NOTES FROM THE ORIFICE: LANGUAGE AND THE BODY

IN WILLIAM BURROUGHS

Robin Lydenberg

Among the "techniques of discovery" William Burroughs proposes in

The Job,' is the following meditation on the verb "to be":

You are an animal.You are a body. Now whateveryou may be you are not
an "animal,"you are not a "body,"becausethese are verballabels. The is
of identityalwayscarriesthe implicationof that and nothingelse, and it also
carries the assignment of permanent condition. ... I cannot be and am not
the verballabel "myself."The word BEin Englishcontains, as a viruscon-
tains, its precodedmessageof damage,the categoricalimperativeof perma-
nent condition. To be a body, to be nothingelse, to stay a body. To be an
animal, to be nothing else, to stay an animal.... Whateveryou may be
you are not the verballabels on your passportany more than you are the
word"self."So you mustbe preparedto proveat all timesthat you are what
you are not. (pp. 200-1)
In this theoretical polemic we can trace the central issues that pervade
and support Burroughs's fiction, particularlyNaked Lunch: the ques-
tion of the relationship between mind and body, and of the role of
language in that relationship; the arbitrary violence of language as
a system of naming and representation; and the possibility of an
ontology and an aesthetics based on negativity and absence. If there
is an ultimate literary goal envisioned by Burroughs, it is to escape
both the body and language, to travel in bodiless space and silence.
Burroughs perceives that such a project cannot be achieved by
abstracttheorizing that ignores the materialityof language or the body.
In the interviews in The Job he relies quite heavily on excerpts from

IDaniel Odier, The Job: Interviews with WilliamS. Burroughs (New York: Grove
Press, 1969). All further references will appear in the text as J.

Contemporary Literature XXVI, 1 0010-7484/85/0001-0055 $1.50/0

?1985 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
his fiction for concrete illustrationsof his theories. He argues and dem-
onstrates that it is only by making the word material, tangible, and
visible, by revealing the intersection of body and language, that we
can "see the enemy direct." Burroughs's fiction, therefore, is relent-
lessly literal, its narrative not just a voice but a body.
Naked Lunch is a history of voice and body, of language and
materiality. This duality is most strikingly dramatized in recurring
images and transmutations of the human orifices of mouth and anus.
Invited by the narrator to "cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection
point,"2I propose to explore the body of Burroughs'snovel by examin-
ing these sites where inside and outside, body and cosmos intersect.
I will focus first on one of the most condensed episodes in the novel,
the story of the carnival man and his talking anus. In this narrative,
anus and mouth - the centers of body and language - become a single
hole, at once an entrance and an exit.
Here is the story as Dr. Benway tells it:
"Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? . . .
"Thisass talk had a sort of gut frequency.It hit you rightdown there
like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and
it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose?
Wellthis talkinghit you rightdown there, a bubbly,thick stagnantsound,
a sound you could smell.
"Thisman workedfor a carnivalyou dig, and to start with it was like
a novelty ventriloquistact. Real funny, too, at first. He had a numberhe
called'TheBetter'Ole'that was a scream,I tell you. I forgetmost of it but
it was clever. Like, 'Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?'
"'Nah! I had to go relievemyself.'
"Aftera whilethe ass startedtalkingon its own. He would go in with-
out anythingpreparedand his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at
him every time.
"Thenit developedsort of teeth-likelittle raspy incurvinghooks and
startedeating. He thoughtthis was cute at first and built an act aroundit,
but the assholewouldeat its way throughhis pants and starttalkingon the
street,shoutingout it wantedequalrights.It wouldget drunk,too, and have
cryingjags nobody loved it and it wantedto be kissed same as any other
mouth. Finallyit talkedall the time day and night, you could hearhim for
blocks screamingat it to shut up, and beatingit with his fist, and sticking
candlesup it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: 'It's
you who will shutup in the end. Not me. Becausewe don'tneedyou around
here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.'

2William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (New York: Grove Press, 1966), p. 224. All
further references will appear in the text as NL.

56 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
 "Afterthat he beganwakingup in the morningwith a transparentjelly
like a tadpole'stail all over his mouth. Thisjelly was whatthe scientistscall
un-D.T., UndifferentiatedTissue,whichcan growinto any kindof flesh on
the humanbody. He wouldtear it off his mouthand the pieceswould stick
to his handslike burninggasolinejelly and grow there, grow anywhereon
him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealedover, and the whole head
would have amputatedspontaneous- (did you know there is a condition
occursin partsof Africaand only amongNegroeswherethe littletoe ampu-
tates spontaneously?)-exceptfor the eyes you dig. That'sone thingthe ass-
hole couldn'tdo was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connectionswere
blockedand infiltratedand atrophiedso the braincouldn'tgive ordersany
more. It was trappedin the skull, sealedoff. For a whileyou could see the
silent, helplesssufferingof the brainbehindthe eyes, then finallythe brain
must have died, becausethe eyes went out, and there was no more feeling
in them than a crab'seye on the end of a stalk."(NL, pp. 131-33)

Dr. Benway'sdescriptionof the carnivalman's act and its repercus-

sions is simultaneously funny and frightening;beneath the Rabelaisian
joke of a talking anus lies an ominous tale of control and domina-
tion, a tale of the strugglebetween body and mind. The central weapon
of that struggle, moreover, is identified as language itself.
The immediate frame for the story is a conversation in which Dr.
Benway and Dr. Schafer discuss the possibilities for surgical improve-
ment of the body: "We could seal up nose and mouth, fill in the
stomach, make an air hole direct to the lungs where it should have
been in the first place" (NL, p. 131). This impulse of the scientific
mind to improve or correct physical nature is reflected in the title of
the carny man's routine-"The Better 'Ole." Here the improvement
is intellectual rather than physical, for in acquiring language the anus
is raised to the superior rational sphere of the mind. But in teaching
his anus to imitate a mouth, the man produces a kind of humiliation
of nature, like the degradingperformancesof monkeys or dogs dressed
in human clothing. The surgical operation proposed by Benway, the
circus performance of trained animals, and the carny man's routine
are all symptomatic of the mind's need to dominate nature and the
body.
The carnival man pursues his goal of domination in a rather
oblique manner by making a joke out of the idea of a dialogue between
ass and face, body and mind. He plays on their similarity, but bases
the comedy of his performance on their irreconcilable difference; the
joke depends on the audience's certainty that the mind is in control
all along. A closer look at the comic material itself reveals the ulterior
motive of this routine: "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?"

