)

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―corresponds most directly to the convention of direct note-taking.‖ In other words, he interprets these notes as coming directly from Burroughs and not from a character present in the discourse.58 Naturally, such approach may be faced with problems when dealing with the multiple narrative voices. However, the critic manages to sidestep any potential difficulties by fusing Lee, Carl, and the narrative voice ―I‖ into one persona, using ―Atrophied Preface‖ as an argument supporting his conclusion: ―Lee the Agent [. .

.] is taking the junk cure . . . space-time trip portentously familiar as junk meet corners to the addict . . . cures past and future shuttle pictures through his spectral substance vibrating in silent winds of accelerated Time‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 182). He explains the part above as a warning about ―dissolutions of body and person,‖ therefore not only reinforcing his argument that Burroughs is present in all the major characters and/or narrative voices, but also further stressing his reading of Naked Lunch as a visionary work. To make his point even clearer, he describes the introductory

―Deposition‖ as ―severe in its moral condemnation of drug use.‖

Ahearn‘s insistence on a rather metaphorical reading is also visible in the critic‘s comment on the following line from ―Deposition:‖ ―The junk virus is public health problem number one of the world today‖ (205). Although the critic says that it is

Burroughs‘ most compelling claim, he insists on a reading that fits the discourse elements he chose for his interpretation: ―Combining several metaphors, [Burroughs] calls [junk] not only a virus, but a pyramid, a monopoly, an industry‖ (emphasis added).

As the critics belonging to the next category claim, these and other descriptions connected to drugs are definitely not metaphors; on the contrary, they are meant literally

(Lydenberg 11). Ahearn‘s reliance on his visionary interpretation as well as his inability

58 As it was already said, Burroughs‘ first-hand experiences often inform his work (Bolton 70). The ―Hospital‖ section is no exception, being based on a cure Burroughs undergone in a Tangier hospital in the fall of 1955. However, there is no direct statement in the discourse itself that would clearly state the notes are truly Burroughs‘. For Burroughs‘ account of the treatment, see Letters 282-99. 103

to deal with any discourse elements that refuse the explanation he has chosen can be seen later in his essay. He mentions that there are ―myriad features‖ of Naked Lunch that cannot be rationalized; however, he promptly ascribes these features as belonging to the tradition of visionary writers. In other words, Ahearn, faced with an immensely varied discourse, chose elements that help support his argument and quickly dismisses the rest.

William L. Stull uses a similar approach as Ahearn, but he instead interprets the discourse in terms of mythology and its creation. The critic considers the discourse to be linear and focused on Lee, thus promoting him to the main hero of the work, a hero on a quest in the medieval romance tradition. He sees the following parts from the

―Deposition‖ section as the central pieces of the discourse:

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. [. . .] I have almost completed a sequel to Naked Lunch. A mathematical extension of the Algebra of Need beyond the junk virus. Because there are many forms of addiction I think that they all obey basic laws. In the words of Heisenberg: ―This may not be the best of all possible universes but it may well prove to be one of the simplest.‖ If man can see. (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 201, 205)

Stull explains the above-mentioned excerpt is the ―great vision‖ of the hero that happens simultaneously with ―the ultimate boon‖ that can revive the waste land, i.e. Burroughs‘ landscape of Naked Lunch (228). As the critic elaborates, the quest in mythology follows a tight pattern constituted by several parts, the most important being ―The Call to Adventure,‖ ―The Road of Trials,‖ ―The Ultimate Boon,‖ and ―The Return,‖ the ultimate boon being symbolized by the Holy Grail in medieval romance (226-27). In other words, Stull interprets the work as a quest towards individualism and freedom to

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live and at the same time employs drug addiction as a metaphor of restriction and control.

Naturally, a mythical quest needs a common enemy and a way of defeating it.

The enemy, in Stull‘s reading, is provided by metaphorical reading of junk—as there are ―many forms of addiction,‖ they are represented by heroin itself, control, sex, bureaucracy, technology, and even time (228). As the critic strives for a linear reading of Naked Lunch, the way of freeing from the constraints is described throughout the discourse. In other words, the plot of the work starts in the section ―And Start West,‖ in which Lee runs away from the narcotics agent in pursuit. Stull explains that the running away element further complements Lee‘s striving for the Holy Grail—for the cure from the Algebra of Need: ―Any quest for something is also a flight—with varying degrees of urgency—from something. Since Burroughs early grasped ‗the junk equation,‘ a strong element of persecution and pursuit suffuses his work‖ (232). To show at least some examples of how Stull views the text: After successfully evading the ―fuzz,‖ Lee flees to Mexico and subsequently encounters Benway. Although he is ―a manipulator and coordinator of symbol systems‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 19), he nevertheless offers insight into the junk equation: ―The naked need of the control addicts must be decently covered by an arbitrary and intricate bureaucracy so that the subject cannot contact his enemy direct.‖ The critic summarizes the second half of the discourse as follows:

Lee again proves himself by supporting the Factualists in opposition to the Liquifactionists [sic], Divisionists, and Senders, who threaten man‘s individuality. If by the time he reaches the end of the ―long hall‖ the hero is still not fully aware of what his quest for freedom finally involves, he is at least able to take decisive action and break the stasis that held him prisoner in [Burrough‘s] earlier works. Isolation of "the human virus" promises that treatment through direct attack can begin, and it is significant that from this point on Lee is in the full sense of the word an ―agent‖ rather than a victim. In ―The County Clerk‖ he outwits the bureaucrats hampering his mission. His increased strength contrasts with Carl Peterson‘s weakness in the face of Benway‘s psychological warfare,

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the conventional hero being no match for the evil powers in Burroughs‘ junk universe. (236-37)

The discourse ends, in Stull‘s interpretation, by Lee finally reaching the end of his quest and at least tentatively cracking the junk equation (241): ―The Heat was off me from here on out . . . relegated with Hauser and O‘Brien to a landlocked junk past [. . .] Far side of the world‘s mirror‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 181).

A comparison of Stull‘s and Ahearn‘s reading is quite interesting. While both rely on almost the same elements—the ―additional‖ sections surrounding the main part of the discourse, and the drug element—they come to very different conclusions.

Ahearn interprets Naked Lunch as a visionary work, in which the main characters merge with the author, therefore making Burroughs himself the central character of the work.

He thus explains all the ―unfitting‖ parts as hallucinations—visions—of the author, images that are able to see into the future. On the other hand, Stull sees the drug element in a more metaphorical way. He thinks of the discourse in mythological terms—in terms of a quest for ―Holy Grail‖—a reading which enables him to impose linear plot and a main character into the fragmentary discourse. Naturally, such reading ignores numerous elements of the discourse, a fact that Stull indirectly acknowledges: ―[A] cluster of images associated with the quest and the waste land give Naked Lunch a unity beneath its fragmented panorama of the gone world‖ (234-35). While some elements of the discourse, such as the frequent shifts in setting or the ―meaningless‖ parts, can be included in Stull‘s explanation above, several others—such as the work‘s atemporal nature—are simply unaccounted for in the critic‘s interpretation.

It must be noted that Stull‘s search for mythology is not entirely invalid. Not only do several other critics such as Gregory Stephenson or Jennie Skerl explain

Burroughs‘ works as mythological, but also Burroughs himself mentioned that his work

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is the mythology for the Space Age (Baker 140).59,60 However, it is the cut-up trilogy written after Naked Lunch that actually devises Burroughs‘ mythology and not the work in question. In other words, one can trace the elements of the mythology in Naked

Lunch but certainly cannot claim that the work is purely mythological, both in its scope and aim. Such interpretation is merely a backtracking of ideas, not serious interpretation of a given work. To further comment on Stull‘s interpretation, it is true that Burroughs employs the junk formula of addiction on a number of controlling agents, including language; however, the discourse of NL is definitely more intricate than the straightforward reading Stull offers. Furthermore, as I will later argue, it is mainly through the way the discourse is shaped that Burroughs fights the ―Algebra of Need‖— the atemporal nature of the text, obscuring causality, often unidentifiable narrative voices are Burroughs‘ literary (and literal) weapons against the ―Control Machine‖ of conventional thinking and interpretation. Therefore, reducing the text to a straightforward and linear narrative diminishes its potential effect as well as completely obliterates the fact it is the very nature of the discourse that is of vital importance.

