psychotic reactions and carburetor dung.cowboyheroMarch 18 2009, 03:07:56 UTC
Being from East County is no excuse. Lester Bangs was born in Escondido (in the 1940s, no less) and grew up in El Cajon and wrote about music better than anyone before or since. Nobody has ever done it with as much verve and life as Lester Bangs did.
I've never read a book I didn't like. I don't know if that speaks more to my open-mindedness or my impeccable taste. Probably both. I've read Naked Lunch. I thought it was ballsy and far-out. Doesn't need to be grounded. It's a book. Doesn't need to be verisimilitude with the real world. They don't exist in the same place. The book was not my favorite, not by a long shot, but I found things to admire in it. As far as writers who could be called "beautiful messes" go, I think there are much better, but Naked Lunch isn't terrible. I guess I feel that nearly every book I've read has had a gem in it, at least one, and that one gem was worth it, even if the rest was garbage.
I watched the movie Naked Lunch and I was mostly like "what is this even supposed to be about" the whole time. See, I didn't even read it, I watched the movie.
i know it's supposed to be a mosaic of... things? but that's because i was like "what the FUCK?!" & googled what other people had said about this book. & i still can't appreciate it. i liked the introduction that burroughs wrote when he was off heroin more than what i've read of the book so far because his introduction was more coherent & it was like "soooo, yeah guys, i was tooootally out of my mind & high on junk when i wrote this & i don't even remember writing it, so uh....? heroin sucks!"
Naked Lunch and I do not get along. At all. So poorly, in fact, that I abandoned it after about ten pages. It's been smashed into a corner of my book case with Tropic of Cancer because that book sucks too.
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I've never read a book I didn't like. I don't know if that speaks more to my open-mindedness or my impeccable taste. Probably both. I've read Naked Lunch. I thought it was ballsy and far-out. Doesn't need to be grounded. It's a book. Doesn't need to be verisimilitude with the real world. They don't exist in the same place. The book was not my favorite, not by a long shot, but I found things to admire in it. As far as writers who could be called "beautiful messes" go, I think there are much better, but Naked Lunch isn't terrible. I guess I feel that nearly every book I've read has had a gem in it, at least one, and that one gem was worth it, even if the rest was garbage.
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also: i'm a little drunk.
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i know it's supposed to be a mosaic of... things? but that's because i was like "what the FUCK?!" & googled what other people had said about this book. & i still can't appreciate it. i liked the introduction that burroughs wrote when he was off heroin more than what i've read of the book so far because his introduction was more coherent & it was like "soooo, yeah guys, i was tooootally out of my mind & high on junk when i wrote this & i don't even remember writing it, so uh....? heroin sucks!"
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