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The counterculture movement introduction
The American counterculture that emerged in the mid-1960s was marked by
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As a movement, the Beat Generation (late-1940’s through the 1950’s) was eventually absorbed into the American Counterculture movement of the 1960’s (1964-1972), an anti-establishment cultural event that was developed in the United States and Britain and predicated upon a lifestyle of peace, love, harmony, music, mysticism, and religions outside the Judeo-Christian traditions so prevalent in the United States at the time. The application of meditation, yoga, and psychedelic drugs were adopted as ways to expand the consciousness. “It [the counterculture] was an attempt to rebel against the values our parents had pushed on us. We were trying to get back to touching and relating and living” (Lisa Law). You can dig into Naked Lunch at any point.
It’s like visiting an all you can eat buffet where your future meal in the form of a large cow greets you, "Good evening," it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in the parts of my body?" (Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe). In Naked Lunch, William Burroughs creates a multitude of vignettes that can be read in any order as he was primarily concerned with the experience of the “now”. Missing a section or reading the sections in an altered chronology won’t have an effect of the reader’s perceptions. On the title of his book, Burroughs said, "The title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” It could be argued that time is not important in the novel, ultimately it is the overarching theme of addiction that knits the vignettes together in what Burroughs called the "algebra of need." Each section depicts a progressively more desperate pursuit for heroin which becomes a metaphor for pernicious compulsions and overwhelming the need for control, be it sexual, political, or social. It is a graphic and brutal examination of our society. Burroughs' exposure of capital punishment as the repulsive and shocking public spectacle at the end of A.J.'s Annual Party: SHERIFF: I'll lower his pants for a pound, folks. Step right up. A serious and scientific exhibit concerning the locality of the Life Center. This character has nine inches, ladies and gentlemen, measure them yourself inside. Only one pound, one queer three dollar bill to see a young boy come three times at least -- I never demean myself to process a eunuch - completely against his will. When his neck snaps sharp, this character will shit-sure come to rhythmic attention and spurt it out all over you. These actions are purposefully and grotesquely inhuman as Burroughs creates scything parable of the great, modern anesthetic. After reading the novel, I now understand why Norman Mailer once referred to Naked Lunch as a “vision of how mankind would act if man was totally divorced from eternity.”