Interesting Timothy Leary interview

 

Timothy Leary (public domain photo)

Mike Gathers wrote to me the other day, remarking, "I came across this Leary interview, and it seems really topical to current times." I thought it was a pretty good interview, too, from 1994, so I thought I would share it.  I liked this bit where he described himself:

"My profession is I’m a dissident philosopher. I’m from the school of Socrates – it’s humanism – the Socratic methods which appeared in Greece over 2,000 years ago, it reappeared as the romantic movement in the eighteenth century – it’s the same movement. It’s called humanism, and its motto is 'Think for yourself,' 'Question authority' and, as Socrates said, 'Know thyself.' The aim of human life is to develop yourself as a philosopher, and it goes along with what’s known as paganism or pantheism or polytheism – that divinity, the divine intelligence – is found within, and is not to be found in institutions. I have one further thing to say about this. This philosophy, which is over 5,000 years old, was assimilated and streamed through the Ganges 4,000 years ago and is the basis of Buddhism, it’s the basis of Taoism in China, it’s the basis of mystical Christianity and Islam – it’s that basically, the interest is Chaos."

A RAW article you may have missed

Well, I missed it -- I can't read everything! Maybe you missed it, too.

When I read Matt Thompson's excellent interview with Bobby Campbell (mentioned a few postings ago), I discovered another article by Matt that I had missed. 

"Happy Maybe Day - Robert Anton Wilson Music & TTRPG Connections," is an article Matt published last year on Maybe Day, and I'll just repeat Matt's summary sentence: "RAW is my favorite author, so to celebrate I am sharing some connections with his work to music and roleplaying games."

While the emphasis  is on RAW, there's a Shea connection, too: I learned something about Mike Shea's career as a writer and designer for tabletop role playing games.

If you want to explore a little bit more on the topic of "RAW and music," here is an old post about RAW's favorite recordings.  Here is another old blog post on musical tributes to RAW, although it seems a couple of the music videos are no longer available. 

The new Timothy Leary book is out

 

A new book, The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution by Joseph L. Flatley has just been released and is available from the usual bookstore sites, such as Barnes and Noble. (I don't want physical bookstores to perish from the Earth, so I've been emphasizing links to Barnes and Noble lately, but you can find it at "the usual place," too.)

I will read the book soon, but judging from this excellent new interview with Flatley at The Psychedelic Press, I am certain that many of you will find the book interesting. Here is one paragraph from Flatley which I hope will give you a taste:

"My attempt to bring Leary’s ideas more fully into occult practice was an experiment: do Leary and Wilson’s proposed correspondences between classical occult symbolism and Leary’s theories on space migration, personality development, and stages of evolution actually hold water? I’m pleased to report that there’s something to it. I think the seasoned tarot reader can use the practices in the book (tarot spreads and Learian revisions of the cards) to compliment their existing practice."

Read the whole thing, and then go to the comments, where Flatley deals with "Leary was a CIA agent" and "Leary treated all of this as a big joke."

Thank you to Michael Johnson for calling this interview to my attention. Mr. Flatley has agreed to speak to me, too, so look for that before too long. 

Bobby Campbell on the 'Ezra Pound problem'

Ezra Pound's mugshot photo (public domain photo).

[I recently posted on Michael Johnson's take on the "Ezra Pound problem," and offered some of my own views, and now Bobby Campbell has weighted in, in a comment to Michael's original piece. With Bobby's permission, here are his comments, "reprinted" here. The other comments to Michael's piece are interesting, too. -- The Management.]

By BOBBY CAMPBELL
Special guest blogger

Another wonderful addition to an endlessly fascinating subject!

Just one small clarification, I believe RAW told me that "The Cantos" did not contain any of Pound's Antisemitism, not that he himself was not antisemitic.

It was great seeing RAW's view on this from the 60's! Much more aligned with what I would expect from him. It seems like by 2005 he was done with the discourse and just wanted to enjoy Pound's poetry and not open that particular can of worms again.