To provide one more example of a metaphorical or allegorical reading: Ron

Loewinsohn claims that although Naked Lunch contains a ―postmodern babel of voices, formats, and overlapping structures,‖ it in fact follows the path of classic didactic literate or ―how-to books of moral instruction that teach, by example more than by precept, about the world‘s double-dealing, how the world presents a deceptive

59 See ―A Mythology for the Space Age‖ by Skerl and ―The Gnostic Vision of William S. Burroughs‖ by Stephenson for more information on the mythology present in Burroughs‘ works. 60 Burroughs used such description on many occasions, for example during the International Literary Conference at the Edinburgh Festival in 1962. Burroughs had stolen the conference and taken it ―into orbit‖ (Baker 140-41). As Burroughs himself said during the conference: ―In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, [. . .] as a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed [. . .]. If writers are to travel in space time and explore areas opened by the space age, I think they must develop techniques quite as new and definite as the techniques of physical space travel‖ (Burroughs, Word Virus 272). For the complete speech given by Burroughs, see Word Virus 272-73. 107

appearance, behind which lurks or indwells a very different reality‖ (563).61 The critic bases his reading on the following oft-quoted part from ―Atrophied Preface:‖ ―Naked

Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To Book [. . .]. 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 . . .‖

(187). By relying on the above-mentioned key, Loewinsohn explain the discourse by the following:

In order to accomplish his educational mission of wising up the mark,62 Burroughs has to take the mark along with him on his horrific journey through the inferno of addiction and withdrawal, since the true ―wising up‖ consists mostly of demonstrating to the mark that this bizarre, inconceivably remote, unearthly world to which he has been shanghaied is in fact his own familiar world, the reality behind its appearances revealed only now in the carnival mirrors of allegory. (563-64)

To summarize the critic‘s reading, Burroughs, who ―experienced addiction as a descent into hell where he was menaced by everything, including his own body‖ (563), is exactly like the Ancient Mariner forced to tell his story to the reader, a story of a cure that can ―wise up the marks‖ (577, 567).63 Loewinsohn uses a large number of biographical data—Burroughs‘ letters, interviews, etc.—to support his argument of

Naked Lunch as a book allegorically symbolizing the ―menacing hell‖ of addiction and, in effect, of the world itself. Interestingly, he touches upon the indeterminacy of the text and its vast interpretation possibilities at least twice in his criticism, yet he fails to draw any conclusions from such parts. For example, when he discusses on the imagery

61 The works Loewinsohn claims Naked Lunch follows are Dante‘s Inferno, John Bunyan‘s Pilgrim’s Progress, and Jonathan Swift‘s Gulliver’s Travel (Loewinsohn 563). 62 The word ―mark‖ is explained in the Glossary section of Junky as ―[s]omeone easy to rob, like a drunk with a roll of money‖ (131). 63 As I have already mentioned elsewhere (see p. 70-71), there are several mentions of the Ancient Mariner in the text: ―Gentle reader, I fain would spare you this, but my pen hath its will like the Ancient Mariner‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 34). 108

Burroughs uses to describe the parties of Interzone, he explains them through the writer‘s biography instead actually inspecting the use behind such images:

Although [the] sci-fi comic book imagery may tend to trivialize the Senders, Burroughs—a gay man, an intellectual, an artist, and a drug addict in the paranoid, cold war world of the conformist 1950s—was painfully aware of the seriousness of the threat to individuality [. . .] that Sending obviously represents. (575)

A more evident example of Loewinsohn‘s misunderstanding of the discourse is seen when the critic discusses the ―talking asshole‖ part, namely its discussion of co- operatives and centralized control included in one of the anecdotes constituting the routine. As he puts it, ―[w]hat isn‘t clear is Burroughs‘s position on these questions. [. .

.] From [the] second anecdote one could just as easily derive a defense of colonialism as a plea for anarchy and cooperatives‖ (582). Simply put, the critic—as did his colleagues mentioned above—settled on some of the discourse‘s keys and elements as bearing the meaning of Naked Lunch; however, such approach not only reduces the highly variable text to a ―mere‖ allegory, but furthermore Loewinsohn‘s reading cannot account for numerous parts of the work which his chosen interpretation is not able to handle.

To provide some support for the critic, Burroughs often talks about his effort to instill change into the readers of his works. For example, the phrase ―wise up the marks‖ comes directly from the author. When asked whether Mary McCarthy‘s description of him as a ―soured utopian‖ is accurate, Burroughs answered: ―I do definitely mean what I say to be taken literally, yes, to make people aware of the true criminality of our times, to wise up the marks‖ (―William Burroughs, An Interview‖

49). It must be noted, however, that at the time of the interview Burroughs has already finished the cut-up trilogy which is certainly more articulate about its message—with its

Nova Mob and Nova Police—than Naked Lunch. More importantly, the interpretation

Loewinsohn offers only diminishes the actual potential of the work.

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It is rather simple to point out the shared characteristics of criticism interpreting

Naked Lunch in terms of metaphor or allegory. All three critics discussed above rely greatly on ―Deposition‖ and ―Atrophied Preface‖ in explaining the work. Furthermore, they often stress certain keys, usually the ones connected to drugs and drug addiction.

Such approach enables these critics to describe the plot as rather linear and focused on

Lee. In addition, stressing the drug element leads to explanation of numerous parts of the work as either hallucinatory or allegorical but always caused by the effect of drugs.

Put simply, such approach explains the complicated and indeterminate work Naked

Lunch certainly is as a rather linear and simple text. Naturally, the approaches chosen by the critics ignore a large number of important discourse elements such as the atemporal nature of the work or its frequent shifts in tone and language. When such elements are mentioned by the critics, either an effort is made to explain them in terms of the chosen interpretation or they are simply stated to be indescribable. However, such statement is, I believe, an indirect way of showing that one‘s interpretation does not interpret the work as a whole but only its certain parts so that they fit into the particular view of the work chosen by the critic.

As I have pointed out earlier, the classification of Murphy and McConnell as

―moral allegorizers‖ is not without difficulties. For example, consider the following

Murphy‘s criticism of moral approach to Burroughs: ―[M]ost criticism of Burroughs to date, from both inside and outside the academy, has been moral criticism directed at his referents in ‗real life,‘ rather than analytical criticism directed at his work as writing‖

(Wising 8). Murphy further claims that Burroughs is an amodernist; as he subsequently explains, amodernism ―shares the modernist and postmodernist suspicion of representational art and politics, but rejects both the constitutive asymmetries of modernist myth-mongering and the postmodern abandonment of the critique in the face

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of the procession of simulacra‖ (29). Put differently, Burroughs uses post-modern techniques in order to act as a social critic in a more modernist fashion (74).64 However, while critical of moral approach to Burroughs‘ work, Murphy still relies on

―Deposition‖ or ―Atrophied Preface‖ sections to provide an explanation: ―The polemical introduction to Naked Lunch, ‗Testimony Concerning a Sickness,‘ proposes the medical metaphor that recurs throughout the book.‖ Furthermore, in ―Intersection

Points: Teaching William Burroughs‘ Naked Lunch‖ Murphy claims that Burroughs in

―Atrophied Preface‖ ―offers a straightforward, practical pedagogy of his writing‖ and that the numerous ―meaningless,‖ imaginative parts ―can best be grasped as a series of drug- and withdrawal-induced hallucinations that pass through Lee‘s mind.‖ Although

Murphy insists on the reliability of the discourse and the keys presented, he closes

―Intersection‖ by the following part that actually suggests the opposite:

Naked Lunch doesn‘t offer a single coherent linear reading but an irreducible multiplicity of lines that ―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.‖ It is up to the determined reader to decide which of those lines and directions to follow from the text out into the world.65 (emphasis added)

McConnell separates himself from the ―allegorizers‖ to a greater extent than

Murphy, in effect being perhaps closer to the soon-to-be discussed ―anti-metaphor‖ critics. For instance, he claims that Burroughs is a stern critic of allegory and metaphor:

