Foucault in California: [A True Story―Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death]

by Simeon Wade, Heather Dundas (Foreword)

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 psychedelic 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 headlong into the erudite and subversive circles of the Claremont intelligentsia: parties in Wade’s bungalow, intensive dialogues between Foucault and his disciples at
a Taoist utopia in the Angeles Forest (whose denizens call Foucault “Country Joe”); and, of course, the fabled synesthetic acid trip on the multihued slopes of the Artist’s Palette at Death Valley, set to the strains of Bach and Stockhausen. Part search for higher consciousness, part bacchanal, this book chronicles a young man’s burgeoning friendship with one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.

Genres: Philosophy, Biography, Nonfiction, Memoir, Theory, Drugs, The United States Of America

152 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2019

Reviews

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this little book about Foucault in California, starting with the Foreword by Heather Dundas, who rescued the manuscript from oblivion. In 1975 Foucault was invited by a professor at Claremont Graduate School to lecture, the invitation really being an excuse for the professor and his lover to hang out with their intellectual idol. Over the course of the weekend, the pair took Foucault to Death Valley (or the Valley of Death, as Foucault called it) to take LSD and listen to music, an experience that apparently transformed Foucault. Heather Dundas picks up the tale (her foreword resembling one of those fictive prefaces in which a narrator explains how a mysterious manuscript came into her possession):

I first heard this story in 2014… I found it frankly hard to believe that a philosopher of Foucault’s standing would, at age forty-nine, agree to experiment with psychedelic drugs with these strangers. The whole episode was absurd, I thought, and it triggered something deeply snarky within me. I hated “theory.” I hated Foucault, who seemed to embody all the privilege and arrogance of the theory movement. When I heard that Foucault’s host in Death Valley, Simeon Wade, had an unpublished manuscript describing this experience in the desert, I decided to track him down. I wanted to get Wade’s manuscript and use it to write a satire about idiot academics in the desert.

And from the very first page, the momentum continues all the way through the recovered manuscript — comical, exhilarating, and moving by turns.

I first visited California in 1973-74 as a student at Berkeley, coming from the monotone Midwest and like so many other transplants was astonished by beauty of the landscape and the palpable sense of “liberation” among the people I met. For anyone, especially anyone gay or lesbian, during those years, this book will bring back the exuberance and utopian confusion of the 70s and 80s. Like Dundas I am indifferent to Foucault’s books, but I well remember the pleasure of first reading them. Wade has given us a picture of Foucault as a completely charming, generous, intelligent man, much more engaging than the bald-headed mandarin who stares at us out of the cover of his books.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The coffee shop was located in full view of a fire station, which prompted Foucault to say, 'I have noticed that in America there are so many fire stations. The major myth in America is fire, but in California it is earthquake. Americans really cling to their myths.'

Essentially a series of interviews cobbled together by an aspiring Boswell. The book details Foucault's 1975 visit to California and his time with a few young men, culminating in his experiment with LSD in Death Valley. This could likely be very moving for the young. Paraphrasing the poet Scott Pilgrim, this was more a series of sighs. It is difficult to articulate the reasons for my disappointment, only the unnecessary embellishment with a cruising philosopher. I did think about Robert Lowell during some of the more tedious questions form Foucault's admirers. How Cal was born into discourses, how his ability to parse the codes of his family tree, one which reached back to the Mayflower was of benefit but also an anxiety. Lowell of course felt the brunt of both penal and psychiatric institutions. I am curious what would have happened if Foucault and Lowell would have taken a walk?

[Vic Bondi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted this to be the poststructuralist Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But it wasn't. It's kind of chatty and banal and it would have been great to have more description of Foucault tripping in death valley. Either that; or some actual philosophy. This had neither.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an odd little book--150 pages entertainingly read in a couple of hours while handling calls and customers at Heirloom Books in Chicago.

I've read several of Foucault's books, finding his work interesting and accessible. This book recounts the author's days with him as his sponsor at the Claremont Graduate School, academic events punctuated by social forays up into the mountains and down into Death Valley. It was while down in the desert that Foucault was introduced to LSD, his first psychedelic experience. Throughout, it's talk, talk, talk on the order of the hosts intellectually posturing and asking the great man for his opinions on this, that and the other thing, Foucault remaining tolerantly polite, and somewhat gnomic, throughout, willing to put up with quite a lot so long as it was coming from handsome young men.

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, so this book is weird. I liked the foreword in which Dundas tries to find out about this alleged acid trip and verify it.