Given the current state of affairs, and being in middle age rather than old age, I feel more obligated to muck around in the worm bins :)))

Separating the dancer from the dance seems a particularly inexact science, with endless caveats and a full spectrum of gray shades, wherein each individual needs to decide for themselves on a case by case basis.

And for myself at least, I feel that the acceptance or rejection of questionable artists seems automatic, based on a reaction of the total synergetic organism, and that my reasons emerge after the gut/instinctual decision, as backwards justification/rationalization, or more charitably, as an observation of tendencies.

Ezra Pound's work doesn't seem to me to currently bolster or advance any active fascist or antisemitic movement. Even at the time, apparently, Mussolini found Pound extremely annoying, and didn't want anything to do with him. His forays into these lamentable ideologies seem to have only produced profoundly embarrassing ephemera, for which he paid a high cost, with no apparent lasting damage. (I'm willing to be wrong about this, but I don't get the sense that the current wave of authoritarian fervor is drawing much inspiration from Pound's Ideogrammic Method, et, al.)

My attitude towards Pound has always been that we should strip him for parts. Take what works and put it towards human purposes and trash the rest. RAW's oeuvre has provided a convenient medium for this, in fact, for several questionable thinkers who produced useful work worth utilizing.

Someone like J.K. Rowling, on the other hand, seems quite intent on leveraging her platform and wealth for directing targeted harm towards vulnerable people.

I think if the art supports the artist who continues to do harm with that support, that constitutes an easy "no thank you" from me.

New Bobby Campbell interview

There's a really good new interview out of Bobby Campbell at Critical Hit Parader, a Substack newsletter written by Matt Thompson, a fellow Maybe Logic Academy alum of Bobby's.

Bobby refers to Robert Anton Wilson as "the Velvet Underground of writers," riffing on the old joke that only 100 people bought the first Velvets album, but they all went out and started a band. I often think about this analogy, too. Did I  come up with it independently or did Bobby put  in my brain?

In the interview, Bobby goes into a lot of interesting detail about his Tales of Illuminatus project, so if you recently pledged to the Kickstarter you'll want to read that. (It's not too late to pledge and get your own goodies.)

But my favorite part of the interview is toward the beginning, when Bobby talks about the kinds of people who like to read RAW, the readers who can deal with "this zen koan quality that requires imaginative speculation and interpretation," and with "the info-density, this embarrassment of memetic richness in his work." Bobby also  talks about RAW's relationship with Discordianism and similar groups and "the context within which many people find themselves discovering RAW, which typically tends to be at some sort of crisis or transformation point." A really good discussion.

I think maybe I fall more into the first group, the ones who can deal with relatively difficult prose and lots of information. I discovered Illuminatus! when I was in college, reading mainstream writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and the more challenging, interesting science fiction writers such as Roger Zelazny and Brian Aldiss. I thought Illuminatus! was one of the best novels I had ever run across. 

Critical Hit Parader is "focused on the intersection of rock music and tabletop roleplaying games." 

Science fiction news: Roger Zelazny and Ian Watson

Roger Zelazny

One of my favorite writers, Roger Zelazny, has received an Infinity Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. It is similar to the organization's older Grandmaster Award, but it goes to writers who died before they could be declared a "grandmaster." Previous Infinity Award winners are Frank Herbert, Tanith Lee and Octavia Butler.

I haven't been able to determine if Robert Anton Wilson or Robert Shea were Zelazny fans (I asked Scott Apel and Mike Shea). Apel's Science Fiction: An Oral History, only $1 for the Kindle or the Nook, has an excellent interview with Zelazny.

