The Mad Artist: Psychonautic Adventures in the 1970s
US Trade Paperback 6' x 9', 364 Pages, 170,000 words (approx)
A novelistic memoir, which covers four years of psychedelically
enhanced life in late ’70s Britain, written within the trip-lit
tradition that includes The Doors of Perception, The
Hasheesh Eater, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The
Naked Lunch. It gives a user’s-eye perspective of mind-expanded
states with very intricate, detailed descriptions. Most contemporary
drug memoirs are stories of mishap, recovery and rehab; but this one is
about the actual experience of tripping and being stoned—both the
upside and downside—and all the weird, wonderful, funny and scary
headspaces you can get into, and how they impact on your larger view of
life.
Cover Blurb:
In the 1970s Roger Keen was a young art student,
heavily under the influence of the surrealist painters Dali, Ernst and
Magritte, the Beat writers Kerouac and Burroughs, and the wisdom of the
East—in particular Taoism and Zen Buddhism. Into the mix came LSD,
cannabis, magic mushrooms and other drugs, which were seen as enablers
in the pursuit of creativity and higher knowledge, fuelling a ‘Quest
for the Ultimate' that pushed out the boundaries of experience to
extremes.
Progressively, new factors entered the equation,
such as the works of Carlos Castaneda, R. Gordon Wasson and other
anthropologists, which demonstrated the roles hallucinogens have played
in shamanic practices and the formulation of religions and philosophies,
going back to the dawn of civilisation. All this added further momentum
to the Quest, putting the trips of today into a much more meaningful
context.
This memoir examines those ‘psychonautic
adventures’ in fascinating detail, and along the way also tells a more
familiar story of youthful excess and exuberance, all set against a
colourful background of hippy student life in the West Country, the
South of England and London. There are glimpses of the Stonehenge
Festival in its heyday and visits to exotic locations in Greece and
Spain, including Cadaques, home village of Salvador Dali.
In the tradition of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English
Opium Eater, Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and
Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Mad
Artist not only explores a fascination with drugs but also the awesome
and sometimes frightening inner metaphysical landscapes through which
the user journeys.
What reviewers say:
"Vigorously and actively trying to get to grips with what we
understand by reality and the world around us through mind-altering
drugs, art, literature, philosophy, music, cinema and ultimately,
writing, The Mad Artist is a dazzling, intelligent and
ambitious quest to cut through conventional ways of looking at the world
that ultimately yields impressive and potentially life-changing results.
A resounding success on every level."
—Noel Megahey, Digital Fix Reviewer
"‘The Mad Artist’ is everything a memoir
should be for the reader; a glimpse into the emotional, spiritual and
social growth of an individual and yet not alienating through whimsy and
self-indulgence. Keen uses the psychedelic experience as a beautiful
craft through which the elements of his life have been magnified and
threaded. It is a textual empathogen, wherein flashes of thought and
circumstance entrench you in the text."
—Rob Dickins, The Psychedelic Press UK. Read
the full review
Read a Sample Chapter as a PDF:
This chapter forms a self-contained group cannabis 'experience
report' from 1977 and introduces many of the colourful doper characters
from the wacky student hall of residence who appear throughout The
Mad Artist. It also gives a good flavour of the approach and style
of the book, concentrating on detail, atmosphere and in-depth subjective
psychodrama regarding drug effect.
Reading more of The Mad Artist:
'The Alphabet Wood', the book's opening five chapters, detailing Roger and Henry's epic first LSD
trip, can now be read in full on Lulu.com.
Click on the 'Preview' link below the book cover.
This same section can be obtained as a free Kindle download from
Amazon Kindle stores (see sidebar). The Kindle app is also available
free for many devices, including PC, iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry.
The Amazon 'Look Inside–Surprise Me' feature also gives access to
other parts of the book on a random basis. Log in to Amazon to use.
Interview with Roger Keen:
Find out more about the creation of The Mad Artist and Roger's
thoughts on other psychedelic literature in an interview with Rob
Dickins of The
Psychedelic Press UK.