BURROUGHS | 57
"Nah!I had to go relievemyself."The mind feigns a removedindif-
ferenceor obliviousnessto the body, that "oldthing"whichis so far
away"downthere."The wishfulfantasybehindthe question,"areyou
still downthere,"is that the anus is gone-that it has takenits incon-
venientneeds and processesand relievedthem somewhereelse, even
fartherawaythan the otherend of the digestivetract. Fromits supe-
rior position, the mind mocks the body's weaknesses,its needs and
dependencies.
The carnyman'sattemptto establishthroughdialoguethe simi-
larity of ass and face, to performhis duality as a "relationship,"is
clearlybasedon bad faith. He is in somewaysworsethanthe medical
experimenter,for he doesn'treallywantto improvethe body, to raise
the ass to equalitywiththe face, but merelywantsto performa comic
"show"of that equalitywhichactuallyremindsus of the body'sinfe-
riority.The dialogue, as it is initiallyconceived,is actuallya mono-
logue, ventriloquyoperatingas the basicweaponof controlby means
of language.The carnyman'sjoke, therefore,masksthe seriousness
of his will to dominatethe body.
The anus dominateslanguagefunction by "talkingall the time
night and day,"reducingthe mindto brutephysicalresponse,"beat-
ing it with his fist and stickingcandlesup it." The mind degenerates
to bruteviolencein responseto the body'sinvasionof its superiorter-
ritory-its language-and the vertical hierarchy of mind over body
is transposedonto the horizontalplaneof a battlefield.The hierarchy
of poweris ultimatelyreversedin this episodewhen the anus appro-
priateslanguageentirely;the mouthgrowsclosed, the brainis sealed
off and trappedinside the skull so it can give no orders.
The fate of the carnymanis likethat of Bubu,whosetale follows
severalpages later. Bubu feeds his need to dominateby consorting
with a Latah, a strangecreatureaddictedto compulsiveservilityand
imitation.In this case, too, carnivalperformanceturnsdaemonic,for
the Latah "imitatesall his expressionsand mannerismsand simply
sucksthe personarightout of himlikea sinisterventriloquist'sdummy"
(NL, p. 141),leaving Bubu with no self and no language.Like Bubu,
the carnymancanno longerspeakfor himselfagainstthe anusbecause
he has no self left. All that remainsis the anus'sgrotesqueparody
of humanidentity-greedy, selfish,aggressive,destructive,mawkishly
sentimental("it would get drunk,too, and have cryingjags nobody
loved it"), and armedwith a diarrheticflow of words.
This anecdotechallengesthe comfortingmyththat it is language
that distinguishesman from beast, or man from his own bestiality.

58 I CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
In this confrontation of body and mind, Burroughs suggests that lan-
guage, the "humangift of tongues," is the first and easiest mental char-
acteristic for the body to imitate and annex for itself. This successful
appropriation suggests that the word has as strong, perhaps even a
stronger affinity with body than with mind. But this strange narrative
is not a parable of the triumph of body over mind. The anus can "talk
and eat and shit" but it can't see, and so it must live off the brain's
eyes like a parasitic virus. The blind needs of the anus-the physical
need to relieve itself or the emotional need to be loved-leave it
dependent on the man's eyes. Those eyes, however, are unconscious,
like the "blank, periscope eyes" of all addicts, disconnected from the
"seat of libido and emotion" (NL, p. 230). The carny man's conscious
life terminates in mindless, emotionless silence, for language only per-
sists where there is conflict and the possibility of domination. Once
the carny man is beaten into silence and the mind goes out, the anus
seems to stop talking and retreats to a blind parasitic urgency. There
is no winner here-this silence is not a freedom from language but
the silence of dead empty air, of the anus feeling blindly for the next
host to feed its parasitic hunger.
The carny man's experience, then, enacts three basic lessons: the
violence and domination inherent in the dualism of body/mind; the
use of language as a basic weapon in that struggle for supremacy; and
the inevitable outcome of the struggle in silence and death. The
apparently arbitrary madness of most of the scenes in Naked Lunch
often obscures Burroughs's consistent repetition of this basic bleak
scenario of domination and destruction. The anecdote of the carny
man stands apart from the fragmented and extravagantly farcical
dramatics which surround it by virtue of its clear, precise, almost flat
prose style. In its clarity and concreteness, it may provide us with a
blueprint for understanding the radical but consistent nature of Bur-
roughs's fiction and theory.
The carny man's story appears in a section of Naked Lunch titled
"Ordinary Men and Women," a cluster of routines that focus most
intensely on the body/mind relationship. The telegraphic urgency of
these scenes reflects the eruption of chaos in this dual structure of
human life. Burroughs populates these stories with concrete embodi-
ments of every possible imbalance of this dual system: from paralyzed
bodies numbed by the abstractions of religion and romance, to para-
lyzed minds imprisoned by the body's physical cravings.
Among the weapons that serve the tyranny of mind over body,
Burroughs accuses the rhetoric of morality and religion, and the senti-

