Eric Wagner to do live podcast interview Friday

Eric Wagner will be doing a live podcast interview on Friday to promote his new book, Straight Outta Dublin: James Joyce and Robert Anton Wilson.

Eric will be a guest at 3:10 p.m. Pacific time (e.g. 6:10 p.m. Eastern) Friday Oct. 3 on Gerry Fialka's  "I'm Probably Wrong About Everything" podcast, tune in here. If you miss the 90 minute podcast live, it will be archived at the same website.

Eric's book is an Hilaritas Press product and also features a long essay by Michael Johnson. Read about Gerry Fialka.  See also my blog post. Mr. Fialka did a long interview with Bobby Campbell. 

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 14

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Mucho Maas, a character from Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, gets mentioned on page 307. “Absquatulation” on page 308 means, “leave abruptly.” 

I feel grateful to get the chance to reread this book. In tracing the history of the US from the blacklist scandal to Nixon to Reagan, it helps me understand how we got Trump and the world of 2025. I don’t have a clear idea of where we will go in 2026 and beyond though. 

I like how this chapter foreshadows the ending of the book, and it makes me wonder why Pynchon called the novel Vineland. Also, do you consider Vineland science fiction? Certainly I’ve never seen it in the science fiction section of a bookstore, but the story does have a number of science fiction elements, from a UFO to thanatoids to other possible non-human intelligences. 

John Higgs to discuss William Blake in U.S. appearance

Portrait of William Blake by Thomas Phillips, 1807

John Higgs, who has written two books about William Blake, will discuss Blake at an event at 5 p.m., eastern time, October 30 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut, in the U.S. The event is free but space is limited. Details here. 

Here is John's summary of the event, from his latest newsletter: "I’m travelling to America (I know…) at the end of October, for an event at Yale University where I’ll be in conversation with Timothy Young, the curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Yale Center for British Art. This is part of the celebrations around Yale’s William Blake: Burning Bright exhibition. For those who can’t be there, there will be a free livestream which you can find here."

For details on John's William Blake books (and other books) please go  here. 

'Sex Magicians' discussion group wraps up

Over at the Jechidah blog, Apuleius Charlton has finished the online discussion group for the Hilaritas Press edition of The Sex Magicians with a final blog post, "Afterwords and Afterthoughts: wrapping up The Sex Magicians." 

For the final post, two folks were invited to write pieces for the post on the book's afterword. I wrote one piece and Adie wrote another. I thought Adie's piece was better than mine, but maybe read them both. 

An 'Illuminatus!' reference in 'Vineland'?

Richard Nixon (public domain photo). 

From Illuminatus!:

The real bread was in the Colossus of Yorba Linda Foundation, which had been successfully raising money for several years to erect a heroic monument, in solid gold and ten feet taller than the statue of Liberty, honoring the martyred former president Richard Milhous Nixon. This monument, paid for entirely by the twenty million Americans who still loved and revered Nixon despite the damnable lies of the Congress, the Justice Department, the press, the TV, the law courts,met al., would stand outside Yorba Linda, Tricky Dicky's boyhood home, and scowl menacinglymtoward Asia, warning those gooks not to try to get the jump on Uncle Sammie. (Page 120, The Golden Apple). 

From Vineland:

... the new Nixon Monument, a hundred-foot colossus in black and white marble at the edge of the cliff, gazing not out to sea, but inland, towering above the campus architecture ... (Page 205, Chapter 11).

John Higgs discusses new book

David Lynch. Creative Commons photo by Alan Light.

John Higgs on his new book, Lynchian: The Spell of David Lynch:

"It's a  book about why the films of David Lynch affect us in a way that no other films do. It’s about his experience of the world and the lengths he goes to to share that with us. This will be quite a short book - it’s 30,000 words, which is roughly twice as long as William Blake Now or half the length of The KLF - and it was written over a very intense period during this summer. I hope you get as much out of it as I got from writing it."

I have to keep this short, but see John's newsletter for more news. The book is out Nov. 13.

Hilaritas podcast features Vincent Murphy on RAW's 'Forbidden Words'

The latest Hilaritas Press podcast, released yesterday, features AI Context Creator, Vincent Murphy talking with Mike Gathers about the new Hilaritas Press edition of Robert Anton Wilson's Book of Forbidden Words.

"This is one of the most compelling podcasts on AI that we've heard in a long time!" Rasa writes in the latest Hilaritas Press newsletter. 

See the Hilaritas Press page for the new podcast for useful links. 

Hilaritas releases my Robert Shea book

 

I am pleased to report that Hilaritas Press today released the Robert Shea anthology I put together, Every Day Is a GOOD Day.  You can read the Hilaritas Press announcement here. 

The book has been gradually popping up, as an ebook and trade paperback,  at various bookstore sites for the last few days. Buy at Amazon.  Or buy at Barnes and Noble.   Or buy at Bookshop.org and support a local bookstore. 

In the newsletter, Rasa writes:

"Bob Shea was one of Bob Wilson's closest friends, and reading this collection of Shea's writings gives you a lot of clues as to why the two men got along so well. Many RAW fans learned about the two Bob's by reading Illuminatus!, but not so many followed the further writings of Bob Shea. This new publication is a wonderful opportunity to find out that Shea was not only a really good writer, but also an exceptional human being. 

"Author Jesse Walker, books editor at Reason magazine, writes,

'One great paradox of Illuminatus! is that its cult following somehow transferred itself to just one of the book's two authors: Robert Anton Wilson still has a devoted cadre of fans two decades after his death, while Robert Shea's solo writings have run the risk of being forgotten. Thankfully, Every Day Is a GOOD Day is here to preserve the memory of this good-hearted, open-minded man – and to let more people enjoy his humane and freedom-loving writings.'

John Higgs, author of Love and Let Die and other books, writes, 

'Entertaining, thought provoking and richly varied, Every Day is a GOOD Day is a perfect introduction to the anarchistic principles and humane thinking of Robert Shea - a man more interested in finding flaws in his own beliefs than he is in forcing those beliefs on others.'

