Tuesday links

Darryl Hannah, getting arrested at a Keystone pipeline protest. (Creative Commons photo, source).

 "I have never used cocaine in my life or hosted cocaine-fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone into marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded upon anyone’s private memorial. I have never planted any story in the press. I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s." Darryl Hannah. Has Hollywood gone too far with "based on a real story" lies? Is Robert Anton Wilson lucky he never became truly famous? I enjoyed Darryl Hannah's home movies of her husband, Neil Young, during the lockdown.

A New York Times reporter tries ibogaine. Compare with the recent Mike Gathers Hilaritas podcast. 

Can psychedelics fix cluster headaches, "probably the most painful medical condition known to science"? 

Hey, audiophile, is that an expensive cable or a banana? 

"America has become a bit like a banana republic, where the government is now so overbearing that everything becomes seen as a political issue. Indeed, President Trump often goes out of his way to make everything seem to be about politics. I used to think of this as something that happened elsewhere, say in Peron-era Argentina. It’s a sad way to go through life." Scott Sumner, maybe my favorite blogger right now. 

"Still, the point of the tale of the Boy Who Cried Wolf is not that wolves don’t exist, or that wolves are always easy to spot. Though I’m painfully aware of the ubiquity of false accusations of fascism, one glaring expression of fascism hides in plain sight all over the world: anti-immigration policies." Bryan Caplan, the piece cites Alan Moore. 

A Shea and Wilson anecdote

Robert Anton Wilson, left, and Robert Shea.

An anecdote from Scott Apel, after I mentioned my Shea book to him: "How great you compiled a Shea tribute! I met him once, at the 12-hour Seattle performance of Ken Campbell's Illuminatus play. He was tall and thin with a high voice and RAW was short and round with his deep Brooklyn accent. Standing together, they reminded me of Mutt & Jeff, if it isn't heretical to say that. "

More soon, by and about Mr. Apel. 

New online reading group for Rosen's 'Classical Style'

 

Eric Wagner has asked to lead a new online reading group for The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven by Charles Rosen and I have agreed, note that Eric recommends the expanded edition. We start in May with the usual format, i.e. Eric will write a blog post and anyone who wants to take part will be invited to weigh in with the comments.

Here is Eric's statement:

"It pleases me to announce that we will begin a reading group on Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. This book provides a great analysis of music dear to Bob Wilson, especially Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. Many people, including me, consider this book one of the best books on music ever written. We will begin on Monday, May 25. I recommend using the Expanded Edition of the text, but you may use the original edition if you would like to. I really look forward to this study group!"

I can't resist adding a couple of points. This book won the National Book Award, so Eric is not alone in his opinion.

I recently ran across a Tyler Cowen podcast that discussed music, and Tyler said that he believes the top three composers are Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. This is the received opinion, but I agree with it. Haydn also is considered an important composer; Sviatoslav Richter, my favorite piano player, once said that Haydn is better than Mozart. So if you are a music fanatic, this is a good opportunity to learn something.

Eric has more musicological  knowledge than I do. I told Eric I was worried I would not be able to follow Rosen's points, and he assured me, "Yes, he has technical stuff, but he also has tons of entertaining nontechnical stuff." So apparently if you are as ignorant as me, you can still learn something.

If you are searching for a cheap used copy, it might help to know that the ISBN for the expanded edition is 9780393317121. Bookfinder.com is a good search engine for finding used books and I found a copy for less than $10.

Charles Rosen was a noted piano player as well as a scholar, as the Wikipedia bio explains. Eric has been bending my ear about him for years. 

I am currently listening to all of Beethoven's 32 sonatas, concentrating on a particular sonata each week (I am at number 18, about to start on number 19). Eric currently has a similar Beethoven listening project, tying it to a re-read of Timothy Leary's The Game of Life. 

Tom Woods on the latest U.S. war

 

Severe damage to Gandhi Hospital in Tehran after U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. (Creative Commons photo, Tasnim news agency. Source.)

[I try to avoid "politics" here --- you can get plenty of that everywhere else --- but given the longtime antiwar stance of both Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, it seems false to simply ignore what's going on with the U.S. and Israel's attack on Iran and the  ensuing war.

I  am often not on the same page as Tom Woods, the conservative-leaning libertarian, but he's always been good on antiwar issues, his latest email is worth quoting at length. So here is an excerpt. -- The Management.]

This sh** is out of control.

The Wall Street Journal just released an op-ed called "An Urgent Need to Contain Turkey." Subtitle: "If the Iranian Regime Falls, Beware Ankara's Regional Influence."

It's echoing a former Israeli prime minister, who let us know a few days ago that Turkey "is the new Iran."

Turkey, a NATO member, is now the new Iran.

