LSD, JFK, CIA?

[Doug Millison]

Well, my mother -- a housewife -- certainly didn't know that Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds might refer to the drug LSD when that album came out, even
though some of us knew it, and I don't think any other parent of a student
at my high school knew it, and I do doubt that the vast majority of American
teenagers who listened to the singles from Sgt. Pepper that were played on
Top 40 radio at the time knew The Beatles were singing about LSD. By the end
of the summer of '67, and especially after Time magazine and other mass
media organs trumpeted all their hysteria about the hippes and acid and the
like, more people would have been able to make that connection -- but still
I don't think you could call it "common knowledge" outside of a tuned-in fan
base.  That was part of the fun of listening to a song like Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds on the radio -- if you were clued in, you knew, and if you
weren't, you didn't.  (Those who know, know.)  The vast majority of people
still have no clue about what LSD is, or was, or might be, and that in the
face of several decades of discussion about LSD, books published about its
history and use, and even the wave of renewed interest in such substances
that has followed the "Ecstasy" craze.  And I bet that a huge number of
people who bought The Beatles' big hit CD, One, have no knowledge of the
drug-taking history of The Beatles collectively or individually, that isn't
now and wasn't when those songs were first released part of the marketing
hype around The Beatles.

The fact that all of Huxley's novels remain in print still doesn't answer my
point about which of his books are widely read.  Lots of books remain in
print that almost nobody reads, including, sometimes, the few people who buy
a copy.  I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody who has read any
Huxley book, Brave New World apart, outside of a college class.  And being
on college reading lists, after all, is what keeps many backlist books in
print -- including, perhaps, novels like Gravity's Rainbow and COL49.  Move
beyond a relatively restricted circle of college students, literary
intellectuals, and perhaps the occasional psychonaut, and I doubt you'll
find many current readers of Doors of Perception -- it's known by reputation
by far more people than have actually read it.



-----Original Message-----
From: MalignD at aol.com [mailto:MalignD at aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 1:31 PM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: RE: LSD, JFK, CIA? 


<<I doubt that Huxley's Doors of Perception enjoyed as much popular, 
mainstream success, and expect that instead its reception was limited to a 
rather restricted group of literary intellectuals (that would be the way 
Huxley's books are received now, every sophomore reads Brave New World, but 
rare is the reader who has even heard of Doors of Perception).  >>


Where do you get this idea?  Antic Hay, Crome Yellow, Point/Counterpoint, 
Doors of Perception, Eyeless in Gaza, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan--all

are in print, have been pretty much since they were written.  Rare, perhaps,

is the reader as myopic as you.


<<I'd argue that only fairly hip fans of The Beatles realized when Sgt.
Pepper

came out that they were singing about LSD.>>

Only "fairly hip fans" equated Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds with LSD?  
Please.