The Air in the Room

In the early winter of 1968 American Beat Generation writer and visual artist William Burroughs, author of Junkie and Naked Lunch, rented a room in a small cottage near the British Headquarters of the Church of Scientology in West Sussex. It was in this cottage that the author of this memoir George Rollins (b. 1944) got to know Burroughs beyond the London course room where they had begun their inquiry into Scientology in the fall of 1967. In The Air in the Room: LSD, William S. Burroughs & Scientology Rollins recollects his childhood and the stifling rigidity of white America in contrast to the explosion of Counter-Culture in the mid sixties, propelled by disillusionment, racial tension, and widening availability of psychedelic drugs. While attending Cornell University Rollins experienced an LSD trip that set him on a path of inquiry that led him to London in 1967, studying Scientology alongside William Burroughs who would become a lifelong friend. Rollins recalls Burroughs affectionately, painting an intimate picture of his unique character and presence. Rollins details the practice of auditing (a method of psychiatric inquiry developed by L. Ron Hubbard) and explains what may have drawn Burrough to Scientology. Included in the book are all of their surviving correspondences, humorous and warm notes written on Burrough's infamous typewriter. A concluding manifesto details the LSD trip that started Rollins on his journey of discovery, his experience of universal consciousness or "The Extra-Ordinary Non-Sexual Orgasm" and the universal truths buried beyond "ordinary perception."