His two favorite books in all the world were still Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass; indeed, using acid only sharpened his delight in the surreal fantasies that a nineteenth-century cleric apparently conjured from stimulants no stronger than weak China tea and cucumber sandwiches. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” as John would later insist, was inspired by a specific scene in Through the Looking-Glass. Alice walks into a shop to find a talking sheep in a poke bonnet knitting behind the counter; then, all at once, the two of them are drifting
...more