Scott shared this background bit about the interview:

"At one point before I published Science Fiction: An Oral History, I considered including the stories of how we obtained the interviews, but opted to go with brief objective bios instead of personal anecdotes. But you might be interested in that story. When Briggs and I started working on the book, we knew we had to include RZ, but he lived in New Mexico at the time we were "down & out in Silicon Valley" and couldn't afford to travel there. (We'd earlier decided that we simply HAD to conduct these interviews in person rather than by mail or phone so that we could engage the writers in hopefully spirited discussions.) So we concocted a Grand Scheme: I was working in the largest used bookstore in Silicon Valley, and we specialized in science fiction. I convinced the owners that we should sponsor an "Author Reading" event, as other bookstores were doing, to draw in more customers, and lobbied for RZ. So they paid for him to travel to San Jose and do a reading. Since they put me in charge of the event, I was able to arrange in advance that he should sit for a 2-hour interview with me and Briggs, which he was happy to do. He seemed rather reserved at first, but as we were driving him to a party in Santa Cruz, Briggs happened to mention Aleister Crowley, and RZ almost jumped into the front seat of the car, he was so excited. 'You know Crowley? You know his work?' he screamed with joy. From then on, he was our new bestie. Later, we sat in Briggs' apartment and did the interview--you can hear us sucking on joint after joint on the tape (edited out for the text version, of course). We ended up getting along so well -- and he seemed so pleased with the interview -- that he insisted we send the book to his agent (as did Phil Dick). RZ's agent ended up screwing us, and when I mentioned this to RZ, his response was, 'I don't know what's happened to him. Over the past couple of years, he grew fangs.' "

I've noticed that the availability of Zelazny's work for the modern reader is rather spotty -- for example, there's no Kindle currently available for Lord of Light, has best-regarded novel. (Note that there's a listing at the link, but it says, "This edition of this title is not available for purchase in your country.") I tracked down the literary agency that handles Zelazny's estate, the Zeno Agency, and pointed out some of the problems. The guy who runs the agency, John Berlyne, apparently did not appreciate the feedback -- he wrote back and said I was "a little naïve" and I  "really don't have a clue of what is entailed." He also assured me he's working hard to preserve Zelazny's legacy: "I might argue that it is wonderful that Zelanzy work is handled by people who sees the value in his work and works tirelessly in difficult circumstances to ensure the author's name is not forgotten." I wrote on April 20 and as of today, Lord of Light is not available as an ebook, but I guess he's on the case. 

One final point about Zelazny: An old friend of mine, Brett Cox, wrote an excellent book about him. 

In other news, the British science fiction writer Ian Watson has died. It doesn't look like even British newspapers have given this much coverage, but he was a talented writer. 

Michael Johnson on 'The Ezra Pound Problem'

How does Ted Nugent connect to Ezra Pound? Read Michael's essay. Creative Commons photo, source. 

When A Non-Euclidian Perspective came out, I noted that it contained what I thought was the best RAW essay yet on how to deal with Ezra Pound's art and politics. More recently, I mentioned Pound while talking about Poul Anderson.

Michael Johnson references both that classic RAW essay and my Poul Anderson posting in what I think is one of his best Substack pieces, "The Ezra Pound Problem." 

Here is how Michael formulates the problem:

The Ezra Pound Problem in General: that conundrum faced by any of us when confronted by a favorite artist’s bad behavior, whatever it was. We make ongoing negotiations with this.

The Ezra Pound Problem in Particular: What any of us who like Ezra Pound’s work does with his ugliness. I’m mostly interested in what other poets and writers have thought about this, and some critics who seem compellingly informed.

Rather than trying to summarize what else Michael writes, I'll just suggest that everyone read it. 

In one of his footnotes  (Michael puts good stuff in the foornotes, you have to read them too, maybe his little homage to The Widow's Son?), Michael writes, " RAW had, by 1968, been reading Pound closely for 20 years. Anderson’s mistakes didn’t stand a chance with him. Are we all like this?"

Yes, I think so. I suspect that Wilson fell in love with Pound's poetry before he learned much about Pound's politics. I know I felt really blown away by Poul Anderson's Tau Zero, a hard science fiction novel with little emphasis on politics, and I think that left me open to being able to tolerate Anderson's mistakes and lesser moments. (If you have read a lot of science fiction, you can't help but notice that many science fiction writers, including many of my favorites, are decidedly inconsistent in quality, as compared to, say, Vladimir Nabokov, who to my knowledge never wrote a lousy book. This may be because many SF writers to stay alive had to write very quickly. Roger Zelazny is one of my favorites, but I'm not going to recommend To Die in Italbar to you. I once heard Zelazny say that after he quit his day job  to be a full time writer, he had to write many books in order to make a living, but that every few books would be a "bear down" book that got his full attention. So Anderson sometimes putting out mediocre stuff doesn't make him stand out in the genre.) 

