Design for Dying

As the fringe guru himself put it, "Mademoiselle Cancer moved in to share [his] body." But in the days before he died, Leary -- never one to miss an opportunity for a party -- used his approaching death to create an exuberant new vision of what dying can be. Optimism, courage, joy and spirituality were central to Leary's final days and his death. Design for Dying -- Leary's last book -- shows us how we too can make dying the high point of life.

Irreverent, thought-provoking and hilarious, Leary's parting shot pioneers new ways to die and new ways for the living to think about death. Urging us to take control of our deaths (and even to determine when and how we will die), Leary relates his own plan for "directed dying," a death we plan and orchestrate to reflect our own lives and values.

And the psychedelic prophet flings open a whole new range of beyond-death possibilites for the wired generation. From downloading consciousness onto the Net -- so that our souls can outlive our bodies -- to the way technology can enhance the final days of the dying to the far-out promises of cryogenics, Leary provides fascinating insights into how technology may eventually help us improve, and even sidestep, death. A thorough guide to death and dying resources and to online tools and further reading lists completes this surprising, funny and totally original look at the new frontiers of death.

Speaking to everyone who has ever wondered if there's more to death - -if there's life beyond the final frontier, if death really means the end, if dirges and hearses and funeral flowers are really how we want to be remembered -- Leary's flamboyant final statement rteveals revolutionary ways to die and redefines, with Leary's trademark creativity and joy, how the living can think about death.

Leary, who last year succumbed to "a healthy, robust, spectacularly ambitious cancerous tumor," has left a work more irreverent, outrageous but possibly more valuable than his role as LSD icon. This posthumously published book examines the process of death and dying in a way you've never read before. Leary argues against the stigma placed on "deanimation" (as he calls death) and blames Judeo-Christian tradition for mourning the dead ("a massive bummer"), the zealousness of modern medicine in prolonging agony, and the indignity of interment ("wormfood"). Although he can be maddeningly flippant in his sometimes original discussions, Leary looks forward to "the ultimate trip" with impish glee and malice toward God and government. Despite the strenuously unconventional arguments he presents here for retaining "personal autonomy" in dying, Leary ironically did not "deanimate live on the Internet" in the "mother of all parties" before his "cryogenic freezing." In an illuminating addendum, Leary's family and friends recall his struggle to maintain the "gonzo" facade in his final months. His courage in discussing the dying process helps dignify a work more infotainment than enlightenment. An optional purchase for libraries.?Ben O'Sickey, Library Journal
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Emerging a year after Leary's death compelled him to take his own famous advice and drop out for good, his last testament is rather a chore to plow through but does afford its rewards. (Sirius adds the occasional remark on the text and appends the best reading in the book: his own and others' responses to two questions about Leary's demise, which Leary once planned to transmit as it happened on his Web home page--so turn on and tune in, kids!--but finally didn't.) After plodding on in his own version of computer-nerdese on the meaning of life, "cybernautics," and language, Leary brightens when he turns to just what you would expect him to liven up about--drugs. He maintains interest while touting his contributions to his original profession, psychology, but waxes soporific again when expounding his theory of drug-assisted human mutation into a better species. The succeeding chapters about dying include giddily attractive advice ("Dying? Throw a House Party!" says one chapter title), speculation about finding immortality via computer information storage and cryogenics, and constant analogizing and reference to various drug highs. One thing is perfectly and charmingly clear: Tim Leary was an antiauthoritarian trickster--for him, the worst of all wars was the war on drugs--bone-deep and to the end. Ray Olson