Paradise Burning: Adventures Of A High Times Journalist [Paperback]

Chris Simunek (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1998

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's hard to imagine that anyone writing for High Times magazine could provide incisive and cutting commentary on contemporary culture, but pessimistic smart-ass Chris Simunek doesn't let the herb go to his head when he sits down in front of the keyboard. This book is a biography of Simunek's years with High Times and his travels to Jamaica, a spring-break bash in Mexico, the Rainbow Gathering, and the annual motorcycle rally in Sturges, South Dakota. Cavorting with criminal bikers, angel-headed Rastas, and hug-happy hippies, Simunek maintains a sly cynicism that makes his self-pitying prose a dark and deeply funny pleasure. --James DiGiovanna

From Publishers Weekly

As its cultivation editor, the author says that "[e]very month I've got to make sure High Times is filled with information for readers interested in growing their own dope." And this wryly self-proclaimed "dope reporter" runs into some interesting folks who are in search of that perfect high, such as the Dirt Farmer, "who lived in an old farmhouse?the kind of place the Waltons might have stayed in if Papa was a sociopath and a multiple felon," but who has a Field of Dreams full of the best marijuana south of the Mason-Dixon line. We get to infiltrate a Potsmokers Anonymous meeting where the "toke and stroke" method is analyzed with hilarious consequences. Next is Sturgis, S.Dak., the home of the annual Sturgis Rally and Races for bikers that is about "babes, beer, guts, tits, ass, tattoos, drugs, vets, and a lot of people telling bad jokes." There is also a visit to Jamaica in search of "the real Bob" Marley, the late reggae cult figure; a junket to the annual gathering of Rainbow Family of Living Light in Taos, N.Mex., where even a dope reporter like Simunek finds "the passivity of the thing... unnatural"; and a road trip following the Sex Pistols around Europe in their Filthy Lucre comeback tour. Fans of the film Reefer Madness and Hunter S. Thompson will be delighted by Simunek. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (May 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031218753X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312187538
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,564,306 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Gonzo!, September 6, 2000

By 

Pebus Dynamo (Slovakia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paradise Burning: Adventures Of A High Times Journalist (Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ya gotta read this one folks..., July 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Paradise Burning: Adventures Of A High Times Journalist (Paperback)

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!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best drug-laden gonzo tales since Fear and Loathing..., March 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Paradise Burning: Adventures Of A High Times Journalist (Paperback)

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!