BTW: One of the points Michael seems to document is that RAW did his best thinking about Pound in that early essay, and his discussion of Pound apparently deteriorated through the decades. 

What we read last month

The Sword of the Lictor is part of Gene Wolfe's four-novel The Book of the New Sun, which I've read several times. 

Here's Mark Brown's report for April:

Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick  4/6 
The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson   4/9   
The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe  4/13   
The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars 1290-1329 by Rene Weiss   4/16 
The Neutronium Alchemist, Part 1: Consolidation by Peter F. Hamilton   4/23   
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse  4/28

What I read last month:

No Man's Land, Volume 2, Sarah Hoyt.
No Man's Land, Volume 3, Sarah Hoyt.
The Underachiever, David A. Price.
Storm-Dragon, Dave Freer.
Meat Cove, Janice Weber.
The Star Fox, Poul Anderson.

As usual, the rest of you are invited to say in the comments what you read last month. 

I am trying to read 'Finnegans Wake'

I always feel there are some books or some authors that I "should" be reading, but nibbling away at the book list in my head is an endless process. Over the last year or two I finally read a couple of Thomas Pynchon books (one of them, Vineland, for the reading group here) and now I am reading Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, a work I have never attempted before. 

After I did a bit of background reading on the Internet, I tried the first chapter but felt utterly lost. Oz Fritz had an extra copy of the book A Reader's Guide to 'Finnegans Wake' by William  York Tindall, and he kindly sent it to me. It has been very useful. 

I got through the first chapter switching back and forth every few pages between the two books, but it seemed like a clumsy and unsatisfactory way to read a book. For the second chapter of the Wake, I tried reading Tindall's chapter first, then reading the Wake chapter all the way through. I found that way I (more or less) felt like I knew what was going on and I also could relax and enjoy the puns. So I will see if that approach works for the subsequent chapters.

I participated in Free Comic Book Day yesterday and picked out four titles. I also  finished The Infinite Mistress by D. Scott Apel. I think it is fair to say I try to read a wide variety of books. 

The card game that 'predicted' 9/11

An article in Gadget Review, "The 90s Card Game That ‘Predicted’ 9/11, Trump, and COVID-19," discusses the Illuminati: New World Order game from Steve Jackson Games. Here is an interesting bit from the piece written by Rex Freiberger:

"In the 90s you may have seen a card showing skyscrapers exploding in flames, drawn in 1994—seven years before 9/11. That’s the “Terrorist Nuke” card from Illuminati: New World Order, a satirical game that’s become conspiracy theory catnip. Unsealed decks now fetch over $2,000 on eBay, driven by collectors convinced this tabletop game somehow predicted the future."

The game apparently was inspired by Illuminatus! and it quotes a piece by Robert Shea, written for the game. The entire piece is reprinted in my Robert Shea book, by kind permission of Steve Jackson. 

Robert Anton Wilson talked about the game in this interview. 

John Higgs on the contents of his subscriber-only book

John Higgs previously announced that he will publish a book of short pieces for everyone who had a paid subscription to his Substack newsletter, and in a new issue of the free version, he announced the contents:

"I’ve spent most of this month putting together the first Midsummer Annual, my forthcoming collection of new, rare and random pieces of writing. Everyone who has a paid subscription to my New Moon Letters will receive a copy of this in the post."

"I’m pleased with the variety of articles I’ve put together. It starts with a new essay on the English radical tradition and then goes on to cover Agatha Christie’s disappearance, Banksy’s Dismaland, Lynch’s The Straight Story, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, The Secret of Monkey Island, the Cosmic Trigger play and much more. It ends with my play H.G. Wells & the Spiders From Mars."

