... we can feel Boyle’s censorious attitude pumping through these pages like a naloxone drip. That’s not to say that Outside Looking In is one long buzzkill, but it is a farce laced with tragedy: the story of a good man’s increasingly tortuous moral gymnastics ... There’s plenty of zany comedy here — including a poo-flinging monkey and a sombrero from which Leary picks the names of sex partners like some kind of libidinous predecessor of the sorting hat in 'Harry Potter.' The humor, though, is tempered by the damage that Leary wreaks on Fitz and his family ... This is a superbly paced novel that manages to feel simultaneously suspenseful and inevitable ... Yes, it’s a drag, man, but any enlightenment that comes from a pill isn’t worth having. Better to get high on a good book.
... [Boyle's] best work since Drop City ... With his usual irony, pity, and a sense of humor that ranges from slapstick to sardonic, Boyle portrays a time when the American beatnik age is withering and about to be replaced by the emerging-hippie culture, and jazz is giving way to rock ’n’ roll ... As you might imagine, Boyle’s story is a page-turner. It would take an absolute hack to write a dull a novel about sex and drugs. That’s not to slight Boyle who captures the period perfectly. He’s done his research on drug research, and he doesn’t fill his characters mouths with a lot of the slang of the day ... fraught with innate irony and humor.
Although Boyle’s novel is set in the early 1960s, it feels fresh because there have not been so many LSD-centered works of literature ... ambitious in the sense that it provides a genealogy of the early days of LSD ... not simply about the joys of expanded consciousness; it also explores the unforeseen perils of liberation ... Much like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance, Boyle’s novel is an affectionate satire of the utopian impulse and psychedelic culture. Boyle’s representation of the LSD experience steers wide of sensationalism (his characters do not try to fly or jump out of five-story windows) ... offers a rejoinder to the slogans of the 1960s.
This novel is not, it must be said, full of surprises. As it turns out, constant drug use and free love may not be good for your marriage, family or academic career. If you’ve studied history — or if you’ve read other Boyle novels — you know well the arc of utopia ... the drug use of Boyle’s psychonauts seems, almost immediately, decadent and dull. The trips are amazing, but they don’t lead anywhere ... LSD does not radically alter Fitz’s sober perspective, at least not in an appealing way. Consequently, the novel’s trajectory is not pronounced, and the inevitable dissolution of the community is less compelling ... [Boyle] is a spirited downhill writer, capable of creating energy by virtue of his own pace and verve, and that is certainly the case here. This is not the best T. C. Boyle novel, but it’s without question a T. C. Boyle novel — kinetic, conceptual and keen. Moreover, when you take a step back from the book you can begin to appreciate that Boyle — much in the spirit of his quixotic and ambitious subjects — has now completed his own impressive public art project: a Mount Rushmore of American Fanatics.
...[a] spellbinding fictionalized take on the now-infamous Harvard Psilocybin Project, which Leary began in 1960 ... Cameos by Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass, and Ken Kesey further capture the time period, while Boyle’s trenchant cultural observations slyly depict how establishment gives way to antiestablishment in this engrossing, mind-expanding trip ... Boyle’s latest work of countercultural, biographical fiction will lure his devotees and the newly curious alike.
... [Boyle's] writing gets really fired up, staying just the right side of gratuitously lurid, but giving you a good amount of bang for your buck ... Boyle renders the hypnotic, quasi-academic mood of the commune skilfully, capturing the participants’ initial belief that this was a serious spiritual quest, not merely a party ... The downside to this generally engrossing novel is that at the centre of it all lies something words can’t describe: what it’s like to do a lot of acid. Also, Leary himself would have been a much more interesting leading man than Fitz ... As the story of one man’s descent into madness and the folly of communal living and doing drugs for breakfast, however, it’s a jolly thrilling read.
... captivating ... Boyle, who apparently had his own days of wild and weird, is insightful and sometimes humorous in depicting the allure and chaos of attempting to live communally under the egocentric leadership of Timothy Leary ... The novel vividly conveys what was seductively tactile, profound and sometimes scary about this moment in time.
The historical references may intrigue some readers and thankfully there’s Google for that. But the heart of the story is the Loney family ... The novel poses some interesting questions about the nature of belief and the very existence of God, but like the hallucinations they sprout from, the questions dissolve as the drug’s effects dissipate. What Boyle leaves us with, instead, is a cautionary tale. No matter how hard humans try, we can’t escape the messy realities of life in a world where there are rules of behavior and consequences for those who don’t follow them.
Boyle's timing is good, with microdosing still a hot topic. But, since his is a 'Gatsby' story, there's only one way this can go. And, with his numerous, dull attempts to visualize the LSD trips that Michael Pollan has recently told us are indescribable and his near-total lack of interest in anything about women except their physical appearances, Boyle hasn't figured out how to make these dopes' grim journey compelling.
The strength of Boyle’s writing lies in his ability to punctuate these dark, squalid moments with sardonic comedy ... contains the kind of surreal and stunning imagery one might expect from a novel about psychedelics, even if it most notably appears at the points when Boyle’s characters are not high ... The characters’ trips, by contrast, which take up a large chunk of the book, are often so generic (swirling colours, mostly) that we wonder what all the fuss is about. This seems to be Boyle’s point, but it makes for an occasionally monotonous novel. The final pages contain no dramatic disasters or sense of heightened consciousness. Instead, the adults become more and more pathetic, languishing in sexual jealousies and unrequited lusts. Families very slowly fall apart. The group’s whole purpose – the 'project', the Gospel of Tim – has seemingly gone nowhere.
... a mighty book. It even has a few fleas along the way ... Outside Looking In works its magic because Boyle deftly alternates between his prismatic vision and his eagle eye for the details and spirits of social reality. He brings the New Frontiers of both Kennedy and Leary back to life ... [a] page-turner ... reading is a sacrament and, in my eyes, Outside Looking In is a gift.
... a little like reading Richard Yates on the tripping experience ... Without advocating or sermonizing, and without indulging too much in the descriptions of sexual comingling and the obligatory acid tripping, Boyle writes of the 1960s to come from the perspective of the '60s that will be left behind ... Keeping his own stylistic flamboyance in check, Boyle evokes a cultural flashpoint with implications that transcend acid flashbacks.
...a satisfying, if overlong take on Timothy Leary’s LSD studies from the early 1960s ... Though it takes its time hitting its stride, Boyle’s novel picks up momentum and is an evocative depiction of the early days of LSD.
