Review: 'The Mad Artist' by Roger Keen

Published in 2010 'The Mad Artist -- Psychonautic adventures in the 1970s' is a novelistic memoir by Roger Keen. Set between 1975 and 1979, the book explores his experiences of psychedelic awakenings -- trials and tribulations -- against the backdrop of his time at art college. The novel manages to combine the best elements of biography and literary flair and carves for itself an exhilarating picture of psychedelic Britain in the late 1970s.

The novel is split into three sections. The first, titled 'Pounds, Shillings and Pence' an old name for LSD, chronicles Keen's first acid experiment and his search for an art college to attend. Several characters are introduced, most importantly Henry, whose relationship with Keen forms the psychedelic gravitas to the novel. The interplay of ideas between the two is a fascinating post-modern insight, wherein their own literary adventures in psychedelic literature creates a rhizome that informs the 'The Mad Artist' as a psychedelic work itself.