In 1960 Timothy Leary was not yet famous--or infamous--and Allen
Ginsberg was both. Leary, eager to expand his experiments at the Harvard
Psilocybin Project to include accomplished artists and writers, knew
that Ginsberg held the key to bohemia's elite. Ginsberg, fresh from his
first experience with hallucinogenic mushrooms in Mexico, was eager to
promote the spiritual possibilities of psychedelic use. Thus, America's
most conspicuous beatnik was recruited as Ambassador of Psilocybin under
the auspices of an Ivy League professor, and together they launched the
psychedelic revolution and turned on the hippie generation.
White Hand Society weaves a fascinating and entertaining tale of the
life, times and friendship of these two larger-than-life figures and the
incredible impact their relationship had on America. Peter Conners has
gathered hundreds of pages of letters, documents, studies, FBI files and
other primary resources that shed new light on their relationship, and a
veritable who's who of artists and cultural figures appear along the
way, including Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Thelonious Monk, Willem
de Kooning and Barney Rosset. The story of the psychedelic partnership
of two of the most famous, charismatic and controversial members of
America's counterculture brings together a multitude of major figures
from politics, the arts and the intersection of intellectual life and
outlaw culture in a way that sheds new light on the dawn of the 1960s.
Through the years City Lights has brought us seminal work by Allen
Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and now, this detail-rich double bio of Allen
Ginsberg and Timothy Leary. I knew both these men pretty well, and the
times intimately, and Peter Conners has been true to it all. I don't
know how he amassed the trunks of data he must have used to find the
jillions of details which were new to me, but I'm certainly glad that he
did. This book wins a well deserved spot on my shelf, and belongs with
anyone who wants an intimate view of the Sixties-Seventies spinning of
the Great Wheel of the Dharma.--Peter Coyote, actor/author, Sleeping
Where I Fall
