I Think, Therefore Who Am I?: Memoir of a Psychedelic Year

by Peter Weissman

The philosopher Rene Descartes declared, "I think, therefore I am." But who is this I that thought posits? In anecdotal style, the narrator of this nonfiction novel relates an odyssey of discovery and confusion, catalyzed by psychedelic drugs, over a year

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

260 pages, Paperback

First published June 19, 2006

Reviews

[Dolly Delightly · Rating 3 out of 5]

William S. Burroughs once said that hallucinogens are “absolutely contraindicated for creative work” and while this may be true, they also make for absolutely great creative anamnesis. I say this having just finished reading Peter Weissman’s memoir, “I Think Therefore Who Am I?” which documents a year of his life spent as one of many “stoned disciples of weed” in New York city. Weissman’s literary endeavours began that same year, in 1968, with a “yellow writing pad…a pack of cigarettes…and a tin canister” of marijuana, but veered off course with increased use of drugs which propelled his descent into sedition. It took him almost 30 years to capture the hazy zeitgeist of the era on paper but he has done so beautifully and with a quasi-stoned power of description which is vibrant and opaque, acoustic and allusive all at once.

“I Think Therefore Who Am I?” opens with two young men, Peter and his best friend Mark Greendbaum, shuffling along “gray streets” overflowing with “brick facades and cars lining the curbs, garbage cans and fire escapes” with no particular destination in mind. Their friendship, solidified by years of familiarity and the seeming innocence of the two characters, their mutual shyness and the novelty of big-city life, binds them together in their ideological convictions as well as their shortcomings. Weissman notes: “Mark and I saw ourselves as rebels. We opposed the war and demonstrated against it. We were prepared to convince the draft board we were insane, homosexual, whatever it took, and to go to Canada, if it came to that. We excoriated the government and authority in general. Yet as male adults taken with the notion of women and what it meant to be men, we lacked the rebellious bravado…” This unifying sense of camaraderie quickly bifurcates as Peter becomes swept up in a whirlwind tour shrouded in “blue haze of cigarette smoke… salt-paper and pot”. Weissman, somewhat unwittingly, finds himself “taking epic treks across Manhattan”, toking on numerous joints, taking acid, frequenting iniquitous basement dens and partaking in the sexual politics among the Bohemian utopia of late 60s New York. He chronicles his “drugged memories” and escapades through rooms reminiscent of “crazed bomb shelters,” urban enclaves “throbbed with libidinous energy,” and phantasmagorical scenes of “people tripping out, getting sectioned” with beatnik aplomb and a droll, unassuming manner.

The memoir, therefore, has the enthralling feel of a picaresque and is studded with varied and peculiar characters, domiciled “like lost souls in Dante” around the hub of activity, including some of his closest associates of the time such as Arnie Glick whom Weissman remembers as “the sort of guy who’s conversation didn’t require reflection”, Rose the “domestic peasant in the kitchen”, Don Juan Goldberg “who attempted to live up to his name,” Richie Klein a “speed freak among acid heads”, LA Ray with his “glib self confidence” and Emily with Tom who made one feel like “a boy in a grown-up world”. Along with his best friend Mark who always “lived life in his head” and Patrick with his “cleft chin and rugged square face”, this multifarious group would have “smoke[d] or swallow[d] anything to get high.” Weissman has a deft hand in relaying the “life-size diorama” of the swarming and “disreputable characters lounging in doorways and lingering on corners,” and inducts the reader into the private passel of domestic politics and the counterculture lifestyle underpinned by the belief that nothing really matters except one’s own hedonistic quest for freedom. Often the drug-fuelled gatherings evolve into philosophical contemplations as the interlocutors find themselves “talking politics and bemoaning the world’s condition.” Occasionally the fragmented, time-warped, discussions venture into man’s mortality emphasised by the realisation that “You shop you, you eat, you read, you die”. Weissman unloads his brimming psyche item by item, like any budding writer who had left home to undertake an idyllic, Bohemian quest to pursue a literary adventure. This ethos stands Weissman quite comfortably although in his most familiar environs he remains one of the “neighbourhood idlers who’d been at it too long.”

