Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

years. He said that when he was writing stories he would simply “roll the pictures” in his mind and write down what he saw as quickly as possible. It was a physical act: he would actually perspire when he wrote. His philosophy was “First draft, last draft, get it out the door.”
    Ron and Polly’s son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., was born prematurely on May 7, 1934, in Encinitas, California, where the couple had gone to vacation. The baby, whom they called Nibs, weighed little more than two pounds at birth. Ron fashioned an incubatorout of a cupboard drawer, using a lightbulb to keep it warm, while Polly fed Nibs with an eyedropper. Two years later, in New York City, Polly gave birth to a daughter, Katherine May Hubbard, whom they called Kay.
    In 1936, the family moved toBremerton, Washington, near where Ron’s parents were then living, as well as his mother’s family, theWaterburys. They warmly accepted Polly and the kids. Ron was doing well enough to buy a small farm in nearbyPort Orchard with a house, five bungalows, a thousand feet of waterfront, and a view of Mount Rainier—“the prettiest placeI ever saw in my life,” he wrote to his best friend,Russell Hays, a fellow author of pulps who lived in Kansas. Ron spent much of his time in New York, however, cultivating his professional contacts, and leaving his wife and children for long periods of time.
    Hubbard pined forHollywood, in what would be a long-term, unrequited romance. Despite his overtures, he received only “vague offers” from studios for short-term contracts. “I have discarded Hollywood,” he complained to Hays. “I haven’t got enough charm.” But in the springof 1937,Columbia Pictures finally optioned one of Hubbard’s stories to be folded into a serial, titled
The Secret of Treasure Island
. Hubbard quickly moved to Hollywood, hoping to finally make it in the movie business. (He later claimedto have worked on a numberof films during this time—including the classic films
Stagecoach
, withJohn Wayne, and
The Plainsman
, withGary Cooper—but he never actually received any film credits other than
The Secret of Treasure Island
.) By midsummer he had fled back to the farm in Washington, blaming the long hours, tension, and “dumb Jew producers.”
    Once again, he threw himself into writing the pulps with a fury, but also with a new note of cynicism. “Never write abouta character type you cannot find in the magazine for which the story is intended,” he advised Hays. “Never write about an unusual character.” Realism was no asset in this kind of writing, he complained, remarking on “my utter inability to sell a story which has any connection with my own background.… Reality seems to be a very detested quantity.”
    Then, on New Year’s Day, 1938, Hubbard had a revelation that would change his life—and eventually, the lives of many others. During a dental operation, he received a gas anesthetic. “While under the influenceof it my heart must have stopped beating,” he relates. “It was like sliding helter-skelter down into a vortex of scarlet and it was knowing that one was dying and that the process of dying was far from pleasant.” In those brief, hallucinatory moments, Hubbard believed that the secrets of existence were accidentally revealed to him.Forrest Ackerman, who later became his literary agent, said that Hubbard told him that he had risen from the dental chair in spirit form, glanced back at his former body, and wondered, “Where do we go from here?” Hubbard’s disembodied spirit then noticed a huge ornate gate in the distance, which he floated through. On the other side, Ackerman relates, Hubbard discovered “an intellectual smorgasbord of everything that had ever puzzled the mind of man—you know, how did it all begin, where do we go from here, are there past lives—and like a sponge he was just absorbing all this esoteric information. And all of a sudden, there was a kind of swishing in the air and he heard a