"If you like RAW's writings, you will easily get into reading Shea. If we may be so presumptuous, let us suggest that this is kinda essential reading for dedicated fans of RAW."

More endorsements here. 

I am pleased with the book, which took quite a bit of time and effort. l have been re-reading it now that I have a physical book in my hands. I've put together a book that I enjoy reading, my main definition of success. 

Various people helped me. I appreciate everyone who helped, and I want to thank a few people. Rasa did the cover, designed the book, got feedback from his board of advisors that improved the book, and in general worked very hard. I'm grateful to the five authors who took time to read the book and write blurbs for it: Jesse Walker, John Higgs, Daisy Campbell, Bobby Campbell and Eric Wagner. You can read what all five said.  And I want to thank Mike Shea, Robert Shea's son and literary executor, for giving me permission to do  the project, part of my crusade to bring new attention to Robert Shea.  UPDATE: I forgot to thank Spookah for his copyediting; he went through the whole book. I'm sure there are other people I should mention. 

Here is the book page.  There is also a Hilaritas Press page devoted to the book. 

As I wrote earlier, this month is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Illuminatus! 

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 13

 

By OZ FRITZ

Special guest blogger

"Problems and their symbolic fields stand in a relationship with signs."  . . . "To learn to swim is to conjugate the particular points of our bodies with the singular points of the objective Idea in order to form a problematic field. This conjugation determines for us a threshold of consciousness in which our real acts are adjusted to our perceptions of the real relations, thereby providing a solution to the problem. Moreover, problematic Ideas are precisely the ultimate elements of nature and the subliminal objects of little perceptions. As a result 'learning' always takes place in and through the unconscious, thereby establishing the bond of a profound complicity between nature and mind." – 

– Deleuze, Difference & Repetition p. 164 - 165

The problem solving model of critical thinking has been around since at least the Ancient Greeks. Deleuze develops his model of the problematic field in relation to the concept of learning. A problem doesn't always mean a terrible thing. You could have the problem of finding the best way of expressing your love and gratitude to someone close. You might try to read their signs to get an indication for a solution. In Vineland, all the major characters have problems to solve right from the get go. Zoyd wakes up one fine summer morning only to remember that he has to pull off a stunt and get it televised to keep collecting his benefits; he's out of smokes and the dog ate all his breakfast cereal. Before too long, he has the Feds after him and can't even go home. Prairie desperately wants to learn about her mother. Takeshi has the problem of dying at any time from the Vibrating Palm technique DL did to him mistakenly and this also becomes her problem. Frenesi and Brock Vond have a serious problem with each other they never seem to try and stop solving. On a broader scale, we have the conflict between the union busters and the anarchists; fascism vs freedom. Unfortunately, the latter problem currently appears in full effect in the world outside.

A problematic field seems a multiplicity, i.e. many "problems" within the field. The fascism vs freedom issue, well articulated in Vineland, where the fascists appear to be winning, directly affects my daily life. I can no longer watch shows on the Tube the authorities censor because they don't like what someone said. This is happening now, in America. I'm also aware that this relatively small blow to my freedom appears next to nothing compared to other acts of fascist violence and terrorism around the world, but it seems a sign for what might get worse.

I have heard the tautology that in Engineering a solution to a problem presents itself in the way the problem gets stated. Clearly laying out a problem results in suggestions for its solution. The problem of freedom vs fascism could be looked at as social engineering. A solution or solutions to this problem, what Deleuze calls "lines of flight," might be in the signs Pynchon constantly provides – the puns, paradoxes, jokes, qabalah, T.V. associations, etc, etc, i.e  his lexicon. Some of these jokes and signs seem blatantly obvious, others deeply obscure. The fascism/freedom problem seems to go deeper and further than the events on the social level. The same problem shows up on the personal, individual level in the fascism of negative habits and patterns from the four lower neuro-circuits vs the freedom of action in the higher circuits. It could be called a problem of Hedonic Engineering.

A teacher in a so-called Mystery School will often create problems and challenges for the student. A good teacher knows exactly how much to push the student such that the problem forces learning but doesn't overwhelm them to the point where they can't deal with it. This is called brinksmanship. When Prairie goes to the Ninjette school she's given the problem of feeding a large crowd with not many ingredients to work with. Her solution consists of the Spinach Casserole with its UBI and giant slabs of baloney on a spit. 

The Deleuze quote gives the example of learning to swim. This applies just as well to learning to swim or surf higher consciousness. One of his idiosyncratic phrases may seem a little perplexing: "the singular points of the objective Idea." You can substitute "Problem" for "Idea" so in this case the objective Problem or Idea is 'to swim." The singular points are the swimming pool or body of water, a swim suit, etc. all the objective things necessary to swim. In terms of learning to swim in the higher dimensions the singular points might include a joint, a maritial arts class, an uplifting piece of music, etc. I would submit that Pynchon's convoluted writing style, the twists and turns, going off on tangents, plot elements that never resolve, all the jokes, paradoxes, puns, allusions, symbolism, Cabala, cultural associations and historical and other obscure references has the effect of inputting information into the reader's unconscious mind thus fulfilling Deleuze's requirement of learning. It's like listening to a dense piece of music, or maybe any piece of good music – too much information to take in on one listening. Some of it necessarily enters below our awareness into the unconscious mind. We play this music again and hear something completely different despite having heard it already. A great piece of music can yield new discoveries after hundreds of listens. I'm on my fourth time through Vineland with no shortage of fresh insights, surprises and getting jokes for the first time. Even if one never rereads this book, I suspect a portion of it remains in the unconscious going forward. 

To give an example of Pynchon's convoluted subliminal associations: we find a mention of Leonard Nimoy on p. 220. Nimoy most famously played Spock on the original Star Trek T.V. series but here he's mentioned in a show, "In Search Of" where he appeared as himself as the host. He 's mentioned in the same sentence as Jack Palance and his show, "Believe It Or Not." Both shows explored mysterious phenomena. At this point in the story Zoyd is wanted for a music gig, but he's missing in action: "nobody had seen Zoyd around for most of the week." 68 pages later on p. 288 Spock is mentioned, but not the Vulcan, rather Dr. Spock the pediatrician famous for his revolutionary ideas on child-rearing. Just before this name comes up, Zoyd once again appears to be missing: 

"'Where's 'at Zoyd at?' 

