I’d have to agree. In the years I’ve gone, I’ve learned about two particularly fascinating novels out there, the post-apocalyptic, post-literate narrative Riddley Walker and the miraculous Cloud Atlas (soon to be adapted to the screen by Tom Twykler of “Run Lola Run”… that’ll be interesting to see. Said movie will also be produced by the Wachowski Brothers, who reportedly assigned the book as required reading to the cast of “V For Vendetta”). So I almost had to kick myself for not thinking of it myself.

Well, check it out for yourself. In all honesty, there’s some books in here I feel you’re better off avoiding – anything, for instance, with the number “2012″ in it. To be sure, there’s a lot of New Age hokum/magical thinking nonsense mixed with some paranoid libertarian/survivalist manifestos to delve through here, not to mention a lot of mainstream bestsellers that all of us are aware of. And I kinda wished there were a few more obscure discoveries, as many of the titles here will be familiar to most bookreaders. Still, it’s an appropriate cross-section of the playa psyche, and what’s running through it circa 2009. And need I say that you can purchase it all at the Bookloft, your friendly online independent bookstore?

Well, too bad. I said it anyway.

So here you go:

-Neuromancer by William Gibson
-The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
-Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans
-T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone (Autonomedia New Autonomy Series) by Hakim Bey
-The Queen’s Gambit: A Novel by Walter Tevis
-Kes by Lawrence Till and Barry Hines
-She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir
-The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan W. Watts
-Conversations with God : An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1) by Neale Donald Walsch (This link is to a newer edition, entitled “The New Revelations)”
-Feel the Fear . . . and Do It Anyway (r) by Susan Jeffers
-Any book by Andrew Weil M.D.
-The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius Of The Golden Age by Christopher Hibbert
-Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
-The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapille
-Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life by Maxwell Maltz
-A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
-Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda
-The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence by Deepak Chopra
-Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy by Joel Kotkin
-Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism by Daniel Pinchbeck
-2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck
-The Phantom Toolbooth by Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer
-The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
-The Secret of Light by Walter Russell
-Myths To Live By by Joseph Campbell
-The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
-THE BIG BOOK OF JOKES & RIDDLES by kidsbooks
-The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz
-Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
-Any title by William Gibson
-Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer
-Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, -Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness by Daniel G. Amen
-My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
-Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World by Bill Plotkin
-1776 by David McCullough
-The Monster Who Ate Stars by Souther Salazar (out of print)
-A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
-Illusions by Richard Bach
-Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
-Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time by Krishna Dharma
-Undaunted Courage : Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose
-Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day
-The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World by Lynne McTaggart
-The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby
-Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution by Terence McKenna
-Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts
-The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter
-The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge
-The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
-Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl
-Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse by James Wesley Rawles
-The World According to Garp by John Irving
-The Milagro Beanfield War: A Novel by John Nichols
-Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
-Lord of the Flies by William Golding
-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
-The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Patricia Reilly Giff
-The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
-The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
-The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
-A Friend of The Earth by T.C. Boyle
-Drop City by T.C. Boyle
-The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq and Gavin Bowd
-Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
-Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach
-Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn
-Any Title by Charles Bukowski
-The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
-House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
-The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
-His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and Nicholas Wright
-A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
-The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot
-The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
-Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
-Lust for Life by Irving Stone
-You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay
-The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
-Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
-I, Monty by Marcus Bach
-A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
-The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
-The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
-Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
-Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese
-The Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins
-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith

Oh, and while I’m at it, here’s two I figured to throw in, to serve as a palliative to all the sweetness and light on the list:
-Childhood: The Biography of a Place by Harry Crews
-Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Missive from an anonymous playa bard, swiped from the Playa Info Bulletin Board

So! Before I begin this, I suppose I should address those of you who showed up a while ago expecting a little bit more information about Adrian Roberts and RE/Search than you ended up getting. I’ll just explain the situation, one I fully intend not to revise, and then move on to less difficult subject matter.

So I did a brief interview with Adrian this past Tuesday, as I was shopping at the Highland Park Farmer’s Market, where he insisted I only print his rather vague quote, after which he went into further depth. Now anyone who’s ever read Piss Clear knows that Adrian, as warm and personable as he is, ranks as the Perez Hilton of the playa, so there was plenty of dirt, but I figured I’d stick to the facts for what I printed. However, he says all of this stuff this stuff was off the record. I can tell you right now that he never at any point in our discussion used that statement, or otherwise I wouldn’t have said anything in the first place. So I’m not beating myself up for what was originally posted.

