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28.
Lovebooks: Drug Book.
A 3pp. synopsis of a projected book on the drug experience, compiled by the ‘Editorial Committee, Lovebooks Ltd.’, October 1965. Three foolscap sheets, printed rectos only. Stapled at top left corner.
The proposal was almost certainly written by Hoppy, possibly with input from Steve Abrams, and its intention, using the knowledge and contacts of Lovebooks’ directors, was for the book to be sold to a mainstream publisher, such as Jonathan Cape or John Calder.
It begins by outlining the book’s four main aims, the first being “to supply accurate information about the experience of using drugs”, before stating: “We are not necessarily pressing for immediate legislation and total sanction of drug usage. We feel that too much of previous discussion of drug experience has been, on the one hand, moralising and condemnation of a paranoid nature, and on the other, manic and irresponsible eulogising.”
The sections that follow discuss the book’s central thesis (“Essentially, we want to show that using drugs is functional, that when a person takes a drug he is trying to achieve something”), its sources and data, and the intention to “interview people who can provide authoritative comment.” These include already obtained interviews with RD Laing and Richard Alpert; mentions of previous contact with William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg; the wish to interview a psychoanalyst and “a member of the Drug Squad”, among others, and to approach David Cooper, Dr. David Stafford-Clark, Lady Frankau and Alexander Trocchi “for information in various areas.”
Though the book failed to materialise, it laid the groundwork for SOMA and the campaign to decriminalise cannabis initiated by Steve Abrams in 1967 (a brief note to him in Hoppy’s hand appears in the top right corner of the first page).
Three old horizontal folds, o/w Very Good.