A GLANCE AT THE FALL ISSUE OF "SOCIAL RESEARCH": DRUGS AND ART

In an issue on "Altered States of Consciousness," Al Alvarez, a writer and
literary critic, compares the Romantic opium aficionados of the 18th
century to the drug-addled beatniks of the '50s and finds the latter sorely
wanting.

Up to and after the Romantic era, opium was a common household sedative
used to treat everything from crying babies to toothaches. Mr. Alvarez
takes pains to point out that this ubiquity robbed opium of any moral
significance; it was considered a vice only when taken to excess, and even
then it earned only the same mild censure as excessive drinking. So there
was little to stop the Romantic poets like Keats and Coleridge from using
their opiated states to inspire their work. For all their fondness for the
drug, they thought of it as a key to inspiration.

The beatniks, on the other hand, were well aware of the political
significance of taking "controlled substances," especially in the
strait-laced 1950s, and drug experimentation quickly became the center of,
not incidental to, much of their work. However, with the importance placed
on "political" drug-taking, art was beside the point, writes Mr. Alvarez.
As a result, "the lost children of Haight-Ashbury hankered after spiritual
drama and significance, but lacked the talent, patience, and application
art requires, and so had to make do with fancy dress and a pose."