NAKED LUNCH is a book by the American writer William S. Burroughs. I met and spoke with Luke Carroll, the son of Paul Carroll (who published excerpts from Naked Lunch.)
The voices you hear are Tim Kinsella, Amy Cargill and Usama (photo by Kristie Alshaibi.)
From wikipedia:
The Controversy:
Naked Lunch is considered Burroughs' seminal work, and one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature. Extremely controversial in both its subject matter and its use of often 'obscene' language (something Burroughs recognized and intended), the book was banned in many regions of the United States, and was one of the most recent American books over which an obscenity trial was held. The book was banned by Boston courts in 1962 due to obscenity (notably child murder in pedophilic acts), but that decision was reversed in 1966 by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. This was the last major literary censorship battle in the U.S. The Appeals Court found the book did not violate obscenity statutes; the hearing included testimony in support of the work by Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer.
In 1959 sections of the manuscript were published in the spring 1958 edition of the University of Chicago student run publication The Chicago Review. The edition was not well received, and caused the university administration to discuss the future censorship of the Winter 1959 edition of the publication, resulting in the resignation of all but one of the editors. When the editor Paul Carroll published BIG TABLE Magazine (Issue No. 1, Spring 1959) alongside former 'Chicago Review' editor Irving Rosenthal, he was found guilty of sending obscene material through the U.S. mail for including "Ten Episodes from 'Naked Lunch'", a piece of writing the Judicial Officer for the United States Postal Service deemed "undisciplined prose, far more akin to the early work of experimental adolescents than to anything of literary merit" and initially judged it as nonmailable under the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 1461
Upon publication, Grove Press added to the book supplementary material regarding the censorship battle as well as an article written by Burroughs on the topic of drug addiction. In 2002, a "restored text" edition of Naked Lunch was published with some new and previously suppressed material added.
usama 