Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Outside Looking In: A Novel
    Outside Looking In: A Novel
    Outside Looking In: A Novel
    Audiobook14 hours

    Outside Looking In: A Novel

    Written by T.C. Boyle

    Narrated by Johnathan McClain

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    A provocative new novel from bestselling author T.C. Boyle exploring the first scientific and recreational forays into LSD and its mind-altering possibilities.

    In this stirring and insightful novel, T.C. Boyle takes us back to the 1960s and to the early days of a drug whose effects have reverberated widely throughout our culture: LSD.

    In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology Ph.D. student and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research” becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a free-wheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living. With his trademark humor and pathos, Boyle moves us through the Loneys’ initiation at one of Leary’s parties to his notorious summer seminars in Zihuatanejo until the Loneys’ eventual expulsion from Harvard and their introduction to a communal arrangement of thirty devotees—students, wives, and children—living together in a sixty-four room mansion and devoting themselves to all kinds of experimentation and questioning.

    Is LSD a belief system? Does it allow you to see God? Can the Loneys’ marriage—or any marriage, for that matter—survive the chaotic and sometimes orgiastic use of psychedelic drugs? Wry, witty, and wise, Outside Looking In is an ideal subject for this American master, and highlights Boyle’s acrobatic prose, detailed plots, and big ideas. It’s an utterly engaging and occasionally trippy look at the nature of reality, identity, and consciousness, as well as our seemingly infinite capacities for creativity, re-invention, and self-discovery.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 9, 2019
    ISBN9780062896964
    Author

    T.C. Boyle

    T.C. Boyle is an American novelist and short-story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published eighteen novels and twelve collections of short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988 for his third novel, World’s End, and the Prix Médicis étranger (France) in 1995 for The Tortilla Curtain. His novel Drop City was a finalist for the 2003 National Book Award. Most recently, he has been the recipient of the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Henry David Thoreau Prize, and the Jonathan Swift Prize for satire. He is a Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California and lives in Santa Barbara.

    More audiobooks from T.C. Boyle

    Related to Outside Looking In

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      American Myth: The Short, Beautiful Life of Breece D’J Pancake

      Jun 26, 2017

      The best American writer of his generation would have been sixty-five this week. The post American Myth: The Short, Beautiful Life of Breece D’J Pancake appeared first on The Millions.

      14 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Michael Pollan

      Dec 11, 2017

      What I get to read is not necessarily what I want to read. The post A Year in Reading: Michael Pollan appeared first on The Millions.

      1 min read

    • Article

      A Holiday Gone Wrong

      Nov 27, 2022

      A Holiday Gone Wrong
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Pill

      Dec 10, 2023

      Marlee stopped taking the pill when she was fifty-two. She had been bleeding each month—albeit hardly and close to tar—so she figured she was fertile, sort of, that something would attach itself to her uterine lining even if not completely thriving.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Time To Chill

      Oct 9, 2020

      Time To Chill
      9 min read

    • Article

      Pneumadectomy

      Jan 10, 2022

      Rolly stood for a few minutes in the shade of the large oak, just out of sight of the boys gathered on the dry shaven green of the bowls club. All aged around eleven like himself, they were dividing up their meager numbers for a game of soccer, knowi

      10 min read

    • Article

      Where There Is No Hospital

      Mar 8, 2022

      Where There Is No Hospital
      15 min read

    • Article

      The Long Night

      Oct 1, 2022

      The Long Night
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Rear Old Time

      May 9, 2021

      A Rear Old Time
      7 min read

    • Article

      Then the Birds Began to Die

      Jul 22, 2021

      Then the Birds Began to Die
      8 min read

    • Article

      No Party Pooper

      Jan 16, 2023

      No Party Pooper
      5 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Sep 15, 2021

      Of the 1000-plus books that have landed on my desk since the debut of this feature, not one has been as astonishing as this one. Brooks is Scientia Professor of Evolution at UNSW Sydney, where he founded and directs the Evolution and Ecology Research

      5 min read

    • Article

      Cillian Murphy On Oppenheimer, Sex Scenes And Self-doubt: ‘I’m Stubborn And Lacking In Confidence – A Terrible Combination’

      Jul 8, 2023

      Cillian Murphy is struggling with what he can and can’t say about his title role in Oppenheimer, the latest Christopher Nolan epic, such is the secrecy surrounding this film. Murphy is under “strict instructions” not to talk about the content. Which

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Free Will of Professor Sturmhauser

      Jul 10, 2023

      Professor Sturmhauser stands in front of his students, looking focused and casually in command—it’s a good disguise. Now he’s pacing back and forth, tossing a pen in the air and saying this: “If you take the measure of your will, what do you think yo

      18 min read

    • Article

      (The Quiet House)

