Naked Lunch is a fever dream. It has no plot, no themes, no reliable narrator. Like a half-remembered nightmare, the more you try to make sense of it, the more hazy it becomes. Characters, scenes, and situations shift in and out of focus, so while each is vividly clear at a particular moment, it is difficult to understand how they all fit together.

When I began reading Naked Lunch, I’ll admit I almost gave up. I didn’t get it. It seemed like the work of a raving lunatic junkie. I read the beginning in a state of utter confusion and frustration, trying to piece together a plot or look for some deeper meaning, but it was like forcing puzzle pieces together that just didn’t fit.

So, after a few chapters, I decided to live in the paragraph (carpe diem?) instead of attempting to understand the book as a whole, and suddenly it became more enjoyable. I started to pick up on Burroughs’ wickedly sharp satire, which questioned my perceptions of sexuality, government, drug use, race, and justice. I began to appreciate Burroughs’ surrealist language, peppered with rich metaphors. I even began to understand Burroughs’ use of obscenity for satire. (Side note: don’t dismiss my characterization of the book as obscene. This book isn’t like The Catcher in the Rye, which has a reputation for obscenity but in actuality contains nothing worse than the things talked about in whispers at the back of a middle school bus. No, Naked Lunch is unapologetically vulgar and gruesome.)

I suppose I haven’t actually explained what Naked Lunch is about. Well, the truth is, the book is really a collection of vignettes tangled together. It is loosely focused on a heroin addict and dealer, William Lee. It follows his escape from New York City police to an otherworldly, dreamlike place called the Interzone, where the majority of the book takes place. This description gives the impression that the book has a linear plot. It doesn’t. Burroughs himself explains this in the preface, which is at the end of the book: “You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point … I have written many prefaces. They atrophy and amputate spontaneous like the little toe amputates in a West African disease … Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To Book […] Naked Lunch demands Silence from The Reader. Otherwise he is taking his own pulse ….” By the way, I did not add the ellipses – this is a continuous excerpt from the book, which encapsulates Burroughs’ strange, cut-up style of writing.

Naked Lunch smashes through literary boundaries. It’s an abstract painting mixed with a George Carlin standup routine. Give it a shot. It’s a book that you either love or hate. But aren’t those the best kind?