BURROUGHS I 59
mentality of romance. In the "Prophet Hour" scene that directly pre-
cedes "Ordinary Men and Women" he exposes the carnival illusions
of religion. Burroughs personifies religion wielding its "WordHoard"
and marshalling its forces for " 'converting ... live orgones into dead
bullshit' " (NL, p. 116). A similar polemic in the form of a homo-
sexual soap opera (pp. 128-30) stresses the parasitic nature of all love.
In the later novel The Ticket ThatExploded, Burroughsdescribesmore
explicitly the disguised violence and cannibalism of "love ... romance
... stories that rip your heart out and eat it."3 Burroughs'sobjections
to religion and romance, parasitic systems of thought that feed off
and destroy the body host, are condensed in a single grim parody:
"Why so pale and wan, fair bugger? Smell of dead leeches in a rusty
tin can latch onto that live wound, suck out the body and blood and
bones of Jeeeeesus, leave him paralyzed from the waist down" (NL,
p. 126). Religion and romantic idealism talk you out of your body,
Burroughs argues, because they must devour that body to survive. A
rhetoric of abstractions becomes the parasite living off the body host.
As in the carny man episode, language again deludes and finally
devours humanity. As Burroughsadvises his readersin The Job, "leave
the old verbalgarbagebehind: God talk, priesttalk, mother talk, family
talk, love talk" (pp. 223-24).
As the tyranny of mind turns "live orgones into dead bullshit,"
the tyranny of the body turns the life energy of sex and sensory experi-
ence into the mindless mechanical responses of pure need. The organ
of need is always the orifice-mouth or anus or some vague undiffer-
entiated hole-sucking life out of a host. Like the "blind, seeking
mouth" of the junky, which "sways out on a long tube of ectoplasm,
feeling for the silent frequency of junk" (NL, p. 7), the sex addict is
alienated from his own body, his own desire. He seeks blindly the same
emotionless biological thrill as the junky: " 'He's got a prolapsed ass-
hole and when he wants to get screwed he'll pass you his ass on three
feet of in-tes-tine. ... If he's a mind to it he can drop out a piece
of gut reaches from his office clear over to Roy's Beer Place, and it
go feelin' around lookin' for a peter, just afeelin' around like a blind
worm' " (NL, pp. 126-27).
The promises made by the rhetoric of religion and romance on
the one hand, and by the rhetoricof the "Gardenof Delights"of sexual
pleasure on the other, mask the parasitism at work in these languages.

3William Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded (New York: Grove Press, 1967),
p. 6. All further references will appear in the text as TTE.

60 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
In more concrete and immediate form, Burroughslays bare this
alienationof body and mindin the experimentsof the mad scientists
who dominateNaked Lunch. Thesescientistsexplore,with inhuman
detachment,possibletechnicalimprovementsof the humanmindand
body. "Doctor 'Fingers' Schafer, the Lobotomy Kid," creates a
"Complete All American De-anxietized Man" (p. 103), who has been
givena "compactand abbreviated"humannervoussystem.Unfortu-
nately, this creaturedissolvesinto a monstrousblack centipede.Dr.
Berger'sMentalHealthHour(pp. 137-38)offersto the worldthe same
scientific miraclethat he has achievedfor the "curedhomosexual"
whose muscles now "move into place like autonomous parts of a
severedinsect,"or for the "curedwriter"who can'ttalk, " 'Of course
we can dub him.'"
Religion,drugs,and sexin NakedLuncheitheramputatethe body
or condenseit to one insatiableorgan of need, one orifice through
whichlife can be absorbed.Similarly,the scientificexperimenters
aim
at a reductionor simplificationof the humancondition:" 'Thehuman
body is scandalouslyinefficient. Insteadof a mouth and an anus to
get out of orderwhy not have one all-purposehole to eat and elimi-
nate? . . . Why not one all-purpose blob?' " (NL, p. 131). Improve-
ment is alwaysin the directionof amputationand reduction:" 'The
humanbody is filled up vit unnecessitatedparts. You can get by vit
one kidney.Vyhavetwo?' "(NL, p. 182).In NakedLunch,all surgery
is a power play, an oppressiveregulationof the body or mind, and
its purposeis clearlyto controlratherthan to liberatethe individual.
In NakedLunch,a basiccontemptfor humanlife alwaysinitiates
the impulseto improveon nature,on the body. Thiscontempt,shared
by the medicalexperimentersand the carnyman, rejectsdifference,
complexity,and changeand movesinsteadtowardreduction,simpli-
fication, and the stasis of death. The truncatedcreatureswho grope
blindly aroundNaked Lunch are dismemberedremnantsof human
life. Dehumanizedinto insects,automatons,or body parts,they have
been cut off from humanevolution, from the " 'independentspon-
taneous action' " (NL, p. 134) of individualwill.
In the body politic, as in the human body, Burroughsexposes
the hiddenviolenceof domination,paralysis,anddamageto individual
life. Therearetwo extremepoliticalfactionsin NakedLunch:the Divi-
sionists,"floodingthe planetwith 'desirablereplicas'[of themselves,]
. . suchcreaturesconstitutingan attemptto circumventprocessand
change"(NL, p. 167); and the Liquefactionists,a kind of party of
lubricitywhoseaimis the "eventualmergingof everyoneinto OneMan