I am not looking forward to when you and I have to endure, in 2029: "Sure, everybody knows the Iran war was a fiasco, but there was no way we could have known that even though everyone tried to explain it to us. But it's urgent that we go after Turkey. That will be completely different. Not on board? You're an America hater!"

I wrote on my other list today that my Twitter feed has become almost intolerable, overrun by talking-point so-called arguments in favor of this Iran operation.

It's all one-liners that very suggestible people heard on TV:

(1) "They've been at war with us for 47 years" (in response to this one, Glenn Greenwald correctly comes back with: we've been in a war with Iran for 47 years but no prior American presidents remembered to wage that war against Iran or even mention to the American public that we've been in a decades-long war with Iran until about six days ago when Israel wanted to attack them?);

(2) Iran would have had a nuclear bomb two weeks from now if we hadn't acted (I don't hear this one so much because nobody really believes it);

(3) although we've been at war for 47 years, this is not actually a war and we shouldn't call it that because Speaker Mike Johnson told us not to, even though if anyone did these things to the United States we would of course describe them as acts of war, and even though up until the Iran intervention we all agreed that Speaker Mike Johnson was a lying weasel.

Ronald Reagan did the right thing in 1983 when the US Marine barracks was bombed and he got out of there, though of course Lindsey Graham and assorted other lunatics are implying that Reagan -- Reagan! -- was a wimp because he didn't respond with a rampage throughout the region.

You will have to forgive my impertinence -- I have a habit of asking questions that send a hush through cocktail parties -- but why the hell was there a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut to begin with?

"USA! USA!" does not count as an answer.

None of this benefits the average American. That's not to say absolutely nobody benefits, but you and I are not among the beneficiaries, I regret to inform you, dear reader.

[More here, with a link to subscribe to the newsletter. You can view the official website.  Here is antiwar.com.  Reason Magazine is good on this issue, here is an example from Nick Gillespie.]

Mary Butts, a modernist writer

Mary Butts in 1919 (public domain photo). 

Every once in awhile, I run into a writer and wind up being surprised that I did not know the name. The modernist writer Mary Butts (1890-1937) would be the latest example.

I am on the email list for Standard Ebooks, an outfit I've written about before that makes available excellent free editions of public domain books. The latest newsletter announced the publication of  the "influential but obscure modernist novel" Armed With Madness by Mary Butts: 

"Six friends are staying in a cottage in the English countryside when they discover a mysterious ancient cup buried deep in a local well. The cup seems to have a long history—could it be the legendary Holy Grail? Long-held tensions start simmering as the friends begin investigating the cup’s story, threatening the formerly peaceful retreat.

"Butts adapts the grail myth to early 20th century England in a highly modernist prose style that invites comparison to Virginia Woolf or Ford Madox Ford. The narrative resembles a kaleidoscope in its shifting perspectives, abrupt dialogue, and dreamlike feel, and close reading reveals densely packed allusions ranging from Greek mythology to English legend.

"The first edition of Armed with Madness was illustrated by none other than Jean Cocteau and won praise from her modernist contemporaries. Butts went on to write a companion novel in 1932 following some of the same characters, The Death of Felicity Taverner."

Who knows what I'll think of Armed With Madness when I get around to reading it, but I saw other indications that, at the very least, Butts was an interesting person who hung out with other interesting people. The Wikipedia bio records that she was a student of Aleister Crowley and spent time with him at the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily. She knew modernist writers such as Ezra Pound. A biography is available, by Nathalie Blondel.

A university professor in Canada provides the Mary Butts Letters Project online.  And here is an interesting piece from The New Yorker, "Modernism's Forgotten Mystic." That 2021 piece by Merve Emre describes Butts as pretty much forgotten, so maybe I get a pass for not knowing the name until a few days ago. Read the piece for the William Blake connection! 

Based on what they read, I  think both Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea would have been interested in her. But if either of them ever mentioned her, I  don't know  about it. 

What we read last month

Another reading log from Mark Brown and myself.

What Mark Brown read last month: 

Trouble is My Business by Raymond Chandler 2/6 
The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson  2/11
Two Hawks from Earth by Philip Jose Farmer  2/18   
Domnei by James Branch Cabell  2/22   
Land of Terror by Edgar Rice Burroughs   2/25   
Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Psychedelic Rock by Jim de Rogatis  2/27

What I read:

The Uncertainty Principle?, D. Scott Apel
War By Other Means (Fall of the Censor Book 7), Karl Gallagher
The Workshop of Democracy, 1863–1932 (The American Experiment Book 2), James MacGregor Burns
Colors of Asia: A Visual Journey, Kevin Kelly
Forged for Prophecy (Forged for Destiny, #2), Andrew Knighton

As usual, everyone else is invited to share what they have read. 

A bit more on 'All Things Are Lights'

 

I've updated my Feb. 20 post on Robert Shea's All Things Are Lights. 

