Tuesday 4 August 2009

The Stoner's Library

The stoner, no doubt you've met him, comes in various shades, shapes and sizes, but we shall imagine him as lean, rather shorter than his lean-ness would suggest at first glance, large-eyed, large adam's-appled and given to standing about with a vacant look while clad in crumpled jeans, rockband t-shirt, vaguely militaristic jacket, outdoor boots that belie the fact that the most greenery he sees is just before he smokes it.

He was in a hostel, during college, anything from a year to seven years ago, and it has fried his brains to the extent that he has been unable to form long- or short-term memories since and winds up telling anyone who will listen about those kerrazzy hostel days. He used to listen to rock and metal then, these days it's mostly electro and trance and a smattering of world music. He has a variety of friends whom he greets with hugs and participates in a complex economy of sharing, swiping and cadging Stuff. His most constant companion is not much of a stoner - he's more of a whiskey man - but he hangs out with stoners because they are easy to manipulate. Unlike the stoner, he has no intellectual pretensions, but he likes to borrow books from the stoner's library because they look cool. He never returns them, which is okay because the stoner rarely remembers to read them.

This is the stoner's library:

The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell by Aldous Huxley, because, like, Jim Morrison, y'know?
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson, he loved the movie. Depp is so cool!
Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs. He's flipped through it, has vague memories of Venusians and manlove and freeform trippiness. That's so awesome.
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, because cheap foreign thugs who become wise are so, like, wise, man.
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, because the movie was so trippy.
Mr. Nice by Ron Marks, coz dealers are so awesome man
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test: Tom Wolfe, which he has never been able to read because the prose gives him headaches, but is so cool, it's all about the hippies and LSD and stuff, man
On The Road: Jack Kerouac, he's flipped through it, the bit about the brothel in Mexico kinda turned him on. He wants to hit the road too, one day.
The Lord Of The Rings: JRR Tolkien, which he has never read through, but is really trippy too, loved the movies
Food Of The Gods: Terrence McKenna, most of which he has actually read, and it's fascinating because it's, um, about how mushrooms, like, made us conscious, and that's so real man.
The Teachings Of Don Juan: Carlos Castaneda, which he mostly doesn't understand, but there's some trippy stuff there.
The Third Eye: T. Lobsang Rampa, which is again really trippy
The Occult: Colin Wilson, which is like, whoa, man. Really trippy and really awesome to flip through when stoned
PiHKAL: Shulgin & Shulgin, which he likes to daydream about
Chaos: James Gleick, he hasn't gotten beyond the fractal-art cover, but, man, chaos is so scientific, now where are my papers?
Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance: Robert M Pirsig, is um, bikes and ... zen. Very deep!
Helter Skelter: Vincent Bugliosi, about how some hippies were into some really bad shit, but man, what a dude, that Manson...
The Godfather: Mario Puzo, which is the only book in the lot he has read from cover to cover, one day on a train journey. It was easy to follow because he has seen the movie.

2 comments:

K said...

If he read anything from the subcontinent, he'd probably pick (only to display) Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid, because it appears y'know? so all about existential angst, smoked up.

You should do one with movies, now!

Space Bar said...

:D nice.

i'm assuming stoners have no time for poetry, huh?

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