BURROUGHS | 61
by a process of protoplasmic absorption" (NL, p. 146). In both cases,
what is ultimately threatened is "humanevolutionary direction of infi-
nite potentials and differentiation" (NL, p. 134). The common goal
of all political parties in Naked Lunch, whether by proliferation or
reduction, is to replace all individuality with total uniformity.
In the guise of medical progress toward simplification, in the
promises of democraticrepresentationand unity, even in the apparently
innocent form of a carnival joke, Burroughs detects the same deadly
pattern. Science, politics, the personal relations between individuals
and the individual's relation to himself, to his own body - all of these
are variations of what Burroughs calls the basic "Algebra of Need"
(NL, p. xxxix). The desire to control and dominate creates a virus para-
site: the devouring monkey who is the form of the junky's need, the
Replica imitations of the Divisionists, the One Man amoeba of the
Liquefactionists, or the aggressive and tyrannical anus of the carnival
man. These degeneratelife forms can only survive, in turn, by devour-
ing their hosts, enactingthe "renunciationof life itself, afalling towards
inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter" (NL, p. 134).
Images of amputation and death haunt the reader throughout
Naked Lunch: "trailing the colorless death smell, / afterbirth of a
witheredgrey monkey / phantom twinges of amputation"(NL, p. 234).
Such poetic echoes - and they do become a surprisinglylyricalrefrain-
are given more concrete and dramatic form in the final stages of the
carny man's struggle. He only escapes the amputation of his head
because the anus needs his eyes; nevertheless, his brain is "sealed off,"
virtually cut off from the body. This is the same sort of incision as
that made by the literal slash of the surgeon's scalpel as he frantically
performslobotomies and amputations. All of these mutilationsof body
and mind reflect the structure of binary opposition: body/mind. In
Burroughs'sliteralimagination, the slash that separatesbody and mind,
setting them in relation of competition and conflict, is as deadly as
the surgeon's knife.
Beneath the specific abuses of politics, science, or personal rela-
tions, Burroughs traces the violence of domination and control to its
insidious origin in the binary pattern of Westerndiscourse. As he warns
the reader somewhat belatedly at the end of Naked Lunch, "Gentle
Reader, The Word will leap on you with leopard man iron claws, it
will cut off fingers and toes like an opportunistland crab"(NL, p. 230).
In the context of language as in the context of the body, all binary
structures-all relationships-lead to dismemberment, amputation,
death of the organism.

62 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
 Ourlanguage,as Burroughssees it, is a systemof word locks or
mindlocks which"cantie up a civilizationfor a thousandyears."He
locates one of the most pervasiveand powerfulweaponsof language
in the "EITHER/OR"
of antithesis: "Right or wrong, physical or mental,
true or false"(J, p. 200). The conflict formulatedby this patternsets
up the conditionsfor what he calls the "wargame":"Itis alwaysyou
ORthe virus"(J, p. 202). Far from celebratingthe playful qualities
of language,Burroughsinsists on the violenceand hostilityinherent
in all games: "It'sthe old army game from here to eternity. . .. There
are no games where everybodywins"(J, p. 202).
We can see this "conflictformula"at work on a literal level in
the episodesof NakedLunch:doctorand patient,colonialistand na-
tionalist,wise man and convert,dealerandjunky, hustlerand mark,
andthe ubiquitouspair-parasiteandhost. All conflictandparasitism,
as Burroughswill insist in The Job, germinatesfirst in language:"I
have frequentlyspoken of word and image as viruses, or as acting
as viruses and this is not an allegoricalcomparison .... The is of iden-
tity is in point of fact the virus mechanism.If we can infer purpose
from behavior, then the purpose of a virus is TOSURVIVE.To survive
at any expenseto the host invaded. To be an animal, to be a body.
To be an animalbody that the viruscan invade"(J, pp. 201-2). Such
a parasitic invasion - whether biological or verbal - spells danger to
individuallife.
In orderto makethe "virusmechanism"of languagevisible,Bur-
roughsinsists alwayson the literalnessof his images:"thisis not an
allegoricalcomparison."The particularabusesof the "Isof identity"
arelaidbarein Burroughs's own inventionof namesfor his characters.
These names reflect the tendencyin Burroughs'sfiction for charac-
ters to be dominatednot just by body or mind, but more specifically
and tyrannicallyby a single organ or orifice: Willy the Disk, the
terminaljunkywhoseentirebodyhasrottedawayexceptfor the "round
diskmouth"throughwhichhe feedshis habit;"theold gash,"a mother
whose son rapes her in his attemptto "stemher word horde"(NL,
p. 40), or the elusiveprivateeye knownas ClemSnidePrivateAsshole.
In thesenames,as in the episodesin whichtheyappear,body displaces
mind, the ass displacesthe eye or face. To name, for Burroughs,is
virtuallyto obliteratehumanity,to reducethe individualto a hungry
orifice, an empty suckinghole.
The carny man episode reveals perhaps most thoroughlythe
violenceand aggressionin the act of naming.The narrativeprogresses
from the implicitepithet (man is "an asshole")to a comic perform-

BURROUGHS | 63
ance (man in a dialogue with his anus) to a literal metamorphosis (man
reduced to his own anus). The apparently innocent linguistic act of
naming leads with terrifying logic to an irreversible change of being.
While the verb "to be" paralyzes individual life within a verbal label-
"You are an animal. You are a body"-in Naked Lunch man is not
even a body, but only a body part, amputated and dehumanized. The
fate of the body, reduced by surgical amputation or parasitic absorp-
tion, is already spawned and sealed in name and image.
The pattern revealed in the names and anecdotes of Naked Lunch
-the insistent literalness, the logical progression, the condensation
or displacement of the whole by the part - is essentially the pattern
of metonymy. Metonymic name and image in Naked Lunch reveal
the violence and aggression inherent in all binary structures, but par-
ticularlyin language. Like Burroughs'smad surgeons, metonymy oper-
ates openly by reduction, appropriation, and control.
Metonymy has received a good deal of attention lately in literary
criticism,particularlyin narrativetheory,4but it is defined and analyzed
almost always in its relation to metaphor, ironically a relation of binary
opposition. In the work of Jakobson and his followers, metaphor and
metonymy have been inflated to represent contrasting ways of think-
ing and of using language. A catalogue of the characteristics asso-
ciated by critics with the two tropes yields the following pattern:
METAPHOR METONYMY

associationby similarity, associationby contiguity,

joining a pluralityof worlds movementwithin a single world
selectionand substitutionof combinationof one word with
one word for another another
mythic, symbolic literal, logical
verticalhierarchy:origin horizontallinearity;play,
and center reversibility
transcendence immanence
unity, order multiplicity,change
completeness,lyricalarrest incompleteness,temporal
or suspension urgencyand drive
4The most important critical texts would include Paul de Man's Allegories of
Reading (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979); Gerard Genette's Figures III (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1972); and David Lodge's The Modes of Modern Writing(Ithaca:
Cornell Univ. Press, 1977). All studies of metaphor and metonymy rely heavily on
Roman Jakobson's essay "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic
Disturbances" in Fundamentals of Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1956).

