Naked Lunch

"You know what's really good here?" Donna says. "The broiled fish. All the fish. Really." Funny, I had not pegged Joanna's 1819 Club as a broiled fish kind of place. Nor did I figure Donna, who is sitting next to me wearing a black bra, G-string and gauzy wrap, as a broiled-fish kind of girl. Go figure. It is 1 p.m. and Joanna's is packed with the lunch crowd: suits and ties, briefcases, trench coats. Mostly white, but a smattering of blacks and Asians. All men.

As the admiring new documentary "A Man Within" shows, the writer William S. Burroughs was a taut collection of contradictions: a critic of law-and-order jingoism who was a gun fanatic (even after killing his wife in a game of William Tell gone terribly wrong), a prescient critic of invasive psychiatry who tried every pharmaceutical known to humanity. A key figure in the Beat movement, he stood apart from his literary peers by virtue of his blue-blood background, his age (he was a generation older than Ginsberg and Kerouac)

David Cronenberg may have seemed like the perfect director to adapt William Burroughs' pop phantasmagoria "Naked Lunch," which was published in 1959. The book presages much of what Cronenberg has done in the movies; it's clearly as much of an influence on him as it has been for such directors as Nicolas Roeg or Ridley Scott.

As the admiring new documentary "A Man Within" shows, the writer William S. Burroughs was a taut collection of contradictions: a critic of law-and-order jingoism who was a gun fanatic (even after killing his wife in a game of William Tell gone terribly wrong), a prescient critic of invasive psychiatry who tried every pharmaceutical known to humanity. A key figure in the Beat movement, he stood apart from his literary peers by virtue of his blue-blood background, his age (he was a generation older than Ginsberg and Kerouac)

Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs Grove Press: 290 pp., $24 * Junky William S. Burroughs Penguin Books: 166 pp., $14 paper * Queer to think of him now spending the last decade of his life living in Lawrence, Kan., meticulously dressed in his undertaker suit and gray fedora, a cross between T.S. Eliot and Dashiell Hammett, poking through the cat food at the local Kroger's, then aiming his Smith & Wesson at backyard canvases in the pursuit of instant "shotgun art," winding up reading H.P.

Ten years ago, David Cronenberg considered filming William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" and dismissed the prospect ruefully. "It frustrated me to realize how impossible that would be because of the restrictions on what is accepted on the screen. When you think of what's in 'Naked Lunch,' how extraordinarily extreme it is . . . you'd be put in jail!" Still, he admitted then, "Some part of me would love to make that movie." Of course, part of him already had.

The man who once made James Woods stick a videocassette into his stomach is having trouble sitting up straight. Just some lower-back problems, David Cronenberg explains to a photographer who wants him to pose for pictures in what, for Cronenberg, would be an uncomfortable chair in a plush, spacious hotel room overlooking Central Park. Still, Cronenberg, 47, obliges with a mild warning that he may not be able to sit still for very long. That's just the kind of normal guy he is.

BOOKS "Naked Lunch" Even if you've already read William S. Burroughs' heroin-cured masterpiece, chances are it's not easy to describe what happened in this stream-of-consciousness story of a junkie's hellish journey to the Interzone. All the more reason to get reacquainted with Burroughs' surreal world with this marathon reading that closes Beyond Baroque's three-day celebration of the novel's 50th anniversary. The story kicks off at noon. 681 Venice Blvd., Venice. Free. (310)

Steven Lowe never needed to comb the swap meets or EBay to put together his treasure trove of William S. Burroughs-abilia. During the course of his on-and-off assistant/collaborator-ship with the "Naked Lunch" author, artist and notorious opiate addict from 1974 to Burroughs' death in 1997, Lowe acquired hundreds of artifacts that would make any "Junky" junkie jealous.

