Writing on Drugs

Rating:
Summary: Love the author's name
Review: a moving , eloquently written story about the plants that shape humankind. This work reads like a journalistic overview of the subject as opposed to a penetrating scientific discourse, which is refreshing.

It's more of a readable, easily digestible (pardon the pun) work for a general audience. Other works on the topic are more detailed but few are as accessible and enjoyable.

Well done.

Rating:
Summary: you have to be pretty close minded to not like this book
Review: I was thrilled when I stumbled across this book in a book store. I rushed home and started reading immediately, as I had long since wanted to read a book on the subject. And to her credit, Ms. Plant didn't let me down one bit.

Although I wish the story of "Writing on Drugs" was told in a more linear fashion, I was astonished to find so much information crammed into so few pages (only 266) in such an interesting way. Not only did I leave the book with a changed perspective on the history of writing, my outlook on the history of civilization was changed as well! Ms. Plant shows that she has done her homework on the use of most all drugs and the effects they have had on societies throughout the ages. My list of books to read has grown a great deal, thanks to her long list of sources.

I would recommend this book to everyone who has ever experimented with drugs or anyone with a open enough mind to listen to what it has to say.

Rating:
Summary: you have to be pretty close minded to not like this book
Review: I was thrilled when I stumbled across this book in a book store. I rushed home and started reading immediately, as I had long since wanted to read a book on the subject. And to her credit, Ms. Plant didn't let me down one bit.

Although I wish the story of "Writing on Drugs" was told in a more linear fashion, I was astonished to find so much information crammed into so few pages (only 266) in such an interesting way. Not only did I leave the book with a changed perspective on the history of writing, my outlook on the history of civilization was changed as well! Ms. Plant shows that she has done her homework on the use of most all drugs and the effects they have had on societies throughout the ages. My list of books to read has grown a great deal, thanks to her long list of sources.

I would recommend this book to everyone who has ever experimented with drugs or anyone with a open enough mind to listen to what it has to say.

Rating:
Summary: This book makes me want to sell my 3 year old for crack
Review: I would rather sell my children off to a homeless drug dealer in exchange for a cap of crack than read the second half of this book which I was forced to put down after repeated trips to the toliet.

Rating:
Summary: Facts were interesting, but needed better organization
Review: Overall, I found "Writing on Drugs" interesting, in that it not only covered how various writers have written about, and on, various drugs, but also how the use of drugs -- legal or otherwise -- have shaped our society. However, the book was poorly organized, with the author jumping from topic to topic without any transition or explanation. The editors didn't help much -- the layout of the book is such that the reader cannot easily discern when one chapter has ended and the next has begun. Finally, Ms. Plant failed to give specific sources for her information. Yes, there is a list of references, but within the text, one cannot tell where she got her information. This is especially disconcerting when she goes on about the CIA involvement in drugs. I don't necessarily dispute the accuracy, but when someone makes such damning statements in public, she'd better be able to back them up, or risk losing credibility.

In the final analysis, I'd recommend waiting for the paperback.

Rating:
Summary: Making the soul visible isn't easy
Review: Sadie Plant--and I enjoy the inevitability of her name--has delved into the world of drugs, but she has seemingly fallen prey to the same lack of focus and inability to grasp any essential truths that haunted the writers of whom she (sometimes) writes. As she eloquently puts it, "Writing on drugs has evolved and mutated like a contagion, each writer reading the others' work, repeating their adventures, amd also their mistakes, endlessly rehearsing the same refrain." Indeed. And Ms. Plant has continued this somewhat dubious trend.

This really is a book without boundaries--and it could use some. Does "Writing on Drugs" refer to writing under the influence of them or simply writing about them after use? (Or just writing about them, period?) Is it actually about writers? If so, why are we treated to insights like the fact that Hitler received injections of speed daily or that Coca-Cola was developed from a wine first produced by John Pemberton? Is it actually about literature? If so, why then so much on Freud who, as far as I know, never thought of himself as a "literary" figure, nor spent time writing about literary figures? And then we have three or four closing chapters that have absolutely nothing to do with writers, writing, or literature. They are interesting in many ways but beg the question, Just what is the focus of this manuscript anyway?

If ever there was a book in search of a ham-fisted editor, this would be it. Ms. Plant has been given leeway to fairly much make any connections she pleases about drug use and how it has infilitrated our modern society and consciousness, and in many ways I applaud her efforts and her skill as a writer/researcher. But, please, if that is her aim--to tie together as many strands as possible--let's not market the book to the public under the title of "Writing on Drugs," unless that title is to suggest that "on" means "about" and that anything but the bong and the Hendrix T-shirt can be tossed in. I mean, the marketers clearly call this an "exhilarating literary exploration."

That said, I think the book pursues its many subjects with a gleeful brio and a fine-tuned sense of inquiry. I learned quite a bit from these pages. There were some literary insights from writers as diverse as Artaud, Coleridge, Nin, Stevenson, Michaux, Cocteau, and Paz. (Unfortunately, they are countered by continual references to Lewis Carroll and that Master of Junk, William Burroughs, which seem almost beneath Ms. Plant's abilities. And, please, why so much discussion of DeQuincey, a footnote in literature at the very best?) There are chapters on the structure of the human brain, which makes it so susceptible to drug ingestion; the economics of the drugs from the eighteen century to the present day; a history of opium that for once and for all made some sense to me of why we had the First and Second Opium Wars, something no textbook ever did.

This book gave me the sense of two people peaking on LSD, both brains awhir, both trying to express to the other the mulititude of impressions, feelings, colors, and sensations coursing through their neurons, and neither really ever having a chance because communication in such extreme circumstances is a suspect business at best. If Sadie wants the reader to understand drugs and their place in literature (or society) better, perhaps she needs to drop the metaphor and method of dope and write instead in a more sober, focused fashion.