Style

Design for Dying is both a memoir, a recollection of personal experience, and a treatise, a formal, systematic description of a subject. It is a memoir because Leary reflects on his life and the lessons he has learned; it is a treatise because Leary outlines not only how he lived, but why he made the choices he did. By systematically laying out his thinking on subjects such as drugs, language, technology, death, sex, and consciousness, Leary shows readers the principles that undergirded his life.

Tone

Leary was a scientist and he often wrote as one. His prose, even in a book as intimate as Design for Dying, is frequently dominated by jargon, awkward metaphors, and convoluted reasoning and syntax. The sections that Sirius wrote are more direct and less weighed down by Leary's attempts to articulate paradox. Leary's problem was in trying to find a language for experiences...