Booth #5: ThoRns Grove - Where Books Eat YOU

[sisyphus]

not to mention, it's got a nifty cover. that's the one elisha reccomended, right? she's so cool!

[Thorngrub]

Yep. She had the original hardcover (which I wish I could have found). But you're right - - this one has a badass cover design.

*I wish I hadn't spaced & left it at home* :-\

[rockysigman]

NR:

[Thorngrub]

thorny said:

Daniel Pinchbeck's Breaking Open The Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into The Heart Of Contemporary Shamanism


Maybe 20 pages in, and it's the most thought-provoking book I've ever begun to read.

This book is blowing my mind

[Thorngrub]

Just finished it. Daaaaaaaaaamn. This is one of the most important (not to mention eminently readable) books I've ever read. I am going to be sure to contact the author.

+Anyone who's ever partaken of mind-altering substances in their past, must read this book: the sooner the better

+Anyone currently involved as a psychonaut of any stripe cannot afford to miss out on this book, and its small and great revelations.

+Anybody who has pragmatically refrained from "polluting" their bodies w/such substances - - should really look into this endlessly fascinating subject, and reading PInchbeck's Breaking Open The Head is as good a place as any (and better than most) to start. He writes clearly, lucidly, and convincingly.

In short, there isn't anyone alive who would not benefit from reading this. At the very least - - the descriptive prowess of the author would suffice as entertainment, even on a superficial level.

Of course, I myself found plenty of depth and meaning in Pinchbeck's alternately humorous and harrowing accounts. I find his specialized historical and psychonautical, autobiographic book to be among the few most coveted and painfully human narratives produced this decade.

It is a tour-de-force. Written w/uncompromising courage and clarity, this non-fiction book is a clarion call to not only those ears who would ordinarily be closed to its inherent message, but to all the people of earth. As these are far from 'ordinary' times, I urge everyone w/ a spark of human curiosity in them to at least check this one out from your local library. It encompasses a wide range of scientific fields, anthropological, astrophysical, neurological, and psychological to name but a few, and is a straight up trip to read.

I am all primed now to studiously track down the bulk of Terrence McKenna's writings - - most prominently, Food Of The Gods, apparantly his most popular, or classic work.

I just don't see how any human reader alive today could possibly be "exempt" from finding the subject matter of this book inherently fascinating. Regardless of your stance on drugs and/or mind-altered experiences, this is a riveting read and tackles some of the most important themes of our current age.

I urge everyone on Castaways to make the time to track this book down and read it.

[Fuzznuts]

They have it at my library. Might just have to check it out.

[Thorngrub]

Yes. It is some freakish stuff.

[Thorngrub]

(*first published in 1988*)

Here's what this book is about, in the author's own words:

"A Splendid Chaos was an attempt to write surrealism that nevertheless made sense...writing allegorically and using archetypal characters."

Here's the synopsis:

"Zero and Bowler and Angie and Cisco strolling through night-time New York City looking for a. good time. They walk into a new club with no cover charge, no minimum; the music is loud and the drinks are free. But the fun ends when the entrance seals seamlessly and a man extrudes from the wall...

Zero wakes up in an alien environment. He has been abducted by the Meta and become a pawn in a weird cosmic game of survival. The Earthers have thirty other intelligent, ambitious, and sometimes monstrous species to deal with. But the their greatest enemy may be a fellow human, Harmon Fiskle, a power-mad adovocate of a strange form of social Darwinism. Despite Fiskle's oppostion, a cross-species expedition embarks on a quest that takes them into a surreal adventure as the search for truth.

A counter to his realistic vision of future-Earth in the Eclipse trilogy, John Shirley shows us, here, another dimension of his talent. A Splendid Chaos is a fantastic feat of imagination, populated with the most frightening succession of alien life forms since Harry Harrison's Deathworld. Although utterly fantastic, Chaos still has meaning and social comment. The garish images of horror are linked, and balanced, with a sober assessment of the human condition."

*from John Shirley's site: www.darkecho.com/JohnShirley/chaos.html

[sisyphus]

from what i know of john shirley he seems pretty cool and interesting, but i have to say that a lot of his cover designs are terrible....

[Thorngrub]

^ It's true. . . . for the most radical, cutting-edge post-underground alternative cult writer, his covers suck ass 80% of the time :-\

[limitdeditionlayla]

hey ThoRn. Just wanted to say howdy

[JACkory]

Once again I opted out of going to my wife's family's 4th of July celebration. I would have loved to have seen what promised to be an awesome fireworks display and my son had worked up several patriotic songs on the piano which he has been looking forward to playing.
Alas, my social phobia has been in high gear for the last several days and it only gets worse when we're talking about a few select members of her step-family who would most definately be attending.
So I forfeited.
So here I am, sitting alone in the house, bored out of my skull. I picked up a copy of Douglas Copeland's "Microserfs" and began reading it...well, I'm about 30 pages into it and I really don't know if I can go on any longer. Tedious is too kind a word for it. I doubt I'll be finishing it because the thought of picking it up again and trudging through even 30 more pages is detestable to me.
I thought this Copeland guy was gonna impress. It's not as if I can't appreciate modern (or is it postmodern) fiction---Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" was excellent and inspiring. But what I've read by Copeland makes me want to go to the library and check out a few Harvard Classics, take a trip backwards in time and hopefully forget about the hour I wasted reading "Microserfs". If this is the future of literature maybe I should find another hobby...mathematics, maybe.
My son was very worried that the weatherman's prediction of a 40% chance of rain tonight was going to spoil his evening, what with the fireworks and all. It's just after 4:30 here and the skies have darkened while a hefty breeze has begun to blow...but no rain just yet, at least not on my roof---it looks like it may have come down some west of here---and I can hear the sound of distant thunder. Maybe it will all wind up before the night falls and his worries about the fireworks display will be unfounded. Then again, who knows what it's doing/is going to do 60 miles from here, which is where he is.

