A “wildly entertaining” and “masterly” memoir (Times Literary Supplement) now in paperback
In The Lives of Michel Foucault, David Macey quotes the iconic French philosopher as speaking “nostalgically-of -an unforgettable evening on LSD, in carefully prepared doses, in the desert night, with delicious music, [and] nice people.-” This came to pass in 1975, when Foucault spent Memorial Day weekend in Southern California at the invitation of Simeon Wade—ostensibly to guest-lecture at the Claremont Graduate School where Wade was an assistant professor, but in truth to explore what he called the Valley of Death. Led by Wade and Wade-s partner Michael Stoneman, Foucault experimented with psychotropic drugs for the first time; by morning he was crying and proclaiming that he knew Truth.
Foucault in California is Wade-s firsthand account of that long weekend. Felicitous and often humorous prose vaults readers he
