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High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experiences in the Seventies
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A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality—but how did their writings
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Start your review of High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experiences in the Seventies
A densely academic examination of the underlying psychological, pharmacological, and psychic experiences that triggered the intense creative acts of the McKennas, RAW and PKD in the 70s is never entirely going to hit its target; the beast is too amorphous, too ambiguous, and just too plain tricksy for any third party to offer a definitive judgment of what was going on inside their heads. Given the characters involved, this is to be expected.
But what you get here is an enjoyable ride nevertheles ...more
But what you get here is an enjoyable ride nevertheles ...more
Get the audiobook, Erik Davis does a great job.
If you favor any of the three main authors being discussed you will most likely love this work. Davis's clear sighted yet non-judgemental survey of the authors' books and thoughts reminds you of all the reasons you loved them on first read and might point out some things you didn't notice before. The web of writers and thinkers he uses to discuss these authors is quite wide-ranging and added to my tbr list (as well as including one of my professors from grad school as a reference). Definitely fu
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I listened to some really good recordings of Professor Davis giving entertaining lectures which led me to the book. He's such a great orator that his voice is narrating this book as I read it in my head, which has been so cool I now think its how it was meant to be read. He is a very distinctive thinker and writer. I do not have the qualifications or the background knowledge to critique all the material that is folded into this book, however as a fairly well read amateur I have learned a huge am
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This book basically lights up all my circuits: PKD, RAW, and the McKennas, all run through the academic machine of deconstructionism, systems theory, and religious studies. Davis is clearly simpatico with the subculture of high weirdness, but he does an admirable job of balancing keen personal interest and disinterested and cool-headed critical analysis.
It's clear that his primary focus is PKD, and his best work lies in close textual readings of Dick's published works read in the light of the E ...more
It's clear that his primary focus is PKD, and his best work lies in close textual readings of Dick's published works read in the light of the E ...more
This is an odd one. If you know nothing of its subjects, you'll find yourself quite lost. Yet, if you are already well-versed in the McKenna mythos, the RAW doctrine and the PKD canon, then you'll be experiencing deja vu.
Honestly, I really like Erik Davis. He's definitely well-meaning, good-hearted and "one of us"; but this book comes across as trying way too hard. It's overly long and often overly-worded. He has the penchant for using fancy esoteric words in place of more commonly used words to ...more
Honestly, I really like Erik Davis. He's definitely well-meaning, good-hearted and "one of us"; but this book comes across as trying way too hard. It's overly long and often overly-worded. He has the penchant for using fancy esoteric words in place of more commonly used words to ...more
This book takes a while to get started: the section on Terence & Dennis McKenna seems much less engaged than Erik Davis' writing on Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K. Dick. That may be because the McKennas wrote (basically) non-fiction, while some of the work by Wilson and Dick that Davis grapples with pushes genres categories in order to describe real psychic experiences that the writers went through. Davis does a good job of explaining how the psychedelic extremes of the counterculture have now
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This book is mega, a deep dive into the weirdness of a very specific time (the early 70's) in a very specific locale (California) that, like tunneling into a fractal, flowers out to be about the deeper past and the future - i.e. the present we are currently living in. (In this, it reminded me, strangely, of Paris 1919, by Margaret MacMillan - though, obviously, way fucking stranger.) Just a flipped out, excellent book that makes me feel a squirmy thrill at being part of what I now see is a long
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An in-depth and erudite exploration of the psychedelic and the esoteric, triangulated through the lives and work of Terrence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K. Dick. It feels as thorough a summation as one could hope for of these weirdos and their weird era without ever going down the rabbit hole and into mild psychosis that these three thinkers themselves inhabited. It successfully walks the tight rope neither rejecting the weirdness nor being "seduced by madness" a tricky feat!
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Oct 18, 2020
Bryan Cebulski
rated it
really liked it
Shelves:
nonfiction-philosophy,
nonfiction-politics
Davis handles a considerable heft of weird, clunky material here not quite gracefully, but compellingly. He's not great at introducing topics or transitioning from one thing to the next, and he lets himself get carried away and his rhetoric winds up emulating the long winded obtuse rambling of his subjects. But it's altogether an interesting trip.