64 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
One can easilyrecognizethe basicelementsof Burroughs'sprosestyle
in the characteristicsassociatedwith metonymy;however,it would
be simplisticto say that metonymyis for Burroughsthe superioralter-
nativeto metaphor-metaphor is bad, thereforemetonymyis good.
Burroughsuses metonymyinstead, it would appear, as an extreme,
literal,andnakedversionof metaphor.In its extremeform, metonymy
helps Burroughsto lay barethe very abusesof word and imagethat
metaphorsimultaneouslyperformsand disguises.
It is difficultto perceivethis relationshipclearlywithoutreturn-
ing from abstracttheoryto concreteillustration-to specificexamples
of the tropesthemselves.Letus take, for example,the archetypalfigure
"manis a beast."Thisanalogynot only dominatesBurroughs's fiction,
but is also the most commonillustrationused in rhetoricaland philo-
sophicaltreatiseson metaphor.The most brilliantrealizationof this
figurein a novel can perhapsbe found at the genre'sorigins,in Cer-
vantes'switty elaborationin Don Quixoteof the metaphor"manis
an ass"(donkey).Cervantes'snovel providesa curiouspoint of com-
parisonto Burroughs'smetonymictext. In the classicaland Christian
world of Don Quixote, metaphor establishes a circular route of
recovery:you admityou area beastin orderto transcendyourbeastli-
ness. The metaphorperformsa gestureof similaritythat temporarily
bridgesthe gap betweenman and beast; but beyond the text's play
withperspectivismandreversal,it leavesthe verticalhierarchyof spirit
over flesh and the structuraldominanceof tenor over vehicleundis-
turbed.Cervantes'snovel would seemto corroboratethe association
of metaphorwith verticalhierarchyand transcendence,as proposed
in the precedinglist.
If we considermetaphorfromBurroughs'sperspective,however,
it appearsconsiderablyless innocent,its promisessomewhatsuspect.
In its most elementaryform, as Aristotlehas observed,metaphoris
a form of naming;as such, Burroughswould argue,it is a restriction
ratherthanan expansionof humanpotential.Themetaphorical process
as Wellekand Warrenhave describedit, "associationby similarity,
joininga pluralityof worlds,"5takeson in Burroughs's viewthe sinister
aspectof parasiticabsorption,like the Liquefactionists'planto merge
the entire populationinto One Man.
Behind the ingenuous democratic gesture of metaphor-the
"show"of joining or equalizingman and beast-Burroughs would
detect the irreversiblehierarchyof a Christianworld view, the ulti-
5ReneWellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, 3rd ed. (New York: Har-
court, Brace, and World, 1956), p. 195.

BURROUGHS | 65
mate supremacy of man over beast. The relationship of tenor and
vehicle, like all binary relationships, always leads to domination and
control. Burroughs makes this dynamics explicit and unavoidable in
the metonymic image. The metaphorical "man is an ass" becomes in
Burroughs's hands the metonymic "man is an asshole." Man is not
tentatively "like" an ass, but unavoidably attached to his own anus.
Metonymic "association by contiguity, movement within a single
world," to use Wellek and Warren'sdefinition again, is realized and
radicalized in the nightmare world of Naked Lunch, where the self-
enclosed "single world" of the body is even further restricted to an
alienated or amputated body part. Instead of the playful and reassur-
ing process of metaphor, Burroughs serves up only the hard cold facts
of metonymy: the carnival man is reduced to his own anus and there
is no way back from that condensation or dismemberment. There is
no recovery of meaning as we find it in metaphor, but an irrevocable
literalness. Burroughs sabotages the metaphorical bridge that unites
man and beast, mind and body, with an incision, the metonymic slash
that divides and destroys. The hierarchy and domination at work in
metaphor-where the equivocation of the "likeness"of man and beast
will allow finally for man's transcendenceof his bestiality-is laid bare
in the overt act of violence and suppression committed by metonymy.
Burroughsextends the notion of the violence of word and image-
metaphorical or metonymic-to the linguistic function of representa-
tion. Like naming, the use of language for representation, the rela-
tionship of word and world, may be accepted as basically innocent,
even unproblematic. One formula for literary representation argues
that all literature is metaphorical-the text is the vehicle, the world
is the tenor.6 Reasoning along similar lines, David Lodge describes
all drama as metaphorical because "it is recognized as a performance
... we are spectators not of reality but of a conventionalized model
of reality."7 To rephrase this in less innocent terms, one might argue
that whether on stage or on the written page, mimetic representation
is a performance that displaces and undercuts reality with the equivo-

6See, for example, Paul Ricoeur's "Metaphor and the Main Problem of Her-
meneutics," New Literary History, 6, No. 1 (Autumn 1974), pp. 95-110.
7DavidLodge, p. 83. In his otherwiseprovocative and ambitious attempt to create
a typology of literary styles based on metaphor and metonymy, Lodge mistakenly
identifies Burroughs as a metaphorical writer and then finds him to be a failure in
that category. Since I have written in some detail about Lodge's analysis of Naked
Lunch (in "Beyond Good and Evil: 'How-To' Read Naked Lunch," The Review of
Contemporary Fiction, 4, No. 1 [Spring 1984], pp. 75-85), I draw here only on his
more general discussion of metaphoric and metonymic modes.

