A âwildly entertainingâ? and âmasterlyâ? memoir (Times Literary Supplement) now in paperbackIn The Lives of Michel Foucault, David Macey quotes the iconic French philosopher as speaking ânostalgicallyâ¿of â¿an unforgettable evening on LSD, in carefully prepared doses, in the desert night, with delicious music, [and] nice people.â¿â? This came to pass in 1975, when Foucault spent Memorial Day weekend in Southern California at the invitation of Simeon Wadeâ¿ostensibly to guest-lecture at the Claremont Graduate School where Wade was an assistant professor, but in truth to explore what he called the Valley of Death. Led by Wade and Wadeâ¿s partner Michael Stoneman, Foucault experimented with psychotropic drugs for the first time; by morning he was crying and proclaiming that he knew Truth. Foucault in California is Wadeâ¿s firsthand account of that long weekend. Felicitous and often humorous prose vaults readers headlong into the erudite and subversive circles of the Claremont intelligentsia: parties in Wadeâ¿s bungalow, intensive dialogues between Foucault and his disciples at a Taoist utopia in the Angeles Forest (whose denizens call Foucault âCountry Joeâ?); and, of course, the fabled synesthetic acid trip on the multihued slopes of the Artistâ¿s Palette at Death Valley, set to the strains of Bach and Stockhausen. Part search for higher consciousness, part bacchanal, this book chronicles a young manâ¿s burgeoning friendship with one of the twentieth centuryâ¿s greatest thinkers.