―[Burroughs] has made a commitment to language which involves not less than everything. In a poetic system of this austerity, allegory is a capitulation, metaphor a final temptation to not-will.‖ Furthermore, since he dismisses metaphorical or

64 In Murphy‘s own words: ―Burroughs‘ work, including Naked Lunch, constitutes an exacting critique both of the social organization of late capital and of the logic of representation or textuality that abets it‖ (Wising 74). 65 The Naked Lunch excerpt used by Murphy is from the ―Atrophied Preface‖ section, p. 191 of the restored edition. 111

allegorical readings of Naked Lunch, McConnell claims that understanding the work as a moral book or claiming it uses drug addiction as a symbol for social criticism is an injustice to the textual strategies used. However, the critic still relies on the ―additional‖ parts of the text as providing meaning to the rest of the discourse. As he claims, the work is a ―religious confession,‖ which ―without either Introduction or Appendix would be immeasurably crippled, dull and ‗unpoetic‘ as those sections may be in themselves.‖

Although differing substantially from the critics discussed previously, both

Murphy and McConnell share with them certain characteristic. On the one hand, the both try to distance themselves from a purely metaphorical or allegorical reading.

Furthermore, they also criticize moral approaches to both Burroughs and Naked Lunch.

On the other hand, Murphy and McConnell rely greatly in their interpretations on the same key sections as the ―allegorizers.‖ Such obvious usage of certain parts in order to explain a greatly heterogeneous text not only restricts possible interpretations, but also often ignores elements of the discourse not in line with the chosen perception. The critics‘ reliance on the mentioned key sections is also the reason why I have classified them into the ―allegorizers‖ camp; however, as I have already said, such classification is not entirely without problems.

IV.D Naked Lunch and Literal Meaning

While interpreting the drug and addiction elements of Naked Lunch in metaphorical or allegorical terms became widespread since the work‘s publication, it was not until the late 1980s that a vastly different reading emerged. In 1987 Robin

Lydenberg published Word Cultures: Radical Theory and Practice in William S.

Burroughs’ Fiction, a book-length work mainly exploring Naked Lunch and the cut-up trilogy. The critic argues that many of the key parts of the discourse previously used for

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interpreting the work as a whole are often unreliable. Furthermore, she also claims that

Burroughs favors literal meaning of the text instead of a reading that relies on a moral or metaphorical approach.66 Oliver Harris, the editor of many Burroughs‘ texts, is another important critic that approaches Naked Lunch in terms of literal meaning (as opposed to metaphorical interpretations) and distrust towards the self-explanatory key parts. In other words, these critics constitute a rather different approach to Naked Lunch than their colleagues discussed above.

As it was already said, both critics reject the self-explanatory key parts, namely

―Deposition‖ and ―Atrophied Preface,‖ as unreliable. Harris explains that Timothy

Murphy‘s failure in interpreting Naked Lunch lies in his unsuspecting belief in the Beat legend of the work‘s creation (Harris, Secret 187).67 More importantly, Harris further explains that Murphy‘s reliance on the genesis of Naked Lunch is reflected in his reliance on the key parts present in the text:

Murphy‘s failure [to understand the actual development of Naked Lunch] is particularly instructive because it goes together with his insistence that in the ―Atrophied Preface‖ that concludes Naked Lunch, as in the ―Deposition‖ which begins it, Burroughs is not being ironic in his accounts of its method [. . .]. In fact, the question of credibility is subject to a systematic deconstruction in the ―Deposition,‖ which mimics and

66 As it is apparent, Lydenberg shares many points with McConnell whose ―William Burroughs and the Literature of Addiction‖ was published in 1967, twenty years before Lydenberg‘s publication. However, it is not until the late 80s—perhaps because of post-modern critique—that a reading stressing literal interpretation instead of an allegorical one gained significant attention from the other critics. 67 To further comment on the issue, it is the following Murphy‘s comment on the work‘s structure that caused Harris‘ rather harsh reaction: ―[T]he mosaic structure of Naked Lunch [. . .] was created, according to Beat legend, when the routines were simply sent to the printer in the order that they were typed up by Kerouac and Ginsberg‖ (―Intersection‖). Harris makes the genesis of the work clear: ―Burroughs had already established a mosaic structure in October 1955; he never referred to the text‘s separate sections as ‗routines;‘ Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Alan Ansen typed up a manuscript in early 1957 that was absolutely distinct from the final text; it was Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Sinclair Beiles who prepared the material for Olympia Press in July 1959; and Burroughs subsequently relocated at least one major section of text‖ (Secret 187). It must be also noted that the key parts in question—―Deposition‖ and ―Atrophied Preface‖—further inflate the Beat legend of the work‘s creation, as Burroughs writes the following in the former: ―I have no precise memory of writing the notes which have now been published under the title Naked Lunch‖ (199). Burroughs himself admitted the imprecise nature of the ―Deposition‖ claim in ―Afterthoughts on a Deposition,‖ an appendix appearing in the restored text: ―When I say I have no memory of writing Naked Lunch, this is of course an exaggeration, and it is to be kept in mind that there are various areas of memory‖ (211). 113

belongs to that Romantic tradition of false prefaces perfected by Coleridge.

In other words, the key sections and the explanations of the discourse they contain are not to be trusted, since they are not meant seriously. Lydenberg further comments on the issue of keys by explaining that Burroughs‘ claim in the ―Deposition‖ section—that some of the work‘s parts were intended as a tract against Capital Punishment in the manner of Modest Proposal—is to be understood in a slightly different way. As the critic explains, Burroughs is ―‗talking to the machine‘ in its own language, responding to accusations that parts of Naked Lunch are merely pornographic—lacking in artistic merit because they are lacking in moral purpose‖ (7-8).

It is the reception of Naked Lunch as a moral text that truly bothers both critics.

As I have already shown, there are numerous readings that interpret the work in terms of morality; for example, Loewinsohn interprets it as how-to book of moral instruction

(Loewinsohn 563). However, it is precisely such interpretation Lydenberg attacks: as the critic states, ―[i]n conventional humanistic criticism interpretation often takes this form of a ‗justification‘ of the text by positioning a moral intention behind it‖ (7). After all, the ―Ugh‖ review by John Willet provides a perfect example of how moral approach changes one‘s perception of a given work. In the review Willet writes that the various explicit and ―pornographic‖ scenes are ―too uncritically presented, and because the author gives no flicker of disapproval the reader easily takes the ‗moral message‘ the other way‖ (qtd. in Johnson, ―Good Ol‘ Boy‖ 50-51). The writer David Lodge also had a similar stance towards Naked Lunch, saying that the discourse ―suspends rather than activates the reader‘s moral sense‖ (qtd. in Lydenberg 8).68 In other words, numerous

68 Lydenberg also quotes Lodge‘s later reexamination of Naked Lunch. Lodge claims that the work‘s ―elimination of a realistic frame‖ and absence of norms ―by which its nauseating grotesquerie can be measured and interpreted‖ makes it impossible to the reader to apply the depicted scenes ―to the real world and draw an instructive moral‖ (8). 114

critics tend to either dismiss the work as immoral or—by choosing the appropriate keys—interpret the work in terms of metaphor. Naked Lunch is thus considered a metaphorical representation of drug addiction and withdrawal, an allegory of the world seen through the hallucinatory mind of a junkie, or a hero‘s quest for freedom and from addiction; no matter what concrete metaphorical reading is chosen, most places, people and events described by the discourse are unreal. Harris further explains the results of metaphorical interpretation:

What‘s wrong with this reading is clear: if from Washington Square subway station to the Hotel Lamprey off Broadway, Lee never actually leaves New York City, then Interzone becomes no more than a nightmare version of the Land of Oz, an unreal and strictly allegorical space. (Secret 235)

In other words, moral reading of Naked Lunch relies on the explanatory key parts and the fact they are able to provide enough evidence for such interpretation. Furthermore, numerous passages are more easily explained as ―hallucinatory‖ than insisting on their literal meaning. Unlike their predecessors, Harris and Lydenberg refuse to interpret

Naked Lunch in such way. Lydenberg points out that there are numerous intrusions present in the text that often have a scientific or technical voice (8). The critic continues that not only do these intrusions enter abruptly into the main discourse, but also they are

―made concrete in their own right by Burroughs‘ use of parentheses which represent visually the splicing in of a different voice in the text.‖ She quotes the following passage from Naked Lunch to make her point clear:

―But you wouldn‘t believe it, certain disgruntled elements chased us right down to our launch.‖ ―Handicapped somewhat by lack of legs.‖ ―And a condition in the head.‖ (Ergot is a fungus disease grows on bad wheat. During the Middle Ages Europe was periodically decimated by outbreaks of ergotism, which was called St. Anthony‘s Fire. Gangrene frequently supervenes, the legs turn black and drop off.) (134)

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Put differently, the discourse, Lydenberg argues, strives for literalness of its images— one should not interpret the above-quoted passage in a metaphorical way. Another part of the work makes the discourse‘s demand for literal interpretation even clearer: ―silent portentous smell of uremia seeping under the door, suburban lawns to sound of the water sprinkler, in calm jungle night under the silent wings of the Anopheles mosquito.