'He clocked out as soon as the kid was born, probably off on one of the lesser-known planets by now'"

The extraterrestrial comment provides an allusion with the Star Trek Spock. 

While we're on Star Trek . . . I found the scene where Rex gives his Porsche 911 to Pynchon's version of the Black Panthers (p. 230 -231) very interesting. Rex knew and loved his car, which he named Bruno, in every possible way. The Panthers,  called BAAD in the book, changed the car's name to UHURU which stands for Ultra Hi-speed Urban Reconnaissance Unit. The acronym seems to deliberately leave out the S for speed so that it has the same name as a well-known book on black culture, Uhuru: A Novel of Africa Today by Robert Ruark. Uhuru translates to "freedom" from Swahili. When actor Nichelle Nichols was tasked by Gene Roddenberry to come up with a name for her character on the fledging Tube series Star Trek she chose Nyota Uhura, the last name inspired by Ruark's novel. She was given the rank of Lieutenant and made the head Communications Officer. Nichols was one of the first black woman to have a lead role on a T.V. Series. After the first year she was ready to quit to take a job on Broadway. Roddenberry told her to take some time to think it over. That night she attended a N.A.A.C.P. event and was told a fan would like to meet her. That fan was Martin Luther King Jr. who told her she played an important role model and should continue. MLK's advice changed her mind and she stayed on.

So we have a Porsche 911 called Bruno donated to a revolutionary cause whose name changes to UHURU which suggests Lieutenant Uhura, Star Trek's Communication Officer. A car with a male name has this name transformed to a name associated with a well-known woman from the Tube. In the United States 911 is the number you dial for an emergency. I believe it's different in the U.K. and Europe. One could infer that Pynchon intends to communicate an emergency. The P in Porsche corresponds with the card known as the Blasted Tower or just the Tower in the Tarot. On 9/11/2001 two commercial airliners flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. I don't suggest that Pynchon consciously predicted the 9/11 tragedy, but when invoking the muse in the process of writing, you never know what will come through. Robert Anton Wilson has mentioned writing about events in Illuminatus! that later manifested in the world. Finnegans Wake also has some apparent time and event anomalies.

* * * * * * 

Chapter 13 brings us intimately into the world of Brock Vond for the first time along with the methods to his madness – his vision of law enforcement. A distinguishing characteristic of Nietzsche was his examination and consideration of the genealogy, or history, of different subjects; one of his masterpieces is "On the Genealogy of Morals." Michel Foucault is known for this approach as well, no doubt inspired by Nietzsche. Earlier, Pynchon provided some genealogy behind the anarchism Sasha and Hub practiced. The genealogy of Prairie seems very important in this book especially at the end. The genealogy of Vond's mission here gets connected with the so-called "father of criminology" Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) and his concept of misoneism – fear of the new. Misoneism seems the same as what Wilson means by neophobe. Lombroso is a real historical figure but, as far as I can tell, had nothing to do with misoneism. This may be Pynchon commenting on Lombroso theories, which I did not research, or commenting on Vond and Fascism in general. 

Like another bad guy, Captain Ahab, we discover depth to Brock Vond; he no longer appears a one-dimensional character. Page 274 - 275 has an interesting bardo dream sequence regarding his feminine side. Toward the end of this sequence Pynchon chooses the archaic word "counterpane" which I learned from reading Moby Dick means "bedspread." At another point Vond, scared shitless, directly confronts death in the battlefield and gets lead to safety by a Guide who observes some kind of grace protecting him.

P. 273 Brock Vond fantasizes about sex and his gun which implies a connection between unbalanced male sexual energy and violence.

The second part of this chapter concerns the events leading up to Prairie's nativity and what follows. Although subtly presented in the subtext, we see an intention to expose Prairie to some kind of cosmic influence at her birth. It reminds me a little of the plot of Aleister Crowley's novel Moonchild. To begin, the midwife's name is Leonard (p. 285). Most midwives are woman. Once again, and at a crucial point comes the male/female blending theme which appears crucial for getting into cosmic spaces. Leonard recalls Leonard Nimoy = Spock. Also, the name of the doctor in Star Trek is Leonard, Leonard McCoy.  Zoyd micro-doses some acid for the occasion "on the chance of glimpsing something cosmic that might tell him he wouldn't die." Among other things, he notices "the paisley patterns on Leonard's Nehru shirt" showing us Nimoy's initials which affirms the Spock connection. This paragraph of Prairie's birth ends with an explicit Star Trek reference. 

Not to mention the whole surf thing. Frenesi tells Sasha she wanted her baby to hear the surf when coming into the world. Sasha connects that with "positive vibrations" which invokes "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys, the ultimate surfer band. We had the College of the Surf and for some unexplained reason, Zoyd's band "the Corvairs [were] billing themselves as the Surfadelics" at the joint where he and Frenesi first crossed paths. The general metaphor mentioned earlier: to surf = to ride the wave of higher consciousness rings true.

Surf = 60+6+200+80 = 346 in traditional Kabbalah. 346 = "Good pleasure; the Will power" this reminds me of Hedonic Engineering.

Surf = 60+6+200+6 = 272 in Crowley's Qabalah. 272 = "Earth," quite a suitable correspondence for someone named Prairie. The four Princesses in the Thoth Tarot correspond with Earth.

Assigning a Tarot card to each letter: S = Art; U = The Hierophant; R = The Sun; F = the Tower.

This holds relevance in my subconscious theater since I worked for years at a recording studio in Sonoma County named Prairie Sun.

We see the paradox of Frenesi in the mother archetype when she rejects her own baby at first. Near the end of the chapter she laments the loss of precious time with her own mother. 