That said, Adrian’s in a difficult position right now, and I’m not about to make it moreso, so I took thee offending info down. This doesn’t stop any of you from digging up a cached version on Google, nor am I interested in stopping anyone from doing so. But if there’s anything that I’ve learned from this, it’s scriptor caveo. And let’s hope homeboy makes his skrilla back.

Right, so onwards and upwards!

This year, I was camped at Entheon Village, the playa’s foremost repository for psychedelic thought. We’re known primarily for our lectures, which this year focused on the festival’s theme of evolution, natch. Traditionally, the village’s emphasis has been on psychedelic discussion – the academic advocacy group MAPS routinely camps with the village – and some people, most notably MAPS head Rick Doblin and self-styled Aussie gonzo journalist Rak Razam, spoke to these issues. But a lot of talk centered, oddly enough, on 2012, the latest endpoint to this version of civilization, and the leap in evolution some anticipate once this milestone is passed.

Truth be told, I only got so much from these discussions. Many of them focused on the temporary city and how different/better it is from the world outside. The Q&A after one panel ended up getting a little ugly when some women in the crowd criticized the lack of female speakers, and it devolved into a shouting match between her and magazine-journalist-turned-New Age-pundit Daniel Pinchbeck. Kinda sad, when you’ve just heard how special and unique the community you’re part of is, only to see that it has yet to eliminate some core grievances burners feel about the larger society we’ve attempted to escape. But it’s hardly surprising.

I probably learned more from the personal interactions I had with some of my campmates, most notably UT-Austin sociology professor and “psychedelic satire” author Tony Vigorito and Origin Press publisher Byron Belitsos. About Vigorito I will have more to say in an upcoming post, but his fiction sounds intriguing – at least intriguing enough for Harcourt to pick him up after his first book, Just A Couple Of Days, built up a rep in the small press circuit.) I had a long talk with Byron where he expressed great dismay at the Google/Authors Guild settlement, and the unintended consequences a privately owned corporation could wreak upon the entire published output of human civilization, not to mention the 23 titles (funny thing, that number, how it always crops up) he’s already published. Perhaps he should have taken it up with Google co-founder Sergei Brin, since his 200 “yellow bikes” (painted green for some inexplicable reason) he donated to the playa for bikeless citizens to ride at will were present at the burn. Maybe Brin was, too. But it was only me that Belitsos could get at such short notice.

Belitsos came to the playa with quite a few books from his Press, and hearing about my blog, he handed me a book called “Conversations With Paul,” LA Times editor Philip H. Knapf’s memoirs about transmissions he received from a guardian angel named Paul. No less than Love Sex Fear Death’s Timothy Wyllie (whom I wrote about a few weeks back in the Process Church General Assembly post.) lent his name to a promotional blurb, so I figure this is something I was meant to read. So I’ll let you know what I got from it.

I also ran into Raymond Soulard, Jr. of Portland, Oregon’s Scriptor Press, who has routinely given away pamphlets of fine literature from writers like William Burroughs and Flannery O’Connor – not to mention several compilations of writings on psychedelics – at Center Camp for years. I once discussed “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” with him once, but this time around, I just took two psychedelic pamphlets, Octavio Paz’s “Sunstone” and Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer” to add to my playa gifts.

I do want to say that in 10 years of attending the festival, I’ve gotten more than just some nice conversations and some great reading recommendations (two of note were Russell Hoban’s “Riddley Walker” and David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas,” which I have since passed down to many others since.). There’s a lot out there that can expand one’s horizons as a person, and indeed, part of it is written. But part of it is painted, part of it constructed and the rest directly lived. That realization is what has stayed with me and influenced me most directly ever since my first solo trip 10 years ago, and it’s what I have attempted to emulate in my own creative written works ever since, starting with four “interactive books” I’ll one day share with you on this site but hardly stopping there. I like to think that an experience like this can bring the exact sort of unique inspiration to anybody, so wherever it is you find it, just go, follow up on what it gives you, and if it makes people stop and stare, then you’re headed in the right direction.