(Note: This is not a figure. Anopheles mosquitoes are silent.)‖ (39). These and other similar examples located in the text, Lydenberg claims, are among the ways metaphorical or allegorical explanations of Naked Lunch are challenged: ―Burroughs does not justify the unpleasant content of his text, as some critics would do, by pointing to a personal idealism underlying a fierce social satire, but rather by insisting, however spuriously, on the scientific and historical objectivity, on the literalness of his images‖

(14). Oliver Harris agrees with Lydenberg on Burroughs‘ refusal of metaphors. The critic claims that the frequent reading of the drug and drug addiction elements as metaphorical or allegorical ―scores as abstract all Burroughs‘ models of control and disease,‖ thus having ―catastrophic‖ impact (Secret 36).

Put differently, numerous passages that the previously discussed critics interpreted in terms of the ―menacing hell‖ of the drug addict‘s mind are meant to be literally—there is no symbolization whatsoever contained in such passages. However,

Lydenberg goes in her claim even further. She explains that Naked Lunch not only refuses metaphorical or moral interpretation, but—through its literalness—actually portrays such interpretations as restricting and controlling: ―The literalness— mathematical, scientific, naturalistic, supernaturalistic—which pervades Burroughs‘ prose style is part of his campaign to free literature from morality and symbolic rhetoric, to seize for it the independence of the sciences‖ (Lydenberg 13). Burroughs‘ amoralness is commented upon by other critics as well. Kurt Hemmer explains that the scene in

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which Clem and Jody confront an Arab Nationalist caricatures both sides of the conflict

(―The Natives Are Getting Uppity‖ 70): ―The police are morally corrupt, but so are the rioters. What we are left with is a statement about brutality in general, not politics specifically‖ (71).69 Simply put, Lodge‘s and Willet‘s argument that Naked Lunch is not moral enough is, in a way, entirely valid. However, as Lydenberg argues, morality is not the work‘s aim; on the contrary, the discourse is entirely amoral because morality is only one of the many possible control systems; the discourse only ―shows‖ but does not

―tell.‖ It is through language that readers create moral assumptions of a given work and that is the reason Burroughs employs and insists on the literalness of his images as well as uses several other literary techniques such as the constant shifts of the narrative voices or the numerous ―meaningless‖ parts. Lydenberg further emphasizes the discourse‘s connection between morality and language: ―The negative mosaics of

Naked Lunch in which Burroughs juxtaposes scattered fragments, remnants, the detritus of the world, are motivated by this desire to defy and exhaust meaning, to starve out the language parasite and leave no symbolic residue‖ (18). Simply put, the previously discussed critics preferred a moral approach because an interpretation based on drug addiction allegory/metaphor gives unity and structure to the disjointed, disconnected and indeterminate discourse; the text‘s numerous graphic and violent images are suddenly ―justified‖ because there is a moral intention behind them (21). However, this is exactly the kind of thinking that Burroughs attacks through the very structure and language of Naked Lunch.

In other words, Naked Lunch is for Lydenberg an attack on language, interpretation and moral thinking, and both critics stress the importance of numerous references in the work connected to language. Among these parts—which for example

69 See page 50 of the thesis for the discussed part. 117

include the section on the parties of Interzone—is the ―talking asshole‖ certainly the most prominent. According to Lydenberg, the routine ―dramatizes the problematic relationship of body and mind, and the role of language in that relationship; the arbitrary violence of language as a system of naming and representation; and the possibility of an ontology and an aesthetics based on negativity and absence‖ (19).70 The story thus reflects the literalness of Burroughs‘ images and the language‘s effort to force a metaphorical reading that could account for the often violent nature of the text: ―[T]he individual is perhaps most taken in and taken over by language when he thinks he is manipulating it for his own purposes—he is never so much the dummy as when he plays the ventriloquist‖ (41). Although Harris does not entirely share Lydenberg‘s conclusions, he does agree on the importance of the ―talking asshole‖ routine; however, since he is concerned about the routine‘s creation and original context, his evaluation of the routine is rather different:

[The routine] is at once a parable and an instance of Burroughs‘ economic situation as a writer, both within a broader cultural history and within his epistolary-based routine practice. [. . .] Burroughs‘ account actively invites us [. . .] to read the routine in terms of its compositional circumstance and the carny man in relation to the writer. (Secret 238-39)

However, no matter what specific interpretation the critics have chosen for the

―talking asshole‖ part, they both make the same mistake: although they dismiss the keys chosen by the previous critics as suspect, they rely on other keys present in the discourse for explanation. In other words, while some relied on the ―Deposition‖ to support their allegorical reading of Naked Lunch, Lydenberg and Harris rely on the ―talking asshole‖ to explain the discourse, which, in effect, is the same reductive approach that both critics condemn. Their refusal to believe the honesty of the ―Deposition‖ and

―Atrophied Preface‖ sections enabled them to view Naked Lunch from a new, wider

70 As it is apparent, Lydenberg‘s argument is a complicated (and sophisticated) one. For more information, see Lydenberg 19-43. 118

angle; however, the reading again highlights some of the numerous discourse elements but ignores others, thus lowering the interpretative potential of the work. The failure to see the shortcomings of one‘s critique is especially visible Harris‘ case: although the critic explains that the ―talking asshole‖ routine has became for many readers and critics a summation of the whole discourse and thus is among the key parts he himself calls

―the most suspect‖ (216), he then spends more than twenty pages exploring the history and events surrounding the genesis of the part and its relation to Naked Lunch as a whole.

Furthermore, while Lydenberg condemns certain parts of ―Deposition‖ and

―Atrophied Preface‖ as rather unreliable and suspect in their readiness to explain the discourse, she gladly uses other parts of these sections to support her interpretation. For example, the critic uses the following passage from ―Deposition‖ to stress her argument on the literalness of the discourse: ―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 [. . .] the Addict [. . .] the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 202). In other words, while Lydenberg tries to point out that Burroughs‘ style highlights the literalness of the work‘s images, she relies on other parts of the sections that are at the same time dismissed as unreliable because they intentionally mimic the moral rhetoric of the conventional society in order to subvert them. In addition, both critics rely greatly on external evidence to support their arguments: Lydenberg on Burroughs‘ interviews and explanations of his literary style and approach, and Harris on the writer‘s letters and events surrounding and eventually leading to the creation of Naked Lunch. The former critic is especially fond of citing The Job, a series of interviews interlaced with several short pieces and articles, since the book contains numerous clarifications and statements

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made by Burroughs on anything from literature to the world youth. However, the interviews were conducted between 1968 and 1970, roughly ten years after the publication of Naked Lunch (Baker 163). During these ten years Burroughs managed to finish his cut-up trilogy, which marked a significant shift in Burroughs‘ style that the writer in The Job frequently comments upon. Harris, on the other hand, investigates the past in order to explain Naked Lunch. He goes through original letters (mostly addressed to Ginsberg), manuscripts, and the various events surrounding the writing of

Naked Lunch, concluding the following:

Naked Lunch supports entirely contrary readings because of the fertile but finally unresolved conflict between opposed writing hands. This is why a material genetic history is so valuable: it shows over time the pull of antagonistic forces—aesthetic but also economic, cultural, and political—at their point of emergence, and this is significant above all in the case of the letter routine. (Secret 222)

After a careful observation the gaps in Harris‘ argument should be visible. I do not want to argue with his statement that the discourse of Naked Lunch is able to support contradictory interpretations at the same time;71 it is his reliance on external documents and ―proofs‖ to interpret the work that, in my opinion, is problematic. These ―externals‖ are, in effect, only additional keys the critics need to explain the work: faced with an indeterminate and highly variable discourse that resists traditional analysis and interpretation, both critics need some guidelines according to which they should read the work. While their predecessors favored keys present within the discourse, Harris and

Lydenberg dismiss (for the most part) such keys only to find themselves lost and in dire need of another set of keys.