I liked the book itself, but it reads almost like an invented set of discussions in which the author and his partner ask Foucault these questions that have yes/no answers and then he expands a little. Like it's a construction, not something that actually happened (or happened but this is the polished-up version of it). They seem to congratulate each other on knowing and liking the same philosophers, artists, musicians--Wade admits as much when he writes that he put out books and albums for Foucault to see and comment on. So the whole thing feels forced, artificial.

The acid trip itself is almost anti-climactic. I guess it would be hard to remember exactly everything when you're tripping, too. But also Foucault's reaction seemed more internalized than standing at the edge of the canyon screaming into the night. Wade said he destroyed a manuscript on "man and the monster" and the first attempt at The History of Sexuality to take a new tack after the acid trip.

The language gets a little grandiose at times. I think I should have probably reviewed Foucault's works before jumping in: the transcribed conversation between him and Wade's students was pretty opaque to me. The students seemed engaged, and I was jealous of the high-minded, complex discussion they had.

Foucault chopped wood well. He ate sparingly. He liked to hike in the mountains with many young men.

I felt for the author: driven out of academia for being "nonconformist" (homosexual). But then he wrote about feeling his student's chest hair (with permission, so there's that) and also about looking forward to class because there was a student who sat in the front row with a hole in the crotch of his pants. He spoke of intimacies with his students and combining life with teaching/work, and I think he might have taken that too far.

[cjs · Rating 4 out of 5]

i'm surprised by how entertained i was by this book. it's basically a breezy recollection of lofty banter between foucault & various post-beatnik 70's californian back-to-the-landers. maybe that sounds awful to you, but it's right up my alley. it's probably fudged too, but i think that's half the fun. at the very least you can use it as a kind of encyclopedia for interesting, sometimes far-out books & composers to look into, but it makes for an endearing little story as well. in any case, it only takes a few hours to read, so the time investment feels small for what you're given.

[EMILIO SCUTTI · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro imperdibile per conoscere il grande filosofo francese in una veste “particolare” non in un’aula universitaria o in un salotto bene a disquisire di filosofia o di etica o sessualità ma invece immerso nella California più selvaggia ed incontaminata. Siamo negli anni 70 e l’autore realizza il sogno della sua vita avere M. Foucault tutto per sé poterlo conoscere meglio poter passare del tempo con lui e addirittura invitarlo ad un viaggio psichedelico tra le montagne della California tra zabriskie point e la valle della morte e tutto si realizza e tutto va oltre le aspettative di Simeon Wade perché il grande pensatore si rivela affabile, divertente, generoso e aperto alle esperienze più estreme. Rimane infine dalla lettura del libro una bella sensazione di libertà e di ricchezza senza stereotipi e senza barriere perché si sente che tutto è autentico e vero al di là dei ruoli e dalle strutture e sovrastrutture ( marxiste ) imposte dalla società .

[Jessie Mannhaupt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Someone said this reads as Foucault fanfiction and I’m cacklinggg

[Jara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una joyita sobre todo lo favorito

[Nils · Rating 3 out of 5]

A breezy little memoir of the weekend that the author and his boyfriend spent dropping acid with Foucault in Death Valley. Reads like a novel with lots of dialog and occasional naturalistic descriptions of glistening landscapes. But this is basically highbrow gossip and storytelling. Fun but not very serious.

One great nugget is when Foucault says, “in Bentham I have found the Columbus of politics. I think one finds in the Panopticon a kind of mythological motif of the new kind of power system our society uses nowadays.” (101)

[Davide Orsato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Documento interessantissimo. Autentico, genuino e, sul finale, anche poetico. Non si capiscono i voti mediamente bassi.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The concept of this book is fascinating -- pretentious gay fanboys stalk famous French post-modernist philsopher Michel Foucault and persuade him to take a trip with them to Death Valley to drop acid. The experience changes Foucault's life. Is it Stockholm Syndrome? Is it fiction? Who cares? It's a killer idea, an idea so great that it totally overcomes the B- quality of the writing and of Wade's own intellect.

It's interesting to see Foucault portrayed as a normal, even self-effacing person. His accolytes out-Foucault Foucault and make Foucault himself appear as the epitome of normality. I suspect that this portrayal of Foucault is both true and false. Part of it comes from Wade's wish to make us see Foucault as his close personal friend. If Foucault was regular guy, then it is more believable that he would befriend a hopeless mediocrity like Wade.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farout read
Precious time capsule
Of 1975

[Leerautorasmola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me ha encantado, una lectura corta, amena e interesante.