66 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
cation of metaphorical "likeness." Burroughs, of course, will bring
us relentlessly back to literalness, to the body, in order to make visible
the threat lurking behind all linguistic representation.Again, the domi-
nant pattern here-of literalness and displacement-is metonymic.
Performance and imitation are never innocent in Naked Lunch.
As we saw in the fates of the carny man and Bubu, performance even-
tually replaceslife itself, the imitation absorbs and devours the original.
The junky is for Burroughsthe archetypal"performer"trying to "main-
tain a human form" (NL, p. xxxviii) despite the monkey on his back.
The human form he maintains, however, is a sham, an empty cello-
phane skin subject to collapse in a vacuum. The junky is " 'without
body and without feeling'" (NL, p. 24); he reports "'absence of
cerebralevent' " (NL, p. 231). Like Bubu and the carny man, the junky
has no self left; he has only the empty and artificial imitation of a
self projected by his blind need. On a verbal level, metonymy is a
similar misrepresentationin which the part masqueradesas the whole.
It becomes a kind of truncated double, like Gogol's "The Nose," chal-
lenging and finally appropriatingthe authority and identity of the indi-
vidual. In Naked Lunch, the part never merely "stands for" the whole,
but displaces and devours it.
Representation is never wholesome in Burroughs's fiction, and
he perceives it as a lethal symbiosis that reduces the world to a "copy
planet," a false and lifeless imitation. In this ersatz universe, language
is never to be trusted. All documents are "forgeries by nature" (J, p.
36) and all "history is fiction."8 A knowing voice warns the reader
in Nova Express: "You notice something is sucking all the flavor out
of food the pleasure out of sex the color out of everything in sight?"
(p. 70). The mysterious force at work here is representation itself, the
alien and empty signifier absorbing the life out of the signified. For
Burroughs, the relationship of word and world is not only arbitrary
but destructive, carrying within it the violence of all language func-
tions, of all binary structures.
Burroughs traces the parasitic threat at work in naming and rep-
resentation beyond these functions to the very structure of Western
syllabic language, to the simplest mechanics of the reading process:
"If I hold up a sign with the word 'ROSE'written on it, and you read
that sign, you will be forced to repeat the word 'ROSE'to yourself. ....
A syllabic language forces you to verbalize in auditory patterns. .... It
is precisely these automatic reactions to words themselves that enable
8William Burroughs, Nova Express (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 13. All
further references will appear in the text as NE.

BURROUGHS [ 67
those who manipulate words to control thought on a mass scale" (J,
p. 59). In other words, language operates like a mass ventriloquy act
in which we are all dummies.
As we saw in the episode of the carny man, the individual is
perhaps most taken in and taken over by language when he thinks
he is manipulating it for his own purposes -he is never so much the
dummy as when he plays the ventriloquist.All communication through
language- Burroughscalls it "one way telepathic broadcast"or "Send-
ing"-is revealed to be terminal for the human individual. Like any
junky, the word addict or Sender is eventually devoured by his own
need, the need to dominate: " 'A telepathic sender has to send all the
time. He can never receive, because if he receives that means some-
one else has feelings of his own could louse up his continuity. The
sender has to send all the time, but he can't ever recharge himself by
contact. Sooner or later he's got no feelings to send.... Finally the
screen goes dead .... The Sender has turned into a huge centipede' "
(NL, p. 163; second ellipsis in original). The Sender, as Burroughs
explains, is no longer a human individual but "the Human Virus."
Born with blank disks for eyes, the Sender's presence is traced
to a sucking emptiness, the "low pressure area"generated by his para-
sitic need. Similarly, the blind sucking orifice to which the carny man
is reduced dramatizes the dead end to which domination through lan-
guage brings all individual life. The site of language-sending, repre-
senting, naming- is always blind and always empty. It is language that
robs us of individual life and of the world itself, creating a "grey veil
between you and what you saw or more often did not see" (TTE,
p. 209). Words subject us to a "continual barrage of images makes
haze over everything, like walking around in smog" (J, p. 34).
This haze of language is portrayedgeographicallyin Naked Lunch
in the narrative'scross-country itinerarythrough the maze of garbage,
boredom, and decay that Burroughs calls "U.S. drag": "You can't see
it, you don't know where it comes from" (NL, p. 12). The characters'
aimless and dazed wanderings, however, come into focus unexpectedly
in moments of intense clarity:
Somethingfallsoff you whenyou crossthe borderinto Mexico,andsuddenly
the landscapehits you straightwith nothingbetweenyou and it, desertand
mountainsand vultures;little wheelingspecksand othersso close you can
hearwingscut the air (a dryhuskingsound), and whenthey spot something
they pour out of the blue sky . . . down in a black funnel. (NL, p. 14)

