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    Outside Looking In: A Novel
    Outside Looking In: A Novel
    Outside Looking In: A Novel
    Audiobook14 hours

    Outside Looking In: A Novel

    Written by T.C. Boyle

    Narrated by Johnathan McClain

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A provocative new novel from bestselling author T.C. Boyle exploring the first scientific and recreational forays into LSD and its mind-altering possibilities.

    In this stirring and insightful novel, T.C. Boyle takes us back to the 1960s and to the early days of a drug whose effects have reverberated widely throughout our culture: LSD.

    In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology Ph.D. student and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research” becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a free-wheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living. With his trademark humor and pathos, Boyle moves us through the Loneys’ initiation at one of Leary’s parties to his notorious summer seminars in Zihuatanejo until the Loneys’ eventual expulsion from Harvard and their introduction to a communal arrangement of thirty devotees—students, wives, and children—living together in a sixty-four room mansion and devoting themselves to all kinds of experimentation and questioning.

    Is LSD a belief system? Does it allow you to see God? Can the Loneys’ marriage—or any marriage, for that matter—survive the chaotic and sometimes orgiastic use of psychedelic drugs? Wry, witty, and wise, Outside Looking In is an ideal subject for this American master, and highlights Boyle’s acrobatic prose, detailed plots, and big ideas. It’s an utterly engaging and occasionally trippy look at the nature of reality, identity, and consciousness, as well as our seemingly infinite capacities for creativity, re-invention, and self-discovery.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 9, 2019
    ISBN9780062896964
    Outside Looking In: A Novel
    Author

    T.C. Boyle

    T.C. Boyle is an American novelist and short-story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published eighteen novels and twelve collections of short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988 for his third novel, World’s End, and the Prix Médicis étranger (France) in 1995 for The Tortilla Curtain. His novel Drop City was a finalist for the 2003 National Book Award. Most recently, he has been the recipient of the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Henry David Thoreau Prize, and the Jonathan Swift Prize for satire. He is a Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California and lives in Santa Barbara.

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    Reviews for Outside Looking In

    4/5

    83 ratings7 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be a trip of a book, with an eloquent and bizarre writing style. The ending may bum some readers out, but overall it is a great book. The lengthy introduction is interesting, but the rest of the story may be hard to get through. Some readers did not feel a real attachment to the characters or the story, and found the accents in the beginning to be cheesy. It is recommended to read Leary's biography if interested in this subject.

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Fucking amazing, eloquent and bizarre; a trip of a book.
    • 2/5
      The lengthy intro was interesting but I had a hard time getting through the rest of the story. This is my first time reading this author. I did not feel any real attachment to the characters or the story. The accents in the beginning seemed kind of cheesy. I recommend reading Leary's biography if you're interested in this subject.
    • 5/5
      great book the ending bummed me out way good. j
    • 3/5
      The author is incapable of writing badly, let’s face it. However, Boyle has covered all of this ground before while writing a much more engaging stories. No dark humor, no romance, just straight up tragedy. Put this down and read his book “Drop City” instead, which is also about a commune and a much better book.
    • 5/5
      I've read a number of nonfiction books that covered the same basic time period of Timothy Leary's study and experimentation with LSD as this book, so it was only natural that I was curious to see how an interesting writer like Boyle would handle this material. After closing the book and reflecting on it, I must say that overall it was kind of a bummer.
      Sure, there is so much rich material when Richard Alpert (later becoming Ram Dass) teams up with Tim to hand out doses of acid to students and friends, simply asking them to write up their experience, so that they can “compare note," so to speak. Boyle does a fine job laying out a history of the discovery of LSD, and the takes the reader through Tim and Richard's ability to find benefactors that underwrite their fascinating group adventures at Harvard, then Mexico, and lastly at a huge estate at Millbrook.
      The problem for this reader, was that Boyle tediously describes the emotional toll on our central family (Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology grad student, his librarian wife Joanie, and their young son Corey) and gives short shrift to the excitement, thrill, self-discovery, and the humor that was obviously present.
      He's not the first author to clearly show the cost of doubts and jealousy that came about from years of freedom and experimentation, with drugs and various sexual partners, but when I pull myself back from the reality of the story, I realize that Boyle's fictional side of the book is a pretty bleak story. All of this core family's relationships may have been completely destroyed. It didn’t seem that Boyle explained enough about why Fritz and Joanie kept craving the drug and sexual experimentation, when their love for each other was bitterly fraying in clear sight. Maybe that one word—craving—says it all.
      Part of the problem is that describing an acid trip with mere words in a novel is tough sledding, but I think Boyle is up to that task, he just didn't seem to want that to be as much of the story, as jealousy, dirty dishes, and another possible utopia gone bad.
      I guess when I get to the core of the issue for me, I was simply saddened with where he chose to take this story. I was craving a more fulfilling story of sex and drugs. Crave on.
    • 4/5
      I think T. C. Boyle is a good writer so picked this up without really knowing what it was about. Timothy Leary, the LSD guru of the 1960's is the subject of the book and the naive and willing followers that came under his spell. The book reminded me a great deal of "The Inner Circle" about Kinsey. In fact, the term "inner circle" is used to describe those around Leary.

      The story is told from the perspective of Fitz Loney, a psychology student at Harvard. Fitz and his wife Joanie along with their son, Corey find themselves in the inner circle of Leary. The first third of the book is probably the best as it describes the beginnings of the relationship while Fitz is a student at Harvard. The last third of the book is set in Leary's experimental commune in Millbrook and is basically a descent into drugs and utter chaos.

      The book was interesting is that there are many historical incidents that are verifiable and which I did look up to read more such as the Good Friday experiment testing whether religious experience can be caused by drugs. An interesting read but it is in form very much like "The Inner Circle)
    • 5/5
      Just read. Like an acid trip. The story is all over the place from Herr Dr Albert Hofmann's lab assistant,
      "Suzi Ramstein" drops 100 gamma of LSD as the first woman in history to trip! (Fiction). To a loser and drunk not able to fix his life from WonderFull trips.