Naked Lunch Review

Review of Naked Lunch (1991) by screenqueeen: 👍 4/5

HOOPTOBER 9.0 21/32

Writing is temperamental and the act of turning focus on the craft makes the topic do weird & unexpected things. Kind of like atoms that seem to sense when they're being observed and behave differently because of it. There's an underhanded way writers talk about writing with other writers, short of ending their sentences with a smirk, a nod, and a euphemistic "...you know," addressing their finer approaches to the written word often getting a little too close for comfort. It's then when a friendly discussion about writing can border on hostile intent, like two secret agents on either warring side passing messages in bottles from the trenches.

NAKED LUNCH has all of that but Bill is caught off guard by his initiation, stumbling into his own half-baked expedition gaining confidence from some offscreen source. Doesn't matter where it comes from as long as he has it. But when he finds someone else who has it too it's spy vs. spy, although it isn't exactly that he doesn't know who to trust, the question is who should he trust the least? It's a fascinating top layer over something more provocative and inherently sinister, like the very existence of sexual preference being inarguably political by those who vehemently disagree with any mode of existence beyond their own.