The Restored Text

By William S. Burroughs

Don’t expect to get too much from this review. I am going to have to read it over again. My problem is that I read before bed and my reading often leads seamlessly into my sleep; so that unless it makes it all the way into my dreams, I forget a lot of what I read.

I chose Naked Lunch because I had never read Burroughs until now. I came to him, backwards in time from Electric Cool Aide Acid Tests, and Hell’s Angles to Jack Kerouac (whom I discovered by way of 10,000 Maniacs.) I have been enjoying Kerouac for a few years and thought I should expand into the Beat writers more generally.

I had also seen the film for Naked Lunch, which I also do not remember much of, but for non-sleep related reasons. I do remember it was weird, paranoid, and featured large insects. Will have to watch that again as well.

This is the “Restored Text.” and according to the supplements Burroughs himself did not remember writing portions of it, so I don’t feel too bad. It has no real narrative, but paints a phantasmagorical, paranoiac, impressionistic series of scenes that link very loosely together through different realities and a few recurring characters. Burroughs has a similar poetic ability to turn flowing phrases as Kerouac, but in a way that is much more disturbed, dark, and raw. In Short, it is a very readable kind of nightmare.

He apparently wrote it while in the throws of heroin addiction and withdrawal. While the author does not remember some of it, Alan Ginsberg helped to edit and piece it together. There were several different editions that included or excluded various parts and the restore text is based on one of those editions, including all his original spelling errors and with the missing and supplemental portions included at the end.