[Carla]

bastante sin más pero ahora no paro de pensar en que me gustaría haber sido amiga de Michel Foucault nose parece majisimo

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve had two people tell me this book isn’t good. And I’m here to echo the same sentiment. Not that the book is insultingly awful, it had potential, but much of the content felt like a fan fiction of a Foucault fan boy rather than a first hand account of Foucault’s visit in California. Also the title of the book is pretty misleading as the dropping acid in Death Valley part of the book was shorter than what I expected. Not only that, much of my time reading this book had me feeling “who the hell writes like this?” because of how much Simeon Wade embellishes his sentences with fancy words to give it the feeling that it’s conveying something more important than what’s already there. If you own the hardcover of this book, I guess the redeeming quality would be the cover, and the only two photos inside the cover, depicting Simeon and Foucault at Death Valley. Again, feels more like a fan fiction more than a first hand account.

[Concha Moreno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Está muy cagado. El autor admiró tanto a Foucault que su adoración alcanza niveles paródicos. Foucault dice tal cosa mundana y el wey: "Y entonces eso me voló la cabeza y entendí las relaciones burguesas de un modo completamente nuevo". Hilarante. El volumen está lleno de chismes: a Foucault le gustaban las drogas y las aventuras con jovencitos hippies. Recomiendo para un fin de semana de echar la bolsa. Ignoren las honduras filosóficas (casi no las hay, pero sí se las encuentras sobre todo hacia el final del libro. No las desprecio universalmente tampoco, igual sirven de introducción si Foucault les interesa--justo como no me interesa a mí), y simplemente vayan en este road trip con el filósofo de la posmodernidad y un grupo de jóvenes random de California.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Pitzer book but humanizes Foucault in a way that is more relatable than his usual dense prose
4 stars bc I wish Wade would have expanded at certain moments—such as the in the desert, the name sake of the book

[Ekaterina Okuneva · Rating 2 out of 5]

Не знаю, зачем я потратила 3 часа жизни на это. История о том, как Мишель Фуко приехал в Америку, а до него постоянно все доебываются. В какой-то момент рассказчик спрашивает, о каких философских концепциях Фуко думал в долине смерти. Я, говорит Фуко, последние несколько часов ни о чем таком не думал. Ну ещё бы! Парниша не затыкался ни на секунду! А вы любите кино? А вы смотрели забриски-пойнт? А вы читали это? А что вы думаете про то?
Манера повествования самая занудная:
...прокомментировал состояние атмосферы, имея в виду смог
Я читал вашу работу, (название работы), посвященную вопросам (бла-бла), написанную вами год назад, изданную в издательстве (название издательства)...
Фуко не знает о своей работе? Не помнит о чем она? Почему нет подробностей, сколько страниц, на какой бумаге вышла книга, сколько копий в тираже? Где купил, при каких обстоятельствах читал, в какой одежде... а нет, это тоже было упомянуто.
... мы все посмеялись по этому поводу - этот комментарий через фразу.
Я сказал то-то, цитируя Хайдеггера, и он узнал цитату! - да боже мой, а в другой главе Фуко как будто не понял какой-то отсылки или цитаты, и я прямо удивлена, как рассказчик ему в рожу не плюнул, такой крах кумиров! Да как он смеет не узнавать цитаты! Или не читать всех книг!
Про трип я не поняла, что такого грандиозного там случилось, никакого плача наутро, никаких откровений.
Зато на следующий день они повезли Фуко в какую-то гейскую философскую секту, как будто на смотрины. Фуко там - о ужас - КОЛОЛ ДРОВА! где он мог научиться? Невозможно представить что Сартр бы колол дрова!!!
Последние минут 15 - это уже прощание перед самым вылетом, допрос ни на минуту не прекращается, я так и представила, как чувак заходит с Фуко в самолет, занимает кресло рядом с ним и летит без билета во Францию, не в силах заткнуться.

И о переводе.
Турецкий сэндвич? Турецкий???
В смысле Turkey? Ну ок.

upd: да, еще одна #красиваяобложка

[Sébastien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Foucault in California is an enjoyable, often humorous read, of minor literary significance, primarily aimed at those already familiar with Foucault’s work. Simeon Wade looks at Foucault with the eyes of a disciple, almost an evangelist — scrutinizing each gesture as if it were miraculous, every utterance as if it carried sacred weight.

Written shortly after the events of 1975 but left unpublished until 2019, the account is marked by a touching sincerity. Wade attempts to resurrect a handful of days spent with “Michel,” with near-archaeological attention to detail. Verbatim quotes, emotional reactions, faces, landscapes of Death Valley — all are captured with a moving documentary fidelity.

