Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Naked Lunch: The Restored Text by William S. Burroughs

5 reviews

ed_moore's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.5

Burroughs’ ‘Naked Lunch’ is an exploration of the drug addiction problem plaguing 1960’s America, written by an author recently recovered from 15 years of addiction. It is told primarily through a series of tangled vignettes which mixed with the nature of depicting addiction and hallucination the story is extremely difficult to follow. Instead you are just forced to take in snippets of extremely uncomfortable text to read. 

I came so close to DNF’ing this, and I never do let myself DNF books, that being the only reason I pushed through. Burroughs claimed in his afterword that the goal of the book alongside depicting the American junk scene was to criticise the capital punishment system in America and question why addiction is frowned upon more than such, though both are criticised. To me, it didn’t read like this. It was just constant exposure to awful scenes of rape, murder, gang rape, child rape, violent rape. It was just a horrific pornographic book on a drug high which had no sympathy or remorse for the topics it was describing, handled them crudely with no respect and didn’t even particularly condemn such. The scenes were persistent and quiet graphic too so it was just consistently uncomfortable and sickening to read. 

Rape being the prominent unsettling element of the book, it was not the only one. It was also extremely sexist, racist and would frequently discuss the concept of hypnotising the homosexuality out of someone and was blatantly crude and homophobic throughout. It really ticked every box on the type of person you don’t want to be.

I didn’t take anything positive from ‘Naked Lunch’ at all and hated it from the first chapter. If I was brave enough to DNF a book this would’ve absolutely been the first.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Murder, and Sexual harassment

joshgroven's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Excrement, Medical trauma, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

moranguinhos's review against another edition

challenging dark funny fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

even in the annotated version there were so many words i had to google. half were drugs & the other half were sex acts. wild vacation read

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Incest, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Torture, Violence, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, and Murder

madisontoth's review against another edition

challenging funny slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

i think this book changed my life. i’ve never read anything like this before in my life and it was so fucking fun!! i’m in love with burroughs’ writing style and every single other book i’ve read after this has just fallen flat. there’s literally nothing like this.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Drug abuse, Drug use, Rape, Sexual assault, Torture, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, and Medical trauma

lain_darko's review against another edition

challenging dark funny slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Cursing, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Homophobia, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Excrement, Vomit, Antisemitism, Medical content, Murder, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis