Mistah Leary – He Dead
Mistah Leary – He Dead is a chapbook written by American author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson and published by the X-Ray Book Co. in 1997.
The book serves as a eulogy for psychologist and psychedelic drug researcher/advocate Timothy Leary (1920–1996). It contains an obituary Thompson wrote for Leary that first appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine. The book also contains a simulated blotter sheet on which Dr. Leary's likeness is printed and other Leary-related artifacts.
The book was hand-sewn and hand-printed at The New Orleans School of GlassWorks and Printmaking Studio, with a print run of only 300 hand-numbered copies. In addition, 26 special lettered copies were also produced.
The title is a play on "Mistah Kurtz, he dead," the epitaph for Joseph Conrad's mining official gone native in Heart of Darkness. It was also the epigraph for T. S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men".