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No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh?
    #13553143 -

So, this semester I'm starting out as a grad student in history, and it's getting to that point where I need to be figuring out what original contribution to the field I'd like to make, and it occurred to me today...what about a biography of Owsley Stanley?  (Or rather, at this point a thesis paper in that direction, to be perhaps later expanded into a dissertation, and to be later expanded into a book). 

From what I can tell, nobody has thought to do this yet.  On amazon, the closest thing to a biography of Owsley Stanley I can find is this:
http://www.amazon.com/Owsley-Stanley-Frederic-P-Miller/dp/6131883645/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1290982036&sr=8-9
which...I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be.  A collection of wikipedia articles on Owsley Stanley?  Certainly not anything of serious academic quality. 

I also checked Owsley Stanley's wikipedia and erowid pages, and I find some newspaper articles of him and interviews with him and whatnot, but no biographies referenced as sources. 

I'm getting excited at the thought that this might be something that I could pursue, wedding my love of psychedelics with my love of history.

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Re: No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh? [Re: Comradez]
    #13553155 -

What sort of issues would you hope to address through this project?

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Re: No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh? [Re: Me_Roy]
    #13553164 -

are you aware that this guy is still alive? he's making jewelry (buckles and the such) for which I unfortunately have insufficient funds. I sent him an email the other day about the prices and he responded!

Damn straight, Owsley email in ma inbox sucka niggas.


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l'enfer c'est les autres

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Re: No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh? [Re: VisionaryFlicker]
    #13553168 -

Back in '97 or '98 one of my friends got a response from McKenna after sending him a rant about salvia.

...not that I'm much of a McKenna fan.

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Re: No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh? [Re: Me_Roy]
    #13553191 -

Yeah I made a bit of a hobby of it for a while, got responses from Country Joe Macdonald from Country Joe and The Fish, and their organist, David Bennet Cohen :stoned:


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l'enfer c'est les autres

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Re: No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh? [Re: VisionaryFlicker]
    #13553513 -

He's a real interesting guy. There are a few interviews with him on his website and he frequented some low carb forum for a while talking about his diet which was pretty interesting in itself.

I would love to read a biography of the man.

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Re: No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh? [Re: Comradez]
    #13556382 -

Very cool idea OP.

Owsley is quite the mysterious character. He's pretty much a mythological beast of the psychedelic counterculture.

He has some pretty unusual beliefs, such as the idea that humans are *only* supposed to eat meat, and that the Earth is facing an impending Ice Age. :paranoid:

There are some essays on his site worth reading: http://www.thebear.org/essays.html


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:heartpump: { { { ṧ◎ηḯ¢ αʟ¢ℌ℮мƴ } } } :heartpump:

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Re: No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh? [Re: Me_Roy]
    #13571498 -

Me_Roy said:
What sort of issues would you hope to address through this project?


I think Owsley Stanley, at least on the surface (and probably even more so once one looks deeper), seems to be a very interesting character. 

I mean, for one thing, there's his grandfather, who was a progressive senator from Kentucky, much involved in busting up tobacco trusts and battling alcohol prohibition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Owsley_Stanley
I find that interesting, as prohibition at the time was sort of a "progressive" issue (at least, it was often tied to women's suffrage), so the fact that he apparently based much of his later political career on fighting prohibition raises my eyebrows somewhat, and makes me wonder what family influences might have (perhaps even unconsciously) primed Owsley Stanley for his later career as LSD chemist. In any case, it always interests me when you have an individual from a family with considerable status go against the grain of society.  I mean, an LSD chemist named Augustus Owsley Stanley III.  Richard Alpert I find to be an interesting character for similar reasons, except he's already been covered quite well. 

I am also intrigued by the references to Owsley Stanley in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."  According to that account, if I recall correctly, Owsley was somewhat of the nervous type and wasn't ready to be nearly so laid back and freewheeling with his LSD as the Merry Pranksters wanted to be.  Assuming that account is representative of how Owsley actually was, I think this sort of personnage is highly remarkable, and I think it poses some questions about what the psychedelic milieu was inherently about on the West Coast.  Because there's this image that, sure, Leary & co. might have been going about it like uptight East-coast intellectuals, but on the West coast everything was laid back.  Well, maybe it's not so simple, especially if you have a guy who is making LSD (and not just doing quasi-respectable psychological research) whose personality is likewise not all hippy-dippy.  Portraying Owsley's unique personnage could potentially help provide much-needed nuance to the image of the early psychedelic movement. 

Then there's his work with doing audio for the Grateful Dead, which is a whole other interesting chapter.  Then you've got his recent hobbies and his views on eating no vegetables or grains. 

All very interesting stuff.  And all very relevant to nuancing the image of the early psychedelic movement.  Because if we can show that the early psychedelic movement attracted not just college dropout hippies and laid back "beautiful people," but also people like Owsley, coming from a background with some status (and risking this), and bringing a subtly different approach to the endeavor, then we have a way of fleshing out the early psychedelic movement into something that is less-easily stereotyped, more easily empathized with, and more thoughtfully considered. 

And yes, I do realize he is still alive, but before I want to bombard him with questions, I want to think this through a little bit more and make sure that I really want to pursue this topic (and make sure that it would be feasible find the relevant primary sources, etc.)  I don't want to waste his time gathering material that won't end up getting used (although I guess as long as someone gathers it, it would be helpful to any investigation in the future, regardless of who did it).  But I haven't really done enough background research to be able to even ask the right questions.  I'm sure whatever questions I would have for him about his personal life at this point would be somewhat ill-informed and annoying.  Right now I'm only in the very preliminary brainstorming/sounding board stage, which is why I'm posting here.

Which, by the way, here's another idea:  Nick Sand.  (I don't know why, but all of these LSD chemists really fascinate me).  I know there was like a BBC report or short documentary on him some time ago, but I think that's all that's been done on him. 

Anyways, thanks for all of the responses!

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Re: No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh? [Re: Comradez]
    #13571873 -

Country Joe MacDonald just unfriended me on facebook :lol:


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l'enfer c'est les autres

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Re: No biography of Owsley Stanley yet, eh? [Re: Comradez]
    #13572835 -

Comradez said:
Me_Roy said:
What sort of issues would you hope to address through this project?


[...] nuancing the image of the early psychedelic movement.  Because if we can show that the early psychedelic movement attracted not just college dropout hippies and laid back "beautiful people," but also people like Owsley, coming from a background with some status (and risking this), and bringing a subtly different approach to the endeavor, then we have a way of fleshing out the early psychedelic movement into something that is less-easily stereotyped, more easily empathized with, and more thoughtfully considered. 



This sounds compelling to me.  I can recall reading the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test shortly after beginning my own graduate study and thinking that there was a lot more to the early Prankster happenings than is often discussed.  You might want to read up on systems theories (if you haven't already) for some insight into these events.

I hope you keep us posted.  I'm very curious where this project will take you!

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