THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION

In his later years as a British novelist living in California, Aldous Huxley became involved in several dubious enterprises and quack cures. His experimentation with drugs led to the treatise THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION, here read by his sometime collaborator Rudolph Schirmer, a musician. Huxley interpreted his mescaline trip in terms of spiritual awareness and religious mysticism. Maybe he was still high while writing because some passages seem like gobbledygook. In a hybrid British-American accent, Schirmer does his best to phrase and cadence the text for clarity. His approach is clinically dry and professorial, a tone that serves to dispel any sensationalism and to imbue the author’s mystical speculations with an air of science that they may or may not deserve. Y.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 01]