The book wavers between emotional reconstruction and the chronicle of an intellectual rapture. It is also a somewhat uncomfortable dive into the credulity of a generation in search of new prophets. The reverence shown to figures like Reich, Laing, and Castaneda — tangled in pseudoscience, orgones, and mystifications — is, at times, chilling, casting a long shadow over an entire intellectual moment.

The much-anticipated description of Foucault’s LSD trip turns out to be decidedly anti-spectacular: the philosopher of the episteme shares little of his inner states, beyond a few grandiose and predictable formulas. If the experience had any real impact, it likely unfolded over the following nine years — the last of his life — subtly influencing the writing of The History of Sexuality.

---

Foucault en Californie est un texte plaisant, souvent drôle, d’un intérêt mineur, mais qui saura séduire les lecteurs familiers de l’œuvre foucaldienne. Le regard que Simeon Wade pose sur Foucault est celui d’un apôtre ébloui, presque d’un évangéliste — il scrute chaque geste du philosophe comme s’il relevait du miracle, chaque parole comme un aphorisme sacré.

Rédigé peu après les événements de 1975 mais resté inédit jusqu’à sa publication posthume en 2019, le récit a le mérite d’une sincérité touchante : Wade tente de ressusciter quelques jours passés en compagnie de “Michel”, avec un soin quasi archéologique du détail. Les verbatim, les émotions, les visages, les paysages de Death Valley… tout est consigné avec une fidélité documentaire émouvante.

Le livre oscille ainsi entre la reconstitution affective et la chronique d’une extase intellectuelle. Mais c’est aussi une plongée, parfois gênante, dans la crédulité d’une génération en quête de nouveaux prophètes. La ferveur dont bénéficient Reich, Laing, Castaneda — entre pseudo-sciences, orgones et mystifications — glace par moments, tant elle semble disqualifier l’ensemble d’une époque et de ses élans contre-culturels.

La description du fameux trip au LSD — que le lecteur attend peut-être avidement — se révèle anti-spectaculaire au possible : le philosophe de l’épistémè dira peu de ses états intérieurs, sinon à travers quelques formules grandiloquentes et attendues. Si l’expérience a laissé une empreinte, ce n’est sans doute pas dans le moment du récit, mais dans les neuf années suivantes, en infléchissant peut-être profondément la rédaction de L’Histoire de la sexualité.

[Elizabeth Frey-Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many, I have found Foucault the man to be problematic, at best. His views, particularly re: pedophilia and the AIDS epidemic, are anathema.

That said, this novel is an incredible homage, written by a young American professor, literally fan-boying about the opportunity he had to spend time with his intellectual hero. Simeon Wade manages to drop enough of Foucault's bon mots to make me curious enough that I will re-read at least some of his writing. Additionally, the casual references to modern musical composition have sent me running to the internet to hear pieces I have never heard before.

Foucault was problematic. Foucault was a name-dropper. Foucault was also often something of an oracle. Definitely worth the read.

[Giuliana Matarrese · Rating 2 out of 5]

La copertina Italiana é bellissima e mi sarei aspettata delle rivelazioni affascinanti ed evangeliche ma la realtà è che si tratta della cronaca anche un po’ banale di un evento della vita di Foucault, tramutato in un libro perché…bé, parliamo di Foucault, tutto ciò che lo riguarda ha la potenzialità di divenire interessante, anche “quella volta che andò in California e provò le droghe”. Questo libro dimostra che non è troppo vero. Anche se Foucault rimane Foucault.
A dire la verità questa delusione é colpa mia e del mio essermi fatta influenzare dal marketing: il libro racconta esattamente quello che promette.
É solo che non c’é null’altro(eccezion fatta per “Godard ha rotto il cazzo con la politica!” che a livello di iconicità sta dalle parti di “te lo meriti Alberto Sordi!”)

[Bridget · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yes queen give us nothing!

What drew me towards this book was the potential, dare I say implication, of an account of Foucault on drugs and a discussion of philosophy in tandem with that experience. They go hand in hand, and yet I was given neither. It felt somewhat braggadocios, like I was listening to someone boast about that time they got to host a great philosopher rather than talk about what that philosopher was truly like. Like when someone starts to share something cool and then stops themselves instead by saying “you had to be there” and leaving it at that. I can fanboy over Foucault by myself, I don’t need to read about someone else doing it to his face. The whole thing was kind of banal and unrewarding, ultimately leaving me very disappointed :(

[Jordi Gisbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sempre es super refrescant llegir biografia... més encara si és de personalitats mitificades. Tot i així, em dona la sensació que part d'aquest llibre és més novel·la que biografia, fins al punt que sembla que Wade estaria posant paraules seves en boca de Foucault. En qualsevol cas, si non e vero e ben trovatto. Per cert, la part de l'LSD és quasi secundària en el llibre. El meollo està en totes les converses banals. La vida, inclús la de Foucault, es juga en les banalitats!!

