Arts 23 Skiddoo
posted by on January 12 at 13:41 PM
I’ve got a hellacious cold right now, so forgive me if this has been posted here earlier today, but: Robert Anton Wilson is dead. I read the Illuminatus! Trilogy, which he cowrote with Robert Shea, when I was nineteen, and it’s honestly one of those books that puts you in a “before I read this” and “after I read this” state. Granted, it’s probably a book that’s launched a million fruitcakes, but the lessons that a young reader can pull from Illuminatus!—that you should always ask “why” and look for the hidden connections between people, places and things—are things that every journalist and every critic (hell, every citizen) should learn as early as possible. And, as far as crazy-making young adult books go, it could always be a lot worse.
Without Wilson’s writing, a lot of people would still be reading bad sci-fi and fantasy, but the road from Illuminatus! is the road to Pynchon, and back to Sterne and Gaddis and forward to Gass and Vollman. It’s the Gateway Big Book, and that is why someone who is not currently an overachieving mucous factory should drink many toasts to Robert Anton Wilson tonight.
I had the same transformative experience from reading the illuminatus trilogy. And during the weeks I was reading it, I had crazy disturbing dreams.
I was once walking in New York, shortly after reading it, I paused under an awning to light a smoke (sorry Dan) and noticed a familiar symbol on a sandwich board sign. I looked up and realized that I was standing in front of the Masonic Temple on 23rd street. My head almost exploded.
R.I.P. R.A.W.
(fnord)
I too loved the books and still occassionaly believe I'm getting mind-fucked by the concepts presented. I need to read it again now that I'm "older" and "wiser" to see what else I can glean from it.
~ddv
I too loved the books and still occassionaly believe I'm getting mind-fucked by the concepts presented. I need to read it again now that I'm "older" and "wiser" to see what else I can glean from it.
~ddv
How is Illuminatus! "the road to Pynchon", when it was published in 1975, which is AFTER all of Pynchon's interesting books?
I think he means it's a young reader's road to Pynchon.
That's correct. Thank you, Skweetis, for clarifying for Fnarf.
Good lord, blogs:
"Thank you, Skweetis, for clarifying for Fnarf."
God bless the twenty-first century.
Like many, Wilson's work literally changed my life...
What do you say about a man who danced so long with the pooka it became impossible to tell where one began or the other ended
I'd like to suggest we commemorate this man, and his lifetime of guerrilla ontology with the coining of a new term. Something to enhance are always enhance-able reality tunnels...
Getting 'R.A.W.ed':
"The experience of feeling both breathtakingly stupid, and heartbreakingly happy, at the same time."
Never read any R.A.W?
amen to that, paul. I dinna ken you liked my boy Billy. Are you a partisan of the early stuff or the Seven Dreams plus era?
fuuuuuck.
RIP RAW
Personally, I see a link between the death of the inventor of instant ramen and Robert Anton Wilson. I blame the Eco-guerillas.
And there is no truth to the rumor that I was part of the original group that helped create the Illuminati game. Really. Even if I did used to have two hypens in my last name ...
The only government is the self.
The only religion is private and personal.
I will not lead.
I will not follow.
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