      Apr 3, 2022

      (The Quiet House)
      17 min read

    • Article

      Performance

      Nov 10, 2022

      “Wait here,” the guard said as he shut the door behind him, leaving me by myself. The floor inside the lab was polished, and the air smelled of disinfectant, and yet the room felt unclean. Leaves shook on a tree outside the window, making shadows on

      18 min read

    • Article

      The Hidden Origins of Mankind

      Nov 12, 2019

      The Hidden Origins of Mankind
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Loneliest Number

      Oct 10, 2022

      “Doctor Blume,” I whispered, “I’m tripolar.” Doctor Blume pursed her lips, leaned back in her brown leather desk chair, removed her horn-rimmed spectacles, and began polishing them with the end of her cornflower blue cashmere cardigan. Then, slowly,

      20 min read

    • Article

      Quantum Physics for Mothers

      Dec 15, 2020

      Quantum Physics for Mothers
      10 min read

    • Article

      Ben Marcus

      Jun 15, 2018

      My wife, Gin, once knocked gently on my head, as if it were a door. “Hello,” she kept saying. “Hello. Who’s in there?” She and our therapist, Dr. Sherby, laughed a little about this, so I did, too. What fun. Keep knocking on my head like that, like i

      23 min read

    • Article

      The Dying Of The Light

      Dec 13, 2023

      The Dying Of The Light
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Outside Looking In

    4/5

    79 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Fucking amazing, eloquent and bizarre; a trip of a book.
    • 2/5
      The lengthy intro was interesting but I had a hard time getting through the rest of the story. This is my first time reading this author. I did not feel any real attachment to the characters or the story. The accents in the beginning seemed kind of cheesy. I recommend reading Leary's biography if you're interested in this subject.
    • 5/5
      great book the ending bummed me out way good. j
    • 5/5
      I've read a number of nonfiction books that covered the same basic time period of Timothy Leary's study and experimentation with LSD as this book, so it was only natural that I was curious to see how an interesting writer like Boyle would handle this material. After closing the book and reflecting on it, I must say that overall it was kind of a bummer. Sure, there is so much rich material when Richard Alpert (later becoming Ram Dass) teams up with Tim to hand out doses of acid to students and friends, simply asking them to write up their experience, so that they can “compare note," so to speak. Boyle does a fine job laying out a history of the discovery of LSD, and the takes the reader through Tim and Richard's ability to find benefactors that underwrite their fascinating group adventures at Harvard, then Mexico, and lastly at a huge estate at Millbrook. The problem for this reader, was that Boyle tediously describes the emotional toll on our central family (Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology grad student, his librarian wife Joanie, and their young son Corey) and gives short shrift to the excitement, thrill, self-discovery, and the humor that was obviously present. He's not the first author to clearly show the cost of doubts and jealousy that came about from years of freedom and experimentation, with drugs and various sexual partners, but when I pull myself back from the reality of the story, I realize that Boyle's fictional side of the book is a pretty bleak story. All of this core family's relationships may have been completely destroyed. It didn’t seem that Boyle explained enough about why Fritz and Joanie kept craving the drug and sexual experimentation, when their love for each other was bitterly fraying in clear sight. Maybe that one word—craving—says it all. Part of the problem is that describing an acid trip with mere words in a novel is tough sledding, but I think Boyle is up to that task, he just didn't seem to want that to be as much of the story, as jealousy, dirty dishes, and another possible utopia gone bad. I guess when I get to the core of the issue for me, I was simply saddened with where he chose to take this story. I was craving a more fulfilling story of sex and drugs. Crave on.
    • 4/5
      I think T. C. Boyle is a good writer so picked this up without really knowing what it was about. Timothy Leary, the LSD guru of the 1960's is the subject of the book and the naive and willing followers that came under his spell. The book reminded me a great deal of "The Inner Circle" about Kinsey. In fact, the term "inner circle" is used to describe those around Leary.The story is told from the perspective of Fitz Loney, a psychology student at Harvard. Fitz and his wife Joanie along with their son, Corey find themselves in the inner circle of Leary. The first third of the book is probably the best as it describes the beginnings of the relationship while Fitz is a student at Harvard. The last third of the book is set in Leary's experimental commune in Millbrook and is basically a descent into drugs and utter chaos.The book was interesting is that there are many historical incidents that are verifiable and which I did look up to read more such as the Good Friday experiment testing whether religious experience can be caused by drugs. An interesting read but it is in form very much like "The Inner Circle)
    • 3/5
      The author is incapable of writing badly, let’s face it. However, Boyle has covered all of this ground before while writing a much more engaging stories. No dark humor, no romance, just straight up tragedy. Put this down and read his book “Drop City” instead, which is also about a commune and a much better book.
    • 5/5
      Just read. Like an acid trip. The story is all over the place from Herr Dr Albert Hofmann's lab assistant,"Suzi Ramstein" drops 100 gamma of LSD as the first woman in history to trip! (Fiction). To a loser and drunk not able to fix his life from WonderFull trips.