The above being said, one should realize the importance of the critics‘ contributions to Burroughs scholarship. Lydenberg is very skillful and convincing in

71 On the other hand, his claim about the genetic history and its value might be challenged; as my thesis shows, a careful and focused discourse analysis can lead to the same conclusions. 120

explaining the techniques and potential of the cut-up technique as well as in connecting

Burroughs with numerous post-modern critics such as Roland Barthes or Jacques

Derrida. As she shows, Burroughs‘ cut-up method is not another obscure ―experimental literature,‖ as many works are tagged and subsequently abandoned, but a radical attack on Western thinking, literary tradition and language itself. However, while Burroughs‘ experimentation with words is rather clear in the cut-up trilogy (―Photo Falling—Word

Falling—Break through in Grey Room—Towers, open fire‖ [Burroughs, The Ticket

That Exploded 110], interpreting Naked Lunch as posing the same direct challenge to language is simply forcing the reading too far.72 They same is true for Harris whose meticulous study of Naked Lunch, its genesis and its relationship to the preceding works—Junky, Queer and The Yage Letters—is certainly valuable.73 More importantly, both critics stress the importance of the indeterminacy and unreliability of the discourse.

On the other hand, Lydenberg and Harris still rely on a different set of keys, on sources outside the discourse that help them in their chosen approach. However, by relying on the selected ―evidence‖ they try to force their chosen interpretation into a discourse that actively resists being interpreted. Furthermore, both approaches chosen by the critics still tend to leave a number of discourse elements unaccounted for. For example, although Lydenberg‘s insistence on the literalness of the language causes the

―meaningless‖ parts of the discourse to be attacks on conventional interpretations instead of being mere hallucinations, other elements of the discourse such as the often hinted humor that can lead to two different interpretations of a given part are

72 I do not want to say that Naked Lunch does not constitute a challenge to literary conventions and the usage of language; after all, these are one of the key points of my thesis. However, Naked Lunch does so in not so obvious manner and it is precisely the indeterminacy of the discourse—as opposed to the visibility of cut-ups marked by the use of dashes—that is of utmost importance. 73 Furthermore, Harris‘ approach has brought into light several facts about Naked Lunch—such as its epistolary nature originating from the letters sent to Allen Ginsberg—that might be often overlooked. Interpreting the work based on its genesis and its relationship and references to the preceding works is, however, an entirely different—and I might add rather questionable—matter. 121

unaccounted for. However, in terms of number of discourse elements discussed, both approaches are certainly a step forward.

IV.E Naked Lunch as an Indeterminate Work

To sum up so far, the vast number of Burroughs scholarship can be classified into several groups according to the number of discourse elements they discuss. Harris and especially Lydenberg are not only renowned Burroughs scholars but also their criticism marks the shift of focus from metaphorical interpretations to literal interpretations, that is to readings aimed at uncovering how precisely does the discourse work in terms of language. However, while both stress the unreliable nature of some of the oft-quoted keys, they still rely on certain discourse elements to provide answers to the many questions posed by the indeterminate discourse. In the recent years, however, a rather different approach has been frequented by some critics. Instead of trying to find some keys in order to explain the indeterminate discourse, these critics base their readings precisely on the complex discourse itself. Davis Schneiderman and Michael

Sean Bolton both stress the importance of the discourse and state that it defies traditional interpretations or contextual anchoring.

Both critics both understand the indeterminate nature of the text. Schneiderman observes that Naked Lunch has avant-garde roots which complicate its full acceptance into the American literary mainstream (188). As the critic continues, ―[t]here are scant similar examples in the permeable realms of modern and postmodern literature that have become as popular as Naked Lunch and yet still remain as thoroughly unmanageable.‖ The work‘s resistance to classification is clear from the various pigeonholes it has been associated with. Jennie Skerl enumerates the various literary groups Naked Lunch has been categorized as belonging to: the avant-garde modernist

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tradition, French writers of ―revolt,‖ Henry Miller as the link between the French and the American, the antiliterature of Beckett, the ubiquitous ―Beat novel‖ pigeonhole, and the (a)moral position (qtd. in Schneiderman 189).74 In addition, the number of various theoretical contexts used for interpretation of the work further illustrates its evasive nature. The difficulties of classifying Naked Lunch lie in the interpreter‘s need to grasp the discourse using ―familiar contexts in historical or cultural ideology‖ (Bolton 54).

Such procedure, Bolton argues, is inevitably bound to fail because the work resists strong connections to particular contexts:

[Burroughs‘] contexts are not material, derived from contexts external to the narratives, but are associative and drawn from the associations and juxtapositions of various unstable temporal and physical dispositions within the narratives. [. . .] By disintegrating material contexts, Burroughs seeks both to remove ideological positions from his narratives and to problematize ideological approaches to their readings. (54-55)

In other words, Bolton‘s argument is similar Lydenberg‘s but with one significant detail: while Lydenberg stresses the literalness of language and its resistance to moral interpretations, Bolton takes her formal analysis one step further by arguing the discourse resists all ideological interpretation. Schneiderman agrees: ―Naked Lunch rejects traditional narrative analysis and, accordingly, traditional structures of novelistic meaning‖ (190). Such rejection is rooted in the work‘s genesis from Burroughs‘ specific epistolary form, the so-called ―routine.‖ As Harris skillfully shows in William

Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination, Allen Ginsberg played a major role in the development of the routines by acting as their receiver during the six-year correspondence between Burroughs and Ginsberg and the epistolary form of the routine determines the textual strategies of Naked Lunch (197). Timothy Murphy clarifies that

74 One might also add the classifications mentioned in the previous chapters. Furthermore, Lydenberg classifies Burroughs as a post-modern writer and Hussey draws parallels between Burroughs and Letterism and Situationism, ―two avant-garde groups with whom Burroughs came in direct contact‖ while he stayed in Paris (Hussey 75). 123

―[t]he routine is a form of micronarrative that operates by multiplication and juxtaposition, but no set of these proliferating routines can be combined to form a unified macronarrative similar to a traditional short story or a novel‖ (Wising 61). Lee, the main character of the semi-autobiographical Queer, also helps in further explaining the particular form of the routine: after finishing a rather vicious routine, he refuses the objections of Allerton (his love interest) by saying it was just ―a routine for [his] amusement, containing a modicum of truth‖ (92). In other words, Naked Lunch is basically a series of semi-related routines and the specific routine form plays a crucial part in making possible the discourse‘s indeterminate nature and unreliability.

Therefore, it is mainly the routine form that is responsible for the discourse‘s resistance to traditional literary analysis. Schneiderman argues that approaching the work as a novel can result only in partial and unsatisfactory results:

If the texts in Naked Lunch are not the texts of a ―novel‖ in any sense of a form arrived at prior to its construction (and, rather, elements of letters), the treatment of the text-as-such results in a series of impossible readings, each attempting mastery foiled by the material methodological limits. (189)

Simply put, the work‘s routine basis—as opposed to traditional novelistic treatment— greatly affects the effectiveness of traditional novelistic interpretations; as Harris explains, the pieces constituting Naked Lunch ―are not fit pieces for a novel‖ (Secret

212). More importantly, both Schneiderman and Bolton understand the fact that Naked

Lunch is an indeterminate work; however, unlike their predecessors, they further develop this understanding by discussing the impact of the work‘s form on critical interpretations.

In other words, Naked Lunch resists traditional literary analysis and trying to shape the discourse according to a preselected reading is a simplistic approach that favors the readerly instead of the writerly. Furthermore, my discourse analysis has

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shown that the work is not only indeterminate, but often contradictory, thus possibly providing conflicting arguments to any reading relying on only some of its keys and discourse elements. In the words of Schneiderman: ―Naked Lunch is coded with its own interpretative counterarguments, and to subscribe to a particular narrative interpretation is to fall into its metanarrative traps‖ (190). Both critics realize the implicit consequences resulting from such observation: textual interpretation has its limits and

Naked Lunch lies beyond the boundaries. Furthermore, since claiming that it is not possible to interpret a given work of art is a statement of serious consequences, both critics suggest possible steps for solving the issue. Bolton explains that ―[t]he challenge for readers and critics of Burroughs is to cease relying on external frames through which to contextualize his narratives and, instead, to create contexts spontaneously during the act of reading‖ (54). The critic provides further clarification:

The contexts of Burroughs‘ novels are determined, then, by readers during reading and according to their own experiences of the ―network of differences‖ created as the narrative juxtaposes and transmutes its temporal and topographic markers. Consequently, context can only be determined during each act of reading as the time and place of the reader, the author, and the narrative engage and merge with one another. (56)

Naturally, such statement is daring and far-reaching in both its statement about the nature of the discourse as well as the impact on literary criticism. Schneiderman offers a solution to the problem of interpreting Naked Lunch that is, at first sight, more inviting than Bolton‘s. He claims that the work contains several meta-fictive passages that deal with the problem of interpretation, one of them being the section ―Campus of Interzone

University‖ (195). The Professor‘s lecture on the Ancient Mariner and the relationship between the Professor and the students is therefore reflected in Burroughs‘ Naked

Lunch and the relationship between the author and the reader. However, since the

Professor concludes the Ancient Mariner shows that ―nothing can ever be accomplished

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on the verbal level‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 74), he himself becomes in

Schneiderman‘s reading a proof that there are barriers in language and that a literary work—in this case Naked Lunch—cannot be fully explained.75 Therefore, the critic is in the end lead to a similar conclusion as Bolton: ―We want to master Naked Lunch, to stop Naked Lunch from mastering us. To accomplish this, it would take a complete redefinition of ‗reading‘‖ (196). The text is indeterminate and impossible to interpret because critical interpretation is one of the many things it challenges. The critic continues:

This impossibility of fully explaining Naked Lunch‘s excesses invokes more horrifying possibility: Narrative-based explanations, no matter how comforting, are simply not comprehensive enough to explain a text that continually announces the impossibility of explanation.76 (197)

It is important to add that it is possible to at least explain how exactly Naked

Lunch operates against concrete interpretations. As my discourse analysis shows, it is through indeterminacy, unreliability and contradiction that a precise interpretation of the work is challenged. However, Schneiderman‘s argument deals with the issue of interpretation and not analysis and as it is apparent, no matter what specific interpretation one chooses, there will be always some parts of the discourse that the chosen reading cannot explain. Harris agrees with my conclusion:

For every part of Naked Lunch that refers to some reality beyond the text and invites pointed interpretation, there are always others that we can‘t explain away. Its redundant doublings and frequent hermetic passages speak an opaque language, a meaningless materiality that cannot be absorbed into the reassuring realms of representation or expression. (Secret 221-22)

75 Schneiderman‘s argument is a complicated one and trying to explain it in only a couple of lines would make his intricate claim unintelligible; for more information see Schneiderman p. 193-95. 76 This statement touches upon an issue of utmost importance for the next part of the thesis; however, it is now sufficient to state that the critics agree that Naked Lunch cannot be satisfyingly interpreted. 126

The above being said, it is necessary to note that the readings that do not understand the mechanics of the discourse and try to impose a certain interpretation on the work are not necessarily wrong. Such readings are surely legitimate, since they are based on certain keys and discourse elements. Nevertheless, such readings are also incomplete as they do not take into account the discourse as a whole—these readings are victories of readerly over writerly, of interpretation that ―has to make sense‖ instead of a reading that has the capacity to enjoy the limitless potential of such text. Fortunately, Bolton offers a reading that accepts the challenge presented by the discourse:

Burroughs‘s carnival/circus world releases all participants from geographically and culturally imposed context and creates a site of ―constant possibility.‖ The freedom of form that describes this landscape reflects a freedom of consciousness in not only the novel‘s characters and narratives, but also in readers who are never bound by the narratives to particular cultural references or ideologies.77 (72)

Put differently, it is pointless to try and shape the discourse according to a certain preconceived notion of how to read a literary text. Roland Barthes explains that a classic—i.e. readerly—text is limited by two concepts: truth and empiricism (S/Z 30).

As Naked Lunch avoids these concepts, readings based on them are inherently flawed.

Instead, as both Schneiderman and Bolton argue, one should understand the indeterminacy of the discourse—and the resulting indeterminacy of interpretation—not as a flaw, but as a limitless potentiality waiting to be explored. Therefore, the discourse belongs only to the reader who is able to write the text in a previously unprecedented way.

77 Bolton compares Burroughs‘ often carnival voice—―Step right up, Marquesses and Marks, and bring the little Marks too. Good for young and old, man and beast‖ (Naked Lunch 95)—to the notion of carnival world by M. M. Bakhtin. He is not the only critic who has made such parallel, see for example Pounds. 127

IV.F Wising Up the Marks: A Commentary on the Discourse

Burroughs has certainly nothing good to say about written text. He perceives it as a controlling device, a restrictive force similar to a police state or bureaucracy, and as such he aims at deconstructing the word in most of his work: ―The word is of course one of the most powerful instruments of control as exercised by the newspapers and images as well‖ (Job 33). Burroughs is not the only one to have such opinion; as M. M.

Bakhtin demonstrates, the word and language are not neutral but colored by other people‘s intentions:

[T]he word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, afer all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people‘s mouths, in other people‘s contexts, serving other people‘s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one‘s own. [. . .] Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker‘s intentions; it is populated—overpopulated—with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one‘s own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process. (294)

To put it differently, not only is it difficult to master the word, but also the word can master its user as the user relies on its correct usage and interpretation which are often covered in an impenetrable mist of associations and allusions. While one of the many keys of Naked Lunch—―There are no independents any more‖ (130)—refers to A.J.‘s nature as an agent, it might be also understood as a reference to the reader‘s (and critic‘s) need for a precise interpretation of a narrative: the reader is dependent on language to explain the discourse and the work must be explained in satisfactory and precise terms.

However, the discourse of Naked Lunch is shaped in a way that conventional readings and interpretations have no chance to grasp the full scale of the discourse‘s potential. Importantly, the discourse of the work touches upon a more serious issue: it comments on the ability to precisely interpret a work that defies interpretations and on

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human capability and limits of interpretation as expressed through language. The poet

Gregory Corso objected to Burroughs‘ cut-up works as ―uninspired machine-poetry,‖ lamenting that his ―soul poetry‖ is ―destroyed‖ by the experimental writing (Murphy,

Wising 104). While Naked Lunch does not employ the cut-up technique, its discourse is not dissimilar to the later cut-up works in its resistance to conventional methods of interpretation. Ultimately, Naked Lunch comments on critical interpretations and, perhaps, on the necessity one feels to interpret a text—as Roland Barthes writes, when the text is explained, the critic is victorious (Image 147). Although Barthes‘s remark deals with the reliance on the author in one‘s criticism, his conclusion can be made about interpretation in general: one simply needs an exact interpretation of a text and the history of Burroughs‘ criticism is an undeniable proof of such statement. The approach requiring a concrete reading can be fruitful when dealing with a more conventional work; however, Naked Lunch certainly is not a conventional work and therefore such criticism can produce only partial results as it relies on a rather narrow selection of discourse elements and passages and ignores the remaining, and often conflicting, parts of the work. That is not to say that everything one claims about the work is immediately overthrown as false—for example, the theme of addiction and control is certainly present in the discourse. However, insisting on a given reading as the correct one leads to the same trap that numerous critics have waded into—although the text is finally ―explained,‖ it is stripped down of most of its interpretative potential and is simplified beyond measure.

