Interview with John Higgs, author of I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary (part one)

It is hard to think of a life story from the late 20th century as dramatic, unbelievable, and absurd as that of Timothy Leary, and only now are we realizing just how much he has permanently changed our culture. This November, we published I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary (Barricade Books, November 2006) by John Higgs (foreword by Winona Ryder).

Unlike other biographies of the controversial psychologist that focus on his personal shortcomings, I Have America Surrounded explains not only what Timothy Leary did, but why he did it. Author John Higgs has written the most comprehensive and objective biography of Leary to date, and includes lesser-known details of his life, including his collaboration with the FBI and his kidnapping by armed revolutionaries and subsequent rescue by terrorists.

John Higgs has written for British publications including the Guardian, Mojo, and the Independent, and was BAFTA-nominated for an innovative children’s program that he wrote and produced. His relationship with the Leary Estate is so strong that he was gifted with a portion of Leary’s ashes. The book was written with full access to Leary’s papers and archives, including a previously undiscovered cache of letters and diaries, and with the full cooperation of the Leary Estate. (Alisha LoRe - Barricade Books)


Interview with John Higgs, author of I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary (part one)
by Sean Kearney (increasingintelligence.com)

IncreasingIntelligence.com: More than ten years after his death, Timothy Leary's life and work seem to be experiencing a rebirth in the public consciousness with at least two feature films in development, the recent publication of Robert Greenfield's Timothy: A Biography, and now your book I Have America Surrounded. Why do you believe is driving this interest and why now?

John Higgs: Well, it was never a life that was going to disappear into obscurity. It was exciting and outrageous, but it was also interesting and relevant to modern culture, so it was just a matter of time before it reared up again. Actually, it's great to be able to say that so confidently - when I decided to write the book back in 2004 the most common reactions I got were "who?", or "oh is he something to do with Winona Ryder? Why do you want to write about him?" Which was the reason why I felt I had to write the book, really. He did seem largely unknown to the punk generation and younger, so it was a leap of faith that they would react to him. My instinct was that there would be a resurgence of interest around the 10th anniversary of his death, so it's quite a relief that it seems to be happening! I'd like to think that the two biographies have helped to prepare the public for any forthcoming Hollywood biopics, which of course is when he'll really cement his legacy into long-term public consciousness. There have been Leary biopics planned since the Eighties, of course, but there are a couple in development now which seem more credible.


I2: Leary was fond of saying, "There are 24 Timothy Leary's" and "You get the Timothy Leary you deserve." What Timothy Leary's are you hoping to shed more light on in your book?

JH: I probably pay most attention to the Fugitive Leary, but that's mainly because I'm a sucker for an adventure story. I'm sure there will be many more biographies in years to come, each with their own 'favourite' Leary.

More important, though, was to get across exactly what the idea of different Leary's actually means, and how it does go deeper than just a flippant description of a changing personality. The idea that you are responsible for creating 'you', and that you can 'reprogramme' your behaviour to adapt to different environments is pretty fundamental to his ideas and to his actions. From the feedback I've got for the book, the fact that he acted out these ideas has been a bit of a 'penny dropping' moment for a lot of people, something that has really helped them get a grasp on why he did what he did.

Obviously I spoke to many people who knew Tim at different points in his life, and something that I found interesting was that virtually everyone believed that 'their' Leary was the key one, the most exciting and the most important in terms of understanding him. And it's easy to see why, for each period was so rich and interesting. Despite all the constant change, there was a core spark in his personality that never wavered (not just Leary, of course, we all have this.) Capturing that spark is probably much harder than describing the transient personalities, I think, you have to paint that very subtly throughout the book.


I2: For the last twenty years of his life, Timothy Leary was an enthusiastic cheerleader for "transhuman" technologies including private space travel, smart drugs and cryonics. While he eventually chose not to have his head frozen, he did make it clear that he would prefer to be revived in a future United States that were not under a Republican administration. Given that preference, 2008 might be the first opportunity to bring him back. If Timothy Leary's consciousness were rebooted today, what do you think he would be doing in the coming years?

JH: Heh! Well, it would probably be something that none of us expect, and something that would annoy his supporters immensely. You would expect him to be at Burning Man, making records with Tool and working on a screenplay with the Wachowski Brothers. Instead he would probably have an affair with Ann Coulter, and the pair would then star in their own reality TV series. I'm sure he'd have something to say about ayahuasca, and I suspect he'd be very interested in genetic modification. But who can say - perhaps he would write an exhaustive biography of Robert Greenfield instead?