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Title: Satire in its most nightmarish form
Review: Naked Lunch is, to say the least, not for everyone. One of the main addictions featured in it is of course addiction to heroin, but the novel is about so much more than that. It's about addiction of any kind whether it's to drugs, money, power, or sex. Here we are introduced to Dr. Benway (a behavioral conditioning freak), a man who teaches his rectum how to talk, and to a group of people to hang themselves to feel that final orgasm which is rumored to be more powerful than any others you could ever have. In this book Burroughs also takes a swipe at the media and the written word (or "word-virus") in general, trying to destroy the importance of the narrative. Burroughs believed the media used language to control the way we think; I read somewhere that he called Time and Life magazine "some kind of police force for the mind." Some call this paranoia, others call it genius. I suggest you read this book and decide for yourselves.
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