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William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch has left an indelible imprint on American literary culture. As the last novel legally suppressed for obscenity in the U.S., its 1966 triumph in the courts cleared the way for free literary discourse. Professed by Burroughs himself as too profane to print in America, Naked Lunch did not accidentally stumble upon the role of champion for free speech. Enshrouded in its reputation as filthy, immoral and depraved, Naked Lunch was repudiated by prudish society and thus desired as forbidden fruit by readers of the 1950s and 1960s. Because of its highly publicized subversive status, the book would always be overshadowed by its notoriety. By examining both the production and reception of this incendiary book - necessarily interrelated aspects - this article argues that it was purposefully packaged as (lucratively) controversial and that the sensational marketing of the text dictated the interpretation of the language printed between its well-planned front and back covers.
Keywords: Naked Lunch / Grove Press / Olympia Press / William S. Burroughs / Beat Generation
Reception of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch has run the gamut. It has been hailed as a work of genius, a masterpiece of experimental fiction; defamed as a piece of filth, an exercise in pornography; and regarded as a book of yawns, a composition without merit. Certainly, the construction and the content of the novel lend it to such drastic responses. Naked Lunch is a difficult text to follow; it takes its reader through a labyrinth of incoherent narrative fragments. To complicate its arrangement, the book is littered with graphic language, sexual violence and drug abuse. But it was not the first "dirty book" ever to be published, and certainly there are more offensive works lining bookshelves.
So how did this book become such an explosive piece of literature? This study of Naked Lunch's early reception (from its first publication in 1958 to its ten-year anniversary in 1968) attempts to answer this question. It argues that its status as a dangerous and forbidden text was carefully manicured by all who were involved in its production and that events after its publication, such as its legal suppression, worked only to bolster this image. As Jennie Skerl writes, "The reception of Naked Lunch...