Naked Lunch

Burroughs's introduction (for some reason includedin the Harper Perennial edition *at the back*) admits this is the world seen through the eyes of a heroin addict, although whether you read the book as a novel or as a collection of interrelated short stories will inform how you truly view the narrative.

I started reading it in September last year, and have only just finished it now in June, which should give you an idea of the reading process (and boy it is a process...).

The book is full of black humour and marvellous imagery (and some killer lines--a lot of the book can be seen as prose poetry), but the constant ultra-violent sex can get strangely dull, the references are obscure (although not always--Burroughs's condemnation of British imperialism still rings sharp, and his irreverent attitude to Islam would make him unpublishable today, but in private enjoyment is very refreshing), and it's clear towards the end that the writer has lost control, it all becoming very boring--I could barely pay attention as I finished the last twenty pages.

There's actually another fifty-odd pages of extra material in this edition cut from the original, but I have no desire to read it.

I can totally understand why some of Burroughs's contemporaries such as Bukowski, as well as modern critics like Scott Bradfield, hate him and his work, but I do not; I'm more disappointed in the end.