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The Big & Dandy Psychedelic Books Thread

The brotherhood of the screaming abyss.

anyone bought it ?

here is a bad review of it from amazon.....

This is an auto-biography. It's not really about Terence McKenna. It's about Dennis McKenna, which would be fine, if this book hadn't been funded in the most part by people who wanted to know more about Terence - and bought by the same sorts of people.

Most of the controversial (read: interesting) elements of Terence's life are almost entirely glossed over. The fact that he apparently stopped using psychedelics after a particularly dark trip, for instance, is not addressed - although it was bought to light prior to the book's publication, it must have been edited out. This is extremely disappointing. I'm not kidding when I say that the biggest questions associated with Terence are dismissed in one or two throwaway lines, whilst pages are devoted to minor romantic relationships in Dennis' life, including high school crushes, etc.

What becomes apparent during a reading of this book is that Terence and Dennis McKenna don't appear to have been all that close. Aside from the events that Terence himself wrote about in True Hallucinations, Dennis is pretty up front about not having had a lot to do with Terence. This means that large tracts of this book are dedicated to fairly mundane details about Dennis' career and love life.

I think I could have stood the lack of detail re: Terence's personal life, had there not been quite so very much (entirely unnecessary) detail about Dennis' in here.

The book feels somewhat like a bait and switch. I very much doubt that the Kickstarter would have been funded if people had known that it would be so timid to directly address the questions we really had about Terence McKenna - what was he like as a person? Dennis says that he was very loquacious and charming, but we knew that already. There was nothing beyond the exceptionally obvious revealed.

This book is not entirely without value, some of the tales about the early years are quite charming and here and there a few snippets of real insight break through amidst the minutinae but sadly Dennis appears to have only truly connected with his brother in early childhood and early adulthood - the rest of this book is, as I mentioned earlier, a very detailed history of Dennis' ethnobotanical career and romantic entanglements.

As a side note, I find it odd how many of the positive reviews on this book seem to be from people who rated and reviewed before they actually read the book - or who don't appear to have read the book at all. It doesn't say much for the McKenna legacy that people aren't even taking the time to read the book before raving about it. I'm a big fan of Terence McKenna, and Dennis McKenna is clearly an excellent scholar - but this book isn't what it was declared to be on the label.



wondered if anyone here has read it yet and could offer an opinion before i waste 20 bucks .
 
but this book isn't what it was declared to be on the label.
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marketers earning their keep. think of the twenty as your little bit for the economy.
 
heres a quote from another review...

"What I've really enjoyed is the much-needed and long-overdue reality check which the cult of personality that is "Terence McKenna" receives at the hands of his little brother. Yet, it's not a harsh reality check that destroy's any love towards Terence; in fact, it simply makes him more lovable, because you see that he's just as flawed, in his own unique way, as the rest of us"

this is what i was hoping the book would be....

but...i couldnt give two fucks if dennis got laid at high school

feeling quite disappointed now
 
I received the book about a week ago, and I am thoroughly enjoying the story thus far. The book is divided into 2 parts, where the first details Terence and Dennis' childhood and early adult life, then it moves into La Chorrera, Timewave, etc.. The subtitle of the book is 'My Life with Terence McKenna' so I am not exactly sure why people would be disappointed, thinking the book would be a biography of Terence's life. In any event, I am breaking into part two of the book where they are getting the group together for the La Chorrera excursion. I think if you are a McKenna fan you will love the book. I was especially interested in hearing about their early life, and how they got into psychedelics. All of my expectations have been exceeded at this point...
 
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Happy Trails said:
so I am not exactly sure why people would be disappointed, thinking the book would be a biography of Terence's life.
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Yup! Thats exactly what i thought!

The summary on kickstarter was

"Terence McKenna is a legend in the psychedelic community: He is remembered as a radical philosopher, futurist, raconteur, and cultural commentator. He was and is one of the most articulate spokesmen for the post-psychedelic zeitgeist. He is one of the prime originators of the 2012 mythos with all its attendent apocalyptarian anxiety. I am the younger brother of Terence McKenna. I want to write a memoir telling the real story of our intertwined life together over the last 60 years, and of the ideas, adventures, and explorations (both inner and outer) that we shared. I am Terence’s only brother; I am the only one who can tell this tale, from this unique perspective. Terence died in 2000, but his ideas live on the Net and in his books (e.g. True Hallucinations, Food of the Gods, The Archaic Revival, The Invisible Landscape and others). The time has come to tell his story; in reality, it is our story"

So i think i [ and everyone else ] could be forgiven for thinking the focus was on Terrance.

Think Santa has got me a copy so glad to hear its a good read.

