Forwarded Review of 'PIHKAL: A Love Story' by Tyrone Slothrop

[Andrew Dinn]

Foax,

The Background
--------------
Last year I picked up off rec.arts.books a review of `PIHKAL: A Love
Story' purporting to be authored by one Tyrone Slothrop. PIHKAL is a
book written by Alexander and Ann Shulgin, the first author a research
chemist who has been working in the field of psychedelic drugs for
over 30 years, the second his wife. Shulgin originally worked for Dow
developing drugs for use on psyciatric patients and obtained a license
to synthesise class A prohibited drugs (such licenses are no longer
granted). Disagreements with Dow over the nature of his research led
him to set up his own laboratory and continue his experiments privately.
Shulgin's laboratory has recently been raided although no charges have
yet been brought to bear.

The Book
--------
The title of Shulgin's book is an acronym for `Phenyethylamines I Have
Known And Loved', phenythelamines being the family of drugs Shulgin
has synthesised and experimented with - a family which includes
Amphetamine (Speed), MDMA (Ecstasy), LSD (Acid) and their variants.
The book describes Shulgin's decision to perform experiments on human
subjects, himself and a group of close friends, the rationale being
that only human neurology is complex enough to be susceptible to
psychedelic chemicals and only human behaviour is complex enough to
enable the effects of these drugs to be made manifest in words or
deeds. It documents their experiences testing the drugs and isolating
their effects. It also contains detailed descriptions of the chemical
synthesis of the family.

The Review
----------
The review includes many references to Gravity's Rainbow and many
Pynchonesque tropes and mannerisms. I don't know who wrote it but at
worst it's a damn good pastiche, at best who knows? To add to the
mystery the review was posted by Dr John Berryhill of the University
of Delaware with the following cover note.

    The following message was sent to me by someone who wishes to
    remain known as Tyrone Slothrop. Tyrone has asked that I post
    this article to the appropriate groups. I no longer have the
    collected works of Tyrone Slothrop, although I believe that there
    are people out there that have them archived away somewhere.

    I am not responsible for the contents of this message. Indeed, I
    must admit that, as of now I have not read it. If need be, I will
    arrange to have reasonable responses delivered to Mr. Slothrop if
    you send them to my address. I don't know whether or when he
    would be able to respond since this is the first time I've heard
    from him in a couple of years.

I have subsequently contacted Dr Berryhill and he has confirmed that
he is willing for me to forward the review to the list and to repeat
his offer to forward comments to Tyrone. His email address is

    berryh at huey.udel.edu.

Dr Berryhill also offered to search for the collected works of Tyrone
Slothrop and forward them if found.

Obtaining PIKHAL
----------------

If you wish to obtain copies of Shulgin's book you may obtain the
second half (which details the results of the experiments and recipes
for synthesising the drugs) from the WWW site at URL

    http://taz.hyperreal.com:80/drugs/pihkal/

Shulgin has agreed to waive the copyright on this half of the
book. The server also provides details of how to order the complete
book by surface mail.

Obtaining Slothrop's Review
---------------------------
Copies of Slothrop's review can be obtained from the same WWW site or
by FTP from the following address

    ftp://hyperreal.com/drugs/psychedelics/phenethylamines/

as postscript file `pihkal.review.ps' or text file `pihkal.review'.

Alternatively you may obtain either LaTeX or Postscript versions of
the text from my WWW home page at URL

    http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~andrew/pihkal.html

For those without WWW access I am willing to forward the postscript or
latex source by email. I might also manage ASCII text at a pinch but
you probably want the prettier version.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
there is no map / and a compass / wouldn't help at all