He gets better with each section. I'm still not sure what to make of the Terrence McKenna chapters, but his work on Robert Anthon Wilson and Philip K. ...more
He gets better with each section. I'm still not sure what to make of the Terrence McKenna chapters, but his work on Robert Anthon Wilson and Philip K. ...more
If you were there in the 70 s, or was it the 80’s, and had a certain, fringe culture frame of reference, then you will either love this or wonder if it was telling you anything new.
Rob Latham over at LARB has the definitive review of Davis' crackerjack book, I think -- I will defer to him and second his opinion that the portion dealing with Terrence McKenna is the least compelling.
The book broke my heart, I have to say. I lived through the 70s, 80s, 90s and the turn-of-the-Mil, and McKenna, RAW and Dick were a source of fascination for me these last 30 years. The further I followed Davis on his deep dive, the more deeply I realized that "weird" is no longer a fringe concer ...more
The book broke my heart, I have to say. I lived through the 70s, 80s, 90s and the turn-of-the-Mil, and McKenna, RAW and Dick were a source of fascination for me these last 30 years. The further I followed Davis on his deep dive, the more deeply I realized that "weird" is no longer a fringe concer ...more
The main thrust of what Erik Davis does is this book is attempt to take anomalous experiences seriously, if not literally. I really like that approach. Anything but curious agnosticism seems like keeping yourself in the dark. If you only believe in the quotidian physical of ordinary experience you close off all possibility and arguably become as ignorant as someone driven by superstition.
The book is kind of hard work though. I don't know that much about Robert Anton Wilson, or Terrance and Denn ...more
The book is kind of hard work though. I don't know that much about Robert Anton Wilson, or Terrance and Denn ...more
High Weirdness by Erik Davis
Interesting, academic insights into the 70s thru the literally comparative and religious analysis of 3 writers/physic explorers (Terence Mckenna, Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K Dick) bordering the thin line between madness, creative genius, mystical / psychotic visions and the dynamic uroboros loop between popular culture motifs, the zeitgeist and the internal "heart of darkness" adventure that each encountered.
Davis the ultimate post modernist shows an openness to tak ...more
Interesting, academic insights into the 70s thru the literally comparative and religious analysis of 3 writers/physic explorers (Terence Mckenna, Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K Dick) bordering the thin line between madness, creative genius, mystical / psychotic visions and the dynamic uroboros loop between popular culture motifs, the zeitgeist and the internal "heart of darkness" adventure that each encountered.
Davis the ultimate post modernist shows an openness to tak ...more
A look at a particular time through three different writers: Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K. Dick. I could spend a lot of time trying to describe what is going here but instead I'll put it another way. If you are into the uncanny and the weird then this book is for you. If you spent time in Lovecraft or even read two of those three folks then this is an interesting trip to try and explain was was happening between 1970-1975.
There is a bit at the end that tries to tie it toget ...more
There is a bit at the end that tries to tie it toget ...more
A dense, intelligent dive into the rise of the weird in 1970s America, with an emphasis on California as a hotbed of strange esoterica. This wasn’t a breezy read, but damn it was interesting. The focus here is on Terrence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K. Dick, three psychonauts who all personified the rise of the weird in distinctly unusual ways. A great read for anyone interested in the history of the psychonaut movement, which has experienced something of a resurgence, and those inte
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The best, purest weirdness is a self-renewing resource that provides novel glimpses of the real even as it expands the boundaries of the explicable way beyond the horizons of the comprehensible. And this is that real shit. Davis is a very clever dude with a lot of love for his subjects that drives him to ask big questions about their work and bring back bigger answers. I’ve never read anything quite like it. Highly recommended.
If you’re interested in Terrence McKenna and/or Robert Anton Wilson and/or Philip K Dick, this book is for you. The author, Erik Davis, adds rich and fascinating context to the very weird “contact” experiences of the 3 thinkers above, without diluting the mystery.
