Naked Lunch (William S.Burroughs)+Naked Lunch(David Conenberg) Term Paper

Naked Lunch (William S.Burroughs)+Naked Lunch(David Conenberg) - Term Paper Example ypewriter company, and thus enjoyed a manner of wealth and support from his family over time that allowed him to pursue literature as a career as well as to travel. However, it was Burroughs’ â€Å"street-wise† sense and knowledge of the subculture of junkies, addicts, pimps, prostitutes, petty thieves, and drug dealers that impressed the other Beats in addition to his mind. Burroughs’ first works before ‘Naked Lunch,’ entitled ‘Junky’ (1953) and ‘Queer’ (written at the same time but published in 1985) , told the story of this sordid underworld with a dry, realistic style from the perspective of a heroin addict, also including seeds of science fiction themes he would return to in later works. Burroughs life is in many ways determined by his homosexuality, and the relationship with his family that entailed in his youth. Homosexuality was repressed and an object of hate crime in America frequently during his time in Missouri, and homosexuals were discriminated upon in ways by society that fueled Burroughs’ identity as an outsider. Nevertheless, his earlier work is written in a style that is traditional and not revolutionary as in ‘Naked Lunch’ and later cut-up novels. When Ginsberg refused Burroughs’ advances sexually in the mid-fifties, Burroughs went into a type of depression that also fueled his drug addiction to new levels. Burroughs and Ginsberg had experimented with the Amazonian entheogen Yage, or Ayahuasca, as well as other psychedelics like mushrooms, acid, & peyote, as well as street drugs like pot, heroin, amphetamines, speed, and cocaine. (Burroughs & Ginsberg, 2001) The drugged state of massive hallucinations is a theme that drives t he majority of Burroughs’ work, as he seeks to express in â€Å"Naked Lunch† and other books a theory of mind and an expanded sense of self that he experienced himself in altered states of consciousness as well as the desperate and self-loathing states of despair. â€Å"There is no line between the real