When I first read Naked Lunch, as a teenager sleeping rough in a Greek olive grove, I thought it funny, baffling and vile, its hallucinatory horrors recalling paintings by Francis Bacon — ‘mouth and eyes are one organ that leaps forward to snap with transparent teeth’. A diet of ouzo and dodgy mousaka played havoc with my bowels, and the pages before me were soon behind me, which I thought would please William Burroughs, whose humour was decidedly cloacal.
It would also have pleased Edith Sitwell, whose review suggested that such was a fitting use for the book: ‘I do not wish to spend the rest of my life,’ she sniffed, ‘with my nose nailed to other people’s lavatories.’ By happy chance, I learn from Burroughs (an excellent film by Howard Brookner, found on video.google) that long before he wrote Naked Lunch he used to act out ‘routines’ with his friend and lover, Allen Ginsberg, with Ginsberg playing ‘the well-groomed Hungarian’ and Burroughs in drag as Dame Edith.
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