The chorizo was needed for stamina, the coffee to keep me awake because as soon as I picked this book up I couldn't put it down - and at over 500 pages all told, this is no skimpy volume so it took me two days and two all-night sessions to get through it. In the absence of amphetamine, thank God and the swine for chorizo.
Ripped on coffee and sausaged-out in the cold light of my last day with Dennis, the question is 'Was it worth it?' And the only answer I can give you besides hard-wired caffiene gibberish is YOU BET. This is one of the best books I have read in a VERY long time. (Parallels for me are "One River", Dale Pendell's "Pharmo" books and "The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky" - not because they're similar but because I stayed up nights with them as well, but it's rare.)
The subtitle - "My Life with Terence McKenna" - was unnecessary I thought since this is a Dennis McKenna book through-and-through and it should say so loud and proud. In fact, if anything, the subtitle could be "His Life with ME" since it really is Dennis' story - and better for it. Dennis has a wonderful writing style and, while Terence (much like Leary) was always ready with a soundbite, a cackling eldritch laugh and the story of another hero's journey to a place no map has seen, some of it was (as Dennis admits) more down to the blarney than the facts of the matter, whereas I believed every word that Dennis said.
Of course we all want to know "what the hell was going on" at La Chorrera (to use Dennis' words) but take your time with this book and don't rush ahead to that. The early sections on family life and ancestry make for an admittedly slow start, but I see why Dennis included them, because they are a valuable record in their own right and also help to explain what comes later for both the brothers. As an archive of how the boar ate the cabbage (or whatever the saying is), they're essential. And then there are some wonderful essays (on Jung and Eliade for example) which are insightful, eminently re-readable, and which demonstrate Dennis' uniquely thoughtful and intelligent nature. The stories of Dennis' work and relationships post-Chorrera (in fact, throughout) are equally riveting. There are whole sections where Terence isn't mentioned at all in fact - and, as much as I respect the man, I, for one, didn't miss him.
Towards the end of the book where Dennis draws some conclusions about his life, his work - and in particular the messages of the teacher plants he has worked with - my mouth fell open more than once because they are exactly the same conclusions I have reached, most notably in my latest book on Salvia; even the words sound like mine. It just goes to show that when the plants have a message they make sure it's heard and there's even a consistency to the language they use... almost... as if... all this talk of alien civilizations and guided evolution might even be... "real". Or if not real, then at least right.
If I could give this more than 5 stars I'd do it - and that's for Dennis not Terence, and the nights we shared on my sofa with a sausage and a flask of coffee. At the end of this book I had the sense of Terence giving Dennis a big high-five across dimensions and passing him the bud and the baton, and I really hope we get to hear more from Dennis in his own write soon.
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Top reviews from other countries
Daniel Takami
Gracias por compartir vuestra historia Dennis
Reviewed in Spain on June 14, 2021
Sorin Albu-Irimies
A beautiful, captivating saga
Reviewed in Germany on March 15, 2020
