It's pretty much part of the job description that as an English student you must devour books, dissect them and compartmentalise them into your own psyche. I think I can say that this is quite an accurate description of myself, books give me the best kind of shivers. However, as one develops both as a person and as a student, there are certain books that are great to re-visit with a greater understanding of the context and an increased perceptivity. There are also some books that once re-visited, are somewhat desecrated and cannot be held up to the light anymore without seeing the gaping flaws within them.
A year and a half ago, I fell in love with the Beat Generation. I still have a book of Allen Ginsberg poetry with every line analysed in painstaking detail, I would listen to Jack Kerouac's haikus night after night, trying to create my own that matched the style of his cultural appropriation. My DVDs of Howl and Kill Your Darlings are lovingly scratched due to over-use. As a naïve 16 year old, I was nothing like the twisted cynic I am today: I loved the call to revolution, the controversy and the intimacy between them that was felt deeply within their poetry.
Fast-forward to the present and after months of re-reading and cramming for university interviews, making sure I knew all the books on the English Lit spec back-to-front and generally not having a great deal of time to read for fun - I decided I'd re-visit my old friends and start reading William S Burroughs' Naked Lunch.
Honestly, so disappointing. After basically unmasking Allen Ginsberg as a phoney for coursework, I knew that I wouldn't hold the Beats in such high esteem ever again, but I was hoping to at least enjoy the book despite this. I must say, it's very clever in some respects. Very clever that a book explicitly about drug abuse can give the impression of taking you on one big trip due to the lack of any coherent structure or sometimes even syntax. Whether deliberate or not, it's the one positive I can take out of the book.
Unfortunately, its structural brilliance does not make up for the lack of any coherent plot or character development. Though it can be said that this is in-keeping with the mood of the book itself, it feels like laziness to me. Laziness or a simple desire to be renowned for being as outrageously controversial as possible, without any concessions but simple notoriety. Therefore one must question the irony of a sub-culture that so opposes capitalism, consumerism and materialism being so quick to write for capitalist gains.
The book is supposed to be a sort of terror-filled, dystopian nightmare, recounting the world's vices and repressions and exploring how they would function on a mass scale. Unfortunately, it feels as though Burroughs runs out of ideas a quarter of the way through and therefore resorts to repeating himself and his characterisation despite having one of the least restrictive writing styles I've ever come across. The book feels like controversy for controversy's sake but has little intrinsic merit, it's sort of tainted my judgement of te Beats as a whole and that makes me really sad.
Sure I can still read On The Road or Pull My Daisy and enjoy the stylistic features and political commentary buried within their works, unfortunately I can't help feeling in the back of my mind that not a single one of them can honestly say they stand by their convictions.
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