naked lunch #1

«Without wanting to be overly reductive, Kerouac believed in his work
with a single-minded passion, and in refusing to accept cuts, he rejects
the publishers' power to force decisions onto him and to impose
narrative intelligibility — their commercially-driven definition of
aesthetic coherence. In the case of Burroughs, far from writing as if
beyond or outside the context of publishing, he has no illusions
whatsoever about his position, about all the compromises and economic
determinations involved in getting a book to market.»

«Clearly enough, the plan to combine the first person "Junk" with the
third-person "Queer" is not just a formal problem for Burroughs'
publishers. On the contrary, this plan to combine manuscripts is also a
plan for a visibly divided self: not just two books in one, but in
effect two persons with the same name in one book, split by the
difference in narrative point of view. The result would therefore embody
Burroughs' own lack of single-mindedness, his own internal rift, which
he has displaced onto Ace Books and literalised in the image of being
sawed in half.»

«In conclusion, the shift from "Junk" to "Queer" marked by the
appearance in April 1952 of the routine was a turning point in
Burroughs' writing — but what's equally clear is that it arises as a
moment of crisis and self-contradiction — as much the breakdown of a
straight method as the choice of a queer one. This was not the end of
the story, but its beginning.»

- http://realitystudio.org/scholarship/confusions-masterpiece/