Ballardian

‘William Burroughs at his writing machine, New York, fall 1953. One of numerous, rarely seen photographs taken by Allen Ginsberg that feature in a special Gallery section of Naked Lunch@50, here Ginsberg’s Kodak Retina records a crucial moment for Burroughs, as he worked on the manuscripts of “Queer” and “Yage” before heading off towards Tangier and the writing of Naked Lunch… (Courtesy of the Allen Ginsberg Trust and Stanford University Library.)’

[In 1960] a friend of mine had come back from Paris where Naked Lunch had been published by the Olympia Press, which was a press that specialized in sort of low-grade porn, but also published what were then banned European and American classics. Henry Miller, for example, was first published in the Olympia Press. And Nabokov’s “Lolita” was first published by the Olympia Press.

Anyway, it was a rather low time for me. I had just started out as a writer. I hadn’t written my first novel. And this was the heyday of the naturalistic novel, dominated by people like C. P. Snow and Anthony Powell and so on, and I felt that maybe the novel had shot its bolt, that it was stagnating right across the board. The bourgeois novels, the so-called “Hampstead novels” seemed to dominate everything.

Then I read this little book with a green cover, and I remember I read about four or five paragraphs and I quite involuntarily leapt from my chair and cheered out loud because I knew a great writer had appeared amidst us. And I, of course, devoured the book and every Burroughs novel. I think there were about three or four then in print from Olympia Press. I knew that this man was the most important writer in the English language to have appeared since the Second World War, and that’s an opinion I haven’t changed since. It was an encouraging moment. I mean, although my writing has never been along the lines that Burroughs set out, his example was a huge encouragement to me.

J.G. Ballard, 1997.

Ballard has made no secret of his admiration for Burroughs, and for Naked Lunch in particular. Can it really be 50 years since this alien work was first unleashed? I’m still trying to imagine the shock of coming upon a book like that in 1959. And I think I know where my next holiday will be…

According to nakedlunch.org:

2009 will see the 50th Anniversary of the first edition of Naked Lunch published in Paris in July 1959 by Olympia Press, which will be celebrated by the publication of Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays, edited by Oliver Harris and Ian MacFadyen and published by Southern Illinois University Press. The book, the first ever dedicated entirely to the study of Naked Lunch, includes contributions by over twenty writers, scholars, musicians and artists, and will be launched in Paris at the University of London Institute in Paris on June 30th 2009. The Launch will include a special concert by acclaimed singer and writer Eric Andersen, a contributor to the Anniversary book.

July 1-3, 2009 — there will be concerts, readings, and performances in a club in the Latin Quarter, as well as exhibitions in homage to Burroughs and his masterpiece. An important three-day critical symposium will take place at the University of London Institute featuring an international range of scholars and writers. The celebratory events will include dérives around the city and visits to key sites including rue Git-le-Coeur, home of the old Beat Hotel, and the Musée Eugène Delacroix, the artist’s last studio and a testament to the enduring influence of Moroccan culture on generations of artists and writers.

All these events will be taking place on the left bank of Paris, only a few hundred yards from where Burroughs, fifty years earlier, completed the manuscript of Naked Lunch. In July 2009, as an homage to Burroughs’ great work, the streets of Paris are the place to be…

nakedlunch.org is a website designed to mark the occasion, a collaboration produced by Oliver Harris and Ian MacFadyen, editors of Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays, and Supervert 32C Inc., creator of the William Burroughs site RealityStudio. It promises a near-future bounty of essays, testimonials, scene-by-scene analyses, discographies and bibliographical resources. Keep an eye on it.

By the way, I never knew until recently that Bowie based Diamond Dogs on The Wild Boys. I always thought he thought he was plundering Nineteen Eighty-Four…

But then again, I don’t recall Orwell writing about dog-men with huge genitals.

..:: Previously on Ballardian:
+ ‘Get Lost’: Burroughs on Curtis
+ Bunker Tales
+ Horror Panegyric
+ William Burroughs:Preface to The Atrocity Exhibition