In other words, conventional modes of explanation rely on one specific—and hopefully ―correct‖—reading and it is precisely such attitude towards text that Naked

Lunch avoids. That is nothing new as my discourse analysis as well as several of the discussed critics have arrived at the same conclusion. However, there is more at stake

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than the ―simple‖ statement about the work‘s indeterminate nature. The crux of the matter is the issue hinted at by Schneiderman several pages earlier: ―Narrative-based explanations, no matter how comforting, are simply not comprehensive enough to explain a text that continually announces the impossibility of explanation‖ (197).

However, before I can fully explain my argument that further develops the statement above, I must provide some additional information.

Burroughs dismisses the Aristotelian ―either/or‖ as ―one of the great errors of

Western thinking‖ (Job 48-49). He is especially critical of the verb ―be‖ and the definite article:

The IS of Identity. You are an animal. You are a body. Now whatever you may be you are not an ―animal,‖ you are not a ―body,‖ because these are verbal labels. The IS of identity always carries the implication of that and nothing else, and it also carries the assignment of permanent condition. To stay that way. [. . .] The definite article THE. THE contains the implication of one and only: THE God, THE universe, THE way, THE right, THE wrong. (200)

Put differently, while one often relies on a specific interpretation, such approach may not be without flaws when dealing with indeterminate works since the interpretation depends on language that is not perfect in its grasp of indeterminate concepts. Roland

Barthes, when discussing a particularly ambiguous passage of Balzac‘s ―Sarrasine,‖ asks rhetorically: ―[I]f we want to ‗explicate‘ the sentence (and consequently the narrative), must we decide on one code or the other?‖ (S/Z 77). As he further comments on the ambiguous passage, ―to choose, to decide on a hierarchy of codes, on a predetermination of messages, as in secondary-school explications, is impertinent.‖ In other words, one should not require an explanation for an indeterminate passage as that would most probably highlight only some of the all possible meanings. If that is taken into consideration, then whose claim about the nature of ―Atrophied Preface‖ is correct,

Murphy‘s or the one by Harris? The former explains that ―Atrophied Preface‖ is not

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ironic because Burroughs is a satirist and social critic who frequently comments on various social or political issues in his interviews and journalistic pieces

(―Intersection‖). Therefore, the critic continues, reading ―Atrophied Preface‖ as an ironic text would lead ―to the impoverishment of both his work and the reader‘s experience of it.‖ On the contrary, Harris claims that the writer is ironic in both

―Atrophied Preface‖ and ―Deposition‖ (Secret 187). One might find support for both arguments in Burroughs‘ interviews as well as in the text itself. There are numerous passages in Naked Lunch supporting the former claim, for example as the parts on bureaucracy or police. Furthermore, Burroughs is often very vocal in his opinions:

―Young people in the West have been lied to, sold out, and betrayed. Best thing they can do is take the place apart before they are destroyed in a nuclear war‖ (Job 81). On the other hand, ―Atrophied Preface‖ is subtitled ―Wouldn‘t You?‖ and not only the phrase reappears several times throughout the text, but it is taken from a letter supposedly written by Jack the Ripper (MacFayden, ―Dossier Three‖ 93). The original letter addressed to the press reads: ―The next job I do I shall clip the lady‘s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you‖ (qtd. in MacFayden, ―Dossier

Three‖ 93) (emphasis mine). In other words, one might also read ―Atrophied Preface‖— and perhaps the whole work—as written just for ―jolly good laughter,‖ as a hilarious but uncritical piece of fiction. Therefore, according to conventional criticism (which relies on the conventional use of language), the reader has to decide whether Naked Lunch is a vicious social/political critique or a humorous work without any moralizing intent.

Similar statement can be made about Burroughs criticism in general: Naked Lunch is either a visionary account or an addict‘s confession or a literal text criticizing moral interpretations.

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The work, as Schneiderman agrees (197), shows that many critical readings cannot take into account its complicated nature and thus resign to simplifying the discourse. In addition, the text claims that any interpretation relying on a ―hierarchy of codes,‖ on a choice between A or B, is not only ineffective for such a discourse but also obsolete: such interpretation cannot hope to comprehend the work‘s discourse in its entirety and complexity. As Burroughs writes in ―Atrophied Preface:‖ ―Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative‖ (184). The work‘s resistance to either/or thinking is in my opinion the largest success of Naked Lunch, as the text invites the reader to see the discourse through several possible interpretations and none of them is necessarily wrong. Furthermore, I argue that the interpretations should be attempted simultaneously. In other words, instead of simply dismissing all interpretations as Schneiderman argues, the text actually invites the reader to take the multiple readings into account at the same time; after all, all the readings suggested by the critics are based on some parts of the discourse and thus are not wrong per se. The atemporal nature of the discourse as well as the numerous repetitions throughout the text only further invites such reading: they express simultaneity on the written page and help in showing the possible multifaceted readings of the work. Therefore, the text represents a critique of either/or thinking and a rather radical attack on the logic of

Western thought and the need to choose a specific reading, ideally the right one— however, there is no right reading of Naked Lunch. The above being said, ―Atrophied

Preface‖ is not a humorous and parodying text or a serious account of Burroughs‘ motivations and explanations, but both. In this respect, the work truly is ―a blueprint, a

How-To Book‖ (187); its goal is, as Burroughs confessed to Knickerbocker, to ―wise up the marks‖ (49), the ―marks‖ being ordinary people relying on concrete language and either/or thinking.

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On a seemingly different note, Jean-François Lyotard defines the term

―postmodern‖ as ―incredulity towards metanarratives‖ (xxiv). Some critics argue that such definition is self-refuting;78 as these critics claim, Lyotard‘s statement is in itself also a metanarrative because Lyotard states that postmodernity defies universal rules yet his definition of postmodernity is in effect one of the universal rules he criticizes.

However, one cannot apply similar critique to Naked Lunch and its status of a work challenging conventional interpretation. To provide further clarification, one cannot object to the work being interpreted as a text resisting conventional reading and interpretation because Naked Lunch is actually written in a language that resists such perception. The content of the text does not directly claim it cannot be precisely interpreted; on the contrary, it instead shows through its style that such interpretation is impossible.

Importantly, the consequence of the work‘s style is twofold. Firstly, because the work refuses specific interpretations, one might also object to my reading of the work as an indeterminate and interpretation-resisting text; after all, I have used several keys from the discourse in the last couple of pages to support my argument. In other words, I have proceeded in exactly the same way as most of the discussed critics: I have chosen several parts of the text and dismissed the rest. Nevertheless, I claim that the objection above some might raise is actually a confirmation of the work‘s resistance to interpretation and not the other way round. Thus, the work is paradoxical in nature— any argument that aims at dismissing some of the evidence I presented in the preceding paragraphs in fact strengthens my claim that Naked Lunch resists specific interpretation.

Secondly, one might try to challenge my argument by interpreting the work in a more specific way some of the already mentioned critics prefer, for example by claiming it is

78 For a criticism of postmodernity see for example ―Modernity versus Postmodernity‖ by Jürgen Habermas. New German Critique: 22 (1981): 3-14. JSTOR. .

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an account of Lee‘s withdrawal hallucinations. However, such procedure would be merely backtracking from the inevitable since it would try to ignore the evidence presented in the first part of my thesis, evidence based on precise and meticulous discourse analysis rather than interpretation. Simply put, Naked Lunch is a text that even more than fifty years after its inception provides a challenge for critics and readers alike. Harris sums it up by claiming that one of the work‘s major cultural functions is the following: to torment the reader by presenting an experience he or she cannot master

(Secret 217).

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V. Conclusion

The Beat Generation flourished during the highly restricting fifties which soon lead to the extremely volatile sixties and the Beats were certainly to some extent responsible for the sudden change in the climate. While William S. Burroughs belongs together with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg among the most famous Beats, his allegiance with the movement was through shared opinions rather than literary style. He is the author of a vast number of works—written, spoken, or painted—and has collaborated with numerous artists, especially musicians. However, one particular work gained the author fame (and infamy) and that work is Naked Lunch.