Reading “I Think Therefore Who Am I?” made me wish I could dispense with my shoes, weave flowers into my hair, don a paisley print smock and drop acid. But above and beyond the drugs and the New York “jumble of skyscrapers” and the panorama of “an ochre smudge of pollution” and human debris the memoir is much more substantive and reveals a brilliant but achingly self-conscious young man and his compelling urge to discover himself and his place under the sun. Yet perhaps the two elements are so indivisibly enmeshed that one cannot be read without the other, as Weissman himself notes: “…there were drugs. Always, there were drugs. No history of that time can be understood without them, an influence and obsession.” In fact, it is difficult to imagine this particular memoir without the drugs or their part in its making, for they have shaped both Weissman’s life and prose style into a syntax brimming with vagaries, memories and apprehensions recollected through a markedly subversive tendency of mind made so by the author’s undertakings. “I Think Therefore Who Am I?” combines polemic, exploit and diablerie making it a unique, intense and candid chef d’oeuvre circumscribing Weissman’s experiences and the epoch of intensely perfervid political activity and free love. And like all good explorations of the self “I Think Therefore Who Am I?” doesn’t hold back, diving into the ugly, the awkward, the funny and the heartbreaking head first as we witness Weissman getting repeatedly stoned (and repeatedly robbed), submerging into philosophy and then astrology, feeling increasingly “like cipher”, losing all his earthly possessions, his friends and his virginity, going to Frisco and returning back to New York only to be “humbled by a dog” and humiliated by his girlfriend and her lover. Whatever else the memoir lacks it has life throbbing through it from cover to cover.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates once mumbled and perhaps the old stoic was right. “I Think Therefore Who Am I?” is a hallucinatory reportage, a sublime recreation of a psychedelic year portrayed with a vivacity which conveys the dizzying myriad twists of the writer’s life as the elusive, surreal images sometimes harden into uncharacteristic philosophical verities and beyond. Weissman’s idealistic notions of the hippy lifestyle and the social ethos of the late 60s are debunked by his own hand through trial and error of the awkward youthful misfit he once was while looking for himself and a place to belong. It makes for an interesting read as he has a great ability to mix raw sentiment in a provocative and utterly candid manner which both ingratiates him with the reader but also makes him, at times, seem somewhat disagreeable. “I Think Therefore Who Am I?” takes many swerves, abruptly imploring you to skid along through a landscape of sex, drugs and politics, sometimes laughing, other times lachrymose, while Weissman grapples with his own identity and the life ahead of him. Speaking of the year chronicled in his memoir, Peter Weissman described it as a “psychic battering” but also as an experience he’s neither keen to forget nor apologise for, concluding confidently that his life, whatever it was back in those days, was worth examining.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Psychedelic experience is purely experiential. It dwarfs – obliterates – language and even the best visual evocations are only a faint reminder. True flashback triggers are random: a smell, a taste, a brief flicker of the beyond beyond. But a firsthand account that is neither dismissive of the epiphanic intensity of psychedelic rapture nor bitter that Eden later eluded us again is so very rare and precious. That such an account would languish in obscurity while books like Robert Stone's “Prime Green” or Grace Slick's atrocious memoir sell thousands of copies is a great injustice, but anyway... “I Think, Therefore, Who Am I” is staggeringly vibrant and immediate, with a revolving door of characters – the dealer of ambrosia who appears of almost mythological stature, the lowlife hangers-on that by and by resort to the far dirtier high of amphetamines, the lithe mural-painting hippy gals, the square friends he turns on with varied outcomes... and, ultimately, the disenchantment accompanying the realization that if you storm heaven you'll sometimes get catapaulted deeper into the subbasements of hell than you ever imagined, though a lesson is to be taken, even from there. This book isn't really about the sixties; it isn't historical in any sort of specific or latitudinal way. It's an account of a radical, accelerated transformative journey precipitated by psychedelics as it happened to be the case with so many then. Weissman remembers. It was not a dream, not a delusion, chaotic and sometimes blinding as it was. He doesn't downplay the significance of what went on like so many memoirists of the time (which is tragic, because for many who did not take it as a starting point for seeking a higher consciousness, it was most likely the most real thing they ever experienced). Naturally there is a pittance of bittersweet nostalgia, but it's all beautifully and generously expressed. One of my favorite memoirs ever!

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was provided to me by the author.

I, being a child of the 80s, have always thought how cool it would have been to have lived through the "flower child" years. Yeah, I would have been one of those putting the daisies in the rifles (did that ever really happen?), or so I like to think. Woodstock, peace and love, and all that. I'm totally there!

Weissman sort of dulls that dream with this "nonfiction novel" of one year in the life of a real, young person of that time.

His New York is dirty, shabby, and unfriendly. My main impression of this time in the main character's life is just total disconnection - with others and with himself pretty much. The main character (also called Peter) seemed to know a lot of people, but didn't really seem to have any real connection with any of them. They all seemed to just orbit around the basement pads and take drugs. They crashed anywhere but never seemed to actually settle down. An attempt at a commune just sort of fizzled out, at least from how I read it. Several people, including Peter, walk out of their own homes when they get overwhelmed, instead of asking everyone to leave. At one point, Peter goes to San Francisco, and just gets so detached that he is shocked when someone called him by his name, it had been so long since he heard it. And had a very emotional reaction when this friend asked his advice about something, just because it had been so long since anyone had said anything real to him. His revelation about San Francisco - the hippies, the free love... he had an epiphany that the whole movement was about nothing. Just "lemmings", as he said. There was no real reason for the hippies to be there. It was kind of sad. Several times, he does have people open up to him. But it is usually someone who is high on something, trying to figure out the meaning of life, and Peter normally tunes out. Probably he was high, too.