Here is the direct naked seeing to which Burroughs's prose aspires -

and what it sees is no comforting vision of transcendence but a harsh

68 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
and ugly mosaicof aggression,violence,life feedingoff life, and life
falling to icy death "throughair clear as glycerine."
To breakthroughblindnessto clearvision is, for Burroughs,to
breakthroughthe mindlocks and wordlocks of language.In the tele-
graphicstyle of his laterfiction, he announces" 'Crabwordfalling-
Virusphoto falling- Breakthroughin GreyRoom-' " (NE, p. 82).
Sucha breakthroughinvolvesreplacingautomaticverbalization,the
blindproseof euphemism,and the continuityof compulsiveSending
with the totallyconsciousmanipulationof the word. In orderto con-
trol languageat will, the word mustbe madevisibleand tangible.As
in the tale of the carny man, languageis displaced,turned over to
the body and made concrete:"'This ass talk had a sort of gut fre-
quency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. ... this talking
hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnantsound, a sound
you could smell' " (NL, p. 132). Once we are able to see and touch
and even smellthe word, its invisiblepoweris undermined.Oncethe
wordis thusgivenbody, it can be expelledor cut loose fromthe body.
In the novels writtenafter Naked Lunch, Burroughsproposes
quite a few practicalsuggestionsas to how this liberationmight be
accomplishedwith tape recorders:"Spliceyour body soundsin with
anybodyor anything.Starta tapewormclubandexchangebodysound
tapes. Feel rightout into your nabor'sintestinesand help him digest
his food. Communicationmust become total and conscious before
we can stop it" (TTE, pp. 50-51). During the sixties, Burroughs
extendedthe cut-upexperimentsdone in paintingby Brion Gysinto
his own writing,proposingthe use of taperecordingsandhieroglyphic
or cinematicimagesto breakthroughthe limits of languageand the
printedpage. He envisioneda total communicationthat would allow
severalvoicesto be transmittedsimultaneously,creatinginfinitevaria-
tions by "echoes,speedups,slowdowns,"techniquesdesignedto cut
up the irreversiblecontinuityof conventionalproseandthe autonomy
of the "Sender."He inventsa writingmachinethat "shiftsone half
one text and half the other througha page frameon conveyorbelts
... Shakespeare, Rimbaud, etc. permutating through page frames
in constantlychangingjuxtaposition"(TTE,p. 65). The cut-up,fold-
in methodof compositionBurroughstemporarilyadoptedis an exten-
sion of the violence of metonymyas we found it in the fate of the
body and the oppressionof image in Naked Lunch. As he explains
in The TicketThatExploded,"Itwould seemthat a techniquea tool
is good or bad accordingto who usesit and for whatpurposes"(p. 21).
Burroughs'spurpose,as he statesit, is the liberationratherthan the
restrictionof human potential.

BURROUGHS | 69
 The precoded messages of language operate on the individualwith
monotonous and tyrannical predictability, like the "Regulator
Gimmick" on some cosmic adding machine: "no matter how you jerk
the handle result is always the same for given co-ordinates" (NL,
p. xlviii). Burroughs replaces this mathematical determinism with the
arbitrarysurgeon'sslash: "Therazor inside, sir- Jerk the handle"(NE,
p. 73). So the predetermined coordinates of Western discourse are
shifted and shuffled; the adding machine ruled by a "Regulator
Gimmick"is traded in for a vast subtraction machine9ruled by chance
and discontinuity. Naked Lunch begins with the flourish of a razor
that has a significant history: "The razor belonged to a man named
Occam and he was not a scar collector" (p. xlvi). Behind this flourish
lies Burroughs's implicit claim that by the random violence of
metonymy and later of the cut-up technique, he will liberatethe reader
from the mechanical fixity and stasis of conventional language.
The cut-up method is a kind of ritual dismemberment. Gerard-
Georges Lemaire has described the dependence of "the Burroughs
machine" on "that pair of scissors, on the analytical gesture trans-
formed into a movement castratingthe continuum of meaning."10The
"analyticalgesture"of metaphor and mimesis-the sorting out of simi-
larity and difference, the translation of work into world- is replaced
by the clarity and violent literalnessof metonymy. Like the metonymic
image, the work of Burroughs's narrative scissors reveals what is
hidden; the cut-up text makes concrete and literal what he sees as the
true nature of all language and verbal thought: "Like a moving film
the flow of thoughts seems to be continuous while actuallythe thoughts
flow stop change and flow again. At the point where one flow stops
there is a split second hiatus. The new way of thinking grows in this
hiatus between thoughts" (J, p. 21). Burroughs's cut-up technique
reveals these gaps, interstices, holes that are compulsively filled in and
covered over by the conventional metaphoric text. As he asserts in
The Third Mind, "All writing is in fact cut-ups" (p. 32).
In place of the order and hierarchyimposed by conventional lan-
guage, Burroughs produces a text that functions by horizontal juxta-
position and discontinuity, creating a network of infinite and shift-
ing intersections. When rhetoricians speak of metonymic juxtaposi-
tions they have in mind the contiguity of objects in the real world,

9See Ihab Hassan, "The SubtractingMachine: The Work of William Burroughs,"

Critique, 6, No. 1 (Spring 1963), pp. 4-23.
1?WilliamBurroughs, The Third Mind (New York: Viking Press, 1978), p. 13.
Further references will appear in the text as TM.

70 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
or the associationof conceptsin our culturalandlinguisticcodes. Bur-
roughs'saim is preciselyto cut these predeterminedlines of associa-
tion or contiguity.In the cut-uptext, the only contiguityis thatcreated
in the text itself by randomjuxtaposition-an infinite ratherthan a
limited set of associations. Burroughsreasonsthat by splicing and
smudginglanguageas on a tape recording,words will be separated
from their conventionalmeaningsand the ugly truth will spurt out
from the "spacebetween."So he alwayslooks to the space between
things,to the gapsthroughwhichclearvisionmightpenetrate.As one
of his charactersin NakedLunchsuggests," 'Thewordcannotbe ex-
pressed direct. ... It can perhaps be indicated by mosaic of juxta-
position like articlesabandonedin a hotel drawer,definedby nega-
tives and absence' " (NL, p. 116).
Burroughs'suse of the central"manis a beast"analogyin Naked
Lunchdrawsour attentionnot so muchto the natureof manor beast,
mind or body, as to the space created between them-by the "is of
identity."As we saw in Burroughs'spolemicon the verb"to be"with
whichI began,he discoversin thisverbalpointof intersectionthenaked
truthabout man'srelationshipto language:the coercionand limita-
tion imposedby name, image, and representation.It is no accident
that the most crucialepisodes in Naked Lunch take place in a geo-
graphicalspacecalled Interzone.No balance,no hierarchyof values
operatesin Interzone,for it is the psychologicallandscapeof the addict
exposedto his need, consciousof his need,but not yet freeof it. Inter-
zone is a state of flux betweenwill and the absenceof will;1 it is a
spaceof confusionandcontradiction,but a spacewherethe airis clear
and you can "see what you eat."
Behindthe metonymicimageof the bodyreducedto a singlesuck-
ing orifice, behindthe bleakvision of humanlife as the monotonous
"lunchthreadfrommouthto ass allthe daysof ouryears"(NL, p. 230),
we may detect in Burroughs'sfiction the survivalof the possibility
of evolutionand change. Burroughsunderminesthe one-waydirec-
tion of reductionor condensation-"Junk is concentratedimage"(NE,
p. 49)-with the reversibilityand flexibilityof the cut-up text: "we
can attenuateor concentratex by takingout or addingelementsand
feedingback into the machinefactorswe wish to concentrate"(NE,
p. 78). Insteadof condensingliquefactioninto a single image, Bur-
roughscreatesa randomand infinitevarietyof implosionsand explo-
sions,the pulsingrhythmof life itself. Medicalexperimenters in Naked
I'Frank D. McConnell, "William Burroughs and the Literature of Addiction,"
Massachusetts Review, 8, No. 4 (Autumn 1967), 669-70.