The discourse analysis I performed shows that Naked Lunch is rather unstable— and perhaps even chaotic—at first sight. The narrative voices are unreliable and change abruptly, the setting of time and place is unstable and bound to shift from passage to passage, the structure of the work avoids organizing into consecutive passages, and there is no visible plot present in the discourse. However, the specific mechanics behind the text and their effects are clearly seen after a closer inspection. The above-mentioned features are not present in the discourse due to a rather shabby performance by the writer but, on the contrary, they serve one specific purpose: to destabilize the discourse as much as possible. Indeterminacy, uncertainty and contradiction are employed frequently throughout the work and often to such degree that the reader has problems to decide on a specific interpretation of a give passage. As if to offer help to the reader confused by such heterogeneous text, the discourse contains numerous keys or passages seemingly containing a solution to certain sections or even the work as a whole.

However, not only are these passages often unreliable, but furthermore they actually narrow the possible interpretations instead of revealing the text‘s true potential because these keys can support only a few of the discourse elements rather than the text as a

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whole. In effect, the nature of the text and the keys present in it achieve the following: the more the text claims a specific reading or information is correct, the more is it later contradicted. Therefore, the reader has two choices—either to decide on a reading that is able to explain the indeterminate discourse for the price of simplification, or to accept the nature of the text for what it is and try to develop a theory that takes into account the discourse as a whole.

As it is apparent, I have chosen the latter; nevertheless, many critics have decided for the former approach instead. My overview of Naked Lunch criticism shows the shift in the work‘s interpretation that occurred throughout the years; however, it should be noted that the categorization is only roughly chronological as some interpretations are more favorite with the readers and critics alike and thus are not easily abandoned. Initially, critics favored a reading that would explain the numerous indeterminate and contradictory passages as visions, illusions or hallucinations. The interpretations belonging to this category relied heavily on several key passages, namely those present in ―Deposition‖ and ―Atrophied Preface,‖ since these passages further supported the chosen reading. Such criticism also adopted a moral interpretation of the more graphic and violent parts in order to ―justify‖ their presence in the text. Although such reading is not inherently wrong, it tends to ignore most parts of the text since these parts do not correlate with the overall interpretation. Nevertheless, as emerging critical theories started to influence literary theories, new readings began to flourish. Instead of searching for a way the controversial passages could be somehow explained, several critics started to argue that Burroughs aims at literal interpretation of such parts, in effect criticizing the need for a moral approach that serves only to justify the

―unredeemable‖ parts. Furthermore, the trustworthiness of several key passages was questioned. However, critics still relied on several keys in their interpretations and

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numerous statements presented in the discourse remained unchallenged. Only recently have a couple of critics emerged and distanced themselves from their predecessors by claiming the discourse is highly indeterminate. According to these critics, the indeterminacy of the work lies beyond mere classification of ―Deposition‖ as a sincere or parodying text; on the contrary, they claim that Naked Lunch is a highly indeterminate work and therefore trying to settle on an exact interpretation is actually counterproductive as it diminishes the potential of the work. In addition, both discussed critics—Bolton and Schneiderman—argue that one should abandon the traditional need for exact interpretation since such approach can never do the work justice. It should be also stressed that a small number of critics stresses the importance of humor in the discourse; the role of humor in Naked Lunch should not be overlooked because it is often through the unconventional humor that the discourse‘s indeterminacy is achieved.

I have made several important points following the overview of Naked Lunch criticism. The work truly resists conventional modes of interpretation and reading—its structure, language and often contradictory nature are simply too much for an ordinary reader (and often critic) to handle appropriately. As such, the discourse comments not only on the necessity to choose a specific interpretation, but also on the limitations of interpretation and language in general. The work shows that the generally accepted mode of interpretation is sometimes insufficient when dealing with a highly indeterminate text such as Naked Lunch—there is simply no correct interpretation of the discourse. More importantly, the text comments on the need to choose only one reading as the most precise one. As there is no inherently wrong reading, it is only the logic of either/or thinking that restricts the reader from employing two or more readings simultaneously. In other words, Naked Lunch shows that several ambiguous passages and, in effect, several entirely different interpretations can be—and should be—

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attempted simultaneously. Reader‘s and critic‘s interpretations are based on language and it is the infallibility of the explanations provided by language that Burroughs attacks. Human understanding and perception is limited by language and as the work shows, it is not perfect. Therefore, the discourse argues, one needs to devise a new way of understanding in order to comprehend the often unidentifiable and contradictory aspects of human lives. The Professor during the lecture at the Interzone University argues that the Ancient Mariner shows ―at some length that nothing can ever be accomplished on the verbal level‖ (Burroughs, Naked Lunch 74). That is the lesson the work serves in front of the reader; the lunch is on the dish naked and only waiting to be eaten.

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VII. Résumé/Resumé

VII.A Résumé

This thesis deals with the work Naked Lunch by the writer William S.

Burroughs. The thesis has two main objectives: first, to analyze the discourse of the work; second, to comment on the work‘s critical interpretations.

The discourse analysis is separated into several parts according to the various textual elements analyzed. The discourse elements analyzed are: narrative voices, structure, time and setting, characters, and language. The analysis is conducted through various critical approaches to best accommodate the commentary on the discourse.

Some of the approaches used for this part are those of Franz Stanzel, Roland Barthes,

Umberto Eco, and Lubomír Doležel. The discourse analysis shows that the work employs various techniques to manifest its indeterminate nature, namely techniques such as unreliable narrative voices, indeterminate chronology of events, non-existent time advancement, or contradictory descriptions of events or places.

The second main part of the thesis deals with critical approaches to the work.

These approaches are separated according to the number of discourse elements they take into account. The first categories greatly relies on a small number of the discourse elements in order to interpret the indeterminate work; on the contrary, later critics take into account the indeterminate nature of the work and therefore are wary of any specific interpretations, claiming that Naked Lunch resists conventional reading. Therefore, I claim, based on the discourse analysis as well as on the overview of the critical approaches to the text, that the work challenges regular approaches to interpretation and thinking and that one must use unconventional methods of interpretation in order to fully understand—and also appreciate—the textual strategies of the work.

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VII.B Resumé

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá dílem Nahý oběd od spisovatele Williama S.

Burroughse. Práce si vytyčila za cíl následující dva body: zaprvé provést analýzu diskursu Nahého obědu a zadruhé komentovat vybrané kritické interpretace tohoto díla.

Analýza diskursu je rozdělena do několika částí, a to podle různých textových elementů daného díla. Analýza diskursu využívá různých kritických náhledů za účelem co nejlepšího uchopení a popsání Nahého oběda. Z mnoha možných přístupů k analýze textu byla vybrána díla od Franze Stanzela, Rolanda Bartha, Umberta Eca či Lubomíra

Doležela. Analýza diskursu ukazuje, že dané dílo využívá množství literárních technik k docílení své textové nestability, a to například: nespolehlivé narativní hlasy, neurčitá chronologie děje, neexistující běh času, nebo protichůdné popisy událostí či míst.

Druhá hlavní část diplomové práce se zabývá kritickými interpretacemi Nahého oběda. Tyto interpretace jsou rozděleny do několika kategorií, a to podle množství elementů diskursu které při své interpretaci berou v potaz. Zatímco interpretace v prvních kategoriích vysvětlují tento nestabilní text pouze pomocí několika málo elementů, pozdější kritici si jsou vědomi neurčité povahy textu a jeho vzdoru konkrétním interpretacím. Tito kritici vysvětlují Nahý oběd jako dílo, které se vzpírá běžnému čtení a interpretaci. Analýza diskursu i následný přehled kritických interpretací ukazují, že Nahý oběd je nekonvenční dílo, které nejen že se vzpírá běžným snahám vysvětlit literární text, ale také pro jeho kompletní uchopení je třeba přijít s novým, nekonvenčním náhledem na interpretaci psaného text.

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