Books 28 and 29 of 2018

One of my favorite genres is the drug revelation memoir. I love reading authors attempting to describe going off the rails. I think of Walter Benjamin writing about hashish, or Aldous Huxley waxing philosophically about mescalin, or Castaneda's descriptions of peyote trips, or Burroughs, etc.

One of the coolest and most interesting thinkers and describers of such experiences was Terrence McKenna. And McKenna and his ideas are a large part of Lin's book. In fact, the only parts of the book which are at all interesting are when Lin is summarizing McKenna. Which leads me to ask why the hell anyone would read this book when they can just read McKenna or watch him on YouTube.

Because--no offense to Mr. Lin--this is the most boring book I've ever read about this topic. Or any topic. It's pointless. It's meandering. It says nothing new. Even the passages about depression and feeling alienated are dull...and another of my favorite genres is the descent into madness memoir by people who feel isolated and alienated and depressed.

How can a writer with any skills at all write tedious and wholly unimaginative descriptions of DMT and salvia divinorum experiences? I simply can't get my head around it. He smokes DMT and spends pages describing feeling distracted and paranoid and moving in and out of a tent he built in the corner from a blanket. He can't make a salvia experience at all tangible or interesting? Even Miley Cyrus can do that.

Nobody cares if you felt suspicious for six hours straight after she shared her DMT with you. How many pages can you spend giving her the hairy eye-ball while she wonders what the fuck your problem is? What did you see or feel inside that realm? That's what's interesting. McKenna and virtually every other writer creates edge-of-the-seat, earth-shattering descriptive passages of breathtaking wizardry about DMT. Lin's passages sag like over wet noodles. I remember as a novice writer in the Temple University MA program how Toby Olson complimented my description of a mushroom experience and pumped me up with lavish praise during a workshop, only to say "but anyone can write a good trip, it's almost cliched."

Mr. Lin--anyone can write a good trip. Why couldn't you? I read something by you before and that was better than this, but not better enough that I would want to read whatever you published between then and now. And after having read this, I definitely do not want to read whatever you published between that and this, because this was so bad. Sorry, dude.




Thank goodness Ms. Due provided a cleanse for the above atrocity. This is a fine selection of creepy fiction, and runs the gamut from traditional ghost stories which are finely crafted and inhabit an interesting niche to more action/adventure sci-fi thrillers. I particularly liked the one about demons in a Florida swamp who take over infants for a while in the summer--has a nice sardonic tone and delicious Twilight Zone moral! And best of all are the rather intense post-apocalyptic stories at the end. Definitely should go on your Halloween reading list.

Groovy

You know you're getting old when the space probes launched in your youth are somewhere far beyond Pluto.

The contents of the Gold Records [by K-Tel] attached to the Voyager craft were selected largely under the supervision of the late Dr. Carl Sagan. In reading up on the history of the Voyager program, I found out that Dr. Sagan was a life-long inhaler of cannibus fumes, and credited much of his creativity and ingenuity to snapping bong hits.

Far out, Carl. This knowledge has led me to a deeper understanding of some features of the Cosmos series, such as you riding down the graphic representation of a black hole as though it were a sliding board, and the prevelance of Vangelis on the soundtrack.

So True

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

What European City Do You Belong In?

Actually, much as I love Amsterdam, I would never want to live there. I'd be incoherent too often. I'd like to live in Bruges or Brussels or some other city close to Amsterdam.

Of course every European city is close to Amsterdam by Eurorail/air. We drove up from Rouen and it took about five hours.