I guess i judged a book by its cover.
 
I've read it... and while I enjoyed it, that negative review is fairly accurate.

There is a lot of mundane, mostly irrelevant detail... amateur genealogists will delight in the painstaking exploration of the McKenna family tree.

And very frustratingly, no mention at all of Terence's existential nightmare trip, which was obviously removed from the book after Bruce Damer disclosed that information. It would have been a great opportunity for Dennis to set the record straight, but now the touchy silence will only generate more unnecessary speculation.

The picture that emerged most clearly for me after reading this book is the uneasiness of the McKenna brother's relationship. Terence was the first-born, his mother's favorite, & later a psychedelic celebrity, & Dennis still seems to be processing his resentment and jealousy over the fact. (Some of it justified - Timewave Zero was after all a massive delusion).

He also has a much more cynical and skeptical take on the famous 'Event at La Chorrera', stating that Terence basically pushed him over the edge before jumping in himself.

If anyone is still interested in reading it, I suggest you download the cheaper $10 Kindle version, with Amazon's free Kindle app for PC's.
 
Thanks to everyone for the feedback - I managed to find a free copy of the ebook online on a torrent so I'll be reading it this week.

I'm sure Terence wouldn't mind and Dennis seems pretty well off so he wont miss my 10 bucks, I'll spend it on drugs so it's kinda the same thing. :)
 
Psychedelic reading suggestions

Any suggestions of books that I could read to get the most out of the psychedelic experience? Also, anyone know of any books on chemistry (regarding drugs) for beginners? It would be great to have a better understanding of how numerous chemicals interact with the brain?
 
Read Tim Leary's interpretation on the Tibetan Book of the Death, it will teach you a lot on "how to trip" and how to react during trips and that sort of thing. All of the philosophy on consciousness will give you some food for thought while tripping, I'd take Terrence McKenna's books as a starting point.

As for the chemistry not sure what's the absolute best and as far as I know there is nothing out there geared towards drugs. I've started reading Lehringer's Principles of Bioschemistry, it's really expensive but maybe Google will help you find a .pdf? :) It will teach you a lot on the subject and you'll be discussing chemical bonds like the guys from ADD soon enough.
 
Stahl's Essential Phychopharmacocoly is a great introductory text. The first four or five chapters will give you a great overview of how lots of different psychoactive drugs work. I'd also recommend From Chocolate to Morphine, except that I think Andrew Weil is a total quack. It might still be worth reading, though. The Synaptic Self is a pretty cool book about consciousness that will give you an idea about how the brain works, and how it's organized, at a high level. Susan Blackmore also has a lot to say about consciousness, and her short text Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction can be read in an afternoon. She talks a bit about her experiences with psilocybin and 2C-B. Reading Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind blew my mind on mescaline, so you might dig that one as well, even though it has nothing to do with drugs.

Personally, I try to avoid anything written by self-proclaimed psychedelic gurus like Leary and McKenna. There is no correct or incorrect way to use a drug, and they have no inherent meaning. People who claim otherwise are just being arrogant, imho.
 
Dose higher, if you can read while tripping you are doing it wrong.
 
entheo said:
Dose higher, if you can read while tripping you are doing it wrong.
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Ok, well ... it's a 500 page book, so I guess what I should have said is that I was reading it beforehand, took mescaline and read a few pages and thought about it, and then read the rest afterwards in the context of what I had thought about. But really, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

Who the fuck are you to say that I'm doing drugs INCORRECTLY? That's incredibly arrogant.

No offense intended :p
 
entheo said:
Dose higher, if you can read while tripping you are doing it wrong.
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Because getting as fucked up as possible is always better. 8)

Comics can be good while tripping. Whichever you like, but if you want something really psychedelic (perhaps to read sober, it's pretty long and it's best if you can pay attention), I'd highly recommend One Soul by Ray Fawkes. It tells the story of 18 different people from across history simultaneously (9 per page on each two page spread, each getting one panel each, but it thematically flows together). Each one from birth to death (lives of different lengths, some die starting from a quarter way into the book, then their panels are black and and still used with some text asking about the meaning of it all, if any and whatnot).
 
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Kapitan said:
Who the fuck are you to say that I'm doing drugs INCORRECTLY? That's incredibly arrogant.

No offense intended :p
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Lmao

I spent a bit of time reading The Psilocybin Solution (towards which I glance whenever I need to spell Psilocybin) in the bath on about 30mg of insufflated 2c-d (3 x 10mg hits an hour apart). This odd little PEA is truly remarkable for cognition & I found myself flying through & accurately interpreting passages that caused some confusion when attempted completely sober!
 
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