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Throughout history, there have been many pieces of American literature that have been suppressed by the government of the United States or other political institutions inside the U.S. These works of literature have ranged from existing in the forms of novels, poems, and magazine issues. The reasons that these works were suppressed, or banned, also have ranged from political, social, religious, or sexual grounds and foundations. One specific book that was repressed by judicial officials is Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. Naked Lunch was banned in areas of the United States on social grounds for its explicit and offensive content. Naked Lunch was published in Paris in 1959 and was put together from a series of William Burroughs’s notes that he composed while living in Tangier. Several of his colleagues, who included Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, and Sinclair Beilles, helped Burroughs weave together the material for the novel. They assisted him in taking a series of stories and accounts that sat all over Burroughs’s desk and floor (in random sheets of paper), and bring them together so that they could be ready for print. They were arranged in a very random order and with no narrative continuity. There was no persistent point of view and the separate episodes were not unified (Chapman, 66). These random thoughts and accounts are generally about the destructive effects of a man’s drug addictions. The addict’s fantasies and hallucinations as a result of his drug addictions are depicted throughout the novel. The names and specific effects of various drugs are detailed, as well as the details of how they are dispensed. Sexual acts are also used and described in detail by the author, in order to represent pain and misery. Burroughs uses vulgar language, and attempts to create the greatest shock effect with his vivid images of drug use, paraphernalia, and sexual encounters (Sova, 187-188). When the novel was published in Paris in 1958, it became the subject of much discussion in the U.S. and eventually became a renowned piece of work in America, even with the fact that only a small number of copies were distributed in the U.S.
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