"Widdicombe Corner"
- now much improved!
– here’s the beans on great writing by great writers who definitely did.
NEW NEW ENTRY (after 4th February 2001) VERY NEW ENTRY (after 6th July 2001)
Availability - apart from recent novels such as Trainspotting by Irving Welsh and From Blue to Black by Joel Lane, the general - and ironic - rule of thumb is that the older the book, the more available it will be. Thus, "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge will be in any half-way decent anthology, you should find Sherlock Holmes lurking in most good libraries and bookshops, Jack Keroac maybe - even though he's in most top hundred authors of last century lists - but Jeff Nuttall's Bomb Culture may be a bit of a hunt.
Therefore I've devised a quick availablity rating:-
*** probably in print, and available in most good libraries and bookshops
** possibly not in print, but probably a copy somewhere in your library system
* almost certainly not in print, could be somewhere in library system, try 2nd hand & specialist shops, and university libraries with courses in contemporary culture?
Kubla
Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“In Xanadu did
Kubla Khan
A Stately Pleasure Dome
degree…..” before being interrupted by a man from Porlock.
VERY NEW ENTRY Rimbaud *
French Poet, at the forefront of experimenting with drugs and literature 150 years ago.
- how does the defendant plead?
Alice in Wonderland/Alice through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
- jury still out
'Fanny Stevenson
burnt it after dismissing it to a friend as "a quire full of utter nonsense."
She said - of what became the world's most admired and profound horror story - "He
said it was his greatest work. I shall burn it after I show it to you."
'Stevenson, an invalid almost deranged by tuberculosis and the effects of
medicinal cocaine, had to spend the next three days feverishly rewriting and
redrafting the 30,000 word story by hand.
'Within weeks, the new version of his pioneering novel about split personality was in
print. Despite Fanny's views it was an instant best-seller. Sermons were preached on it in
thousands of churches, including St Paul's Cathedral.....It rescued the Stevensons from
acute debt. For the first time, the couple had enough money to live comfortably'
John Ezard, The Guardian page 3, 25 October 2000
Underlining by Lit-Net editor. It should be realised that cocaine then was considered an acceptable analgesic - extra-strong asprin (Just as combat troops have been issued with benzedrine [aka speed] while morphine [aka heroin] is regularly given for relief of extreme pain.) Jekyll and Hyde was the first novel to explore the concept of a 'split personality,' whose study and classification had only just begun. It is far more profound than the horror genre it is typically assigned to, and far more adult than Stevenson's adventure yarns such as Kidnapped and Treasure Island. In short, a short literary novel. Film versions abound: the classic stars Spencer Tracy, but I also have a soft spot for the Brit production of about twenty years ago starring Michael Caine, who does remarkably well. Not many people know that.
Sherlock
Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Nothing got up the Good
Doctor Watson’s nose than the master detective’s cocaine habit –
brilliantly exploited by Nick Meyer in The Seven Per Cent
Solution © *
where Watson takes Holmes to Vienna to be cured of his addiction by Sigmund Freud….
A Long Day's Journey Into The Night by Eugene O'Neill***©
Okay, it's a play, and by a Yank, but arguably the most important from the last century, or so says Richard Eyre in his current Beeb-2 20th century theatre series. Drugs? The mother is Eugene O'Neil's who was addicted to heroin after taking it as a painkiller. 50s film version beloved by the method acting school, and currently opened at The Lyric, London 020 7494 5045/ 7344 4444(fee) with Charles Dance and Jessica Lange - and it is long!
Islands
(VERY NEW ENTRY) & The Doors of Perception
by Aldous Huxley
Especially towards the end of his life Huxley espoused the use of Mescalin, a natural form of LSD, as means towards perceptual enlightenment. Islands is the novel, The Doors of Perception the philosophy behind it. (Thanks for reminding of Islands, Tom Flemon)
Opium
by Jean Cocteau
His extraordinary
experiences when taking the drug and his acute suffering while being reated for opium
addiction. ‘It has a curious sorcery about it. The notes and spidery,
hallucinatory drawings crawl over the mind like deadly nightshade.’ Kenneth
Alsop, Daily Mail
The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs © ***
The original US speed
freak
On
The Road to Satori In Paris by Jack Keroac
The beat generation
writer. Big Sur is perhaps the most psychedelically
influenced and poetic of his books
NEW ENTRY How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
by Lenny Bruce *
The best stand-up comic ever, Lenny made Ben Elton seem like Des O'Connor. A gripping
autobiography.
NEW ENTRY The Politics of Ecstacy by Dr Timothy Leary *
A cogent and controversial espousal for why LSD can be good for you, and why society might say otherwise. Controversial because it was so cogent.
