Be Not Content A Subterranean Journal William J Craddock Rudy Rucker 9780984758555 Books
Download As PDF : Be Not Content A Subterranean Journal William J Craddock Rudy Rucker 9780984758555 Books
Be Not Content is a coming-of-age novel set in San Jose, California, in the mid 1960s—describing William Craddock’s experiences as a young acid-head. This is a hip, profound, and wonderfully-written book, a unique chronicle of the earliest days of the great psychedelic upheaval. Be Not Content is filled with warmth and empathy, tragic at times, and very funny in spots, a wastrel masterpiece where laughter plays counterpoint against the oboes of doom. A mystical underground masterpiece.
Be Not Content A Subterranean Journal William J Craddock Rudy Rucker 9780984758555 Books
And here I thought I was the only one who had even heard about this book!This is a very powerful narrative about the impact of LSD on the young people of the 1960s and 70s. It is poetic, complex, smooth as 23 year old whiskey. It has some of the best descriptions of the psychedelic experience I have ever read. It is moving, frightening, exhilarating, much like the times it portrays. It conveys the "torn from your roots" sensation that often accompanies the experience. It also documents the vast gap that developed between those who explored this experience, and those who didn't and were abhorred by those who did.
"The early acid-eaters huddled together apart from the hostile world of the uninitiated; those who'd never trembled and freaked on the swaying tightrope of thin-line sanity, crying for all of mankind and the futility of ridiculously short birth-to-death life; those who'd never crumbled and melted under powerful, ego-killing doses of questionably pure chemicals to lie on cheap apartment floors confessing and repenting personal failures and the misunderstandings and selfishness of all humanity, renouncing, after long painful battles, all games and , therefore, all claim to life as a separate entity, dying at last in a nova-flash of micro-second enlightenment and total love beyond emotional love, to be reborn again instantly, but only after countless Eternities with the Void, discovering to your joy, to your amazement, to your flickering sadness, that the world and the I and the talk and the task still remained and that you'd been granted or cursed with one more chance--one more time around."
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Tags : Be Not Content: A Subterranean Journal [William J. Craddock, Rudy Rucker] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Be Not Content is a coming-of-age novel set in San Jose, California, in the mid 1960s—describing William Craddock’s experiences as a young acid-head. This is a hip,William J. Craddock, Rudy Rucker,Be Not Content: A Subterranean Journal,Transreal Press,0984758550,Biography & Autobiography Personal Memoirs,Biography Autobiography,Memoirs,Personal Memoirs
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Be Not Content A Subterranean Journal William J Craddock Rudy Rucker 9780984758555 Books Reviews
While this might not be for everyone, it is a very well written first person account of the start of the LSD revolution in and around San Francisco. Some of the passages in here are about as good a written account of what it feels like to be on LSD as can be transferred onto paper. He captures perfectly the frustration which comes from getting a glimpse of enlightenment, but not being able to hold onto it or make it part of everyday life. All of this is set against the backdrop of the rise and ultimate inevitable fall of the peace and free love movement, which from the inside must have looked like it was going to transform the world into a completely new one. As all the characters end up having to learn, reality can be stubborn though.
Just an awesome description of how it was. So glad this book has been re-published. If you were an acid freak, a member of the tribal 60's culture, or even peripherally associated with the culture (as I was), you'll laugh, cry, & celebrate this book. A moment in time that can never possibly be recreated. I'm so glad I came of age during this period. I originally came across this book in a college book store in '71. It was being used as a text for a cultural anthropology class. Nothing like a text book, but sure captured the spirit of the time.
I read this in the mid-70s and it stuck with me. I looked and looked for years for a copy of it but never found it. Finally it's been republished. Thank goodness. This is a fascinating read. In hindsight it's more enlightening now than it was for me as a teenager. This is written from the perspective of, as Craddock puts it, minor acid freaks in San Jose. Not the center of the LSD universe, but very nearby. The numerous brief intersections with the centers of the universe and the insights gleaned from them are enlightening and priceless. This book is amazing - you have to cut Craddock just a little slack for having written it as a mere 20 (or so) year old but he successfully gets across ideas and, more importantly, feelings that are generally indescribable.
When one is young, and even earnest, it is often painfully difficult to write prose, especially memoir, without seeming pretentious. This risk is vastly increased when topics lean on the largely ineffable 'spiritual' side.
So, incredibly, William J. Craddock has effortlessly managed to completely avoid this trapping, whilst both reverently and irreverently embracing the dark and light of sixties counterculture; its mind altering adventures and his own, very turbulent, sometimes psychosis-laced, trip through psychedelic adolescence.
Beginning with his time in a prominent, ubiquitously feared, outlaw motorcycle gang, the story quickly changes flavor after Craddock is unceremoniously woken out of his violent life by the ruthless mirror thrust before him and many others of his generation, by the sometimes liberating, often devastating, mysteries of Lysergic Acid.
Set in one seed center of "hippie" (predating the now loaded, often-derisive term) counter-culture San Francisco, and its infamous Haight-Ashbury district, Craddock stumbles into the early 'Acid-Tests', where earliest Grateful Dead are jamming; pranksters are pranking and young minds are spinning from their conditioned axis .
But this is mostly incidental- the action's nucleus is a more intimate setting, centering mostly on the morphing personalities within the protagonist's circle of friends and acquaintances, who are frequently facing terrifying impositions by authority getting drafted; busted and regularly being harassed by straights, cops and Jocks as a consequence of their long hair and lifestyle.
Even this is largely peripheral, as W.J.C. dives so far into his mental processes during these times, that the core of the book seems to emerge as his mind itself; the human mind, the thing that unites us all, in all its beauty, all its ugliness.
A major charm of this stunning work is that, although there appears to be no message stressed by its author, through the sharing of such intense personal metaphoric nakedness and stark, raving chaos (both personally & equally, within society), a message can't help but emerge, but it's a message felt; not read. And this is one hallmark of timeless, classic literature.
Highly, highly recommended.
And here I thought I was the only one who had even heard about this book!
This is a very powerful narrative about the impact of LSD on the young people of the 1960s and 70s. It is poetic, complex, smooth as 23 year old whiskey. It has some of the best descriptions of the psychedelic experience I have ever read. It is moving, frightening, exhilarating, much like the times it portrays. It conveys the "torn from your roots" sensation that often accompanies the experience. It also documents the vast gap that developed between those who explored this experience, and those who didn't and were abhorred by those who did.
"The early acid-eaters huddled together apart from the hostile world of the uninitiated; those who'd never trembled and freaked on the swaying tightrope of thin-line sanity, crying for all of mankind and the futility of ridiculously short birth-to-death life; those who'd never crumbled and melted under powerful, ego-killing doses of questionably pure chemicals to lie on cheap apartment floors confessing and repenting personal failures and the misunderstandings and selfishness of all humanity, renouncing, after long painful battles, all games and , therefore, all claim to life as a separate entity, dying at last in a nova-flash of micro-second enlightenment and total love beyond emotional love, to be reborn again instantly, but only after countless Eternities with the Void, discovering to your joy, to your amazement, to your flickering sadness, that the world and the I and the talk and the task still remained and that you'd been granted or cursed with one more chance--one more time around."
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