Since you mentioned author William Burroughs in the three questions thread, I just had to wiki him.
Now I got to read Naked Lunch!
DAMN YOU!!

Plot summary
Naked Lunch consists of many loosely related vignettes in which several characters such as the sadistic, sociopathic and borderline incompetent Dr. Benway reappear. The primary character is agent Bill Lee.

The book's structure anticipates the cut-up technique Burroughs would later employ in novels such as the so-called "Nova Trilogy" (The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express). The stories draw from his experiences in Tangiers and his life in America and Mexico, as well as a tour through South America he undertook after accidentally shooting his common-law wife Joan Vollmer in the head while supposedly playing a drunken game of William Tell. Throughout this period he became addicted to several drugs (notably heroin and morphine). The novel's mix of taboo fantasies, peculiar creatures (like the predatory Mugwumps), and eccentric personalities all serve to unmask mechanisms and processes of control. Burroughs explains the title as “a frozen moment when everyone sees what is at the end of the fork.” The title was suggested by Burroughs's friend Jack Kerouac. The novel is a particularly grand illustration of Burroughs's skill with dialogue. Poet Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs' close friend and sometime lover, refers to Naked Lunch in his introduction to his epic poem "Howl".

The book contains what is generally considered to be some of Burroughs' most memorable and quoted passages. One of the most quoted is a section (or, to use Burroughs' terminology, a "routine") known as "The Talking Asshole". This story-within-a-story involves a man who teaches his anal orifice to talk, a trick he soon regrets when it develops a personality and mind of its own and eventually takes over the man's body. The man is eventually incapable of doing anything other than consuming and excreting, becoming an "all-purpose blob." The anecdote serves as a symbol of material consumerism, which, like a man teaching his asshole to talk started with good intentions but ultimately ended in lobotomizing the population. The man is eventually stripped of his free-will, doubt, and reasoning, and can only serve as a more efficient consumer. The man is to represent society, who's been offered hopeful capitalism at the expense of being brainwashed by the media in order to forward the capital. Notable recordings and performances of this routine include Frank Zappa reading it during 1978's The Nova Convention (it was recorded and released by Giorno Poetry Systems), by Burroughs himself in his mid-1990s CD Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales, and it is quoted virtually verbatim by Peter Weller's character in the film version of Naked Lunch.

Several characters would reappear in many later works, most notably the surgeon Dr. Benway, Clem Snide "the Private Asshole", and Inspector Lee. In 1989, Burroughs published Interzone, a collection of short stories and other writings including a chapter entitled "WORD" that at one time was considered for inclusion in Naked Lunch. According to some sources, Burroughs' original title for the novel Naked Lunch was also Interzone.
[Edited 8/15/07 21:02pm]

I need Cliffs Notes just for the thread...: