BURROUGHS, William. The Naked Lunch. Paris:The Olympia Press. 1959.
8vo. Publisher's green printed wrappers, title within black ornamental border, rear cover with price 1500 Francs amended with a hand-written label to '18NF'; pp. [4], 225, [5]; minor fading to spine with minimal rubbing to top and bottom; otherwise near fine.
First edition.
The Naked Lunch was William Burroughs seminal and most controversial work. His semi-biographical second novel (after Junkie) was banned in several US states, and is one of the most recent American books to undergo an obscenity trial. Using his own experiences as a drug addict, his satirical and dream-like narrative was originally written as a series of vignettes. Burroughs intended the chapters to be read in any order, and it was in fact his closest acquaintances who put the novel together into some form of (in)coherent whole. The title, Burroughs claims, was suggested by his close friend Jack Kerouac, and means “exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch – a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork”.
Although it was initially rejected by Olympia Press, it was finally published in the summer of 1959. A few months later the franc was devalued, and unsold copies of the book were re-priced. These usually come bearing an '18 NF' stamp on top of the original price, rather than having a label, as this copy demonstrates.
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