[THS] Stray Questions for: Don Lattin

[Peter Webster]

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/stray-questions-for-don-lattin/?emc=eta1

 February 26, 2010, 7:00 am
Stray Questions for: Don Lattin
By GREGORY COWLES

Don Lattin is the author of four nonfiction books, including most recently “The
Harvard Pschedelic Club.”

What are you working on now?

This week finds me in that transitory state between promoting the last book, “The
Harvard Psychedelic Club,” and pitching the next. Writing books is a strange
business. You spend a year or two in your pajamas in your basement hardly seeing a
soul or saying a word. Then you find yourself flying around the country, appearing
on TV shows, peddling your work at bookstores and talking, talking, talking. I’m
ready to get back in my pajamas and crawl back down into my man cave.

Next week my literary agent and I have a meeting to talk about a new book I’ve
proposed, a kind of prequel to the Harvard book. I’ve stumbled across some
interesting new material about the psychedelic drug scene in the 1950s that could be
woven into a compelling story.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I finished writing two reviews for The San
Francisco Chronicle’s Sunday Book Review — on “What Is God,” by Jacob
Needleman, and “Jesus Freak,” by Sarah Miles. I’ve also started working on a
freelance magazine article about promising research into beneficial uses for some
newly developed psychedelic drugs.

Describe a typical day in your writing life.

My best writing (and thinking) happens in the early morning hours, which is a good
thing because I often wake up at 4 or 5 a.m. I make some coffee, do my back
exercises, then head down to the basement to write for the rest of the morning. I
wrote my first two books while working for a daily newspaper, which was not easy.
Four years ago, I took a buyout from The San Francisco Chronicle. It’s been tough
for some of my colleagues, but it was a great opportunity for me. It still feels
wonderfully luxurious to be able to focus on long-term projects and not worry about
what I’ve got for tomorrow’s newspaper. Just having time to think is a luxury in
today’s shallow, chaotic and argumentative media universe.

My afternoons are filled with reporting, reading, telephoning, researching and
(mostly) just wandering around the house not doing all the other things I need to do.
The highlight of the day is taking my dog to the park, playing Frisbee with her and
riding my bike along the San Francisco Bay to my post office box, on the other side of
town.

What have you been reading or recommending lately?

Aldous Huxley is a central character in the new book I’ve pitched, so I’ve been
rereading his work. My long and somewhat strange trip began with Huxley, back in
high school. It was the late 1960s. I was probably 15 or 16 when I read “Island,”
Huxley’s final novel, about a cynical reporter shipwrecked on a mysterious Pacific
island where the natives live in cosmic harmony with everything. He, of course, goes
native. It’s the same storyline as “Avatar,” which I just saw in IMAX 3-D and found
amazingly reminiscent of a few LSD trips I had back in the day. “Avatar” is a fun
movie to watch, but it’s a dull and predictable story. “Island” doesn’t fare well either
with the passage of time, but I have enjoyed rereading “Point/Counterpoint,” one of
Huxley’s better novels.

I just finished Michael Parenti’s forthcoming diatribe on religious hypocrisy, “God and
His Demons.” It was an assigned review, but I’m not looking forward to writing it.
While I respect Parenti’s intellect and progressive politics, I found this book
depressing, derivative and mean-spirited. On the other hand, I loved “What Is God,”
by Jacob Needleman. He’s a longtime philosophy professor at San Francisco State
University, and a fixture around here. To quote myself, this is “a powerful and deeply
personal book about Needleman’s lifelong effort to connect with God using both his
head and his heart 
 a rare book that manages to be both skeptical and inspiring.”