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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Were some of the Illuminatus! appendices saved?

When I looked at the Robert Anton Wilson interview in the D. Scott Apel book I blogged about a couple of days ago, I noticed something interesting.

In the interview, conducted in January 1977, Wilson states that 500 pages were cut out of the published version of the work, including eight appendices that were cut out of Illuminatus! by the publisher, Dell. This is what comes next:

Apel: Will those ever be published?

Wilson: Yeah, I think so.

[Note: This prediction turned out to be accurate; in 1980, Berkeley's And/Or Press published The Illuminati Papers, which included much of the 500 pages of material cut from the original manuscript of the Illuminatus trilogy.]

I've never seen it asserted anywhere else that The Illuminati Papers is largely material cut out of Illuminatus! I always thought the lost appendices were, in fact, lost. That's what I thought Wilson said in other interviews. Can  you guys weigh in?

4 comments:

Eric Wagner said...

I had never heard that. Perhaps. Thanks for finding this.

michael said...

What I once entertained as a baseless possibility now seems a lot more substantial. Wow.

It's easy to see something like Illuminati Papers's "Stupid Dynamics" as being an appendix to Illuminatus!

There are still some Other Appendices, which we were told will be published "in heaven."

michael said...

With RAW's stated preference to write stoned, edit sober, write stoned, edit sober...I wonder how much of the pieces that ended up in Illuminati Papers had been altered? (assuming this info was accurate)

(I doubt we'll ever know...the archive problem...)

Jeff said...

Maybe someone can channel RAW and ask him to cite some sources now that he is in no eminent corporeal danger from the various agents who may have wished him harm.

Where exactly did they find the basis for the film about atlantis or the story of the church of the yellow sign?