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JAIL NOTES.With introduction by Allen Ginsberg.
Book by Timothy Leary
- GenresPhilosophy
Unknown Binding
First published November 1, 1970
147 people want to read
About the author
Timothy Leary
155 books807 followersTimothy Francis Leary was an American writer, psychologist, futurist, modern pioneer and advocate of psychedelic drug research and use, and one of the first people whose remains have been sent into space. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Leary is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 26, 2024
Timothy Leary and the 'head' culture figure strongly in Hunter S. Thompson's work— Leary functioning as synecdoche for the ideology of the psychedelic movement of the late '60s.
(Further, his ultimate arrest in 1970 is cited by Thompson to Yail Bloor in 'The Great Shark Hunt').
It was this figuration of Leary— and the billed 'Introduction by Allen Ginsberg' —that prompted me to pick up this text from a second-hand book store in Cardiff.
The 'Jail Notes' themselves are interesting foremost for their depiction of daily life in jail— though Leary suffers from a compulsion, similar to Norman Mailer, to show how he's 'in' with the black men there. Fragments of Leary's broader 'philosophy' are included, often written in ALL CAPS. Other stylistic quirks include a substitution of 'I' for 'eye', 'my' for 'maya', and pronouns for 'thits'.
All this is interspersed with sections of Plato's Apology, a treatise on Catholic doctrines of hell, and Colin Wilson's Necessary Doubt. These often run parallel to the subject of the notes, though occasionally resonances are emphasised or their subject matter directly addressed. Wilson's text in particular provides the foil to Leary's own discourse on LSD as a means of 'RE-IMPRINTING' (p. 91).
After the notes there are three pieces: the second of these, 'The Four-Thousand Year-Old Rock & Roll Band: A Memory Experienced', amounts of the strongest of Leary's prose in the book. It details the events of a trip to Morocco in '69, culminating in a visit to a village of 'Dionysiac' musicians, the joujouka. Here, Leary's sentence structure retains its consistency up until his description of the music and accompanying dances, wherein his characteristic liquidation of syntax apes the ecstasy of the experience well.
(Further, his ultimate arrest in 1970 is cited by Thompson to Yail Bloor in 'The Great Shark Hunt').
It was this figuration of Leary— and the billed 'Introduction by Allen Ginsberg' —that prompted me to pick up this text from a second-hand book store in Cardiff.
The 'Jail Notes' themselves are interesting foremost for their depiction of daily life in jail— though Leary suffers from a compulsion, similar to Norman Mailer, to show how he's 'in' with the black men there. Fragments of Leary's broader 'philosophy' are included, often written in ALL CAPS. Other stylistic quirks include a substitution of 'I' for 'eye', 'my' for 'maya', and pronouns for 'thits'.
All this is interspersed with sections of Plato's Apology, a treatise on Catholic doctrines of hell, and Colin Wilson's Necessary Doubt. These often run parallel to the subject of the notes, though occasionally resonances are emphasised or their subject matter directly addressed. Wilson's text in particular provides the foil to Leary's own discourse on LSD as a means of 'RE-IMPRINTING' (p. 91).
After the notes there are three pieces: the second of these, 'The Four-Thousand Year-Old Rock & Roll Band: A Memory Experienced', amounts of the strongest of Leary's prose in the book. It details the events of a trip to Morocco in '69, culminating in a visit to a village of 'Dionysiac' musicians, the joujouka. Here, Leary's sentence structure retains its consistency up until his description of the music and accompanying dances, wherein his characteristic liquidation of syntax apes the ecstasy of the experience well.
April 12, 2008
I'll never forget seeing Timothy Leary on tv when I was around 13. He was wearing flowing white clothes of a vaguely Indian cut, sitting outside under a tree on a sunny day, &, obviously (even to my inexperienced self of the time), in a state of profound expanded consciousness presumably under the influence of LSD. This wd've been around 1966 or '67. I assume he was being interviewed about being a 'drug guru'. That part I don't remember. He was clearly a highly intelligent person & I was deeply impressed - mainly by the glow of his face. Several yrs later he was in prison when he was arrested b/c his daughter was caught in possession of marijuana when they were reentering the US from Mexico. Or something like that.
