When I did my Maybe Day article, "Reading about Robert Anton Wilson: Biographies, criticism and more," I listed three books under the "Critical Studies" heading -- Eric Wagner's two books, and Steve "Fly" Pratt's Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson. And as I mentioned in my recent post on what I read last month, I finally read Steve's whole book last month. Here are a few notes.
At the end of Robert Anton Wilson's TSOG: The Thing that Ate the Constitution and Other Everyday Monsters, there's an outline for a planned RAW book called Tale of the Tribe. Steve's book is a collection of essays about (or related to) RAW, usually on topics or figures mentioned in the outline.
I enjoyed the book. As you might expect with Steve, there's a lot of ideas and inspired notions. There are pieces on John Sinclair, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Claude Shannon, Alan Moore's Jerusalem, plus excerpots from Steve's email exchanges and interviews of RAW. There are many references to Finnegan's Wake. Here is a bit Steve wrote about FW, comparing it to the more experimental work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sun Ra: "Now we can better constructively criticize their arts based on a lifetime of output and analysis of the evolution of their artform over time, we can now see and share a deeper coherence in their music."
Oz Fritz liked the book. Here is his review, written in 2019.
A note on availability. While paperbacks of the book remain available in several places, including Walmart, the inexpensive ebook I bought from Amazon and read last month (about $4) is no longer offered. Steve says he is working on a revised version of the book. Here is most of his email to me when I asked about the matter:
"Yes, I removed almost all my Kindle books, and some paperback in a fit of disgust at Amazon, Bezos and the nazi cia Mossad US led broligarchy. Fuck them! I hope I may find a real publisher some day and some interested entities in my work.
"I have a completely rewritten edition, but things change so fast I can't get happy with it all. I have several introductions now."
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