This lack of real connection to other people is something that I would not have expected in the 60s. But I am aware of how drug use can shift perceptions and change personalities. So some of the detachment could have been the result of Peter's and his friends' drug use. They did get high a lot! He and his friends were less political, at least in this year, than I could have hoped. There is very little about politics in this book. A brief mention of some arrests after a sit-in that had happened previously, that was pretty much it. Peter was no longer into politics at this time. I think he was just tired of caring and more interested in hanging out.

I did enjoy the story of this "psychedelic year." Although billed as a "nonfiction novel," this work really rings true to me. It felt very much like a memoir. It's my guess that the author may not have wanted to be too specific on names and dates or something, so he called it that. It feels honest and real.

[Peter Weissman]

It's my own book. I'll leave it to others to rate.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t quite roll my eyes when I saw the cover and title of Peter Weissman’s memoir, I Think, Therefore Who Am I? That didn’t happen until I reached the eighth paragraph on page one and read this sentence, “A certain gradation of light filtering through a window would stir me, propel me back downstairs a few hours later and through the gray streets.” I could hear the author murmuring, “gradation of light, a certain gradation of light.” If I kept reading, it would be to see just how pretentious this memoir could get. But I kept reading and soon I saw the light. There’s a sublime scene in The Producers when Springtime for Hitler is premiering on Broadway. The curtains go up, the play begins and the audience is stunned into open-mouthed silence by the audacity of the bad taste—and then someone laughs, and someone else laughs and the entire audience is howling. The play is FUNNY. Springtime for Hitler is so bad that it’s funny. Two-thirds through the I Think, Therefore Who Am I?’s second chapter, “My Czechoslovak Awakening,” I had my Springtime for Hitler realization. This book is FUNNY and extraordinarily well written.

The narrator’s friend Tom has just told the Peter that he’d just obtained a long awaited drug, but Peter’s excitement is dampened when Tom reveals a couple of ordinary looking pills, “...like those for sinus congestion.” Then Tom discloses their origin: Czechoslovakia.

“Czechoslovakia!
The word exploded in my head, stranding the two of us in America, the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, where it seemed these capsules had been smuggled from so we could be free too.”

The incomparable Roger De Bris directed Springtime for Hitlert it was Mel Brooks, writer and director of The Producers, who intentionally made Springtime unintentionally funny. In his episodic memoir, Weissman skillfully calls up from that “Psychedelic Year” 1967, a cast of self-absorbed and self-congratulatory characters who reveal larger truths than the ones they seek in Dope 101.

Peter and his friend Mark’s quest to end war and score drugs, to find truth and get laid, to create Utopia and find a place to crash is authentic. Weissman’s memoir or nonfiction novel is a meticulous recreation of 1967 and its frontrunners. Their cosmic observations, their disdain for muggles (well, HP Muggles), their obliviousness to employment (Maynard Krebs set the stage five years earlier with “Work?!!” but Krebs at least recognized the concept, even if to reject it). “A certain gradation of light filtering through the window...” is well-wrought hip speak/hip thought. As the narrator admits, “Day after day I smoked one joint after the other, inflating the ordinary to the poetic.”

Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat, chronicling the lives of several California paisanos during hard times, eventually met with harsh criticism for its portrayal of Mexican Americans, but Steinbeck’s intention was to parallel the lives of his characters with Arthurian legend: Danny, Pilon, Pablo and Jesus were Depression era knights. Weissman has nothing like this in mind in his depiction of Tom, Mark, Leo and himself. This ain't no disco. This ain't no allegory.

A terrific chapter is “Day at the Beach,” when the boys decide to get out of the city and spend a day at Jones Beach. They look forward to an exotic afternoon. When they get there the beach is windy, empty, and hot.

“We’d brought a blanket, which we spread not far from the water, using our sandals to anchor it against the hot wind before sitting down, an oasis of three in a desert of space.

We sat awhile in the bright daze, then Michael, who couldn’t help but fidget , began to play with a handful of sand, and kept at it, transferring the grains from hand to hand, trying not to lose any. Tom, who had no compulsion to do anything, sat with his long legs drawn up, scanning the wide-open emptiness. And I stared at the water, thinking.”

Afraid to go into the choppy water, forgetting to bring lotion, unable to light cigarettes because the wind keeps blowing out the matches, the three sit in the hot wind and sun, enduring, until,

“Eventually we’d had enough, and trudged back across the burning sand to the boardwalk.”

Further down the beach and a few decades into the future Bret and Jemaine are tuning their guitars for an open air concert.

Not all of the book has that comic edge.

