Naked Lunch (1991)

"Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to".

A few days ago, I landed a copy of The Criterion Collection edition of David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. I've been an admirer of the director since his work on eXistenZ and The Fly. He is my other Terry Gilliam. Great concepts, great execution and lots of visual flair. As for William Burroughs, I've tried (unsuccessfully) many times to get a copy of The Naked Lunch. For four years, I looked and looked. The library of the university I used to go to has a most impressive collection of fiction. The book is listed in the library catalogue but for some reason, it has mysteriously disappeared from the shelves. I did, however, find Junky, and ever since developed an appreciation for drug-themed literature.

Cronenberg's Naked Lunch (1991) is a metaphoric comment on the mysterious writing experience. William Lee (Peter Weller) is an ex-junkie who has come clean and found his profession as a bug exterminator. That is, only until he sees his wife, Joan (Judy Davis), shooting up a syringe full of bug powder or pyrethrum. "A Kafka high", she tells him, "You feel like a bug". It is safe to say that after this scene, only the third in the film, nothing on screen and in Cronenberg's world can be considered as happening in "reality" any longer. The disjuncture is faintly obvious at first. At the police station, for example, where Bill is brought after being arrested for possession of narcotics, we meet the first product of his imagination. It is a gigantic talking bug with a pouty pink anus for a mouth and the impossibility of its existence allows us to dismiss it as a hallucination.

But is it? Reality rapidly spirals out of control once the Interzone, Inc. conspiracy is unveiled. Bill is convinced that his wife is an agent sent to kill him and murders her in a William Tell routine (i.e, a whisky glass on her head, a pistol in his hand, shot fired, glass unbroken). Due to overwhelming guilt, he falls back into his old habit and into an arabesque world from which he emerges only once, when his friends discover him wondering in the streets with a pillowcase full of a candy shop of drugs.

I mentioned earlier that this is a film involved with the writing experience. In this one moment of semi-sobriety, Bill is read a few lines of a novel he has apparently been writing in his apartment throughout his drug-induced hallucinations. It is significant that Bill fails to recognize the words as his own. This raises some important questions about the issue of ownership in relation to content. In his case, writing under the influence made him forget what he was doing, his writing was not a conscious act even though it has the clarity and linearity of a conscious act. Who owns it? Bill, of course, disclaims ownership of this New Jersey story. His brain is fried and his wires are reconfigured into Interzonal laws.

On one hand is a beautiful piece of writing and on the other, the weak, addicted mind that produced it. The dichotomy between the two is such a sublime comment on literature and their authors. Writing is assumed to be a noble profession because it is judged by its output (Ulysses, Homer, The Divine Comedy). Literature is instrumental in creating and recording culture and history. It is assumed that the mind that writes it, that gives birth to it, is equally as noble and refined. Yet Cronenberg's adaptation shows us another truth: that it is capable of living in and thinking of the greatest filth as well, that it can be a polluted gutter teeming with all variety of insects.

The bug references are not only a symbol of mental decay and degredation, they are also one of the many elements in the film that are a tribute to Kafka. After shooting a load of insecticide into her breast, Joan tells her husband that it's "a Kafka high. You feel like a bug", a clear reference to The Metamorphosis where Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a gigantic insect. There are a plentitude of Kafkaesque sequences as well. Bill is arrested for a crime but when he escapes the prison, no one makes any inquiries into his disappearance. Moreover, we are never told exactly why he was arrested and there are no official proceedings. Additionally, if we accept his murder of Joan as a real event, which it likely was because there was a witness, and not another product of his hallucinatory voyages into the unknown recesses of his mind, then the fact that we do not see any lawful consequences is extremely bizzare. This is the complete opposite of Kafka's approach although it has a similar disconcerting effect on the audience/reader. Kafka's trick is to produce dire consequences but he always remains elusive on the cause. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa is transformed into a bug but we never know why. In The Trial, Josef K. is hunted and killed for an unexplained crime that he did not commit. In The Castle, the main protagonist never reaches the castle and dies trying to manoeuver through bureaucratic labyrinths. In Cronenberg's universe, a law-transgressive crime has been committed but it has no lawful consequence. We know Bill has not been caught because the Interzone still exists, its story is ongoing.

