The Astronaut and the Acid Head
August 18, 2019
First, a short warning: This
piece is about books, with only passing references to real life, (if there is
such a thing.) First, I recommend a book
by Scott Kelly: Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.
This memoir was a lot better than I was expecting when
I picked it off the Current Shelf at the local library. Scott Kelly spent a year on the International
Space Station. (You might have
seen the PBS documentary about it: (https://www.pbs.org/show/year-space). Meanwhile his identical twin, Mark (husband
of Gabby Gifford), also an astronaut, stayed on the good old Earth.
It’s a good mix of the gee-whiz tech stuff with the personal
insights of an intelligent and talented man.
Please don’t be put off if you’re not particularly interested in science
or space. Actually, a second-hand
recommendation might be more convincing:
Even my wife Emily, who reads 80% fiction and is not a science buff, read
it and praised it effusively.
The following paragraph from Kelly’s book may be of
interest to those who saw the movie “Gravity” directed by Alfonso
Cuarón and starring Sandra Bullock. (When
I saw the movie, I wondered if any of the ISS crew had seen it.)
“When we got the call about the [dissected] mouse last
night, we were just finishing up with movie night—‘Gravity’. We'd set up the
big screen in Node 1 facing the lab and gathered to watch it—all of us but
Samantha, [attractive Italian female astronaut] who was finishing her workout.
I've noticed a strange phenomenon when people watch movies in space: we
instinctually move to a position that looks like lying down with relation to
the screen. In weightlessness our positions make no difference in the way we feel
physically, but the association between lying down and relaxing is so strong
that I actually feel more relaxed when I get into this position. The film was
great—we were impressed by how real the ISS looked, and the five of us were an
unusually tough audience in that regard. It was a bit like watching a film of
your own house burning while you're inside it. When Sandra Bullock got out of
her space suit and floated in her underwear, Samantha happened to come floating
by the screen in her workout clothes. Later I regretted failing to get a
picture of them together.”
Scott Kelly, Endurance:
A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, p. 122
But the part of the book I want to highlight here is
not the present-tense account of his year aboard the ISS, March 2015-March 2016,
(or attractive women floating about in their underwear), but his looking back
to the experiences that motivated him to become a fighter pilot and later an astronaut.
Kelly gave credit to one book, The Right Stuff by Tom
Wolfe, for setting him on a course that eventually led to astronaut-hood. In a later opinion piece in the New
York Times, Kelly wrote:
“In 1982, I was on my way to
flunking out of school, with no particular ambition but to party with my
friends. I was in line at the campus store one day when a book cover caught my
eye — I picked up the book while I waited in line, and by the time I reached
the cash register I was so engrossed I bought the book and took it back to my
dorm. By the next day, I had finished it and had found my life’s ambition: I
was going to fly military jets off an aircraft carrier, become a test pilot,
and maybe even become an astronaut.”
“I had known these pursuits existed before, of course,
but Tom Wolfe’s prose brought them to life in a way that spoke to me as nothing
else had before. As a terrible student with severe attention problems, I was a
poor candidate to achieve any of these goals. But I had achieved them, and I
wanted to thank Tom Wolfe, who died on Monday at the age of 88, for the part he
had played in my life by sending him a photograph of myself holding the book in
the space station.”
Kelly was a college freshman at the time. At first a series of articles Wolfe started
in 1973 for Rolling Stone magazine, The Right Stuff came out in 1979.
It set me thinking about how books influence
people. Obviously, not many people choose
a life-path because of reading one book.
But apparently, some do, at least this one man. The irony is that, by all accounts, Kelly was
not much of a reader during high school and his first year of college, but when
he did pick up a book and read it, Wham!...he was off and running. One book!
Naturally, I couldn’t help comparing myself—my young
self-- to Kelly. Unlike him, I was a
voracious reader all through high school and college. But I cannot to this day recall one book that
influenced me as much as The Right Stuff influenced Kelly.
Perhaps, by the sheer volume and breadth of my reading, I was inoculated. For example, I read Moby Dick, but had no
desire to become a whaler or even to go to sea.
