An interesting array of items came into the Terence McKenna Archives this week. I’ll just get straight into it:
- Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal by Tom Shroder includes a couple of passages mentioning Terence in two separate sections on Ricks. One chapter is on Rick Doblin includes a story that Rick also conveyed to me when I interviewed him about Terence regarding the origins for funding an MDMA study as a sort of opposition to Terence’s general cautioning against the promotion of that substance. Another chapter is on Rick Strassman, who I’ve been meant to interview for some time now about his own interactions with Terence but keep losing track of time (soon enough).
2. Eric Cunningham wrote his PhD dissertation, Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen, and The Psychedelic Eschaton, in the Department of History at the University of Oregon largely as a comparison between the eschatological ideas of early 20th century Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida and those of late 20th century American psychedelic spokesperson Terence McKenna. Nishida’s work incorporated Zen Buddhism with contemporary Western philosophy, taking on the likes of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel with his own unique philosophy which would become the foundation of the highly influential Kyoto School in Japan. As is often the case with Humanities PhD work, Cunningham’s dissertation was subsequently published as a book. It would be nice to also have a copy of the actual dissertation, as, no doubt, some edits were made between the completion of the dissertation and publication of the book manuscript (so, if you’re reading, Eric, and have a digital copy that you’d be willing to send…). There’s obviously huge sections devoted entirely to McKenna, so I will only post some evocative snippets here just so you can get a sense of the territory.
3. I found some well-priced copies of Thomas Lyttle‘s Psychedelic Monographs & Essays volumes and so ordered them in partial use of some recently acquired birthday money–for the general psychedelics library, not the TM Archives. I wasn’t expecting anything from Terence, as I had looked through most of these before in other people’s libraries and hadn’t noticed anything, and nothing is listed for PM&E on Terence’s bibliography. So far, I’ve only received #5 and that expectation largely holds up. However, there is a review, by George Root, of The Sacred Mushroom Seeker: Tributes to Gordon Wasson. Roots review is quite long but only mentions McKenna among a list of contributors and doesn’t explicitly mention or discuss his chapter called ‘Wasson’s Literary Precursors’.
4. Aftershocks: The End of Style Culture by Steve Beard includes several mentions of Terence and an event report/review of True Hallucinations (the latter of which I’m hoping to be able to use as part of a document I’m creating for an upcoming crowdfunding campaign and so won’t post here). Beard, too, includes reference to Terence’s appearance at Fraser Clark‘s London club, Megatripolis as well as comparisons between Terence, Tim Leary, and Hakim Bey.
5. For those of you who have been actively paying attention to the blog, you may recall a couple weeks ago, I came across a book, Cam Cloud’s Acid Trips, which contained some black & white copies of photos of Terence, shot by Chip Simons, at his home in Occidental, California. They came from the same shoot as this well-known photo which accompanied an interview by David Jay Brown. Well, to update you on the situation, I have received a folder in the mail from Simons which contains film positives of many more snaps of Terence from the same photoshoot. All I can say for now is that they are truly delightful! I have an appointment on campus next week with the Image Resource Center on campus to digitize them. Of course, these photos belong to Simons, and I don’t have any immediate plans or permissions to share them at present. But, I’m hoping to be able to use some of them as part of the upcoming crowdfunding campaign (but I’ll need to discuss those details with the photographer). Eventually, they will come out, but for now they need to stay private–I will keep you updated.
6. The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop (the Revised & Updated edition, 2006, is what I got–the 1st ed. is 1999), Nina Luttinger and Gregory Dicum briefly mention Terence’s comments about the relationship between the rousing effects of coffee and the labor-intensive raison d’être of the Industrial Revolution, although they (understandably, given their focus) leave out his query about why the ubiquitous workplace 15-minute coffee break is not replaced with a cannabis break.
7. Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends & Heroes, edited by Roy Christopher, contains a favorite interview of mine with Terence by the ever-insightful and barbed culture critic Mark Dery. Dery’s interview is preceded by a long introductory text (also by Dery), which is also a favorite treatment of Terence and his life and work. The interview and its lengthy introduction will be featured in the ‘Companion Guide to Terence McKenna’ feature that I am creating for the upcoming crowdfunding campaign. I had previously had scans of this but finally added a hard copy to the collection.
8. The material in A Magical Universe: The Best of Magical Blend Magazine (1996) was selected by the magazine’s editors, Jerry Snider and Michael Peter Langevin. Terence appeared in the pages of Magical Blend on many occasions, offering essays and interviews alongside reviews of his books and advertisements for his products. Robert Anton Wilson called Magical Blend “a quiet revolution.” The selection that is included in this edited volume is an essay that Terence wrote for Magical Blend #26 (April 1990) and was later reprinted in The Archaic Revival. I already had a copy of this in the archival holdings but received a few copies to use as incentives for crowdfunding.
9. A couple weeks ago, I received a copy of Matthew Pallamary‘s Spirit Matters: A Memoir, which, among other delightful reminiscences, describes the story behind the photo below, in which Pallamary sent along the first printed copy of the first edition of his novel Land Without Evil to be gifted to Terence at the 1999 AllChemical Arts Conference, shortly before his death. Well, this week, I received a copy of Land Without Evil, which is dedicated to Terence. I’ll get the archives copy signed when I meet with Pallamary in a couple weeks when he comes to town as a workshop leader at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.
10. Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History by Mary Kilbourne Matossian was one of the books in Terence’s library and is among the books cited in Food of the Gods, where it is used as part of an argument against “the Wasson-Hofmann theory” that the kykeon beverage of the Eleusinian mysteries was a form of ergotized beer (of course, Terence, following Robert Graves, wants to push the possibility of a psilocybin mushroom).
11. The following items were added to the general collection and don’t include any specific material related to Terence McKenna, but I thought that they might be of general interest, so thought I would include them as well. So, here’s the ‘Supplemental Haul’…
See you next week with the next haul!