Doors of Perception author Aldous Huxley requested a dose of LSD as he succumbed to laryngeal cancer in 1963. Three weeks later, Huxley’s widow, Laura Archera, wrote a letter describing the experience (“the most beautiful death”) to her brother-in-law. Today the prescription of psychedelic drugs to terminally ill patients is less uncommon than you might expect.
Huxley’s Closes His Doors of Perception
Setting the Bar Quite High
Believing that high quality TV dramas have supplanted silver screen blockbusters, and now rival novels as “the best way of widely communicating ideas and stories,” Salman Rushdie is set to pen a science fiction series for Showtime. The show will be called “The Next People.” Yet while he’s cited “The Wire” as a source of inspiration, the novelist also backhandedly referred to it as “just a police series.” (A stance he defended on Twitter.) Controversial? Perhaps. But still nothing compared to him calling “Game of Thrones” “very addictive garbage.” Later on, when asked by Vulture to list some of his favorite TV shows, Rushdie curiously counted “Entourage” among them.
The Debut of Two Fancy New Faces
Two journals started the week by showing off their fancy new faces. Gigantic launched a new web site for the magazine, featuring a chapter from Shya Scanlon‘s Forecast 42 and new fiction by J.A. Tyler. The Barnes & Noble Review debuted a toothsome redesign along with a sobering essay on book publishing by former Executive Editor-in-Chief of Random House, Daniel Menaker.
The Joys of Air Travel
“In college, I didn’t realize I was the face of the Diaspora, the embodiment of all the women they thought I was, and who I knew I was. I was from Africa, east and west, a sojourner through the islands of the Caribbean, a daughter of the Second Great Migration of African-Americans from South to North. Perhaps Chaka said it best—to these young men, I was ‘every woman.’ To airport security, I was that woman. The one to be stopped and searched. The one who was suspect. A long-lost daughter whose lineage crossed through Kush—was I carrying Kush now, perhaps, in my hair?” If a ‘Pat-downs, Pissing, and Passport Stamps’ headline isn’t enough to get you to read this great piece from The Literary Hub, hopefully the quote will do.
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Avid Bookshop
Do you live near Athens, GA? Come out tonight to support a newly opened indie bookstore: Avid Bookshop. Or, if you can’t make that, hit up tomorrow’s “Kids’ Day” at the same place. They have a Twitter account, too.
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Calling All Foer-Besotted 10-Year-Olds
Spotted on the streets of New York: a casting call for a “10-13 year old Caucasian male” to play protagonist Oskar Schell in Stephen Daldry‘s upcoming film adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Notable Goyim Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock are attached to the project, as Oskar’s parents.
Huxley is turning in his grave nearly 100 years after his visionary prophecies began to form into his own mode of fiction. He is one of my favorite authors and raised serious issues and made world-wide breakthroughs in the research of psychedelics as well as our cognitive liberties. I drew a portrait as homage to the man and his works. See the him roll with the mushrooms, the pills and the doors of perception at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2010/07/aldous-huxley-rolls-in-his-grave.html