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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
This bad trip for Leary fans is enlightening for others [book review]
    #6348507 - 12/08/06 04:38 PM (17 years, 3 months ago)

This bad trip for Leary fans is enlightening for others
December 9, 2006 - Daily Yomiuri

Brad Quinn / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Timothy Leary: A Biography
By Robert Greenfield
Harcourt, 689 pp, 28 dollars



In Timothy Leary: A Biography, Robert Greenfield writes that admirers of the LSD guru and 1960s icon are sure to hate his book. But love or loathe Leary--one of the most controversial figures of that turbulent decade--this long but very well-written biography is undeniably riveting stuff.

As Greenfield's comment suggests, Timothy Leary is no hagiography. However, the author, who has written books on the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead, is far from heavy-handed in his condemnation of his subject. Rather, he lets the improbable events of Leary's life speak for themselves.

Born in 1920 in Springfield, Mass., Leary was of a different generation than most '60s counterculture icons, arguably having more in common with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner than the hippie culture that embraced his message, "Tune in, turn on, drop out."

In detailing Leary's early years, Greenfield establishes the suspicion of authority that would later make him an ideal '60s counterculture icon. But while some of the stories paint Leary as a likable rogue--he was forced out of both West Point and the University of Alabama for his bad behavior with women and booze--his hedonism and capriciousness also had a darker side, which had devastating effects on his children and contributed to the suicide of his first wife.

Although compelling reading throughout, Greenfield's book really picks up steam when Leary lands a job in 1960 as a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University and takes his first life-changing trips on psilocybin mushrooms and LSD. Galvanized by the drug, Leary set up the Harvard Psychedelic Project and also began such astonishing experiments as administering LSD to inmates at Concord Prison.

Leary, however, proved to be a shoddy researcher, making unsubstantiated claims about LSD's power to rehabilitate prisoners and even "cure" homosexuality. But he was even more careless in his personal life, getting busted for marijuana even after it became obvious that he was under intense scrutiny by authorities.

A virtual life sentence over his marijuana bust would set Leary off on a series of almost unbelievable adventures. With the help of the radical Weather Underground group, Leary broke out of prison and fled to Algeria, where he briefly became the friend and then captive of on-the-lam Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver.

After outwitting the authorities for several years, Leary was finally caught and returned to prison, where he had as his next-door neighbor Charles Manson. Although Leary is said to have come to see Manson as a colleague, Manson was, in contrast to Leary's unflagging optimism, a decidedly "choose death" kind of guy.

In public, Leary carried himself with enormous confidence, and with a never-ending grin that suggested he had unlocked all the mysteries of the universe. But Greenfield's book reveals a coldness behind the smile, showing that almost nothing, not even numerous family tragedies, ever really fazed him.

Prison, however, was something Leary could not stomach for the long haul, and he greatly reduced his sentence by informing on many of his friends and colleagues, including leftist lawyers and members of the Weather Underground.

After his release in 1976, Leary became something of a parody of himself, going on a lecture tour with Richard Nixon henchman G. Gordon Liddy, appearing in dubious films like pothead comedy duo Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams and trying to stay hip with the kids by sampling the new designer drugs, eating junk food and moshing, age 72, at a Smashing Pumpkins concert.

But Leary's long strange trip was destined for an even more bizarre end. Stricken with inoperable prostate cancer, Leary filled his Los Angeles home with young devotees and cryogenic equipment so that he could be preserved after death, all the while offering detailed reports of his deteriorating condition on his Web site.

Nearing the end, Leary claimed that the most important thing you could do in your life was die. For the man who turned a generation on to psychedelics, death would be just another trip.

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"You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind." - Timothy Leary

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InvisibleMe_Roy
Stranger
Registered: 07/30/02
Posts: 3,230
Re: This bad trip for Leary fans is enlightening for others (book review) [Re: veggie]
    #6349048 - 12/08/06 07:47 PM (17 years, 3 months ago)

Sounds like that could be a good book. It is a terrible book review, however; wouldn't even make the grade with LeVar Burton.

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OfflineQuake3
Total Carbohydrate
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Registered: 08/31/06
Posts: 924
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Last seen: 12 years, 9 months
Re: This bad trip for Leary fans is enlightening for others (book review) [Re: veggie]
    #6351837 - 12/09/06 05:22 PM (17 years, 3 months ago)

"But he was even more careless in his personal life, getting busted for marijuana even after it became obvious that he was under intense scrutiny by authorities."

I thought his daughter was arrested for smuggling pot but he chose to take the blame instead.. ?

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InvisibleCloud9
I don't feel, and it feels great
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Registered: 07/03/03
Posts: 1,554
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Re: This bad trip for Leary fans is enlightening for others (book review) [Re: Quake3]
    #6351988 - 12/09/06 06:28 PM (17 years, 3 months ago)

i'd like to read it.


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OfflineIgnatiusJReilly
Up From Sloth
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Registered: 08/28/05
Posts: 668
Loc: LA
Last seen: 13 years, 2 months
Re: This bad trip for Leary fans is enlightening for others (book review) [Re: Cloud9]
    #6354609 - 12/10/06 03:52 PM (17 years, 3 months ago)

I like the part about coldness behind the smile. Perhaps what people percieve to be a lack of concern for tragedy is rather a propensity toward acceptance. Poor review, anyway.


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"A Bad Day for Pants"

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