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152 Naked Lunch: The Cover Story polina MACKAY It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. —Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray P roverbially, one is not meant to judge a book by its cover. Yet, publishers, editors, and writers go to great lengths to negotiate its precise parameters. Most people would not admit to buying a book for the cover, but we operate in a world that values first impressions. The Observer’s Rachel Cook in her article, “Allow Us to Judge a Book by Its Cover,” comments, “It is pretty difficult not to get attached to certain covers, nor to resist their siren call through the fluorescent wastelands of Borders and Waterstones.” In the case of Naked Lunch, always preceded by its reputation, could the dust jacket have anything to do with buying figures or with its reception? Does the cover of the first British publication (Calder, 1964), which features a monochrome picture of Burroughs’ face with red, piercing eyes, attract or repel the consumer? Does the 2004 Spanish publication, which attempts to capture something of Naked Lunch’s sexual themes with the image of a fork dangling over a penis, lure in or scare away the Catalan-speaking reader?1 Many critics, including myself,2 have argued that Burroughs’ work assaults authorial ownership, mirrored in his claim in the introduction to Naked Lunch that he has “no precise memory of writing [it]” (199). The book’s last section addresses this lack of authorial mastery in disorganized prose H_M Ch18.indd 152 3/25/09 7:35:56 AM Naked Lunch: The Cover Story 153 that aims to disrupt an already unstable narrative: “‘Possession’ they call it. [ . . . ] As if I was usually there but subject to goof now and again. [ . . . ] This book spill off the page in all directions” (184, 191). Another significant characteristic of this section is the repetition of “I.” Even this does not suggest some superficial authorial control as the narrating I is as unhinged as its story. It mutates from “a recording instrument” to an absent entity (“I am never here”) to a limited presence (“I am always somewhere Outside”) and so forth (185). Simply, these literary strategies proffer a shape-shifting text that might collapse into meaninglessness at any moment. Although the above interpretation of Naked Lunch is valid, there is a problem with this approach particularly in terms of the metanarrative of Burroughs’ book. As Oliver Harris points out in a recent essay on The Yage Letters, this interpretive criticism draws on fables surrounding Naked Lunch, such as Burroughs’ claim that he does not remember writing it. What is needed instead is a reassessment of the manuscript’s history; as Harris argues, “recovering the original circumstances of publication is essential if Burroughs criticism is to undo what amounts to the repression of his oeuvre’s richly complex textual history.” In the place of interpretive inaccuracies , Harris offers a Social Text–theory analysis: “This theoretical model opens up descriptive potentials by bringing new material objects within the frame of analysis (physical features of the text, multiple states, etc.), as the basis for further critical interpretation” (par. 8). One such feature that deserves similar treatment, I argue, is the book’s cover. If a meaningful discussion of covers is to take place, we must reposition the literary text in culture. If one accepts that covers and other paratextual fences, such as introductions and appendixes, are part of the text’s material history, then one must also be prepared to treat the book as an object. As such, it has a place on a shelf, it decorates coffee tables, acts as a shield from the world on the train. In each case, the cover makes a statement about intellectual curiosity and about taste. By extension, covers are complex manifestations of a culture’s aesthetic choices. As Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger argue: In retrospect, the most intelligently designed covers of American books recall particular moments in our cultural memory. The designs conjure up associations of our personal and collective encounters with the groundbreaking intellectual expressions of our times. They define what we were, what we hoped to be, and sometimes, what we have become. (8–9) Alan Powers also argues that covers are modern art forms that have impacted greatly on modern fiction including the successful launch of pubH_M Ch18.indd 153 3/25/09 7:35:56 AM [3.22.181.209] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 16:31 GMT...

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