Outside Looking in
Book - 2019
In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology Ph.D. student and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug's possibilities such that their "research" becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a free-wheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living. With his trademark humor and pathos, Boyle moves us through the Loneys' initiation at one of Leary's parties to his notorious summer seminars in Zihuatanejo until the Loneys' eventual expulsion from Harvard and their introduction to a communal arrangement of thirty devotees--students, wives, and children--living together in a sixty-four room mansion and devoting themselves to all kinds of experimentation and questioning.
Publisher:
New York, NY : Ecco, [2019]
ISBN:
9780062882981
Branch Call Number:
BOY
Characteristics:
385 pages ; 24 cm


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Add a CommentI devoured this book. Last line is an instant classic!
Great book!
T.C. Boyle does here what he does best: creates a believable recreation of a point in time, and fleshes it out with interesting characterizations and situations. Highly recommended! I was sorry when it ended - a very addictive read, finished in 2 days.
The prolific and irreverent Boyle has been writing compelling literary historical fiction since his 1982 debut novel "Water Music," where he portrayed Scottish explorer Mungo Park. Having already tackled other large personalities like health activist John Harvey Kellogg and architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Boyle now turns his attention to the infamous Dr. Timothy Leary and his psychedelic experiments at Harvard University and elsewhere. In "Outside Looking In," Boyle has turned the staid “academic-life” novel on its head as Leary and his followers try to create a brave new world.
this is the one about lsd