It’s one of the most interesting and compelling books I’ve come across on esoterica since Cosmic Trigger.
It’s one of the most interesting and compelling books I’ve come across on esoterica since Cosmic Trigger.
Pulp fiction and high theory. I'm a sucker for this shit.
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Reading Erik Davis' lengthy and dense tome brought me back to a specific yet nebulous feeling from my childhood, surfing the World Wide Web for conspiracy theories and urban legends, well before the days of the "Creepy Pasta." Davis, a comparative religions PhD, gives that exciting and foreboding feeling an academic sheen as he traces how Terrence (and Dennis) McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K. Dick grappled with and reified the American post-war and Californian post-sixties hangover of
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Overlong, hard to digest work that betrays it's origins as an academic thesis. The maddeningly overwrought, impenetrable attempt to define to a minute degree of precision is the mumbo jumbo of institutions of higher learning, more arcane than anything HP Lovecraft could conjure. The book is laced with interesting nuggets but they are incorporated into a bloated corpus that saps energy and interest. If one is already familiar with the works of Wilson, the McKennas and Dick, much here is contemptu
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I read this because I was interested in learning more about the McKenna brothers, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K. Dick, four colorful counterculture figures who’s work I’ve enjoyed over the years. As a casual psychonaut, I thought it might be fun. Since finishing it, I now feel like I know LESS about them, if that’s possible. This book was apparently written as a doctoral thesis and academically examines “weirdness” through the lens of these figures’ mystical/psychotic experiences in the cont
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High Weirdness is a deep, deep dive into the experiences, experiments, theophanies and theologies of three true architects of 1970s American (especially Californian) psychedelic, psycho-spiritual "occulture" -- Terrence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, and Philip K Dick. All but the final chapter was written for Erik Davis's doctoral thesis, studying under Jeffrey Kripal, so if you follow the work of either of these men, Davis or Kripal, you already have a good idea what's in store for you. HW is a
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The book sets out to think through the cosmic/supernatural/religious experiences of Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K Dick without either accepting them at face value or reducing them to drug-induced foolishness and/or pre-existing neural atypicality.
It does that very well, and presents a compelling picture of 1970s California counterculture High Weirdness in general, although the long trawl through PKD's very long trawl through his visions may have eventually left me wondering s ...more
It does that very well, and presents a compelling picture of 1970s California counterculture High Weirdness in general, although the long trawl through PKD's very long trawl through his visions may have eventually left me wondering s ...more
A truly illuminating book about the eerie resonances between the early 70s and today, and the delirious, inspired quests of thinkers and writers to discover a reality outside of both the mire of politics and the solipsism of their own minds... essential reading for anyone trying to grapple with the innate, menacing weirdness of the early 2020s.
Thoughtful, openminded, truly intelligent look at 70s esoterica.
Top stuff
Absolutely remarkable. Equal parts historical treatise, philosophical deconstruction, and hilarious cultural deconstruction. Everything that non-fiction should be.
Finally, some weirdo who's into hacking reality while keeping his eyes on the stars, and his feet on the ground...
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Not for everyone. But this book has almost all the Weird Shit™ that I love from the last 50-ish years of American culture that I love all in one place.
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Erik Davis is an American writer, scholar, journalist and public speaker whose writings have ranged from rock criticism to cultural analysis to creative explorations of esoteric mysticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Davis ...more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Davis ...more
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“One important consequence of this approach is that the meaning or full activity of a drug can only be worked out and constructed in practice. A drug's effects, in this view, aren't discovered, but nor are they purely invented. Instead, they are enacted.”
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“The transitive shift from observer to participant, from gaze to encounter, requires both active engagement and a passive willingness to allow the phenomenon to reveal itself in its own terms. This visionary leap opens a dimension of experience, of ontological possibility, that is simultaneously a kind of abyss. In finding a “Thou” where before there was an “it”—as Martin Buber would describe it—the psychonaut suddenly faces all manner of risks: terror, madness, delusion, or what Terence ironically called “death by astonishment.” But to not take the chance, for some anyway, falls short of the mark.”
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