Subject: Biography, Literature & Literary Studies
-
Heaven & Hell Aldous Huxley
In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers, was transformed. Huxley described his experience with breathtaking immediac…Read More »
-
The Doors of Perception Aldous Huxley
'The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out'. Aldous Huxley first took mescalin in 1953 and continued his experiments with hallucinogenic drugs until 1963 when, on his deathbed, he asked for and was given LSD. Huxley explores the effects of the mescalin…Read More »
-
The Torrents of Spring Ernest Hemingway
A hilarious parody of the Chicago school of literature. Poking fun at that "great race" of writers, it depicts a vogue that Hemingway himself refused to follow. In style and substance, it is a burlesque of Sherwood Anderson's Dark Laughter, but in the course of the narrative, other literary tendencies associated w…Read More »
-
Vile Bodies Evelyn Waugh
The Bright Young Things of 1920s Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercise their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade, whether it is promiscuity, dancing, cocktail parties or sports cars. A vivid assortment of characters, among them the struggling…Read More »