A reason for the form of this chapter, starting with Brock Vond then changing to Prairie's birth with Frenesi as the through line, presents itself at the end of this adventure, but I won't give it away.

There's a shout-out  in this chapter to one of my favorite musician/composer/sound engineers, Frank Zappa.  

Next week: please read Chapter 14, pages 294-322

Steve "Fly" Pratt releases new album

 Steve "Fly" Pratt has a new album out, MAMMALIAN,  which stands for "Model Agnostic Meta Multi Agent Learning Intelligence and Nonfiction," influenced by his years of study of Robert Anton Wilson. Go here to learn more. 

Kumano Kodo one of the best books I read this year

 

This book seemed really interesting to me and held my attention; I wish I had written about it earlier, as I think many of you would like it. But it's still available!

Kumano Kodo: Pilgrimage to Powerspots, by J. Christian Greer and Michelle K. Oing, describes a walking tour of a very old Japanese Shinto and Buddhist pilgrimage trail. It is not a tourist guidebook; it's a discussion of the history and culture of the trail and a description of what it was like to go on it. 

The introductory section in the front gives background on the area of Japan discussed in the book. The trail is touted as a "heritage" area, but the difference between heritage and real history is explained. The Kumano Kodo is a UNESCO "Universal World Heritage Site." There were politics behind that, and the claim of "universal" appeal seems to be in tension with the claims of Japanese exceptionalism embodied in Shinto. All of this was new to me and fascinating.

The pilgrimage is then described. For each chapter on a section of the trail, there are vivid descriptions of the experience, with chapter headings on "Distance travelled," "Foods consumed," "Drinks slurped," the number of panic attacks and sock changes, and so on.

If you don't know Christian, he is a Discordian and an academic,  currently serving at Stanford University as a lecturer after stints at Yale and Harvard. Here is a bit of  his Stanford biography, not the usual sort of  thing:

"J. Christian Greer, PhD, is a scholar of Religious Studies with a special focus on psychedelic culture. He holds a MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, as well as a MA and PhD (cum laude) in Western Esotericism from the University of Amsterdam. While a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Divinity School, he led a series of seminars on global psychedelic cultures, which culminated in the creation of the 'Harvard Psychedelic Walking Tour,' a free audio guide detailing how the Harvard community has shaped the modern history of psychedelic culture. He is also the co-founder, and currently the co-chair of the "Drugs and Religion" program unit at the American Academy of Religion.

"His forthcoming book, Angelheaded Hipsters: Psychedelic Militancy in Nineteen Eighties North America (Oxford University Press), explores the expansion of psychedelic culture within fanzine networks in the late Cold War era." 

Somehow I sense that the forthcoming book  might be interesting.

As for his Discordian credentials, Christian is interviewed in the book Chasing Eris by Brenton Clutterbuck, and he managed to appear on Episode 23 of this podcast. 

My wife asked me if Kumano Kodo was one of my "weird books." Maybe, but I think it could appeal to quite a few people. 

I should mention that Robert Anton Wilson is mentioned by name on page 84, and various concepts popularized or invented by RAW recur in the text. 

The book almost seems like an art book, as it has numerous collages in color, assembled from manga, comics, publications about Persian rugs and tourist guides for Japan. They seemed quite good to me; I spent a lot of time looking at them. I would not claim to be an art expert (or EXPERT as I believe RAW has sometimes spelled the word), but my wife says she has been dragged inside enough art museums to last a lifetime, so perhaps I am entitled to an opinion.

My Bach, and Michael Johnson's

Johann Sebastian Bach

When I think back to my college days, I realize that I did learn a lot in those days, although what I learned in the classroom was rivaled by what I learned outside. I discovered Bach my freshman years in both ways: My favorite class my freshman year was a "music appreciation" class, which I loved because it exposed me to lots of wonderful music. The music it covered included a far amount of Bach, including Cantata No. 140, the "Wachet Auf" cantata. It is still one of my favorite classical music pieces, and in fact I listen to the cantatas more than I listen to any other Bach. Michael Johnson, though, in his fine new Substack piece on Bach, concentrates on Bach's solo ins trumental music, which makes sense, as Michael is a heavy metal guitarist. [UPDATE: See the comment; Michael is more eclectic.]

In my dormitory my freshman year, there was a guy down the hall, a friend of friends, who had an album called "Switched on Bach," and so Walter/Wendy Carlos was another source of Bach education for me. One of the more impressive pieces on the album was "Sheep May Safely Graze," and while still a college student, I tracked down and bought a recording of the cantata it appears on (e.g,, the "Hunting Cantata," BWV 208.) 

Buying that album, a minuscule part of Bach's total work,  took a bit of real effort, and I had to spend real money. Nowadays, I have access to a huge treasury of Bach recordings available for free (from the public library digital music services) or cheaply (from the commercial music services.) Young people take this cornucopia for granted. You have to be old to really appreciate digital music. Vinyl has made something of a comeback, for some reason, but in the 1970s, listening to music in your car meant listening to eight track tapes. I notice there isn't much nostalgia for eight track tapes.

One of my favorite novelists, Richard Powers, has Bach references in much of his work, perhaps most obviously in The Gold Bug Variations, but Bach pops up in many other novels, too, including the latest one, Playground. I enjoy Powers' Bach bits in much the same way that I love Robert Anton Wilson's writings that discuss Beethoven. 

Valis trilogy on sale

I think of ebooks as modern paperbacks, i.e. inexpensive ways to build one's personal library, and I like to occasionally note book sales that might be of interest to readers of this blog. I noticed this week that the Amazon Kindle ebook version of Philip K. Dick's Valis trilogy (VALIS, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer) is about $2 right now, cheaper than many cups of coffee. (If  you don't want to give your money to Amazon, you can also get it as an ebook for $2 from Barnes and Noble.) 

Dick is an example of a classic science fiction writer whose books often go on sale as ebooks; I've noticed that Philip Jose Farmer, Poul Anderson and Clifford Simak books, for example, are also often cheap. I recently took advantage of a similar sale to buy and read Dick's Flow My Tears the Policeman Said when it also sent on sale for about $2; it's back up to $14 now. I thought it was one of Dick's best books. 

