Wow. What an experience. And honestly, I think “experience” is a better word than simply referring to this as “reading a book”. This book is famous for having an unusual style similar to stream of consciousness. The writing skips around, the narrator becomes distracted, and there’s no obvious plot. For that reason, it’s not a “book” in the normal sense. In fact, considering it was based off of real events in the authors life, it reads more like an experimental journal of sorts. The story, or lack there of, revolves around a narrator who does drugs and moves from city to city trying new drugs and making new friends. The style of writing is very trippy and gives you a slight feeling of doing drugs yourself. However, while this book broke record ground with some of the things that it said in its time (including descriptions of gay sex and violence and drug use) and the way in which it was written, I think it is honestly overrated. It was revolutionary in its time but it strikes me as very experimental and lacking deep substance beyond the obvious trippy quality. It is unsurprising to me that there is an existing stereotype of seemingly literary men that discount feminist writing or minority viewpoints and lean towards the writings of certain men, including Bukowski and this writer, William Burroughs. There is a definite similarity between the poetry of Bukowski and Naked Lunch. Both pieces of writing seem unafraid to say what they want to say and seem to discount the viewpoints of others in favor of focusing solely on their own experiences. Both also rely on experiences or feelings provided by a particular substance or the influence of said substance-in Bukowski‘s case it was alcohol, and William Burroughs case it is drugs. If you are interested in stream of consciousness writing or, alternatively, if you are interested in writing that involves drug use, I think this is a good choice for you. However, if you are someone who might be disturbed by extremely offensive language, including slurs against gay people and racial slurs, then I would avoid this book. Overall, I’m glad I read it so that I have knowledge of it and can use it as a point of reference, but I will probably never read it again as it is just not for me.