Man of Letters

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In his memoir The Mad Artist, Roger Keen details his past psychedelic experiences in the 1970s. As a result of its publication, he became part of the current alternative scene and wrote for magazines and websites, such as Psychedelic Press, The Oak Tree Review, International Times and Reality Sandwich. 

His interest in countercultural history, avant-garde and psychedelic cinema, and the psychology of altered states manifests in this collection of fourteen essays, which touch on figures such as Thomas De Quincey, Charles Baudelaire, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, William Burroughs, Carlos Castaneda, Timothy Leary, Howard Marks and Will Self.

Using his media background, Keen explores many aspects of left-field cinema in depth, from early surrealism through to the French New Wave and Hollywood depictions of drug trips, to the equivalent movies of the twenty-first century, such as Enter the Void and Midsommar.

He cites a long list of notable directors in this area, including Stanley Kubrick, Ken Russell, Roger Corman, David Cronenberg, Terry Gilliam, Jan Švankmajer, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Georges Méliès, Tim Burton, Christopher Nolan, Richard Linklater and Ben Wheatley.

The essays revisit the ‘Alphabet Wood’ hallucination of the Plym Woods in 1975, the mushroom-inspired ‘Cult of the Novel’ messianic quest to turn the world on to ‘reality fiction’, and contain updates to the ‘trippy movie’ coverage, including 2022 films Avatar: The Way of Water and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

In total this collection bears witness to a lifelong obsession with trippiness and weirdness in all its forms within the narrative arts.

Read a background piece about this collection: The Tale of Two Covers

‘Man of Letters is a showcase of Roger’s talents as a writer, with creative non-fiction, literary criticism and film reviews neatly nestled together, highlighted by his admiration for a lineage of experimental drug writers from the 19th and 20th centuries. […] Much like some of the subjects of his essays — De Quincey, Baudelaire, William Burroughs — Roger has wrestled with the drug experience as a literary aesthetic that is as much visual as it is intellectual, and his writings are all the more intriguing because of it.’ — Robert Dickins, Psychedelic Press Journal XXXIX

‘It left me feeling as if I'd imbibed a distillation of a Dali painting together with one of Dylan Thomas' extravagantly visionary poems, a handful of Syd Barrett verses and a scintillating infusion of that ‘cosmic ride’ at the climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I definitely recommend this book. You will love the trip!’ — Simon Clark

'The author looks at subversive cinema and literature, as well as his own writings and experiences to take us on a vicarious trip into the vortex. His breadth of understanding as well as his velvety prose style, make for a fascinating and entertaining read.' — The Kissing Bandit

‘[Roger’s] descriptions of the visuals and of the fractured, frantic and inspired thought processes of the LSD experience are brilliant. They sparkle all over.’ — Leaf Fielding, author of To Live Outside the Law