One sad episode concerns the arrival of Martha from Minnesota in the chapter of the same name. Martha is naïve, earnest, gentle, generous, giving and hard-working, which is to say totally out of tune with the times. She becomes an embarrassment. Hopelessly unhip, she’s treated badly by Peter, who doesn’t much care that he could hurt her, and never expresses remorse. Honest stuff, Weissman.

In my favorite episode in the book, “Summer of Love,” Peter travels to San Francisco for The Summer of Love. He soon hears about the “Biggest be-in west of the Mississipi! Today! At Golden Gate Park!” With a “bounce in his step” (great detail, great writing) Peter heads off for Haight Street. Nirvana. Hippies everywhere. He moves with sidewalk crowd. “I floated more than walked, enveloped in a bubble of well-being, anointed by the liquid sun, dazzled by the spectacle.

“This is the high point of my life!”

Peter reaches the corner of Haight and Ashbury. He gazes at the street signs. “It brought tears to my eyes, and I imagined a plaque affixed to the building there, in some distant year, “THE FUTURE BEGAN HERE, to which I’d point with pride and tell my unborn children: “I was there, at that moment.”

The best of all possible worlds.

In that same chapter, Peter, ravenous at the be-in and disappointed by the food the Diggers (a SF group that provided free food and clothing to all comers) are distributing, wanders to the margins of the field and there sees an older man on a blanket. Peter’s gaze falls on containers of food spread out across the blanket. The man watches Peter and then offers him food, which Peter wolfs down. When Peter stops eating, the man says, “You must’ve been hungry.”

“I looked at him more carefully now, as he regarded me with mild curiosity. I could see he didn’t expect gratefulness, and some lucid part of me appreciated his indifferent generosity. But seeing the liver spots on his bald head, the crow’s feet at his eyes, the ordinary clothes he wore, I all but dismissed him, because he clearly wasn’t one of us.”

Brutal. Bravo.

[Dietrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much ink has been spilled over 'the Sixties' and their meaning that the era has been boiled down to a collection of stereotypes and summaries of everything that went Right or Wrong in the new America. This book takes a much deeper and more personal look at the divisive time by relaying the experiences of one year in the life of an everyman personally struggling with the turmoil of the period. This approach breathes fresh life and depth into a subject matter in danger of becoming an inert and impersonal symbol. The author/narrator reflects on dramatic events in his life with a tone that alternates perfectly between keen observation, whimsy, and thoughtful sobriety.

[Raphaela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gripping account of hippie culture in the 1960s which goes beyond the stereotypes and soundbites of popular culture, as told in ebullient prose by a man who lived through it. Funny, thoughtful and self-aware, Weissman is a capable narrator to take us through the crash pads of the Lower East Side and the hopeful energy of Haight-Ashbury. What Hemingway did for Paris in the 1920s and Kerouac did for the roaming beatnik scene, Weissman does for East Eighth Street, Tompkins Square and Golden Gate Park in 1967 in this memoir of a psychedelic year.

[Rita Sherry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just found this five-star review of the Italian version of the book, hence the choppy feel of it:

Some fabulous eras, such as the one that saw the birth of the hippie movement at the end of the sixties, seem strangely alive even in those who for personal reasons have never lived them. Maybe that's why "I think, so who am I?" it has been welcomed in the United States with enthusiasm by readers of several generations, and appreciated above all for its ability to make the vitality and contradictions of a year that became part of history: 1967, out of every cliché. Weissman's writing, supported from an out of the ordinary visual memory, it creates a unique effect, making the facts narrated at the same time precise and distant, alive in an unattainable past: wandering the streets of New York, surreal and involuntarily comic dialogues with the companions of " trip ", the initial hopes and the failure of the municipality, the Summer of Love in San Francisco. These "Memoirs of a psychedelic year" are the result of an elaboration lasting thirty years: it took so long to purify the odyssey of experiences from all forms of mythology, to make it alive and tinge it with irony. And finally leave room only for the doubts evoked in the title: "I think, therefore who am I?"

[Naren Jackson]

Initially, I had problems starting this book because of the "hip jargon"; however, as I progressed in the reading, I became quite impressed with the autobiographical, self-reflection of the author and his excellent use of metaphors. Apparently, he could have gone into great chronological detail in describing his hitch-hiking trips across the country (from New York to San Francisco and back to New York again), however, his confining the subsequent passage (blocks) of time to individual chapters, made the book quite an easy read. The last chapters were especially enlightening as to his "adult" reflections upon his previous "Psychedelic Year.". As I, personally, was livining and working adjacent to the "San Francisco/Berkley scene" at that time, to me, Weissman seems to be sort of "stapling" himself to the tail end of a Northern California era. I would definitely recommend this book, if nothing else, as an anthropological "participant obersever" paper, even though his many external observations were more of a subjective nature. After a slow start, reading this became more of a page-turner.