As the admiring new documentary "A Man Within" shows, the writer William S. Burroughs was a taut collection of contradictions: a critic of law-and-order jingoism who was a gun fanatic (even after killing his wife in a game of William Tell gone terribly wrong), a prescient critic of invasive psychiatry who tried every pharmaceutical known to humanity. A key figure in the Beat movement, he stood apart from his literary peers by virtue of his blue-blood background, his age (he was a generation older than Ginsberg and Kerouac)

BOOKS "Naked Lunch" Even if you've already read William S. Burroughs' heroin-cured masterpiece, chances are it's not easy to describe what happened in this stream-of-consciousness story of a junkie's hellish journey to the Interzone. All the more reason to get reacquainted with Burroughs' surreal world with this marathon reading that closes Beyond Baroque's three-day celebration of the novel's 50th anniversary. The story kicks off at noon. 681 Venice Blvd., Venice. Free. (310)

Even if you've already read William S. Burroughs' heroin-cured masterpiece " Naked Lunch ," chances are it's not easy to describe what happened in this stream-of-consciousness story of a junkie's hellish journey to the Interzone. All the more reason to get reacquainted with Burroughs' surreal world with this marathon reading that closes Beyond Baroque's three-day celebration of the novel's 50th anniversary. The story kicks off at noon and, appropriately, has no scheduled end time. 681 Venice Blvd.

MICHAEL POLLAN has perfected a tone -- one of gleeful irony and barely suppressed outrage -- and a way of inserting himself into a narrative so that a subject comes alive through what he's feeling and thinking. He is a master at drawing back to reveal the greater issues.

Steven Lowe never needed to comb the swap meets or EBay to put together his treasure trove of William S. Burroughs-abilia. During the course of his on-and-off assistant/collaborator-ship with the "Naked Lunch" author, artist and notorious opiate addict from 1974 to Burroughs' death in 1997, Lowe acquired hundreds of artifacts that would make any "Junky" junkie jealous.

Naked Lunch William S. Burroughs Grove Press: 290 pp., $24 * Junky William S. Burroughs Penguin Books: 166 pp., $14 paper * Queer to think of him now spending the last decade of his life living in Lawrence, Kan., meticulously dressed in his undertaker suit and gray fedora, a cross between T.S. Eliot and Dashiell Hammett, poking through the cat food at the local Kroger's, then aiming his Smith & Wesson at backyard canvases in the pursuit of instant "shotgun art," winding up reading H.P.

Restaurant owners trying to figure out who was stealing the stock installed video cameras that allegedly caught their landlord downing expensive food and wine in the place after hours--in the nude. Albert Hohmann, a city firefighter, has been suspended without pay after being charged with burglary, petty larceny and criminal mischief, Fire Department spokesman Michael Regan said Wednesday.

As the admiring new documentary "A Man Within" shows, the writer William S. Burroughs was a taut collection of contradictions: a critic of law-and-order jingoism who was a gun fanatic (even after killing his wife in a game of William Tell gone terribly wrong), a prescient critic of invasive psychiatry who tried every pharmaceutical known to humanity. A key figure in the Beat movement, he stood apart from his literary peers by virtue of his blue-blood background, his age (he was a generation older than Ginsberg and Kerouac)

So William Burroughs too has passed into the night, a realm he knew intimately alive and will doubtlessly master dead. For Bill, through most of his 83 years, was more attuned to and focused on a world beyond the so-called normal than he was to the mundane matters we associate with daily living. He was truly, consistently and completely a rebel, a maverick, a freewheeling original who abhorred boundaries and any kind of restriction, social or artistic, and especially governmental.

With all the new and improved--and just plain new--men's magazines glutting the newsstands, has anyone noticed what we've noticed? They're not your dad's men's magazines. More specifically, they're not Bob Guccione Jr.'s dad's men's magazine, otherwise insouciantly referred to as Penthouse. Hey, you know what we're talking about. No, we do not mean that men aren't interested in sex anymore. But Guccione le fils has seen the future and it is sexy, not sexual. More on that later.

So William Burroughs too has passed into the night, a realm he knew intimately alive and will doubtlessly master dead. For Bill, through most of his 83 years, was more attuned to and focused on a world beyond the so-called normal than he was to the mundane matters we associate with daily living. He was truly, consistently and completely a rebel, a maverick, a freewheeling original who abhorred boundaries and any kind of restriction, social or artistic, and especially governmental.