BURROUGHS I 71
Lunch amuse themselvesby imaginingways of arrestingor cutting
off the life cycleof "tensiondischargerest"at the momentof extreme
tension:" 'whatwouldbe resultof administering curareplusironlung
during acute mania? the
Possibly subject, unable to dischargehis ten-
sions in motor activity,would succumbon the spot like a junglerat.
Interestingcause of death, what?'" (NL, p. 131). In the cut-uptext,
on the contrary,condensationalwaysleadsto explosion,dissemination,
expansion,"tensiondischargerest."Burroughsmakescertainthat the
cycle is alwaysrecharged:"Youin the Wordand the Wordin You is
a word-lock .... the word-lock that is You. Stop. Change. Start again.
Lightenyour own life sentence"(TM, p. 61).
Withinthe contextof Burroughs'scut-upwriting,the metonymic
incisionis naturaland harmless:"Youcan cut into Naked Lunch at
I have writtenmany prefaces. They atrophy
any intersectionpoint. ...
and amputatespontaneous"(NL, p. 224; ellipsisin original).As the
"AtrophiedPreface"that appearsprovocativelyat the conclusionof
his novel demonstrates,the cut-uptext is imperviousto amputation
becauseit is a nonhierarchicalnetwork.Its partsare interchangeable
and reversible:"TheWord ... can be had in any order. . . . This book
spilloff the pagein all directions"(NL, p. 229). In short,Burroughs's
text is not addictedto its own image.
In his encounterwith Burroughs'swriting,therefore,a readeris
offereda curefor all formsof addiction.He experiencesa systematic
programof immunizationby exposure-exposure to the repression
of all binaryoppositions(especiallythatof body/mind),to the restric-
tions of namingand representation,to the coercionand violenceof
all word and image. Overexposureto the word and to the body has
a liberatingandpurgativeeffect: "themoreyou runthe tapesthrough
and cut them up the less power they will have"(TTE, p. 217).
Burroughs's fictionis full of devouringholes-the physicalorifices
that feedthe body'saddictionsandthe weakspotscreatedby ourneed
for "emotion'soxygen"(NE, p. 65). Likethe low pressureareavacuum
that betraysthe presenceof the wordvirus-empty languagesucking
the life out of all it represents- theseholesdevouranddestroyhuman
life. The strategyof resistanceof Burroughs'smetonymicand cut-up
proseis to turnthe enemy'sweaponsagainstitself, to use these same
orificesas the meansfor escape.The only hope for the carnivalman
tyrannizedby his anus, for the compulsiveverbalizertyrannizedby
the word, is to abandonbody and word entirely,to leave the anus
talkingto itself as he escapesthroughit to extended"levelsof experi-

72 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
ence"of life in space and silence:"Throughthese orificestransmute
your body .... The way OUTis the way IN" (NL, p. 229).12

Boston College

'2Since the completion of this essay I have read with great interest Serge Grun-
berg's "A la recherche d'un corps": Langage et silence dans I'oeuvre de William S.
Burroughs (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1979). For those already familiar with the theo-
retical complexity of Burroughs's work, this study provides a provocative network
of intersections of Burroughs'sformulations about language and the body with those
of Lacan, Freud, Leclaire and others. The parallels Grunberg points out in psycho-
analytic theory corroborate my own earlier work on the affinities between Burroughs
and contemporary continental literary theory ("Cut-up: Negative Poetics in William
Burroughsand Roland Barthes,"ComparativeLiteratureStudies, 15 [December 1978],
pp. 414-30). While Grunberg wisely denies any intention of offering a clinical diag-
nosis of Burroughs, his analysis is filtered through the grid of psychoanalytic dis-
course. He tends to identify as "classical conditions" or "very familiar"certain stages
of development or associations (as in his linking of homosexuality with misogyny,
narcissism and paranoia); and he asks us to approach the text in general as a dream
text to be decoded, to be resolved into a unity of meaning and self. Grunberg de-
scribes this unity in Burroughs's work as a compromise, a balance in which the body
and writing intersect: "realisant une sorte de miracle d'equilibre entre une ecriture
qui cherche a se d6nuder et un corps qui tente de se dire" (p. 182). While I agree
with much of Grunberg's interpretation of Burroughs's work, I think the limit of
his psychoanalytic approach is his reluctance to imagine (or to recognize as anything
but desperate denial, failure or self-delusion) the possibility of life without a body,
life without a unified subject. The prison-house here is not language, but the psycho-
analytic grid: one is always returned to castration, the oedipal drama, and narcis-
sism. I hope the literary context in which I discuss Burroughs's practice and theory
will leave him somewhat less constrained.

BURROUGHS | 73