About the new 'Pynchon movie'

Paul Thomas Anderson (Creative Commons photo, details). 

One Battle After Another, the new loose adaptation of Vineland by director Paul Thomas Anderson, has gotten Thomas Pynchon's blessing, according to an interesting article at The Film Stage: 

“ 'Realistically, for me, Vineland was going to be hard to adapt. Instead, I stole the parts that really resonated with me and started putting all these ideas together. With [Pynchon’s] blessing,' Anderson notes, confirming he’s one of the rare individuals on the planet who has crossed paths with Pynchon, the reclusive postmodernist author whose new book Shadow Ticket arrives just after One Battle hits theaters."

Describing the new movie, the article says, "While the story of revolutionaries is inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland (moving up the events a few decades), Anderson’s film barely lifts a sentence from its source material, instead using just the basic structure to tell a story all his own."

I have not crossed paths with Pynchon (that I know of, of course) but when I read Chapter 11 of Vineland, I did wonder if Pynchon has been to Oklahoma, where I grew up and lived for any years and still have relatives; the description of Oklahoma City was accurate, and the details of the big storm coming into the city sounded like it came from someone who was familiar with Oklahoma's violent thunderstorms. I ran a couple of searches, but I can't find any proof Pynchon has traveled to Oklahoma.

'Stop blaming them'

Tyler Cowen

[Tyler Cowen says the following is "more political" than his usual posts, and it's more political than MY usual posts, but I think it fits  in well for a Robert Anton Wilson blog, given that RAW was opposed to scapegoating groups (see for example, "Shocking Hidden Facts About Male Non-Violence" from Email to the Universe.) -- The Management.]

One of the most dangerous collectivist arguments in the wake of Kirk’s murder is to blame the “trans community.” Some have reported that Robinson lived with a transgender romantic partner. Regardless of whether this proves to be true, there is no good evidence that trans individuals are especially likely to commit murder (try asking Grok). There is also no evidence that this particular trans individual contributed to the murder plot; rather, reports indicate the person in question is cooperating with the authorities.

If there is generalized evidence for anything, it is that trans individuals are likely to be the victims of violent attacks.

And yet, Elon Musk is approvingly reposting the following: “It’s time for a complete and total ban on cross-sex hormones. They cannot change your sex. They turn men with perverse fetishes into deranged bioweapons, and women trying to escape sexual trauma into androgynous osteoporotic goblins. These people need to spend a long time in an asylum—some of them, indefinitely.”

Constitutional rights, anyone? The right for peaceful individuals to avoid involuntary incarceration? How about basic toleration? Musk is an individualist in many other contexts, but it appears not this one. As a strategy matter, why go out of your way to make left-wing charges against the right seem plausible?

-- Tyler Cowen (source)

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 12

Fred Astaire in 1941 (public domain photo). 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger 

Another tai chi reference on page 264: I started doing t’ai chi ten years ago, and I have not reread this book during that time. This morning I heard a bit of a review of the Sex and the City sequel on television, and while reading the scene of Frenesi and DL talking in Mexico, I imagined Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Catrall playing them. (They could take turns playing the parts, the way some actors take turns playing Iago and Othello.) 

I put an asterisk in the upper right hand corner of page. 265, probably back in 2006 when I taught this novel in a community college English class. I don’t remember doing it, and I don’t remember why, but I find this paragraph ominous in 2025: 

“Then again, it’s the whole Reagan program, isn’t it – dismantle the New Deal, reverse the effects of World War II, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity - ‘I don’t like the way it came out, I want it to me be my way.’ If the President can act like that, why not Brock?”  

The reference to Fred and Ginger on the next page makes me think of David Thomson’s idea of casting Fred Astaire as Dr. Jekyll and Jimmy Cagney as Mr. Hyde. Fred would have made a great Brock Vond. 

Gary Larson is an Illuminatus! fan? [UPDATED]

 

UPDATE: See Bobby Campbell's comment, below. 

Michael Johnson's book reviews

Michael Johnson's latest Overweening Generalist Substack episode, "Book Reviews on Acid." , is a roundup of reviews of three books: Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium by Erik Davis; The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary by Susannah Cahalan and Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age by Norman Ohler. 

The reviews are well-written and Michael brings considerable knowledge of his own to bear; these reviews would not be out of place in a slick magazine or the New York Times book review section, but we get to read them in a Substack sent out as an email (or if you prefer, at the website or in your smartphone app.) If you haven't checked out Michael's newsletter, this would be one place to start. 

The book on Rosemary Woodruff Leary is not a flattering portrait of Timothy Leary, as other reviewers of the book have noted; I thought Michael handled it well. 

RAW biography now available in Spanish

 

Here is something interesting: the RAW biography, Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson, by Gabriel Kennedy,  is now available in Spanish. Details here.  Aurora Dorada (e.g., "Golden Dawn Editions") is located in Spain. "Independent publishing house of underground esotericism, counterculture and Lovecraftian themes founded in Xàtiva in 2019 ... Among its most notable authors are: H.P. Lovecraft, Austin Osman Spare, Arthur Machen, Aleister Crowley, Thomas Ligotti, Clark Ashton Smith, Phil Hine, Michael Bertiaux, Phil Baker, Peter J. Carroll, Nema Andahadna and S.T. Joshi." The book can apparently be ordered from the publisher, but if you want to search for it from another vendor, the title in Spanish is La Capilla Peligrosa. Vida y crímenes mentales de Robert Anton Wilson.

'Tales of Iluminatus #2' close to being finished

 

Bobby Campbell reports that the second issue of his Tales of Illuminatus! comic book series will be out soon:

"I'm very happy to announce that we are in the final stages of production on Tales of Illuminatus! #2!

"Specifically, I only have 5 pages left to draw :)))

"We didn't win a lottery spot to exhibit at the Small Press Expo this year, so our hard deadline got a little softer, but the end is still very much nigh!