[Stephen Okita · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such an incredible journey for anyone who has interest in Focault or the french critical theory journey.

As well as an insight into the man, you get the climate of academia the psychology the interactions and so many gems of lines.

It is difficult to read this and agree with Focault that when he says “i am not a prophet”.

[adL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bravo les universitaires homosexuels

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of the appeal of living in a hyper-connected age of information overload is the opportunity it routinely affords to happen haphazardly upon knowledge of the existence of exciting new books, and in the case of Simeon Wade’s boxed-up-way-too-long-in-a-storage-locker text FOUCAULT IN CALIFORNIA, put out belatedly by Heyday, a small publisher concerning the existence of which I had previously been completely unaware, I can be thankful in the extreme that directionless online roving brought me to awareness of its recent incarnation by way of hardcover. This is the kind of book that if it appeals to you is likely to appeal to you very much indeed, that tantalizing subtitle probably doing about 98% of the Heyday’s marketing for it. I know there was scant hesitation on my part; I placed my order with utmost haste. I acquired a graduate degree in the liberal arts early in the 21st century, keen then and remaining so insofar as concerns the poststructuralist arm of continental philosophy and critical theory. I certainly read a great deal of Foucault as young man. He inspired me and I found him more than simply useful, even if I would more strictly have been inclined to identify as a Deleuzian. I have also long been invested in counterculture more generally, and though I have certainly studied milieu ranging from fin de siecle Paris to, say, 1920s Buenos Aires, the American scene of the 60s and 70s has always been distinctly critical to me. (Note that I wrote my master’s thesis on the events of August 1968 as reflected upon in American and Czechoslovakian cinema.) The subtitle of FOUCAULT IN CALIFORNIA promises us an account of Foucault dropping acid in California’s Death Valley, but if we open the book, immediately on the inside cover we will see Foucault and our authorial guide Simeon Wade’s life partner Michael Stoneman standing at Zabriskie Point—apparently, we will later be told, well into the comedown phase of the drug experience—a location made famous in the supremely key Michelangelo Antonioni counterculture art film named for it, which premiered in New York in February on 1970, just over five years before the photograph in question was taken. You will be excused if your mind, like my own, is damn near blown. The story of how this manuscript has arrived to us in book form is itself pretty incredible, Heather Dundas, the USC Ph.D. candidate central to the story, here providing an invaluable foreword, having herself spent some considerable time finding it difficult in the extreme to credit. Dundas had heard scuttlebutt concerning Foucault’s Death Valley acid trip. There was hazy mention in certain circles of Simeon Wade, a one-time associate professor at Claremont College who had purportedly facilitated the expedition. She tracked Simeon down in 2014 near his home in Oxnard, California. Dundas had originally found the whole idea of the story “absurd,” confessing also that she had always hated “theory,” believing Foucault et al. to “embody all the privilege and arrogance of the theory movement.” Originally she had thought of herself as engaged in research that might provide her material for a kind of withering satire on the dubious misadventures of cluelessly self-serious academicians. She would go on to meet with Wade on multiple occasions over many years, he always arriving unkempt and fashionably late, and to her surprise they would become genuine friends. It was difficult at first to confirm most of what Wade told her. It were as though his records as a professor at Claremont (his first and only tenure-track position) and other California Institutions had been mysteriously expunged. Wade had eventually given up on teaching, going on to work for many years as a psychiatric nurse, perhaps not a terribly surprising career move for a fan of R. D. Laing and Félix Guattari. Slowly but surely pieces began falling into place. There was more and more evidence of an ongoing relationship, such as a photo of “Wade and Stoneman laughing with Foucault outside a conference in 1981” in an issue of TIME magazine from November of that same year. Finally, after many visits over a considerable span of time and Simeon’s repeated grumbling speculations that it was probably in a box “somewhere deep in one of his four storage units,” the former scholar provided Dundas with the manuscript for FOUCAULT IN CALIFORNIA: “It was copyrighted 1990, and Wade said that Foucault had read it and approved its publication, but no publishing house would touch it—too scandalous, or perhaps too tainted by its connection with Wade.” (Foucault’s approval of the manuscript would later be confirmed by way of communications found in one of those storage units.) Friends with Simeon Wade and no longer the least bit interested in writing any kind of lampoon, Heather Dundas became convinced that the manuscript deserved to be available and widely read, setting out to see that this came to pass, though Wade would never get to hold the book in his hands, dying unexpectedly in his sleep in October of 2017 at the age of seventy-seven. Yes, it’s quite a story. And that’s just the foreword. Wade’s text itself begins with a bit of background. Wade had studied the intellectual history of Western civilization at Harvard, attaining a Ph.D., and having had his thinking irrevocably revolutionized by encounters with Foucault’s MADNESS AND CIVILIZATION, THE ORDER OF THINGS, and finally DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH, as well as by ANTI-OEDIPUS, by Foucault’s “colleagues” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, came to discard his Hegelian biases, realizing that resistance to all forms of fascism was the central mandate of the times—that “Foucault