I read all of Ian Fleming’s 007 series (12 novels), but never seriously
considered a career in espionage. (The
“womanizing” part came later and of its own accord. I can’t blame Bond for that, and I admit I
never came close to his proficiency in this pursuit.)
This
was my first Fleming book.
In high school, I read both big novels by Ayn Rand [1],
but unlike Paul Ryan, was not inspired to become a conservative Republican
politician. The more I read, it seems,
the less inspired I was by any one author or book.
There were two exceptions. The first came early. I was in eighth or ninth grade when I read A
Sense of Where You Are by John
McPhee. It’s about the Princeton
basketball player Bill Bradley, who, after his college career, went on to be a
Rhodes Scholar, pro player for the New York Knicks, U.S. senator for the state
of New Jersey, and author in his own right.
His political swan song came in 2000 when he ran for the Democratic
presidential nomination. He lost to Al
Gore in the primaries. [2]
McPhee quotes Bradley, “When you have played
basketball for a while, you don’t need to look at the basket when you are in
close like this,” he said, throwing it over his shoulder again and right
through the hoop. “You develop a sense of where you are.”
 |
| First paperback edition |
Back in 1965, at about the same time McPhee’s book
came out, Princeton made it to college basketball’s NCAA Final Four. That year it was in Portland, and my dad (God
rest his soul), got tickets and took me.
Princeton lost to Michigan in the semifinals, despite 29 points from
Bradley. Next night, in the consolation
game against Wichita St., Bradley scored 58, setting a record. [3]
To this day, 54 years later, it is the single most impressive display of
individual basketball skill I have ever seen.
At the end of the game, which by current standards was meaningless
because it was only for 3rd place [4], every
one of the 15,000 spectators in Memorial Coliseum was standing and roaring, not
for either team, but for one player! It
was a basketball orgasm! The game that followed, between Michigan and UCLA for
the national title, was an anti-climax.
So, in that
green period of life, I was an aspiring baller and, like millions of
other kids, I wanted to be like Bill Bradley.
I thought I needed to grow about 5-6 more inches and be a big
forward. (I wound up at 6-3 and ½, just
tall enough for a guard, the skills for which I sadly lacked.) Long story short: I failed at high school
basketball, for reasons quite apart from lack of expected growth.
I cannot blame Bradley or McPhee for my failure at
basketball, though the standard they set was impossibly high. Bradley was a fine scholar, too, and that
part of his character I was able to emulate partially. I was a pretty good student and got a
full-tuition scholarship to the University of Washington. [5]
My subsequent academic career at that that institution, unfortunately, did not
rise to anything like Bradley’s, for reasons partially explained in the
following paragraphs.
The second exception was a book I read in the summer
of 1970, I think. (That would have been
after freshman year at the UW.) It was
an earlier book by Tom Wolfe called The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,
which came out in 1968. The book is
about the author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes
a Great Notion), who, after “experimenting” with LSD in the early 60s,
became leader of a group of like-minded artistic types who called themselves
The Merry Pranksters. The book
chronicles not only their adventures but the rise of the LSD-and
marijuana-fueled counter-culture, especially in San Francisco.
My
copy looked very much like this.
OK, so here comes the “Acid Head” part of the
title: That was me. Reading Wolfe’s book inspired me to take
LSD. Maybe “encouraged” would be a
better word. I had dropped acid a few
times during freshman year, also mescaline and psilocybin, but not until I read
Wolfe’s in the summer of ’70 did these substances have a credible proponent [6]:
Kesey and his pals.
