 Red Room Writer Profile
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Don Lattin's Blog
July 2, 2010
- Having spent the last three years tripping through the history of the psychedelic sixties, I couldn't help but laugh at the following paragraph in a recent front-page story in the New York Times: "Scientists are especially intrigued by the similarities between hallucinogenic experiences and the life-changing revelations reported throughout history by religious mystics and those who ...
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June 25, 2010
- Northern California's latest attempt to re-invent journalism, the Bay Citizen, went on-line May 26, and as someone who covered the Godbeat in that neighborhood for 25 years, I was happy to see an entertaining religion story prominently displayed on Day One.The story was headlined "At Episco Disco – The Sacred and the Profane – a young priest puts on the best party in town." Four ...
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April 1, 2010
- Writing a memoir is shameless act of self-indulgence – an admission that, yes, ladies and gentlemen, we do think the entire world revolves around us. It's an even trickier task when we're working on a "spiritual memoir," which, judging by the best-seller lists in recent years, has become a popular and occasionally profitable means of self-expression."Spirituality" in ...
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March 26, 2010
- You don't have to be a Bible scholar to know that Jesus hung out with the wrong people - lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, crazy people. But knowing that is not living that.Many if not most churches have some kind of ministry reaching out to those people, but most Christians (and non-Christians) like to keep a comfortable distance from the poorest of the poor.Not Sara Miles. This former ...
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March 1, 2010
- Gregory Cowles of the NY Times Book Review was kind enough to throw me a few "Stray Questions" for the Times "Paper Cuts" blog. The questions aren't really stray -- everyone featured is asked the same three questions. Here are my answers: What are you working on now? This week finds me in that transitory state between promoting the last book, “The Harvard ...
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February 10, 2010
- You never know who will show up or what to expect when you face the folding chairs and start reading from your new book.Especially when the book you just wrote is all about LSD.On Tuesday night, I made my fourth bookstore appearance to promote my new book, and it happened again.Someone tried to turn me on.Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised. The late Timothy Leary--a key figure in my ...
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February 9, 2010
- Coming of age in the 1950s and early 1960s, Jacob Needleman was part of a generation that spent much of their lives running away from God. Even people in the God business - priests, ministers and especially seminary professors - challenged traditional Judeo-Christian ideas about the nature of God.Time magazine notoriously asked the question "Is God Dead?" in big letters on the cover of ...
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January 21, 2010
- Brit Hume was right about Buddhism – or maybe half right.Earlier this month, the right-wing Fox commentator (redundant) was talking (like practically everyone else on TV) about the sexual sins of Tiger Woods."He is said to be a Buddhist," Hume intoned with gravitas. "I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So ...
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January 10, 2010
- My long and somewhat strange trip began in high school with Aldous Huxley. It was the late 1960s. I was probably fifteen or sixteen years old when I read “Island,” Huxley’s final novel, the one about a cynical reporter who gets shipwrecked on a mysterious Pacific island where the natives live in cosmic harmony with all and everything.As a novel, “Island” does not fare well with the ...
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January 9, 2010
- My new book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club, is the story of four guys who crossed paths in Cambridge, Mass., in the fall of 1960 – Timothy Leary, Richard (Ram Dass) Alpert, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil. But the sound track that was floating through my mind while I was writing the book was laid down by another Fabulous Foursome from the sixties. I refer, of course, to John, Paul, George and ...
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December 26, 2009
- It's the day after Thanksgiving in the bustling kitchen of Willis Barnstone's book-filled home in Oakland's Piedmont Avenue neighborhood. The 82-year-old poet, translator and literary critic has just typed out a poem about what happened the day before yesterday - when he tripped at the Chinese restaurant just down the street from City Lights bookstore in North Beach, bumping his head and nearly ...
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December 4, 2009
- It's been nearly a month since Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, shouting "Allahu Akbar," gunned down 13 soldiers and civilians at the Fort Hood Readiness Center. Looking back at four weeks of news coverage and commentary, it seems to me that this saga has become an example of the "narrative" getting in the way of the story.Everyone has their own narrative to explain why this ...
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December 1, 2009
- One of the many things I’m thankful for this holiday season is not having to come up with some stupid Christmas story. Being a religion writer for a daily newspaper made me dread the approaching holidays. What are we going to say about Hanukkah this time around? Do we really have to take Kwanza seriously every single year? How can I best convey my feelings about holiday stories on the ...
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November 13, 2009
- Blogger Charles Cameron alerts me to the eerily disturbing news that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Muslim Army shrink and accused mass murderer, borrowed a quote from one of my articles in the SF Chronicle in a June 2007 Powerpoint demonstration to his colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In the final bullet point of slide 11 he writes in quotes, “It’s getting harder and harder ...
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November 3, 2009
- Karen Armstrong has written another big book about the various ways people throughout history and across cultures envision and explain what they can neither see nor understand.This new work by the prolific British author is titled "The Case for God." It takes 411 pages to argue that the postmodern believer must find a theology of silence, a catechism beyond words.Her message inspires ...
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