Outside Looking In

A Novel

By: T.C. Boyle

Narrated by: Johnathan McClain

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.

Very interesting story and well performed

I recently listened to Tom Wolfe’s “Electric Coolaid Acid Test” about the use of acid in the 1960s in California featuring Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. “Outside Looking In” tells a similar story but focuses on the east coast and Timothy Leary’s group. There is a small overlap, in one scene, between the stories which I was delighted by. “Outside Looking In” is a great story and the performance is excellent. Highly recommended.

Depressing

T. C. Boyle is one of my favorite authors and the subject is very interesting but the story was so sad and depressing, it put me in a funk for days after I finished it. All those bright people using the drug as an excuse to become degenerates and their children raising themselves and watching it all. I know it’s a novel, but he does a lot of research and incorporates the truth in his books. It was just too hard to be reminded that the hippies with all their utopian ideas of psychedelic freedom and love were mostly just bums who partied till the money ran out and the law cracked down. Timothy Leary and his “educated” cohorts were irresponsible and their lousy research helped to discount any good research that was accomplished with psychedelics. The ending was abrupt and left me hanging.

What a collection of unlikeable characters

Boyle is one of my favorite authors but I’m 2/3 of the way through this book and have yet to find a redeeming quality in any of the characters. They’re all a bunch of spoiled, privileged, hedonistic children, enjoying a self-indulgent life free of responsibility and pretending it’s “research.” If that’s the author’s take on the psychedelic’60s, fair enough. Not what I expected from T.C. Boyle though.

Not one of T.C. Boyle's best

Gives a good gestalt of what the whole project was really all about, but the particulars are often unconvincing.

If you like counter culture books, skip this one

I’m not much of a critic but I feel the need to warn others. I got this audiobook expecting something like drug misadventures of Hunter Thompson, or drunken low lives of Charles Bukowski, heck even a cultish frenzy like Chuck Palahniuk. But this book did not deliver. Not to compare apples to oranges but T. C. Boyle seems to look down upon drug use in a way that just feels obviously condescending. And sure maybe drug use should not be glorified but at least make the journey fun. I felt no connection with any of the characters and I had to crank the audio speed to double just to rush to the end. The dialogue was almost unbearable. It reminded me of the boss from Office Space but not funny at all and it made me want to roll my eyes several times. But if you want to tell someone that you are against their drug use and that anyone who tries LSD will drop out of school and join a boring cult, recommend this one.