[Drugs] [Leary, Timothy] O’Sullivan, Joe

The Imprint of Timothy Leary (or Timothy Leary Revisited). Exclusive Story and Photos By Joe O’Sullivan. [with] Seven Photographs from the “Man of Visions” Series.

New York: UPI Roto Service, 1966. First Edition. Photocopy of a typed manuscript, 8-½ x 11 in., 12 pp., printed recto only, sl. chipping and toning at edges; together with an additional copy of the typed manuscript; a License to Use Your Head order form for Leary’s Future History book series, no date; and seven (of eight?) “Man of Visions” silver gelatin prints, 8 x 10 in., each dated May 28, 1966, with caption leaves and UPI Press stamps verso. Near Fine. Item #CAT0204

Journalist Joe O’Sullivan visited Timothy Leary’s community in Millbrook, New York twice in 1966. Following these visits he released two interviews with Leary on the UPI Roto Service. This interview, unpublished and unrecorded in Leary’s bibliography, is the second of the two interviews. The interview offers detailed descriptions of Leary’s daily life and providing an ordinary context for his controversial work. Leary gives laconic answers to O’Sullivan’s questions about drugs, the counterculture, free love, Viet Nam [sic], and the communal life at Millbrook, occasionally proffering a bit of unasked for advice, including on the author’s children. “Let them turn you on … Treat them as little gods and goddesses.”

The photos, taken to accompany the first interview, similarly reflect O’Sullivan’s interest in the mundane: e.g. poignant, detailed vignettes of a shrine to Rosemary Woodruff (soon to be Leary’s wife) while she was doing jail time for marijuana possession. We find no evidence that either interview was ever published. The first article, “Man of Visions,” is referenced in our typescript’s caption and was “serviced to UPI Roto Service clients in the package of May 28, 1966,” the same date as the present photo-series which presumably accompanied it.

Both articles would have appeared before Leary’s landmark Playboy interview was published in September 1966, which the annotated Leary bibliography lists as his first published interview [Horowitz, Walls, & Smith D1] . Surprisingly, there is no reference in Horowitz to either of the earlier O’Sullivan UPI articles, though a short, third article, “God and Timothy Leary,” was published in Dec. 1966 [Howoritz et al. D3]. Some of the photographs from “Man of Visions” are known from other sources, a few seemingly unpublished. Materials are in excellent condition with minimal wear.

Price: $800.00