716: The Kerouac Project of Orlando Book Club Discussion of William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (with Matt Peters)!
episode
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
1h 12m
3 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the purpose of this episode and who are the hosts?
Welcome to The Drunken Odyssey with John King, a podcast about the writing life.
Tell us, oh muse, about a man whose mind and career has careened far and wide and upside down.
flow into the very mouth of time and more than a few bottles a man who actually owns a typewriter and perhaps even a soul and now your host john king
Welcome to episode 716 of the World's Greatest Creative Writing Podcast. On today's show, Matt Peters and I complete our discussion of William S. Burroughs' first quartet of manuscripts as part of the Kerouac Project of Orlando Book Club. Today's installment, at long last, Naked Lunch. Matthew may return to the club someday to talk about more Beat Generation books in the fuzzy future. But as the book club will switch to poetry for a while after this, Matthew shrewdly plans to absent himself from those convos, he being verse averse. Matt and I did have this dialogue in The Kerouac Project of Orlando, the historic location where Jack Kerouac lived when On the Road was published and where he wrote his follow-up book, The Dharma Bombs, which I find to be a stronger book than On the Road, for those of you keeping track of my perhaps insignificant opinions at home.
Matt and I didn't have any guests there, as the house was in preparation for its emergency renovations. If you'd like to learn more about the Kerouac Project's residency program and its fundraising efforts, you can learn more in this week's show notes. What I have enjoyed about these Burroughs investigations is that they combine both the wonder of creativity and storytelling with the thorny problems of academic discourse. As always on this show, we lean in favor of the direction of creativity, not because academic discourse is wrong, but because the spirit of creative writing requires a much different mindset from academia. One can love both, but the work of creative writers needs to have its fingers in the dirt without gloves on, if you know what I mean.
Actually, I'm not sure I know what I mean. Happy belated Bloomsday and Juneteenth, everyone. And happy Pride Month. Here in Orlando, Florida, the city beautiful, we hold our largest Pride celebration in October because being out and about in June is miserable, as those who take summer vacations to Walt Disney Place can attest. All right, let's get to Williamsboro's Matt Peters and the ghost of Jack Kerouac probably getting quite frustrated with us.
Welcome back to The Care Work Project of Orlando for the fourth installment of The Care Work Project of Orlando Book Club. And today we are going to be discussing, at long last, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. My name is John King. I'm a board member of The Care Work Project of Orlando, and I'm also the host of the Drunken Odyssey podcast. And I'm joined by my good friend and publisher, Matt Peters of Beating Windward Press. Hello there.
Yeah, this has been a bit of a journey.
And your theory that reading all of these books in sequence would make Naked Lunch read differently, I think, has certainly proven true in my case. Good.
I'm glad one of my theories panned out. Since I didn't get the PhD in literature and didn't want to write the thesis, I just say stuff.
Well, in my defense, my thesis was not on Naked Lunch. Uh, as it is, I feel like when I earned my PhD, uh, my professors just saw me playing in the wilderness and they're like, I kind of know some of what you're talking about. Just make sure it makes sense. And then, you know, they yelled at me when it didn't. And then, uh, arguments ensued and then eventually it, it made sense. So they graduated me to get rid of me. I'm sure that's true of at least half of all students everywhere. So yeah, this made a lot more sense to me in my first reading and I'm going to read a little introduction here. So when I read this book in my twenties, I didn't mind that it made so little sense in terms of linear linear narrative, or even in terms of nonlinear narrative.
What has changed is that I have more skills in background to eat naked lunch with.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the purpose of this episode and who are the hosts?
0:00–11:47
2
How do John King and Matt Peters introduce Naked Lunch and the Kerouac Project?
11:47–20:00
3
What changed in the hosts’ perception of Naked Lunch after multiple readings?
20:00–29:37
4
How does the book’s unconventional structure affect its reading experience?
29:37–36:16
5
Who is Dr. Benway and what role does he play in the novel’s themes?
36:16–45:08
6
What commentary do the hosts give on the novel’s treatment of sex, drugs, and control?
45:08–53:18
7
How do the hosts discuss the lack of traditional chapters and the concept of “chunklets”?
53:18–1:02:46
8
What final thoughts and takeaways do the hosts share about Naked Lunch?
1:02:46–1:12:12
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
721: A Secret DVD Commentary for Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive (with Chad Coup)!
720: A Discussion of Sylvia Plath's Ariel with Rachael Tillman
719: A Conversation about Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce (1985) with Shawn McKee!
718: Gilbert King, Plus Laura Lee Baher and Erik Deckers Event!
715: Henry Hughes!
714: Lara Egger!