2 responses to “Episode 716: The Kerouac Project of Orlando Book Club Discussion of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (with Matt Peters)!”

1. 

   D J Rout

   June 23, 2026 at 2:21 am

   Good show!

   I certainly got a good introduction to this work, which I needed because I’ve never had any desire to read it no matter how famous it is, and I had the impression that it was someting like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

   You were right about it seeming sensational to the middle school mind. I felt the same way about Tropic of Cancer when I was 16.

   But as to the writing, it seems like the Beats had no idea what they were doing or how to write it and were lucky enough to get avant garde publishers. Would anyone publish something lie Naked Lunch today? (Well, I’ve heard that nobody would publish Tolkien today, so who knows what’s up with publishing?) Maybe Queer would get published just because of the title…

   The conversation was much helped by whatever confectionery you two were sharing.

   Reply
   1. 

      thedrunkenodyssey

      June 25, 2026 at 7:17 pm

      The Beat Generation writers were literary explorers who did not want to fit neatly into any pre-existing tradition, so I would say these writers had some idea of what they were doing precisely as they experimented.

      A generation before them, Henry Miller began Tropic of Cancer by observing,

      This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty… what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off-key perhaps, but I will sing.

      The Beats came into being at a time when the literati was asking itself if the novel was dead, a conversation that was alive until after several decades the persistence of the question seemed to indicate that the novel had to be alive enough for the question to be asked.

      The definition of what a literary novel should be was still a loose and baggy monster at that time. Plath’s The Bell Jar reads like a memoir, not a novel with a clear plot. Ulysses is much more of an experience than a story, though the story is there under its massive surface and mythic resonances.

      Of course Tolkien couldn’t get published today. All the agents would tell him, this seems remarkably like J. R. R. Tolkien. Too derivative. 😉

      Thanks for listening, DJ. 🙂

      Reply