and his circle had laid the groundwork for finding out what we really need to know about mind and society. They were articulating the lineaments of a new age that was upon us.” Wade goes on to rhapsodize on the subject of Foucault's exalted status in the early 1970s. Foucault would be made Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France, the title invented specifically for him on account of his having been “In a sense […] the first to apply systems analysis to the history of thought.” We can surely comprehend how this might very much catch the interest of a young man, such as Simeon Wade, with his particular academic background. Wade lists some of the things we might be inclined to call Foucault—philosopher, historian, sociologist, psychologist—but reminds us that the Frenchman conceived of himself as a kind of journalist, investigating the genealogies of current human-societal phenomena. There is of course also the man’s mystique and attendant celebrity. “Every Wednesday during the short term at the Collège de France, Foucault read his lecture as he sat in front of a bare table lighted by a single lamp. The hall was always packed with attentive students and peers, many of whom taped each session. It was the same hall where Henri Bergson, the famous philosopher, held forth during the Proustian era. As with Bergson, one had to wait in line to gain admittance to the hall when Michel Foucault spoke. It was always an event.” At this point we might benefit from backtracking ever so slightly and making a key observation. If Foucault thought of himself as to a large extent a journalist, we might want to consider this alongside the fact that Simeon Wade’s FOUCAULT IN CALIFORNIA presents itself far more as a work of journalism than of academic exegesis. The book is heavy on facts and fun, light on jargon. Wade’s voice in the text is enthusiastic and conversational. We have been to a large extent prepared for this, as Heather Dundas has made clear already that reading the text is not at all dissimilar to having a conversation with Wade at, say, the Starbucks where she and he first met. I sense in the text something like traces of the legacy, if not the direct influence, of New Journalism, and FOUCAULT IN CALIFORNIA is a lot more like Tom Wolfe’s THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST than it is a comprehensive primer on MADNESS AND CIVILIZATION or THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, with all that this implies about its general accessibility. The story properly begins with Wade making overtures to Foucault from afar. Hearing that Foucault is about to occupy a temporary post at Berkley, Wade sets out to persuade the figurehead of the “Molecular Revolution” to pay a visit to the decisively conservative campus of Claremont College, where Wade has only recently set up a new graduate program in European Studies intended to spread the teachings of pathbreaking continental theorists, immediately fantasizing about the possibility of an experiment involving “Michel Foucault + The Philosopher’s Stone + Death Valley, California + Michael Stoneman,” imagining producing a psychedelic experience for Foucault that will open the floodgates to an “intellectual power approaching the wonders of science fiction, something on the order of Dr. Morbius in FORBIDDEN PLANET, or the Galaxy Being from the first episode of THE OUTER LIMITS.” In one preliminary letter to Foucault, Wade rhapsodizes upon the subject of the great French avant-garde gnostic Antonin Artaud’s experiences taking peyote with the Tarahumara Indians, directly quoting Artaud’s line about being “suspended among the forms hoping for nothing but the wind.” This is the point at which Wade has perhaps overplayed his hand, and Foucault does not respond to this final letter. Simeon Wade and Michael Stoneman first see Foucault in person at an event in Irvine, California where the French philosopher-journalist is set to speak, Wade contemplating his hero-cum-quarry’s famous bald head, discerning what he believes to be “several extra lobes” that “bulged from the apex of the brainstem,” and concluding somewhat flamboyantly that “One did not have to be a phrenologist to recognize that an extraordinary cerebral mutation, something on the order of a supermind, had emerged from the outer limits.” This is perhaps an extreme manifestation of Wade’s enthusiasm, practically giddy, inarguably kind of sycophantic, but not exactly uncharacteristic. Wade and Stoneman insinuate themselves into physical proximity with Foucault. Stoneman flirtatiously compliment’s the man’s physique, the invitation to Death Valley is reiterated. Clearly a chord has been stuck. Memorial Day weekend in Death Valley is a go. It is Foucault who in his faltering English keeps calling it the Valley of Death. The momentous day arrives, Simeon and Michael pick Foucault up at the airport, bringing him first to their shared residence, an “airplane bungalow house, which hovered above Route 66 like an irradiated riverboat floating on a cloud of mist.” Their view of the San Gabriel mountains is obscured on the day of Foucault’s arrival. The three men discourse at length in the bungalow house, discussing such eminent topics as Hatha yoga, Wilhelm Reich, Carlos Castaneda, Ivan Illich’s DESCHOOLING SOCIETY, Deleuze’s PROUST AND SIGNS, and R. D. Laing’s KNOTS, which Simeon has left out to provoke comment, Foucault accommodating him by stating that he holds it to be Laing’s finest “theoretical” work. Michael plays a tape recording of his composition HOMAGE TO MIZOGUCHI, inspired by Kenji Mizoguchi, the (to my mind) greatest of the classical Japanese cinema masters. Foucault praises the composition, commenting that it invokes Noh drama. Then there is an ABSOLUTELY STAGGERING revelation (perhaps especially to me personally, my interests and prefixations being what they are): Foucault “just happened to be” in a car “right behind Godard” when the great Franco-Swiss filmmaker had the utterly devastating and kind of famous motorcycle accident that very nearly killed him in 1971. In Foucault's purported words: "one whole side of his body was flayed.” This reader nearly had a brain hemorrhage. As the three men set out on their journey to