Here (in part) how Shea described the novel in an interview (reproduced in my new Shea book, Every Day Is a GOOD Day.) 

"The title comes from a medieval  philosopher, Scotus Erigena, who said, 'All that are, are lights.' The main characters have an outlook that is as mystical as that statement, only their mysticism is not of the orthodox variety. The main character is a troubadour who achieves illumination in an adulterous affair with a countess through the rites of courtly love, which I portray as a westernized version of tantric yoga. The troubadour is also in love with a woman minister of the heretical Cathar sect. Nowadays they tell women they can't be priests; in those days they burned them at the stake for trying." 

Oz Fritz continues 'Shadow Ticket' analysis

Oz Fritz has continued his discussion of Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon, with a Part Two post now up at his The Oz Mix blog. 

This one focuses quite a bit on Dante. Oz observes:

"The Divine Comedy by Dante provides a foundational pillar in the canon of Western and Near Eastern literature. It poetically describes a journey through death and the underworld. The influence of this opus on modern and postmodern writers has been profound. You'll find it in James Joyce (Finnegans Wake), Ezra Pound (The Cantos), Robert Anton Wilson (Illuminatus! and others), Malcolm Lowery (Under the Volcano) to name a few."

Here is Oz' first post.   Also, please see my earlier post for links to what Eric Wagner and Peter Quadrino wrote about Pynchon's latest novel. 

A Part Three post is planned with "a Deleuzean perspective."

Dan Simmons has died

Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea both loved science fiction, and I do, too, but science fiction writers  still don't get as much respect as other fiction writers; Dan Simmons, who wrote the Hyperion Cantos novels, did not get an obituary in the New York Times after he died on Feb. 21. So I am telling you about it here.

The Hyperion books are really good; the Ilium/Olympos books also are well known, but I was less impressed with them. Simmons also  wrote horror and other work. Here is an obituary from Newsweek. 

Joseph Matheny announces free audio versions of his work

In his latest newsletter, available here, Joseph Matheny announces audio versions of several of his works are now available for free. 

The titles include the audiobook of This is Not a Game, Ong's Hat: The Beginning, Ong’s Hat: COMPLEAT, and Xen: The Zen of the Other. They are torrents, but Joseph includes a video explaining how to use the technology.

Joseph also explains what you can do -- and not do -- with the free versions of his work, and it's worth quoting:

As many of you know, I always make a free digital version of my work available for free after a year of selling it through commercial channels. Some unscrupulous players have taken that to mean that those works are available to be taken, resold, and reused without permission. I shouldn’t have to explain this, but one more time for the folks in the back:

You’re free to download the free versions for your personal use. You are not allowed to resell, remix, or include in any collections without my express, written permission. There are legitinmate, legal copyrights on all my works, for that very reason. The free versions are distributed under the following Creative Commons agreements (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International) and are also legally copyrighted, registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Look it up. I'm happy to offer my work for free; I’m much less than happy for people or corporations to profit from it.

There are other interesting items in the newsletter. 

Mike Gathers' interesting podcast

As I mentioned I would, I listened to Mike Gathers' in the latest Hilaritas podcast, above, as I was intrigued. It is interesting, personal and candid. Mike talks about his two trips to Costa Rica for Iboga psychedelic therapy, what is was like, how it affected her personal habits and his health. He's planning a follow-up session. Mike is careful to explain that Iboga is dangerous, and not something to experiment with by yourself. 

'Saucers, Spooks and Kooks' news roundup

Saucers, Spooks and Kooks is a new movie based on the Adam Gorightly book of the same name, which I enjoyed. 

Here is an official podcast.  You can also read a roundup of other podcasts.  And there's a post on how the movie got made.  And here's the Substack home page.

Watch here.

Have a nice day!

Atomic bomb test at Bikini Island in 1946 (Wikimedia Commons photo).

One of the reasons I miss Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, besides the obvious ones, is that I wonder what they would make of advances in computers in general, and AI in particular. (They were both fascinated by personal computers; there's a little bit about this in my Robert Shea book.) At age 69, I love my smartphone and marvel at the computer I can carry in my pocket. Technology is wasted on the young. I was a teenager in the 1970s, when our second TV was a black and white with antenna ears, and mobile music meant eight track tapes.

Anyway, here are a couple of things that caught my eye, alarming or black humor, depending on your temperament:

1. "AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations." The lead sentence: "Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises."

Via Jesse Walker, who writes, "I was rooting for the resolution of WAR GAMES and instead they kept giving us the setup for THE TERMINATOR."

2. Scott Alexander mentions one of the winners of the ACX forecasting contest and then writes, "Seems potentially bad that so many of the people who win forecasting contests are professionally involved in some form of worrying about AI killing us. Hopefully that’s just a coincidence."