Your Reputation Precedes You: A Reception Study of &lt;em&gt;Naked Lunch&lt;/em&gt;

Wilson, Meagan

doi:10.2979/jmodelite.35.2.98

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Scholars discuss the case predominantly in terms of a final victory for artistic and literary freedom of expression and the changes it brought to the literary market in general (de Grazia 1993;Whiting 2006;Glass 2013). Others stress the fact that censorship incites interest and discourse, rather than suppressing it (Wilson 2012). I would like to approach the case of Naked Lunch from a different angle and argue that the obscenity trial not only helped establish its literary prestige and by extension that of Burroughs's previous work, but affirmed its claim to be a novel.…”

Section: The Case Of Naked Lunchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Literary Prestige of Censorship: The Case of Naked Lunch

Majewska

2023

Authorship

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By tracing the publication history of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, this article shows how the gate-keeping mechanism of censorship can facilitate literary prestige. The release of the Grove Press edition of Naked Lunch in 1966 after two obscenity trials marked the end of complete literary censorship in the US and was a crucial step towards the canonization of underground authors. By making it necessary to argue on behalf of the text’s form, the obscenity trials helped in framing Burroughs’s arguably “formless” text as both a coherent work and a work of high literary merit. The article offers a detailed account of the enabling role of censorship in the case of Naked Lunch, which consisted not only in generating the interest of underground publishers (Olympia Press in Paris and Grove Press in the US) but also in helping Burroughs’s formless, fragmented text take shape and as a novel.

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Section: The Case Of Naked Lunchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Literary Prestige of Censorship: The Case of Naked Lunch

Majewska

2023

Authorship

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“…Shock-tactic obscenity was among the heterodox stylistic elements that they used in constructing their unconventional literary style (Stephenson, 1990;Lee, 1996;Newhouse, 2000;Russell, 2002). Similarly, Burroughs used obscenity in his works, which is evidenced by the obscenity court case against Naked Lunch that he faced in the U.S. in 1962 (Wilson, 2012) and The Soft Machine court case that the Sancı and Sertabiboğlu faced in Turkey in 2011. Furthermore, he is known to use such techniques as fragmentation and cut-up to create non-linear and experimental narratives in his works (Lydenberg, 1978;Houen, 2006;Wilson, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%