Paradise Burning: Adventures Of A High Times Journalist

By Chris Simunek

Book Overview

Paradise Burning is the rocky-road story of a reporter for America's most notorious marijuana magazine, High Times. From pot plantations to live sex shows, from biker rallies in Sturgis, South Dakota, to the homes of Jamaica's reggae legends, Simunek blazes a trail of smoke through today's dope underground, narrowly escaping the wrath of customs agents, speed freaks, and New Age gurus along the way. The first book in decades to give you a detailed slice of the high life, Paradise Burning is the shocking, honest, hilarious truth about today's drug culture.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031218753X
• ISBN13: 9780312187538
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Griffin
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Beyond Gonzo!

If you have made it to this review, Good! These people ABOVE don't know what they are talking about (wou will notice the 0 of x readers thought this helpful) and the grumpy first lady (top review) should lighten up! Plain and simple this writer is a genius. Long before his days at HIGH TIMES or doing readings in NYC, or his first great story written for EUGENE LANG (NEW SCHOOL) you could tell Chris had talent. Even if fans caught some of these stories in HIGH TIMES they will still make you laugh out loud on repeated readings. The first night I met chris was during a long frenzied night of acid on the edge of the godforsaken California desert. (moreno valley) This is long before the kind of success any NYC student would only dream about obtaining. Take a native New Yorker and drop him in the bleak unrelenting California desert and you would expect utter panic. Still, during that night his insight and sense of humor were right on the pulse of what I wanted my genaration's best writers to express. Forget dropping names like WILLIAM or HUNTER S. or Gonzo, only his employment at a magizine, makes the feeble minded reach for such easy associations. Simunek's talent goes beyond this, this is the book readers will look back upon to over a long career and see how people's demand to pigeonhole a new writer, underestimates the sounding of a true voice for our times, once CHRIS/GENE moves out of the subculture and casts he insight gaze on new areas will people realize what a unique gem they have on their hands.

Ya gotta read this one folks...

Even if you don't give a hoot about smokin' one, pick-up this book. It's not completely freaky and unsettling like a great deal of beat works of fiction from an author like Burrough's, but it still has that candid and sincere feel to it. Meet a diverse array of characters while you tag along with the cultivation editor for a magazine about the greenest thing on God's earth. Once you're done, you are going to want everyone you know to read this book!

Before Slackers there were smokers

Aint a smoker worth a dime who aint read High Times. As a cultivation editor of that esteemed publication, Simunek manifests the dreams of many a substance abuser with no real goals, no real aims, no real direction-that is, he gets paid to follow the psycho-delic brick road to where there is untold smoke at the end of the travel rainbow. Free drugs, hoping for a non-commital feel and making a hasty getaway with limbs unbroken is Simunek's Holy Grail. He gets an expense account which seems non-accountable and sometimes doesn't get the story. His editors don't seem to care too much provided he turns up with some buds (not the six pack variety) and a packet of papers. The Marx Brothers had Zeppo, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers have got Simunek. While these kind of tales have the pot-ential to bore some people stupid, Simunek relates his adventures in a way that makes us straightos wish we'd inhaled, chuck in our jobs, sell the house and the golf clubs, pack up the family and the Bob Marley vinyl and move to California. Once there, we could live out our days worrying only about low flying choppers and nosy neighbours with an unhealthy interest in genetically confused botany. Simunek is more than just a doper. He has an acutely sensible eye for cultural criticism and has an ascerbic wit through which he makes humorous value judgements about everyone and everything. His real talent is not so much for detail that can make these kind of yarns tedious, but for the analysis of situations from a viewpoint motivated by both a need for self preservation and lifestyle protection. I like that in an author. He is well aware that the attention span of many of us is weaker than a sparrow's ankle and moves onwards quickly to the next town, the next adventure, the next bong. His relating of a story at an LA heavy metal convention is simultaneously hilarious and sad.I reckon Simunek has probably given one lung, one nostril and innumerable brain cells knocking out this book. Pull out the bong, light up the lava lamp and recline in the bean bag. Where there is smoke there is fire - Simunek is worth a read.

The best drug-laden gonzo tales since Fear and Loathing...

Simunek's style reaches such an honesty that the bare lies shine right through his hysterical accounts of his HIGH TIMES mis-adventures that pierce the heart and soul of today's counter-culture underground. This is a book that'll be a necessary survival tool for future generations of misfits, malcontents and marijuana missionaries. Simunek's sure to leave no stoner unburned...Let the roasting begin!