[Thorngrub]

Howdy La.
'sup JAC.

Currently reading:



The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History, by Terrence McKenna

Finally getting around to this controversial author (may he R.I.P.)

Here's a quick overview of this book from Library Journal:

"McKenna has been exploring the "Wholly Other" for 25 years. In this spiritual journey, he ponders shamanism, buddhism, and enthnopharmacology. By the phrase "archaic revival," McKenna refers to a return to shamanism, which he believes can be enhanced by current scientific practices. The next level of spiritual transformation, he explains, is achieved by the intelligent use of psychedelics and should be performed only by thoughtful explorers rather than experimenters, scientific or otherwise. The ideas presented in this collection of interviews, speeches, and articles are radical even now, and will challenge the reader. There are many insights on current spiritual movements such as goddess worship, deep ecology, space beings, and virtual reality. Recommended."
- Gail Wood, Montgomery Coll. Lib., Germantown, Md.

So far, it makes for some compelling reading.


I purchased McKenna's book in San Francisco at CITY LIGHTS, along with this one:



"The Yage Letters", by William Burroughs has been re-released w/corresponding material by Allen Ginsburg. Originally published in '63, it is essentially Burrough's descriptions of his travails in South America on a quest for the legendary "yage" - (ayahuasca) - that potion drunk by shamans which induces a hallucinatory state, and was alleged to help one kick the habit of harder drugs- - namely, heroin -- which Bill wanted badly to rid himself of.

I have elected to read McKenna's overview (after already finishing "Breaking Open The Head") first, so that I might be better informed ("hindsight = 20/20") into the minutiae and primitivist viewpoints espoused by Burroughs on his pioneering quest to seek enlightenment from an entheobotanical source.

[Thorngrub]

Okaaaaaaaaaaay, my brain's had enough yage / ayahuasca / triptamine info soaked into it to last me a while now. Here's the results of this psychedelic tide of information, as I read all 4 books I currently have on the subject:

~The Cosmic Serpent: DNA & the Origins Of Knowledge,
by Jeremy Narby: - Totally engaging narrative. Arresting worldview. Fascinating perspective. Piqued interest in me about ayahuasca & its effects. Sparked a strong curiosity, which led me to read

~Breaking Open The Head, by Daniel Pinchbeck: - Ok this book blew my freakin mind, and by the time I was done with it, I was practically ready to divulge in any or all of these psychotropic substances (w/the singular exception of "Iboga", said to offer one knowledge of the date of their own death), to find out for myself "the great mystery", and furthermore, Pinchbeck's book was read at a breakneck pace, and really managed to paint a convincing, large-canvas portrait of a psychedelic underpinning to our biosphere's inherent reality. References to Terrence McKenna led me to pick up the following:

~The Archaic Revival, by Terrence McKenna: - Halfway through this, I was ready to try some of this fabled "DMT", or dimethyltriptamine which McKenna raves about. Reputed to be the most powerful of all psychedelics, smoking this substance is said to shoot your soul out of your body like a cannonball into another dimension. It only lasts a few minutes, and 20 minutes after experiencing it, you're back to normal as if you never even went there. * However: note that by the end of this book, I began having "2nd thoughts" as to the efficacy and/or overall safety of taking these substances. McKenna starts coming across to me more like a drug casualty than an heroic purveyor of underlying realities and/or truths. Finally I am led to read the fabled

~The Yage Letters REDUX, by William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg: - After completing this raw pioneering account of the infamous junkie's reflections on his travails south of the border in search of the miraculous curative properties of yage - (he wanted to rid himself of his heroin addiction) - my overall impression of the entire "Westerner-seeking-shamanic-psychedelic-kicks" has been, not tainted per se, but rather, put into a perspective which (to say the least) has given me pause, or second thought, on the entire matter.

~ ~ ~

And that is where I'm at, right now. Not so certain any more about playing around w/these powerful "psychomimetics"; especially when considering what foine shape me old noggin seems to be "as is", know'm say'n -?

[sisyphus]

having only just read the first two of your list, i also have lots of second thoughts about trying these drugs. i think i'll stick to analyzing dreams at this point, rather than trips. also, for a man whose mind was so opened by drugs, daniel pinchback could be kind of narrow, drawing conclusions to the effect that there was no way some of the things he saw whilst tripping could have been pulled from his own mind/psyche. why not? we unconsciously absorb so much peripheral information every day, and we only use ten percent of our brains. who knows....