NEW ENTRYThe Centre of The Cyclone-an autobiography of inner space by Dr John C Lilley*
Scientific and personal account of the effects of LSD
The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Woolfe
The book that made
journalist Woolf (The Right Stuff ©** Bonfire of Vanities © ***) a
best-selling respected author. Takes the US psychedelic scene from Burroughs and Dr
Timothy Leary through the Keroac-inspired Merry Pranksters – with their yellow school
bus and its destination board that read [FURTHER] including Neil Cassidy
(The First Third*) Ken
Kesey (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest © ***
Sometimes A Great Notion*©) as well poets such as Alan Ginsberg (Howl!*) Lawrence Ferlinghetti
and Gregory Corso, who when his publishers dared asked what happened to their countless
advances replied “Money Doesn’t Come With Instructions.”
The
Teachings of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan & Tales
of Power
by Carlos Castaneda
A spiritual and anthropological journey into the traditional use of natural drugs in search of enlightenment by Mexican Indians.
VERY NEW ENTRY Ice by Anna Kavan
Just predates the hippy era, very haunting and evocative novels about being a heroin addict: otherworldly within a science fiction setting
NEW ENTRY Bomb Culture by Jeff Nuttall *
The British alternative scene in the 60s/70s. Looking back now the hippies' reaction to the Cold War and the threat of nuclear devastation can be seen as being fairly hard-nosed and sane. Read especially the fifth section "The Underground" - poet Jeff Nuttall is very readable and objective.
NEW ENTRY Play Power by Richard Neville *
The book by the editor
and co-founder of Oz, the alternative magazine that led to the last great obscenity trial.
Sections about the trial can become tedious, but shows how the establishment reacted and
why. Interestingly their defence barrister was one John Mortimer,
A
Clockwork Orange © by Anthony Burgess
Controversial and
gripping exploration of sense, drugs and violence
VERY NEW ENTRY Sombero Fallout & A
Confederate General From Big Sur
by Richard Brautigan **
I never think of Richard Brautigan as a
drug influenced novelist – he was so naturally mellow. All West Coast late hippy
cool, but so lyrical. These are his most druggy novels, I guess, but try Willard and His Bowling Trophies, The Hawkline Monster, and Dreaming of Babylon,
while everyone who works in a library should read An
Abortion; a historical romance.
Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas © by Hunter S Thompson
Another Yank journo
turned writer by drugs. A mad, compelling and sidesplitting view through a heady drug
cocktail of a Republican Convention that chose Nixon to run for President – in
Britain the best we’ve managed is Jeffrey Barnard is Unwell
NEW ENTRY Postcards From The Edge © by Carrie Fisher **
Semi-autobiographical novel by daughter of Debbie Reynolds & Eddie Fisher, and leading lady in films from Star Wars and Hannah and Her Sisters. Any book that starts "Maybe I shouldn't have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares" gets my vote. As Steve Martin said "Makes 'Moby Dick' seem like a big, fat dumb book .....savagely funny and savagely revealing" Also good film version with Meryl Streep and Shirley Maclaine as daughter and mother.
NEW NEW ENTRY Requiem for a Dream © by Herbert Selby Jnr
Guardian Film of the Week www.requiemforadream Sad, sparse and intriguing. screenplay co-authored by Selby who wrote
NEW NEW ENTRY Last Exit To Brooklyn © by Herbert Selby Jnr
Most famous book, if only because they tried to ban it. Also film but not as good as the book.
VERY NEW ENTRY Cocaine Nights by J G Ballard (publisher Flamingo)
Five die in ex-pat Spanish nightclub fire. Why?
"It's disorientating, deranging and
knocks the work of other avant-garde writers into a cocked hat"
"Shoot up Cocaine Nights"
Trainspotting
© by Irving Walsh
You’ve all heard
about it. Have you read it? Great book, film’s better!
The Long Arm of Gill Hamilton by Harry Harriman **
Sci-Fi drug use
From
Blue to Black by Joel Lane
Just out and set in
Birmingham Indie scene of the 90s. Comparable in style and quality with The Great Gatsby
by Scott-Fitzgerald. Fuller review in Lit-Net shortly
ISBN 1 85242 618 7 £10 published by Serpent’s Tail, 4 Blackstock Mews, London N4 2BT tel: 020 7354 1949 fax: 020 7704 6467 e-mail: info@serpentstail.com website: www.serpentstail.com
“Which
do you prefer – grass or astroturf?”
“Don’t know, never smoked astroturf
LIT SQUAD HIT
LIST
With thanks to Tom Flemon, John Lancaster, Elspeth and Alan Bailey, and Annie Lightly