"I'll be shutting down late Kickstarter pledges next Friday (9/19) and begin the process of collecting addresses for shipping out our pre-orders.

"I'm not quite ready to nail down a specific date yet, as circumstances remain variable, and I'm leaning towards quality over speed, so I hope you will accept an amorphous, yet incandescent, 'SOON'."

More details at the Substack, which you can subscribe to. 

RAW Semantics on physicist Roger Jones

 A new post from Brian Dean, "‘Physics as Metaphor’ & RAW." It begins:

"Here’s a book that Robert Anton Wilson cites intriguingly: Physics as Metaphor, by Roger Jones (1982). And what an unexpectedly wide, deep and luxuriant read. Bob W. references it several times, and it’s on at least one of his book lists (’50 books from the library of Robert Anton Wilson’, RE/Search #18). I said 'unexpectedly' as I haven’t seen it mentioned before in the wider Wilson world. Hence this post, and a query."

As is usual with Brian, the accompanying artwork is arresting, and as is usual with me, I've nicked one. 

I keep running into Yukio Mishima

 

Yukio Mishima in 1955. Public domain photo by Ken Domon. 

If you are a serious reader, you have probably heard of the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, who died in 1970, age 45, in a ritual suicide after a failed coup attempt. 

For years, I didn't consider reading him, in spite of his literary fame, as I assumed he was the sort of ultranationalist, far right wing nut who could be safely ignored. Lately, though, I have wondered if he falls into the Ezra Pound category, i.e. a person with terrible politics who is nonetheless worth reading. I keep running into references to him by people who have nothing to do with Mishima's  political views.

I am a fan of the surrealist American poet Charles Henri Ford (1908-2002) and when I read one of his anthologies, I noticed a poem about Mishima (titled "Mishima," as part of "Four Elegies.") It's not entirely flattering ("Actually you were more attracted to power than to people or to art") but the fact that Ford bothered to write about him at all interested me.

I don't know what Robert Anton Wilson thought about Mishima, but Robert Shea was a fan. Here's an interview with Shea is Science Fiction Review:

SFR: What contemporary authors do you get the most out of reading?

SHEA: The list is continually undergoing revision as my taste changes and my reasons for reading change, but John Fowles, Romain Gary, Norman Mailer, Yukio Mishima, Vladimir Nabokov, George Orwell, Thomas Pynchon, J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert Penn Warren seem to have taken up permanent residence in my literary pantheon.

I am currently reading Kumano Kodo: Pilgrimage to Powerspots (about an old pilgrimage trail in Japan) by J. Christian Greer and Michelle K. Oing, and it relates a short story by Mishima.

So: Should I read Mishima? 

 

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 11

By OZ FRITZ
Special guest blogger

"The informal slogan around 24fps was Che Guevara's phrase 'Wherever death my surprise us.' It didn't have to be big and dramatic, like warfare in the street, it could happen as easily where they chose to take their witness, back in the shadows lighting up things the networks never would ..."– Vineland, p. 202-203

"Those thinkers in whom all stars move in cyclic orbits are not the most profound: whoever looks into himself as into vast space and carries galaxies in himself also knows how irregular all galaxies are; they lead into the chaos and labyrinth of existence."

– Nietzsche, The Gay Science 

The character Weed Atman has an interesting name. Sometimes Pynchon goes opaquely occult with his signifiers, other times he's screamingly obvious. Atman is a Sanskrit term for the True or Deep Self. It's the part of you that survives obliteration in death and gets reincarnated, according to Hindu doctrine. Atman can also get thought of as the essential nature of something. In philosophy they talk about the being of this or that. To give one example, Deleuze wants to find the being of the sensible in his philosophy of difference. Weed Atman could signify the being, or the essential character of Vineland given that various forms of cannabis consumption - weed - run throughout the book. Not necessarily the character Weed Atman, but his name, the only name in the book with this blatant a definition.

To state the obvious, marijuana has an explicit role in Vineland. After breakfast, Zoyd begins his day (and the book) smoking half a joint. If a reader proved highly suggestible, they'd already be stoned in the second page of text. We find two or three amusing cannabis references in the working practices of the 24fps enclave in chapter 10. There's another weed reference in chapter 11; I think a character turns up with a joint in their mouth. To state the less obvious, marijuana has an implicit role in this book. In chapter 10 we find DL's initials given a number of times and at least once in chapter 11.

DL = 34. Chapter 34 in The Book of Lies is called "The Smoking Dog".  Pynchon seems quite fond of both smoking (weed) and dogs. Vineland starts (the Copeland quote) and ends with a dog. I'll leave that for the reader to unlock.

DL's initials appear capitalized (although reversed) as Love and Death in "The Smoking Dog." I highly recommend reading that chapter and commentary as an adjunct to reading Vineland. It's easily found online and clocks in at less than two pages long. Crowley calls Love and Death "greyhounds" that chase us. Pynchon puts us in a greyhound bus station with Zoyd and a baby Prairie in a later chapter, 14, I believe. DL herself seems all about death and love with the vibrating palm delivering death and her love for Frenesi, Takeshi, and the gesture of love she showed Prairie. Also, D = daleth = Venus, the goddess of love.

Apart from entertaining his audience in such a delightful way, Pynchon provides keys for establishing a presence in the higher dimensions – Leary's brain circuits or systems 5 through 8. Weed Atman appears as one of two characters who starts out living but ends up dead, in the bardo as a Thanatoid. In general, the bardo can be thought of as the territory "in between." Metaphorically speaking, an explorer of higher modalities (brain circuits 5 - 8) needs to temporarily die to their conventional self image, their mundane identity (as determined by their experiences and actualizations in C 1 - 4) in order to establish a lasting awareness in C 5- 8. We can think of that presence in the higher circuits as our Atman, our True Self. Weed Atman, the being of Vineland, seems an obvious key for getting there. According to Wilson and Leary, marijuana activates C5. Though I suspect Pynchon doesn't care much for Bob Dylan (I could be wrong) the 24 fps slogan 'Wherever death may surprise us' reminds me of "Rainy Day Woman #12 & #35."

