![]() ![]() It is a revelation which will please nobody and may spoil a few appetites, but it has to be made, though few have the courage to make it. The meat on the end of every fork is revealed as the guts and blood of our fellow-men. We’re all sitting grinning at a ghastly meal which he suddenly shows us to be cannibalistic. ![]() The obscenity is not of Mr Burroughs’s devising: it is there in the world outside. This, God help us, is no “Fanny Hill” or “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” It is a picture of hell, and hell is not corrupting. What they will find, on the other hand, is a palimpsest of obscenity so emetic that no amount of casuistry will be able to justify a charge of inflammation and corruption. From the title of Mr Burroughs’s masterpiece they will be led to expect something illicitly agapoid, a sort of phallic Laocoön, and they will be disappointed. It’s amazing how little is needed to slake the thirst of the pornography-hounds, the prurient sniggerers, the protectors of public morals. THE NAKED LUNCH, by William Burroughs (Calder, 42s). ![]()
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