{"id":2955,"date":"2011-01-25T17:48:45","date_gmt":"2011-01-26T01:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=2955"},"modified":"2011-01-25T20:04:58","modified_gmt":"2011-01-26T04:04:58","slug":"cronenbergs-naked-lunch-as-transreal-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/25\/cronenbergs-naked-lunch-as-transreal-sf\/","title":{"rendered":"Cronenberg’s NAKED LUNCH as Transreal SF"},"content":{"rendered":"

For whatever reason, most people don\u2019t think of William Burroughs\u2019s novel Naked Lunch <\/em>as science-fiction, but really it is. In particular, it\u2019s what I call Transreal SF, that is, a form of autobiography in which one\u2019s experiences are made more vivid by transmuting them into SFictional tropes, see for instance my talk, \u201cPower Chords, Thought Experiments, Transrealism, and Monomyths<\/a>.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n


\n[Hummingbird and Orchid by Martin Johnson Heade.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Burroughs himself often wrote admiringly about SF in his letters, and said that\u2019s what he was indeed writing. But people ignore this. Perhaps it\u2019s that so few SF works aspire to such a high literary level, or that Naked Lunch <\/em>doesn\u2019t have a straight-through plot-line. But if you look at the tropes in the book, it really is SF\u00ac\u2014aliens, imaginary drugs, telepathy, talking objects … the gang\u2019s all here.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking about the book both because Burroughs is a character in my novel-in-progress Turing & Burroughs, <\/em>and because I watched David Cronenberg\u2019s Naked Lunch <\/em>via NetFlix instant-watch last night. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What great cinematography\u2014the framing, the colors, the segues, the simple but telling effects. The acting is great too, it\u2019s understated, which is important\u2014it\u2019s easy to go over into gauche, hammy stuff when portraying legendary figures like the Beats. Judy Davis is a wonder as Joan Vollmer (called Joan Rohnert in the film), and as Jane Bowles, also called Joan in the film.<\/p>\n

And what a wonderful script. Cronenberg himself has the credit for the screenplay. You can find it online, transcribed from the movie by some fanatic, at Drew\u2019s Script-o-Rama<\/a>. The novel Naked Lunch <\/em> doesn\u2019t have a single clear plot-line that would make a movie\u2014indeed the lack of such a plot is a key artistic element of the book, and a key aspect of the mythos around the book.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For the purposes of the film, Cronenberg created what Wikipedia terms a \u201cmetatexual adaptation<\/a>.\u201d\u009d That is, he blended elements of the novel with the by-now-legendary story of Burroughs\u2019s life\u2014the shooting of his wife, the expatriate years in Tangier, typing the pages of Naked Lunch <\/em>high in his Tangier room, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg helping him assemble the manuscript. All of this material is outlined in Burroughs\u2019s letters, and in the reminiscences of his Beat friends\u2014the transreal oeuvre is blended together to produce the transreal film.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a brilliant move on Cronenberg\u2019s part to have the typewriters be alien beings. For a writer in those pre-computer days, a typewriter was an object of great mana. A partner, a friend, a tool\u2014more reliable than any computer ever is. I remember in 1982 going on a trip with nothing in my suitcase but underwear, my pink IBM Selectric typewriter and some Clash and Ramones records. And to have these machines become talking insects or alien heads is a great concept.<\/p>\n

Cronenberg made two marketing moves to enhance the film\u2019s general appeal.<\/p>\n

First of all, rather than having the main character be addicted to opiates, the Bill Lee of the movie is addicted to not-quite-real substances like cockroach-extermination-powder and the powder of the \u201cblack meat,\u201d\u009d taken from very large fresh-water Brazilian centipedes. Burroughs himself used this move in the novel\u2014rather than going on and on about heroin as he\u2019d done in Junkie<\/em>, which is a turn-off for many readers. In Naked Lunch <\/em>, the characters are obsessed with these more science-fictional drugs.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The second market-friendly move by Cronenberg\u2014which aroused the ire of some<\/a>\u2014is that he plays down his Bill Lee character\u2019s homosexuality. To some extent this fits with the Burroughs of the early 1950s. Bill was, after all, married for a time\u2014before he shot his wife. And, judging from his letters, he was always put off by overly flamboyant flaunting of one\u2019s homosexuality. One gathers from Burroughs\u2019s work that there there was a definite transition period for him in the early 1950s, and Cronenberg sets his character in the period of the transition.<\/p>\n

By time Burroughs was actually living in Tangier, he was well past the transition, constantly writing about boys in his letters, so in that sense the film is historically inaccurate. But we\u2019re not talking about true history in the movie Naked Lunch <\/em>. We\u2019re talking about attaching the images and dialog of an author\u2019s fantastic novel to a mythologized version of the author\u2019s life. And in some ways the transitional state is a good choice to use for the film. In any case the character is, as Burroughs remarked to Cronenberg re. the film, “queer enough.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I did find the ending of the movie a downer, to have Bill repeating the same dreadful mistake that he\u2019d made near the start. Cronenberg is taking off on a possibly ill-advised remark by Burroughs to the effect that if he hadn\u2019t shot Joan he might not have become a writer. That\u2019s not a place that most of us want to go.<\/p>\n

For my taste, it always a little cheap and obvious to give a novel or a movie a serious feel by using a hard, downbeat climax. What\u2019s the line? \u201cTragedy is easy, comedy is hard.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One of my favorite bits in the film is when the Burroughs character is talking to the Paul Bowles character, and the older man is telling Bill all these shocking intimate things about himself, and Bill says, \u201cI\u2019m surprised you\u2019re telling me all this,\u201d\u009d and Bowles says, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not saying it out loud. The conversation you\u2019re hearing is telepathic. You see, if you look closely, the words you\u2019re hearing don\u2019t match the motions of my lips.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

Another great bit is when Bill is passed out on the beach with, he thinks, his broken typewriter in a gunny-sack. And Jack and Allen show up to cheer him up. And Bill mumbles, \u201cA little trouble with my typewriter.\u201d\u009d And the boys look in the sack, and all that\u2019s in there is trash\u2014empty pill bottles and cans and bottles. “My typewriter.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For whatever reason, most people don\u2019t think of William Burroughs\u2019s novel Naked Lunch as science-fiction, but really it is. In particular, it\u2019s what I call Transreal SF, that is, a form of autobiography in which one\u2019s experiences are made more vivid by transmuting them into SFictional tropes, see for instance my talk, \u201cPower Chords, Thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2955"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2957,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2955\/revisions\/2957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}