Weed Atman, the being of Vineland. I submit that atman symbolizes the land of the vine, the territory of the higher dimensions. Ingesting cannabis seems one easy way to start off in that direction when somewhat adhering to set, setting and dosage guidelines. According to Google AI's Overview: "A true vine is a long-stemmed plant that uses other objects for support as it climbs to reach sunlight. It develops specialized climbing structures like tendrils (eg., grapevines) or clinging aerial roots (eg., ivy) to attach to surfaces." This seems isomorphic to connecting more consciously with the inner galaxies that make up the atman.

* * * * * * 

This appears the 4th chapter in a row giving an emphasis on attention: "Then, in a shot of the whole crowd, she noticed this moving circle of focused attention as somebody made his way through, until a tall shape ascended to visibility. "Weed!" they cried, like a sports crowd in another country, the echo just subsiding before the next Weed!" This quote also could serve as an illustration of someone moving into the higher dimensions ("another country"). It will be observed by those who pay attention to these things that Pynchon's use of the SC combination has noticeably increased in frequency since Prairie made her Spinach Casserole with its UBI (universal basic ingredient though universal basic income works just as well in the occult symbolism of SC). Most of this chapter takes place at the College of the Surf; the quote has "sports crowd."

Earlier someone mentioned family as a recurring trope or theme in Vineland. In Chapter 11 we hear about "Weed's infamous family weekend get-togethers, when everybody was supposed to wallow in retro-domestic Caring and Warmth ...". Vineland ends with a big, annual family reunion. The only other main character who dies (maybe) in the book does so at the end. I have no idea if this has any relevance.

The storm that occurs when Frenesi and Brock are in Oklahoma that they also track on the Tube shows parallels with Pynchon's first published story, "The Small Rain." It's set in the aftermath of a weather event responsible for a lot of death. Like Wilson, Tom spreads his characters and themes throughout his written output. For instance, 86 has come up a bit in the Vineland discussion. Speaking of his younger self in the 3rd person on page 1 of his introduction to Slow Learner: "I mean I can't very well 86 this guy from my life." In the same introduction Pynchon explicitly connects the SC code with "The Small Rain" by informing us that the characters in it comprise a branch of the military called Signal Corps. The SC combo doesn't appear in the story at all.

The College of the Surf recalls a brief but scintillating adventure in my younger days. In 1978 a friend and I hitchhiked down to California from Western Canada. We spent a few days at Isla Vista, the locale of the University of California at Santa Barbara. One evening we hung out around the small night life area buying beer for underage students. We were underage too, the drinking age was 21 at the time, we were 18 but I guess we looked older due to our scruffy appearance from living on the road. The night before, we had tried staying in Santa Barbara on the beach, but were accosted by the police with their guns drawn on us – the only time that's happened to me. After searching us and failing to find any drugs, they took us to an area where homeless people camped and told us to get out of town before sundown the following day. After helping the students obtain their drug of choice, we dropped some acid and had a wonderful all night adventure finally crashing at dawn by the ocean. LSD gets a mention in Chapter 11.

The chapter ends with an interesting passage showing Frenesi reflecting on life, time and the way of service: "...time was rushing all around her, these were rapids and as far ahead as she could see it looked like Brock's stretch of the river, another stage, like sex, children, surgery, further into adulthood perilous and real, into the secret that life is soldiering, that soldiering includes death, that those soldiered for, not yet and often not in on the secret, are always, at every age, children" (p. 216). We see a lot there – Frenesi comparing her life to a river recalls Finnegans Wake; maybe a reference to Chapel Perilous; soldiering for children aligns with some lines from The Book of the Law, etc.  What struck me the most was that I had never considered surgery as a stage in life. But I guess as you get older and the body starts to fall apart all the medical stuff one has to go through does become a stage in life. I can relate to that.

Synchronicity: when researching atman I found out that the root word it comes from means breath. On Wednesday, someone I know very well went in for a lung biopsy and relayed a coincidence. One of the nurses asked what kind of music would he like to hear during the procedure. He said older Pink Floyd, please. When they wheeled him into the operating room the song "Breathe" from Dark Side of the Moon was playing. It couldn't be a more perfect choice, he thought.

Next week: please read Chapter 12, pages 218 - 268.

More on basic income

 

The links-with-commentary is one of my favorite items in the Astral Codex Ten Substack, and the "Links for September 2025" did not disappoint. After I did the recent posting on new basic income information, and read the comments that followed, I discovered that Scott also had covered the recent controversy (item No. 54). Scott adds this bit:

"GiveDirectly, a charity involved in basic income experiments, has a response here; they say that some studies are positive, and that the ones that aren’t might have tried too little cash to matter, or been confounded by COVID making everything worse. They also point out that basic income is harder to study than traditional programs like giving people housing, because if you’re giving housing you can measure housing-related outcomes directly and have a pretty good chance of getting enough statistical power to find them, but since everyone spends cash on different things, the positive effects might be scattered across many different outcomes (and therefore too small to reach significance on each).

"Everyone involved in this debate wants to emphasize that the poor results are for First World studies only, and that studies continue to show large benefits to giving cash in the developing world."

There are also other points Scott makes.

Also in the same newsletter, interesting news about AI, age of consent in different European countries and other matters, including the observation, "Andy Masley’s AI art is good." An example is above. 

'Magnificent Ambersons' to get AI treatment

Photo from the Magnificent Ambersons, with Anne Baxter in the middle. 

From the Hollywood Reporter:

"Since the rise of generative artificial intelligence in 2022, the technology has mostly been plugged into parts of the production pipeline as far as its deployment in Hollywood. Think visual effects, dubbing and storyboarding. As it stands, it’s mostly thought of as a tool to streamline certain processes and cut costs.

"But others have their sights set on completely overhauling the entertainment industry’s use of AI. At the forefront: Showrunner, which plans to reconstruct the destroyed 43 minutes of Orson Welles‘ The Magnificent Ambersons."

