Brian Doherty has died

Brian Doherty. Facebook photo posted by Sherry Wong). 

Brian Doherty, 57, has died. He was the top modern historian of libertarianism, but also a genuine expert on Robert Anton Wilson, as I will remind everyone shortly.

Here is the obituary at Reason magazine, where he was a senior editor, working with other libertarian RAW fans such as Jesse Walker. The review gives full credit to his scholarship --- he wrote a long book called Radicals for Capitalism that is the definitive history of modern capitalism and also has material putting Robert Anton Wilson's politics in context with the libertarian movement -- but check out how he got interested in libertarianism: "Born in Brooklyn and raised mostly in Florida, Doherty first caught the libertarian bug at age 12 by gobbling up the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson." 

The Reason obituary by Matt Welch delves into Doherty's libertarian scholarship and journalism but also has lots of details about how Doherty founded a record label and played in various rock bands, and his interest in avant-garde art happenings, Burning Man,  underground comix and other pursuits. 

It's perhaps not the most important thing about him, but Doherty wrote one of the best guest posts ever published on this blog. "Robert Anton Wilson: A Conspiracy of Silence?" is a piece which Doherty originally hoped to publish in the New York Times Book Review. He gave me permission for me to run it in July 2015.  It's very good, please take a look. 

See also that when Hilaritas Press published A Non-Euclidian Perspective, a new collection of RAW's political writings, Jesse Walker assigned Doherty to review the book. 

I hope some of you will go ahead and read Doherty's RAW piece published on this blog. I could not remember how I got my hands on it, so I checked my email. 

One of my best blog posts here is my "Illuminatus! vs. Cryptonomicon" post, listing various parallels between the two works. I got a few nice comments, but in general I was a little disappointed it did not make more of a splash.

But I did get a nice email from Mr. Doherty, who wrote, "Very smart and thorough comparison of the two; I noted a much more casual resemblance between the two when desperately, and in the end fruitlessly, trying to convince an imagined NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW audience that they should give RAW a second thought.

"On his death I queried NYTBR about writing an appreciation essay on RAW; they said yes to the idea but rejected the actual essay, which was written in a rush and without much time to re-read RAW, and I think I was too scrupulously trying to connect him to "important" lit stuff. Or I just did a shitty job. At any rate, I append the still unpublished essay in case you are interested. (Nothing for a serious fan or scholar to learn from it, of course.)"

Of course I was pleased to get his feedback, but I also liked the attachment. Naturally, I immediately asked if I could run it, noting that he might still be trying to sell it and might have a better place for it, and he replied, "Oh, that piece is completely dead as anything sellable; if you think it has anything to offer the specialist audience at your site, please run it, I'd be delighted."

So I ran it. Mr. Doherty asked only, "If you choose to run it, do note the purpose for which it was written: to explain RAW to the generalist audience at NYTBR on the occasion of his death."

Here is a post on Facebook by Sherry Wong.  Bryan Caplan has posted an appreciation of Doherty's magnum opus.  I learned about the bad news when I saw Jesse Walker's posting on Facebook.