The film is packed within three bubbles. In the inner bubble are the pyrethrum-inspired visions of giant centipedes and bugs, squirting typewriters, doppelgangers, homosexuals, uninhibited sexual activity, a conspiracy about an illegal drug market and Bill's tangled involvement in this outlandish, alien world. The middle bubble is more subtle, characterized by the sort of reality one observes of in the first five scenes. Of this world, of New York City but with pink elephants and flying pigs. In the outermost layer is a world that runs on a complete breakdown of the laws of cause and effect. Even outside the drug experience, Cronenberg's world spins on some disconcerting, disorienting point of reference which is always unrecognizable, unseeable.

Currently the deep blue skies soar above me and the winter weather chills my bones, local cuisines vary at a rate of about 5 times a month, once in a while my back hurts because my position is right-angled in a back corner of a car that has achieved a mileage of at least 4000km; currently I have been trying to dodge near-fatal accidents that, mostly, appear to have been directly related to the lack of knowledge about local road rules and signs and, in what is starting to become a large handicap, speaking only English. Nevertheless, the general color of things and that peculiar shade of air manage to be different in almost every country and community so that a brick building in Rotterdam and a brick building in Italy look entirely, worldly different from each other. As such, whenever I predict that my eyes shall tire soon, there will be at least a few days of recuperation, rest and privacy, then, finally, I will not be tempted to roam the area in ever-expanding circles that would gradually lead me out, camera in hand, further and further away from the accommodation, and at such an opportune and blessed moment, I will sit and attempt the tedious task of sorting through mail. And after that, if there is some time, compose a short note on all literary exploits I have so far had.

And so - In Greece, I discovered Mick Jackson in a beautiful wooden home walled with rows and rows of science fiction books, bought mostly at sales and second-hand shops and filled with the long, aged aura of history. In a Zurich squat, I found in a toilet on the third floor, above the soup kitchen, a five-page zine in which was an exposition written by a graphic designer sick of bureaucracy and eager to begin a project that avoids, for once, the itchy tape of rules and law and relies, instead, on initiative and trust. (It worked.)  In Bulgaria, I finally found De Profundis by Oscar Wilde, complete with an introduction; I no longer need to stare at a computer screen if and when I am in the mood for a most bitter, reproachful and yet elegant letter. My delight exceeded me because it was a text that I had always wanted to read and own in a book and to celebrate, we went to the Falafel King. In Belluno, in a bed-and-breakfast tucked away on one of the many rolling green hills of northern Italy, I found a bookshelf in the room under the window, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. In Belgium, I was introduced for the first time to one of the most enigmatic figures in history I have ever come across - Athanasus Kircher. In Vienna, I scoured the shops in the streets surrounding a university, got lost and took the wrong turn enough times to allow the sun to set so that when I finally found a bookshop, I was happy to buy even a text printed for students by the university press. City of Glass by Paul Auster, a small red book that fit easily into whatever little space I had on my backpack, was my happy companion in train rides across Holland and Germany (whenever I was not sleeping or admiring the view with an envious eye). Right now, in Czech, I have discovered a wonderful gem - The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl. I am only at the third chapter but I need to race back and start reading it!

Re-reading "Wuthering Heights"

A week or so ago, I sickened of purchasing new books long enough for me to pick up Wuthering Heights again, after two years of having first read it. As the first time, I was blown away by Emily Bronte's lyrical style and her exquisite eye for detail. The whispering, mourning moors beyond the Heights, the fiercely defiant Joseph, who makes for such an odd servant, and the destructive and consuming love between a savage Heathcliff and a selfish Catherine - yes, they all blew me away in equal proportions. Since I was reading it for a class in Romantic Literature, I had little leisure to pursue my own meandering thoughts. (Which reminds me how the phrase "unreliable narrator", in my four years' worth of lit tutorials, came up more times than I cared to count (and with almost the same frequency as "postmodernism"). It seems to be an obsession with undergraduates to keep pointing out that narrators are unreliable (and how almost everything can be explained away because it is postmodern). Unfortunately, few showed how and why.)

English novels of the 18th and 19th century had a tendency to contain frame narratives. Frankenstein is a popular example; each of its multiple narratives delving deeper and deeper into the monster's story. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells' The Time Machine are other examples. The purpose of a story-within-a-story technique is to offer multiple perspectives on an event, opening up the possibility of multiple meanings within and without the scope of a text. It is a conscious effort to call attention to the fact that what is being told is a story, and this self-consciousness raises questions about how narratives tell themselves. One of the interesting things I found about using the frame conceit is that while it distances the reader from the space, time and locale of the story, it inevitably draws him deeper into the narrator's psyche. In other words, a certain sense of extreme subjectivity is heightened and an odd tango between distance and nearness is negotiated. In the case of Wuthering Heights, such a dramatic degree of subjectivity is achieved that meaning-making is problematized. More on this later.