More here. 

This is an update to some news I reported back in 2023, but AI wasn't mentioned yet. 

Still no word on using AI to restore the lost pages from Illuminatus! That's a joke, of course. Well, I think it is ...

New studies don't cast basic income in a good light

Photo by Colin Watts on Unsplash

I've done past blog posts on the basic income guarantee, the idea that the government should use cash transfers to make sure everyone has a minimum income, because it's an intriguing idea and Robert Anton Wilson was interested in it. 

I've noticed recent news here and there that recent studies of such programs haven't been very encouraging, and Substacker Noah Smith, in a recent piece, has a good summary, excerpt:

"In recent years, some new research has come out that tempered my enthusiasm for the cash benefit revolution. First, a basic income trial in Denver failed to decrease homelessness, which is one thing you’d really like to see basic income do. Then, an even bigger basic income trial in Texas and Illinois found that just $1000 a month caused 2% of people to stop working — a very big disemployment effect, contradicting the results of earlier studies. Worryingly, this study is much more believable than any of the more optimistic studies, since it’s a very large randomized controlled trial. (Of course, it’s just one study; the papers showing little effect are still more numerous, even if no single one is as reliable.)

"Meanwhile, a lot of these studies are finding that cash benefits aren’t really doing much to improve quality of life for the people who get the cash. You can measure various things we think curing poverty ought to improve, like health, education, employment, housing, etc. And unfortunately, these recent studies show that cash benefits aren’t making those indicators look much better."

There's more at the link. I should note that Smith still favors cash transfers:

"A more valid counterargument — and one that Bruenig touches on, but could have been a lot more explicit about — is that poor people having more cash is simply a good thing in and of itself, whether or not their kids become healthier or they get a better education or they report less depression. Being able to afford more food, more transportation, more housing, etc. makes your life better, even if it doesn’t make you lead a healthier lifestyle."

In his newsletter, in an issue that I can't link to because its behind a paywall, Richard Hanania says those results are unsurprising. "The underlying premise was wrong. There's this idea that poor people are just normal people with less money, rather than understanding they're poor in the first place because they have dysfunctional traits. Money will not solve low intelligence, poor impulse control, an inability to cope with unexpected challenges, etc. This is something conservatives have been historically more likely to take for granted."

 

Who's our greatest living novelist?

Richard Powers (Creative Commons photo by Phoebe Ayers, details here.)

In his recent piece on Thomas Pynchon that I blogged about a few days ago, PQ writes, "Pynchon is arguably the greatest living novelist on the strength of Gravity's Rainbow (1973) alone ... "

This is obviously not an unreasonable opinion, but it made me wonder what other writers plausibly could be suggested. (For the sake of discussion, let's limit this to writers from the U.S.) Colson Whitehead? Don DeLillo? Anne Tyler? N.K. Jemisin? Alice Walker? Stephen King? Percival Everett? Barbara Kingsolver? Who am I missing?

My three favorite "name" writers are Richard Powers, Neal Stephenson and Tom Perrotta. Whenever any of those three issues a new book, I have to read it, ASAP. 

Powers probably would be the writer among those three with the biggest literary reputation. He won the National Book Award for The Echo Maker, the Pulitzer Prize for The Overstory and was awarded a MacArthur "genius" grant. The Gold Bug Variations is another well-regarded novel, and I liked Playground, the one that came out last year. 

I actually interviewed Powers via email after another novel I liked, Orfeo, was published, here is my interview. 

What we read last month

What I read last month:

The Sound of Utopia: Musicians in the Time of Stalin, Michel Krielaars. About musicians and composers who faced persecution in the Soviet Union. I especially liked the chapter on Prokofiev.

Keys to a Successful Retirement: Staying Happy, Active, and Productive in Your Retired Years, Fritz Gilbert. Some good ideas.

Salt, Adam Roberts. First novel by a British writer I have gotten interested in. Roberts is consistently a good read. 

The Sex Magicians, Robert Anton Williams. A re-read to participate in the online reading group at the Jechidah blog. 

The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, James Warren editor. A good collection of essays. I've now read 14 books on Epicureanism.

The Book of Forbidden Words: A Liberated Dictionary of Improper English, Robert Anton Wilson. An easy read, I learned some things. Not a core RAW book for me. 

What Mark Brown read last month: 

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem  8/2  

Beyond Apollo by Barry N. Malzberg  8/8 

The Jonah Kit by Ian Watson  8/16  

The Illuminati Papers by Robert Anton Wilson  8/20   

Mythologies by Roland Barthes  8/21   

The Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison  8/31

I'm busy reading classic science fiction this month as a judge for the Prometheus Hall of Fame award, so my list next month will look more like Mark's. 

 

An 'Illuminatus!' anniversary

Alerted by an anonymous comment to Sunday's post about Illuminatus!, I pulled my old copy of The Eye in the Pyramid, dating to the 1970s, off my bookshelf and read that the first printing was September 1975. In other words, this month is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first book of the trilogy! I am particularly delighted about this for reasons that will become clear shortly. 

'Vineland' online reading group, Chapter 10

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Deep breath. Most of what I remember and most of what I love about this novel happens in the first half of the book. Perhaps I will understand and appreciate the balance of the novel reading it in 2025, Thanatoids and all. I did enjoy the bit about Rolls Royces in chapter nine.  

The discussion of faces on film on page 195 makes me think of two things. First, I think of the character on Fear the Walking Dead who recorded interviews with people about their experiences during the zombie apocalypse. Second, I think about the documentary Hôtel Terminus. The surviving members of the French Resistance in that film seem full of life, whereas the collaborationists and Nazis seemed, as Pynchon says, “evasive, affectless, cut off from whatever they had once been by promises of what they would never get to collect on?” 

Pg. 197, xanthorcroid means, “of, relating to, or designating races having light-coloured hair and a pale complexion” according to Collins Dictionary. That fits with the reference to the sisters’ attitude towards the surfing community in this passage.