Death Valley, energetic colloquy continues. Focuault talks quite amusingly about his friendships with Jean Genet and Gilles Deleuze. One notes that Foucault tends to be deferential and kind when talking about other intellectuals throughout Wade’s account. I might have expected him to be harsh when inventorying the faults of people like Noam Chomsky and Louis Althusser, but he always tempers his criticisms with gentlemanly regard. (He was certainly pleased to be paid for his television "debate" alongside Chomsky with a giant brick of hash!) Foucault says he believes that THE ORDER OF THINGS is a better title than LES MOTS ET LES CHOSES. Although he repeatedly says he is not especially interested in literature, he does confess to thinking very highly of Malcolm Lowry and William Faulkner, even reporting having gone with a lover on a sort of Faulkner pilgrimage during a previous visit to the United States. The three men discuss the San Francisco leather scene, the bathhouses, and gay subculture in general. In the intense desert light Foucault is provided a pair of reflector sunglasses and is told by Simeon that they make him “look like the son of Kojak and Elton John.” The philosopher is reported to be “delighted.” Deep in the desert the lysergic potion, the Philosopher’s Stone, is ingested. It is Foucault’s first experience with psychedelics, a deferment of the rite to which he attributes his lover’s skittishness about such drugs. The potion is taken, cannabis smoked, and Grand Marnier quaffed. Michael plays his tape recorder and “Charles Ives swept through us into the salt flats glistening like icing on a wedding cake.” Properly high, the men relocate to Zabriskie Point, Richard Strauss and Stockhausen are played. Asked about a possible decisive moment in his intellectual development, Foucault recalls revealing his homosexuality to the headmaster of the École normale and facing more than merely censure as a result, causing him to understand the “fundamental impulse of our society: normalization.” Only a very small amount of writing is dedicated to the actual subjective experience of the psychedelic trip. Later Foucault will say that though the experience was perhaps the greatest of his life he did not waste his time thinking about concepts. He says that the psychedelic experience “affords an experience of the Truth” not entirely dissimilar to sex with a stranger. If he articulates anything like a revelation it would appear to be by way of his passing repletion of a gnomic mantra: “We must go home again.” The men retreat to their lodgings for the remainder of the night, returning to Zabriskie Point in daylight for photographs, then for a final look out from Dante’s View. Upon returning to Claremont and environs, Foucault is obligated to make a couple public appearances. First he is obligated to give a talk, which frustrates him and does not go terribly well. After that there is a big faculty party (complete with myriad hangers on), where Foucault holds court in good humour and is at one point asked by comedian and future United States Senator Al Franken (!) who he (Foucault) thinks will win the World Series (!), to which the philosopher playfully rejoins that he is not a prophet. Before leaving the party, Foucault takes interest in Simeon’s friend David, and the next morning, before Foucault has to fly back to Berkley, he and Simeon make a trek up to see the Taoist mountain man David and some other quasi-hermit European Studies congregants. A mountain symposium ensues. You will note that this occurs on or at least in the vicinity of Mount Baldy, where poet-songwriter-performer Leonard Cohen would eventually famously spend some time living among the Buddhist monks. Foucault speaks of Gaston Bachelard, who was his teacher, and tells a young man who feels lost that the young very much should feel lost, that there are no solutions, no answers. The mountain men christen the philosopher Country Joe Foucault. (He sure can chop wood!) Focuault makes a key pronouncement, perhaps the central one of the whole text, you will allow me to paraphrase: we must know ourselves by listening to others, this is how the unconscious operates. A distinct, nearly autonomous section follows the mountain symposium. Foucault engages in a congenial Q&A with Wade’s graduate students much of which is simply transcribed in something close to unabridged form. Here we have the Foucault most of us know well, extemporizing on power, discourse, history, the body, the event as process, et cetera. Following the Q&A, a final lunch is enjoyed at the tacky and weirdly racist coffee shop Sambo’s, situated conveniently at the San Bernardino Freeway entrance, where California’s mythology is explored, earthquakes and the Golden Gate Bridge and so forth, before Foucualt is finally brought to the airport where he, Wade, and Stoneman do the (molecular) fare-thee-well. The end. Yes, but also, it would seem, a beginning. How do we measure this exactly? Heather Dundas begins her foreword by introducing the first clue that sent her off in search of Simeon Wade, a line in David Macey’s THE LIVES OF MICHEL FOUCAULT wherein the journalist-philosopher is quoted reflecting upon that “unforgettable” evening in 1975. There is some evidence that after the Death Valley trip he discarded what he had so far written of the second volume of THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, starting again from scratch. The final three volumes of THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY do appear to mark a transition away from a concern with power and evolving systems of control toward something else. (A letter from October 1975 was found amidst Wade’s papers after his death in which Foucault asserts candidly that he had to “begin again” on his “book about sexual repression” following his recent visit.) Simeon Wade has made a credible case here. It would not appear that the breakthrough Foucault experienced immediately before, during, and after his Death Valley trip was especially cosmic or metaphysical. What his focus turned toward was an aesthetics of experience, the sense that life should be lived as a work of art, and perhaps above all the primacy, as regards such a shift in focus, of friendship.