The novel begins with Lockwood's introduction to the Heights but it is Ellen (Nelly) Dean's narrative that takes up a large chunk of the text. Her voice is that of the novel's and we, the readers, are in Lockwood's position, locked into the role of listeners. Just as Lockwood is paralysed as Nelly's tale unfolds, asking no questions and making no interruptions - notice it is always she who signals the end of an episode, while he grudgingly obliges - so we, the readers, are seated silently listening.

Nelly Dean's narrative takes on the quality of the extremely subjective: her defends and excuses are woven into the fabric of her narrative. Lockwood does not question it since it is the only account he has. The reader, fortunately less passive than Lockwood, has a duty to churn through this mismash of events/opinions/justifications/prejudices, etc and filter out as close a representation of events-as-they-occured. Of course, we remember Saleem Sinai saying memory has its own truth and realize that any attempt to uncover some sort of objective reality quite impossible. Bronte, it seems, comments on the impossibility of accurate representation, much less on one true representation.

Ellen's power over the narrative as well as the mute Lockwood-as-reader places her in an extremely advantageous and powerful position and I think she is aware of this. Many times in the text, her voice rises with indignation at the accusations levelled against her, yet one gets the sense that she cannot disguise the pleasure in her voice at being the only person coherent and "objective" enough to pass on the tale. I think she is also pleased at being given the opportunity to validate her actions that had gotten her into trouble with Edgar Linton just before Catherine's second illness; plus it gives her a reason to go on a power trip by affording her a role and purpose greater than that of mere maid - she is now the beholder and dispenser of knowledge.

In contrast to Ellen's masculinity is a feminized Mr. Lockwood. First overcome by the daunting and dramatic appearance of Wuthering Heights, he is treated with less cordiality than expected from his host; he is scolded and dismissed by Heathcliff's servant, Joseph, then attacked by a pack of dogs, and, to cap it off, is afflicted for a few weeks by an illness. When we observe his apparent inability to comprehend the strange set of rules governing Wuthering Heights, he is reduced to a comical position. His earnest attempts to observe social decorum are utter failures in a house where such values are meaningless. This misplaced propriety gives us a sense of Lockwood-as-female at his first ball in proper society, introduced to gentry and stumbling quite successfully all over the place. Pitiful, yes but funny also.

In subtle ways, Nelly Dean admits to being an untrustworthy servant to her master and mistress, which foreshadows her incredible unreliability as a narrator too. "I remembered Mr. Edgar's stern rebuke of my carrying tales; and I tried to smooth away all disquietude on the subject, by affirming, with frequent iteration, that that betrayal of trust, if it merited so harsh an appellation, should be the last." A bit of context is necessary: the incident in question here is regarding Heathcliff's visit to Thrushcross Grange and the fight it provoked between Linton and Heathcliff. Ellen had a significant role to play in the confrontation by "carrying tales" to Linton, although she wasn't exactly lying but she wasn't minding her business either. She then failed to inform Linton of Catherine's three-day fast/starvation because she felt Mrs. Linton was putting on airs (there is sufficient evidence to indicate this but let us not forget she also dies a short while later), but Nelly's self-granted independence of action maximized the potential disaster the situation had to offer. On day three, when she half-truthfully tells Catherine that Mr. Edgar did not inquire about her absence about the house because he had been reading his books all along, she precipitates an illness that sends Catherine Linton to her grave. Nelly's role and actions, at this point, takes on shades of cunning and manipulation.

Although it is a rather unkind reading, I think there is a case to be made of Ellen Dean's many attempts to usurp power that is otherwise denied to her in the position of maid. These, of course, are well-justified and covered up in her narrative to Lockwood; she appears only as one most concerned of everyone else's wellfare. Yet it is not entirely fair to say Nelly is only a power-hungry, devious, Machiavellian old maid although that would fall very nicely under a Gothic reading. It could entirely be possible that she unconsciously imbibes these traits under the guise of a kind, well-meaning caretaker. She has, after all, seen to the care of Heathcliff, Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw since their birth, as well as their children. More than once, she helped Heathcliff escape from Hindley's murderous and envious grasp. Moreover, that Catherine Earnshaw is a selfish woman was mentioned by Heathcliff, too, which makes Nelly's reaction to her mistress's fast not unusual. And if we can believe her on these accounts, we can also believe that her narrative is an intensely subjective one, colored by her own insecurities and neuroses.