How often do we get to read a highly literate acct of being in prison? Leary escaped & went to Northern Africa. For me, Leary was a genius &.. a fool. From the government's prespective, a very dangerous person. Leary managed to lead a long & fruitful life free of many of the neurosises that inhibit most people. Alas, he also provided mass encouragement to experiment w/ drugs that many people cdn't handle. Leary's foolishness lay in taking it for granted that people cd handle whatever he cd. A militant communist friend of mine disliked Leary b/c he'd heard that he'd been a snitch to save himself from more jail time. Then there were rumors that Leary had only told the Feds outdated & useless info. Whatever the case, I smell Cointelpro disinformation here. In other words, whatever Leary might or might not've done along those lines, I'll trust HIM long before I'll trust a rumor. "Jail Notes" isn't only concerned w/ Leary's personal predicament. He writes about fellow prisoners:
"PLIGHT COLLAR CRIME
Each day stories heartbreaking cruel and sad.
At lunch. Beautiful young black haired boy of nineteen.
At Newport Pop Festival, Cops started a riot. Long-haired kid threw rock cop and fell on its nose. Cops started search. In parking lot didn't know there was riot. Cops came up and said, "That's the one." Booked for assault on police officer with dangerous weapon. When cop gets wounded thits really go all out to hang it on someone. Have no money and father believed cops. Father hated hippies. Kid had public de-mender talked to him for less than five minutes. Got five to life. So depressed, bleak, incredulous, stunned, disbelieving, dazed sorrow that him story had to be true. Five years before gets to see the parole board. Five years. Age nineteen to twenty-four."
Grammatical, spelling, & punning peculiarities are Leary's. This is, of course, the type of story that the general public shd know more about. In a letter reproduced in the bk from April 7, 1970, Leary writes:
"You recall that while at Harvard we took LSD over 30 times in prison with long-term inmates. There is a lot more that I can do to liberate. The solution to society's problem is prisoner liberation. (The classic jargon of penology - punishment, reform, rehabilitation - is nonsense. We must all be liberated on both sides of the bars.)"
I agree w/ Leary completely about this & I'm grateful for his clear expression. Alas, such a liberation might've seemed likely to happen thru massive ingestion of consciousness-expanding substances but that's just as foolish as any other pill-popping solution. Life is far too complex for something so convenient & society is far too entrenched for an escape from its prison to be an easy matter. Leary cd escape & I honor him for that but what about the rest of us?!
How often do we get to read a highly literate acct of being in prison? Leary escaped & went to Northern Africa. For me, Leary was a genius &.. a fool. From the government's prespective, a very dangerous person. Leary managed to lead a long & fruitful life free of many of the neurosises that inhibit most people. Alas, he also provided mass encouragement to experiment w/ drugs that many people cdn't handle. Leary's foolishness lay in taking it for granted that people cd handle whatever he cd. A militant communist friend of mine disliked Leary b/c he'd heard that he'd been a snitch to save himself from more jail time. Then there were rumors that Leary had only told the Feds outdated & useless info. Whatever the case, I smell Cointelpro disinformation here. In other words, whatever Leary might or might not've done along those lines, I'll trust HIM long before I'll trust a rumor. "Jail Notes" isn't only concerned w/ Leary's personal predicament. He writes about fellow prisoners:
"PLIGHT COLLAR CRIME
Each day stories heartbreaking cruel and sad.
At lunch. Beautiful young black haired boy of nineteen.
At Newport Pop Festival, Cops started a riot. Long-haired kid threw rock cop and fell on its nose. Cops started search. In parking lot didn't know there was riot. Cops came up and said, "That's the one." Booked for assault on police officer with dangerous weapon. When cop gets wounded thits really go all out to hang it on someone. Have no money and father believed cops. Father hated hippies. Kid had public de-mender talked to him for less than five minutes. Got five to life. So depressed, bleak, incredulous, stunned, disbelieving, dazed sorrow that him story had to be true. Five years before gets to see the parole board. Five years. Age nineteen to twenty-four."
Grammatical, spelling, & punning peculiarities are Leary's. This is, of course, the type of story that the general public shd know more about. In a letter reproduced in the bk from April 7, 1970, Leary writes:
"You recall that while at Harvard we took LSD over 30 times in prison with long-term inmates. There is a lot more that I can do to liberate. The solution to society's problem is prisoner liberation. (The classic jargon of penology - punishment, reform, rehabilitation - is nonsense. We must all be liberated on both sides of the bars.)"
