“I saw it happen. Ten pounds lost in ten minutes standing with the syringe in one hand holding his pants up with the other” (9). Burroughs’ evocative image of the addict’s flesh fading away “at the first silent touch of junk” is located in a “New York hotel room” — implying some recollected scene from the 1940s — but in fact it echoes almost exactly a description of events in Paris not long before Naked Lunch’s publication.

Writing to Ginsberg on 2nd January 1959, Burroughs refers to “para-normal occurrences” involving Jacques Stern, one of the most mysterious but influential figures in Burroughs’ life at that time: “I saw Stern lose about seven pounds in ten minutes when he took a shot after being off a week. (That flesh you gain back when you kick is soft and ectoplasmic at first, and it melts literally at touch of junk.)” (Letters 405). Since ectoplasm flows freely in these early pages of Naked Lunch, the fit seems perfect. In which case, we’re left wondering why Burroughs relocated this uncanny scene of fleshly dissolution from Paris to New York — and therefore also left recognising the way biographical experience is subject to the same disorienting procedures of space-time travel as anything and anyone else in Naked Lunch…

(Text: Oliver Harris)

Thoughts about this section? Add a comment below or return to Naked Lunch: Section by Section.

 Print This Page •  Email This Page