From the exterminating silence to the stigma of writing in "The Naked Lunch" (David Cronenberg, 1989)

Abstract

Far from being presented as an adaptation of William Burroughs’ novel, the movie The Naked Lunch offers a reflection on writing attentive to the work of an author who only presented himself as a writer when he experienced the trauma of the accidental death at his hands of his wife Joan. According to Cronenberg, writing would not be for Burroughs but a stigma that would have separated him from his initial plan to exterminate all rational thought, a curse from which he would try to flee using a delirious language. However, the language virus always manifests itself as a barrier that cannot be fought against.