William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is confusing in how it shifts narrators, places, and topics without warning. There seems to be no overarching structure to the novel other than its lack of structure. There are brief one to seven word titles (I hesitate calling them titles because they are decentralized by being all lower case, right aligned, same font size as the prose, and if they were not italicized they would blend with the rest of the text) that are like a flash of “10 Days Later” on screen. The deemphasis of the titles supports the text’s desire to be seen as a visual form because it is not about the traditional form of a title being a given after a page break, a larger font size, or sectioned off with space underneath it. The deemphasized titles are a quick note that we are moving along like how we see a movie cut scenes and immediately know we are somewhere else. Burroughs uses the word “Fadeout” often that makes the novel feel like a play dimming the lights in order to change costumes and background scenery. In certain respects, this novel would flow better as a play. The heavy attention to visual detail, the spasmodic shifts in scenes, and the many characters with unique characteristics. But the play would have to be rated R for its explicit language as well as the excessive display of sex and violence. Naked Lunch is fascinated with the visual representation of the mental, from hallucinations to government experiments gone wrong.

The sex scenes, particularly with Mary, Johnny, and Mark, reminded me of Crash by J.G. Ballard because both are obsessed with sex and violence. Naked Lunch’s obsession with drugs, sex, and violence shows a side of America that is fueled by the rush, the need to have instant gratification, and does anything to fulfill this need. Crash has a narrative whereas Naked Lunch is more aptly a jumble of short stories and chunks of prose. Naked Lunch’s lack of structure worked well for it because it sets the reader in the mind of the junkie where there is no time only junk time. The removal from linear time pairs well with queer time, time that is deliberately non-linear in order to challenge the standard straight, heterosexual orientation norm. Naked Lunch has a lot of homosexual sex as well as a particular interest in sex and death by hanging. The rapid killing of people shows a disregard for life and highlights the extremity of instant gratification. People will truly do anything for the rush, even kill others and themselves for it.

Naked Lunch has tidbits of social commentary on complacency, the police state, the use of technology and science to control people, the power of the doctor, and political parties. I wondered if these pieces would work better as stand alone short stories because as part of the novel they get lost among the whirlwind of other bizarre anecdotes and snapshots of different characters.

A family member gave me a book titled, “How to Write Historical Fiction.” I haven’t written historical fiction and I don’t suppose I will, but that doesn’t mean the book is useless. Historical fiction is the genre that is the most explicit with mixing nonfiction and fiction. Nonfiction and fiction each use each other.

When I tell someone my focus is creative writing, they act like the field of nonfiction is closed to me, as though all I can write is made up stories. I find the two genres to be inseparable. My creative writing is inspired by my nonfiction life.

Even in nonfiction, there is creativity in how it is formatted, what is told, and how much is told. This is why you can have dozens of books on the same person and each book will be different even though that person’s actions and events in his/her life are the same. A nonfiction book is still told through a frame. The frame or the point of view is something that we can never escape from in storytelling, even if the story is true, because the storyteller has to make decisions of how the story is told. The most nonfiction a story can be is real life, but we still run into differences from points of view. Witnesses of a crime scene give different statements because they saw the same event from different observation points and have different interests.

Even in the wildest fiction, there are elements of real life, whether it be inanimate matter, language, or living beings. How the real life elements are changed or what is added is what makes these stories refreshing. Yet the same can be true for nonfiction with how we are surprised and fascinated by the bizarre things that are true of reality.

But for nonfiction you have to do research and fiction can be anything you come up with. Well, good creative writing also requires research in order to make the elements that are nonfiction or to make something unreal believable and place us concretely within the new world.