Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Kinga

Shauny_32 rated it did not like it
Self-indulgent shite. Not enjoyable. I love Most of Burroughs work including Naked Lunch but this was too inpenetrable. It just was not fun. It was simply a junkie tapping away at his type writer, alone in his cheap motel room thinking how great it might be to write a book completely fucked. Sorry pal, it's shite.

Love this review.

Dunno if I can be bothered to read this impenetrable shite.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Of WSB I have read only Junky and Naked Lunch (when I was too young to make any sense of it whatsoever)
 

luka

Well-known member
Yeah well you're reading another one this weekend. You know how self improvement makes you feel better about yourself. In control. On the right track. At ease with your conscience
 

version

Well-known member
I bought a copy of Naked Lunch when I was about fifteen and felt I shouldn't have been sold it. I couldn't really process what I was reading and it was pretty shocking. Up until that point I didn't realise a book could be like that.
 

version

Well-known member
Yeah, I didn't read the whole thing at the time. I got to the bit with the threesome and the gallows and set it aside. It was too much.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I probably (at least in theory) loved that stuff cos I was actively searching for obscene outrageous literature.

Always intrigues me to wonder what I was making of all the stuff I was reading as a 17-18 year old. Joyce and Kafka, writers I can't have understood much about. "The Trial" was a complete mystery to me.
 

version

Well-known member
I probably (at least in theory) loved that stuff cos I was actively searching for obscene outrageous literature.

I think I perhaps was, but didn't expect to find something that obscene. A failure of imagination on my part, I guess. It's intertwined with my stumbling across Rotten.com when I was even younger and being genuinely upset and disturbed by it.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I used to go on there.

There's that weird phase in your teenage years where you're looking for the most shocking stuff possible.

Maybe as a way to prove you're not a child anymore, at least to yourself.

Especially if you're not a macho type.

Worth remembering, I suppose, when you encounter these 4chan-style kids. Most of them are probably just fronting.
 

version

Well-known member
Always intrigues me to wonder what I was making of all the stuff I was reading as a 17-18 year old. Joyce and Kafka, writers I can't have understood much about. "The Trial" was a complete mystery to me.

I'd say the two books which really put me on my arse in some sense were Naked Lunch and Gravity's Rainbow; the former for the reasons I've already explained and the latter because it was the first time I felt genuinely lost whilst reading a book.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
And the same goes for whatever you think is the "hardest" stuff possible. Why else would I have been reading "Portrait of the Artist..." and "The Trial"?

Mind you, I definitely got more out of Joyce than Kafka. The language gets through, even if the meaning doesn't.
 

version

Well-known member
I'm not sure how old I was but the first time I read Kafka was when I was about to go to sleep and my dad chucked a copy of The Metamorphosis at me and told me to read 'In the Penal Colony'. It definitely went over my head at the time, I just thought it was a cool, gruesome story.
 

luka

Well-known member
Corpsey has started Nova Express already! I love self improvement. Boys encouraging one another to be the best they can be.
 

version

Well-known member
In a 1961 typescript he identifies his writing as a war machine for time travel out of time itself: "This is war between those of us who want out and those who want to keep us all locked in time. The cut ups are not for artistic purposes. The cut ups are a weapon a sword. I bring not peace but pieces."
 
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