I agree w/ Leary completely about this & I'm grateful for his clear expression. Alas, such a liberation might've seemed likely to happen thru massive ingestion of consciousness-expanding substances but that's just as foolish as any other pill-popping solution. Life is far too complex for something so convenient & society is far too entrenched for an escape from its prison to be an easy matter. Leary cd escape & I honor him for that but what about the rest of us?!
June 16, 2015
Love him or loathe him, Tim Leary certainly lived a full life. Brilliant psychology professor turned LSD guru (later joining the cybernetic revolution), he seemed to have a knack for surrounding himself with the good and the bad and even a few uglies along the way.
"Jail Notes" was allegedly written while ol' Tim was in the clink, serving a 10-year sentence for a small amount of cannabis (which he alleges was 'planted' in his vehicle by the arresting officer). The pages of the book were smuggled out of the prison by his lawyer, little by little.
He uses Joycean punning and imitates the speech of various inmates to show the horror and monotony of life 'inside', in a couple of different California...er...correctional institutions. Leary himself seems to have been spared the worst of it, due to his 'outlaw celeb' status, but others around him aren't so lucky.
The last couple of chapters are a flash-back (tee hee) to mid-1969, when Leary and his then-wife Rosemary journeyed to Morocco, to meet with the Master Musicians of Jajouka. It's a trippy and cerebral account, as only Leary could do. The last chapter is about he and Rosemary taking up stargazing, in order to spot possible visits by the Space Brothers.
I found "Jail Notes" a decent read, despite it's gritty subject matter. Leary chronicles the ups and downs without either too much pathos or glee. It may not be as profound as "High Priest" or "The Politics Of Ecstasy", but I think it's a necessary diversion in his work.
"Jail Notes" was allegedly written while ol' Tim was in the clink, serving a 10-year sentence for a small amount of cannabis (which he alleges was 'planted' in his vehicle by the arresting officer). The pages of the book were smuggled out of the prison by his lawyer, little by little.
He uses Joycean punning and imitates the speech of various inmates to show the horror and monotony of life 'inside', in a couple of different California...er...correctional institutions. Leary himself seems to have been spared the worst of it, due to his 'outlaw celeb' status, but others around him aren't so lucky.
The last couple of chapters are a flash-back (tee hee) to mid-1969, when Leary and his then-wife Rosemary journeyed to Morocco, to meet with the Master Musicians of Jajouka. It's a trippy and cerebral account, as only Leary could do. The last chapter is about he and Rosemary taking up stargazing, in order to spot possible visits by the Space Brothers.
I found "Jail Notes" a decent read, despite it's gritty subject matter. Leary chronicles the ups and downs without either too much pathos or glee. It may not be as profound as "High Priest" or "The Politics Of Ecstasy", but I think it's a necessary diversion in his work.
July 9, 2019
On January 21, 1970, Leary received a 10-year sentence for his 1968 offence, with a further 10 added later while in custody for a prior arrest in 1965, for a total of 20 years to be served consecutively.
For a fee of $25,000, paid by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Weathermen smuggled Leary out of prison in a pickup truck driven by Clayton Van Lydegraf. The truck met Leary after he'd escaped over the prison wall by climbing along a telephone wire. The Weathermen then helped both Leary and Rosemary out of the US (and eventually into Algeria). He sought the patronage of Eldridge Cleaver for $10,000 and the remnants of the Black Panther Party's "government in exile" in Algeria, but after a short stay with them said that Cleaver had attempted to hold him and his wife hostage. Cleaver had put Leary and his wife under "house arrest" due to exasperation with their socialite lifestyle.
He still found time to write this...
For a fee of $25,000, paid by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Weathermen smuggled Leary out of prison in a pickup truck driven by Clayton Van Lydegraf. The truck met Leary after he'd escaped over the prison wall by climbing along a telephone wire. The Weathermen then helped both Leary and Rosemary out of the US (and eventually into Algeria). He sought the patronage of Eldridge Cleaver for $10,000 and the remnants of the Black Panther Party's "government in exile" in Algeria, but after a short stay with them said that Cleaver had attempted to hold him and his wife hostage. Cleaver had put Leary and his wife under "house arrest" due to exasperation with their socialite lifestyle.
He still found time to write this...
April 25, 2008
This is the book that Timothy Leary wrote in jail. The writing is Joycean and playful. Read it to find out how to make your escape from a man who did just that!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews