He began writing poetry and short stories in his early 20s, but it was his first novel, Crome Yellow (1921), which established his literary reputation. Huxley, had a lovely, very posh voice, as evidenced by this BBC interview from 1958 – which is also notable for, among other things, Huxley's claim to be an essayist who happens to write novels and a discussion of Brave New World and LSD.Īnd here's an interesting essay on Huxley and mescalin in The Reader.Aldous Huxley was born on 26 July 1894 near Godalming, Surrey. He was doing what he had written in Island and I had the feeling that he was interested and relieved and quiet." "He had taken this moksha medicine in which he believed. You can also get a flavour of Laura Huxley's relationship with her husband in this touching account of Huxley's final moments, and his famous last LSD trip, minutes after JFK was shot. Here, Huxley's second wife details her marriage to the writer from 1948 to 1963, explaining and defending his experiments with drugs and his belief that psychology could help his failing eyesight. Moving back to the man himself, This Timeless Moment – A Personal View of Aldous Huxley by Laura Huxley is fascinating. Shulgin takes Huxley's willingness to dose himself on experimental chemicals to new heights in a moving, fascinating, scientifically rigorous and frequently terrifying guide to all things Phenethylamine. Then there's also PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, by Alexander Shulgin. Meanwhile, the key contemporary account of the 1960s acid explosion must be Thomas Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, where the man in the white suit follows Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters on a very unusual bus trip … although Hunter S Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas is far more fun.įor a more sober account, try LSD – My Problem Child by Albert Hofmann, in which the great bicycling chemist discusses his difficult legacy. There's also Storming Heaven: LSD And The American Dream by Jay Stevens, another history of LSD following the drug from Albert Hofman's laboratory to Timothy Leary's college to Ken Kesey's bus and then across the world. It's a social history of LSD, the 1960s counterculture and the CIA's strange foray into psychedelic experimentation. It's also well worth looking at Island – a late novel marking the culmination of Huxley's philosophical and psychotropic investigations.Īcid Dreams by Martin A Lee gives a good idea of the influence of Huxley's ideas. Huxley's anti-utopia also displays plenty of the obsessions that would lead him to The Doors Of Perception – particularly in the form of the drug Soma. Meanwhile, if you haven't already, you must also read Brave New World – JG Ballard says it's more prophetic than 1984 and few would argue that its influence is huge.
0 kommentar(er)
