Naked Lunch [1959] - William S. Burroughs

"Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit - Kid, it was tasty . . ."

"I lived in one room in the Native Quarter of Tangier. I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of terminal addiction." Naked Lunch documents an unrepentant drug addict's descent into total hell with an intense, Boschian detail that alternates between extremely horrific and truly comedic imagery.

Simply one of the greatest and most influential American novels of the 20th century, Naked Lunch has been variously described as "brutal," "obscene," "disgusting" and "immoral" by its plethora of critics. Fuck the critics. Long after the works of Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway have been totally forgotten, college students will still be clamoring for this cult classic from Burroughs (also known as William Lee, El Hombre Invisible, Cosmonaut of Inner Space, Elvis of American Letters and Godfather of Punk). Burroughs claimed that the title was suggested by Jack Kerouac: "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork." Of all the great characters in Naked Lunch - the Paregoric Kid, Pantopon Rose, Bradley the Buyer, Placenta Juan the After Birth Tycoon, Doctor "Fingers" Schafer (the Lobotomy Kid), Clem and Jody, Doctor "Doodles" Rindfest, Clem Snide the Private Asshole, Captain Everhard, Salvador Hassan O'Leary (the After Birth Tycoon) - it is Dr. Benway who inevitably steals the show: "I deplore brutality...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."

Naked Lunch Trivia

• Jack Kerouac suggested the title of Naked Lunch: "[A] frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."
• Naked Lunch was banned by Boston courts in 1962 for obscenity but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed the decision in 1966.