[Ale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha parecido un libro muy divertido. Un viaje psicodélico/filosófico muy placentero de leer.

[Bri Nourie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great and quick read. I love Foucault and it was so cool to read about him in Claremont… 5C history af. Also testament to the powers of psychedelics. Recommend to any Claremont student 🌟

[Eugene Pustoshkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Книга «Мишель Фуко в Долине Смерти» опубликована издательством «РИПОЛ Классик» и имеет подзаголовок «Как великий французский философ триповал в Калифорнии». Это короткая книга, в которой Симеон Уэйд рассказывает о том, как он и его романтический партнёр Майкл Стоунман пригласили в 1975 году Мишеля Фуко (1926–1984) попутешествовать по калифорнийской Долине Смерти, известной своими грандиозными природными видами, и принять в этом путешествии известное психоактивное вещество. <…>

Мой интерес к этой книге вызван тем, что Кен Уилбер, — американский интегральный мыслитель, переводом трудов которого я занимаюсь уже около 14 лет, — с глубоким уважением относится к Фуко и, по собственному признанию (сделанному им в «Бумерите», этой философской пародии на «постмодернистский роман»), прочитал все его произведения, опубликованные на английском языке.

На заре своего изучения уилберовской интегральной метатеории я столкнулся с высказыванием Уилбера о том, что Фуко, будучи секулярным мыслителем, не практиковавшим какой-то стабильной созерцательной йоги (позволявшей бы освоить все основные медитативные состояния вплоть до состояния пробуждения), всё же испытывал духовное состояние, или пиковое переживание, мистицизма природы. Это утверждение сразу же бросилось мне в глаза, и я его взял себе на заметку. Также Уилбер описывает известный факт, что Фуко в течение всей жизни был присущ интерес к трансгрессии и предельному опыту. Это объясняет, почему Фуко согласился на это калифорнийское путешествие с незнакомыми людьми, коими были Уэйд и Стоунман. <…>

Если вернуться к книге Симеона Уэйда «Мишель Фуко в Долине Смерти», то русское издание внешне выглядит симпатично, однако имеет и свои минусы (в тексте часто встречаются опечатки, что говорит о недостаточной вычитанности перевода). Судя по всему, в оригинальном издании на английском языке присутствовали сделанные автором фотографии (приведённые и в данном обзоре), которые, по какой-то причине — возможно, для упрощения процесса печатной публикации — не вошли в это издание.

[Полную версию рецензии см. по ссылке в моём блоге: https://www.pustoshkin.com/post/alter... ]