Of course, Wolfe and Kesey received more than their
share of criticism and opprobrium for popularizing, if not encouraging, the use
of drugs. Just recently I came across
this:
A review in The Harvard Crimson identified
the effects of the book, but did so without offering praise.[9][10]
The review, written by Jay Cantor, who went on to literary prominence himself,
provides a more moderate description of Kesey and his Pranksters. Cantor
challenges Wolfe's messiah-like depiction of Kesey, concluding that "In
the end the Christ-like robes Wolfe fashioned for Kesey are much too large. We
are left with another acid-head and a bunch of kooky kids who did a few krazy
things." Cantor explains how Kesey was offered the opportunity by a judge
to speak to the masses and curb the use of LSD. Kesey, who Wolfe idolizes for
starting the movement, is left powerless in his opportunity to alter the
movement. Cantor is also critical of Wolfe's praise for the rampant abuse of
LSD. Cantor admits the impact of Kesey in this scenario, stating that the drug
was in fact widespread by 1969, when he wrote his criticism.[9][10]
He questions the glorification of such drug use however, challenging the
ethical attributes of reliance on such a drug, and further asserts that
"LSD is no respecter of persons, of individuality".[9][10]
[Wikipedia]
 |
| Kesey and Pranksters on Further |
I carried on
dropping acid, and its psychedelic relatives, all through college and for some
years afterwards. I was never motivated
by its liberal/spiritual trappings, or because I thought it was a righteous
thing to do. Moreover, though I
respected them as authors and loved their works, I never idolized Kesey or
Wolfe.
I ate LSD because it was fun, usually in the company
of like-minded friends, male and female.
Note: I’m not bragging about how many acid trips I took (probably less
than a hundred, and that includes mescaline and psilocybin, in both natural and
processed forms.) I wouldn’t recommend
psychedelic drugs to young people. But
neither would I recommend alcohol, though beer, whiskey and vodka are
advertised 24/7 on TV and other media.
A lot of nasty, violent, stupid shit was happening in
the 60s and 70s. If I erred on the side
of non-involvement or escapism, so be it; I can forgive myself for that. Unlike Scott Kelly, I never bothered to write
Wolfe and thank him for the inspiration. [7]
 |
| Wolfe the dandy in his heyday |
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the
worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
From W. B. Yeats, “The
Second Coming.”
What else can I say?
I lacked all conviction, but I don’t boast about that, either.
I never became dependent on psychedelic drugs, but, as
the 70s dragged ever-more-depressingly on, I did become alcoholic. Booze
snuck up on me; LSD did not. (Well,
maybe the James Bond novels did have a subconscious effect. (“Vodka martini, shaken not stirred.”)) But that’s another story, connected with other
influential books.
The irony here, (if that’s the appropriate concept), is
that different books by the same author may have divergent effects on
different people. That, and the fact
that popular books when they come out are products of their times. If the Kelly twins had been born in 1950,
their lives obviously would have been much different. Given their avowed liberal leanings, I wonder
whether they’d have joined the military and fought in Vietnam. Maybe Wolfe’s earlier book, The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, would have influenced them as it did
me. If I’d been born in ’64, who
knows? By the time I came of age in the
80s, the counter-culture, such as it was, with all its boons and excesses, was
moribund, a thing of the past. History. Maybe
I’d have picked up a copy of The Right Stuff, become an engineer
and applied to NASA. (My eyesight wasn’t
good enough to become a fighter pilot, even if I’d wanted to.)
This piece is finished; it can’t end with
parentheses.
NOTES:
1.
1. Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
2. 2. “On
March 9, 2000, after failing to win any of the first 20 primaries and caucuses
in the election process, Bradley withdrew his campaign and endorsed Gore; he
ruled out the idea of running as the vice-presidential candidate and did not
answer questions about possible future runs for the presidency. He said that he
would continue to speak out regarding his brand of politics, calling for
campaign finance reform, gun control, and increased health care
insurance.” [Wikipedia]
One has to wonder what the
country—and the world—would be like if Bradley had been elected.
3. 3. Previous record was Hal Lear, Temple
U., 48 points vs. SMU, 1956.
4.
4. The so-called consolation
game was discontinued in 1981.
5.
5. Not that big of a deal. As I remember, in-state tuition at the UW in
1969-70 was less than $400 per year, considerably less than books, room and
board.
6.
6. The most celebrated proponents were
probably Tim Leary and Richard Alpert (later Baba Ram Das), but by 1969, we of
bookish bent thought them rather laughable.
7.
7. Just speculating here: I’ll bet many more people were inspired by to
take LSD by The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test than were inspired by The
Right Stuff to become fighter pilots/astronauts. Millions
more.
Interview of Wolfe by Rolling Stone:
Comments
Post a Comment