Also: " I like the fact that this will not exist online, and that the likes of Amazon will never know of its existence. The cover image and this mailing list platform aside, the only people involved in this are me, my wife who copy-edited, a local Sussex printer and the post office. There will be no digital versions - so no ebooks or audiobooks. It won’t be available in online or offline shops. It’ll just drop through your letterbox at midsummer, and that’s that."

John says, "And for those without a paid subscription - if you do decide to upgrade your subscription, there’s still time for me to add an extra copy to the printer’s order!"

More here. 

D. Scott Apel on his Alec Smart mystery series

A large chunk of the fiction D. Scott Apel has written consists of his series about California private eye Alec Smart. The five books (so far) of the series are The Uncertainty Principle?; The Infinite Mistress; Detective, Comics; Jobs of Work and Hollywood, Ending. (Scott has a habit of using commas in his book titles, so I've resorted to using semicolons in that title list to try to make each title clear). 

The Uncertainty Principle? is the first book of the series and I have listed the other titles in order. I asked Scott if he believes it is necessary to read the books in order. He replied, "The Alec Smart books can be read in any order, although there is a through-line of his relationship with his girlfriend that culminates in their marriage at the end of Detective, Comics. There's a difference between the order in which I wrote and published the books and the year in which they take place, but the books can be read in any order."

The Uncertainty Principle? is notable because it includes fictional depictions of Robert Anton Wilson, Arlen Riley Wilson and Philip K. Dick. Here is my interview with Scott about the book. 

Here is Scott's description of his guidelines for the series:

"Early on, when I began brainstorming these novels, I determined to attempt to follow a trio of requirements for any entry:

"First, each needed an odd plot. I got so sick of murders, serial killers, kidnappers, extortionists, heists, and so on -- the standard fodder in most modern mysteries -- that I wanted to come up with ideas that were as original as I possibly could. In The Uncertainty Principle?, for example, the plot revolves around a science fiction writer who hires Alec to find out why everything he writes comes true. In The Infinite Mistress, a ditzy North Beach dancer who's been being hypnotically regressed into "past lives" brings Smart the few facts she's recalled and asks him to determine whether her experiences are real or just fantasies. In Detective, Comics, Smart's client is a 13-year-old genius-level comic book magnate who hires him to retrieve a stolen Batman comic. And so on.

"Second, whenever possible, I wanted to base the characters on people I know. I'll admit this began as a necessity: In 1979, I had no idea how to create an original, realistic fictional character, but I realized I knew several people who qualified as unique characters and who I knew well enough that, with a bit of fictional enhancement, could serve as characters in a novel. You can see this easily in The Uncertainty Principle? in which Bob and Arlen Wilson, PKD, and Robert Heinlein become fictionalized -- not to mention "Casey Bragg," based on my old college friend Kevin Briggs, and "Sean Fox," my co-founder of our college humor magazine. Alec's lovely red-headed girlfriend Laurel was based on The One Who Got Away; if I couldn't land her in real life, I could at least create an alternate universe in which my alter ego could have a relationship with her. In The Infinite Mistress, Alec's client is based on Carol Doda, the first topless dancer in North Beach in the '60s, with whom I had a laughter-filled interview in the early '70s. She made such an impression on me that I used whole chunks of that interview as dialogue in the book. IM also introduced James J. Ferrette IV, aka "Jimmy the Ferret," also based on a friend -- my most outrageous friend. Although I had to add a bit of fictionalization to his resume, much of what is said about him was drawn from real life.

"Finally, the third self-imposed requirement is that I wanted to use the series to memorialize places in Silicon Valley that I loved, many of which have disappeared. In UP?, I set a scene in Recycle Bookstore, where I worked for about 3 years, for example. (And related to Point 2, the gorgeous blonde who appears in that chapter was my then-girlfriend, and the trio playing Deathfuck 2000 were co-workers). A couple of scenes in The Infinite Mistress take place in an abandoned Western-themed amusement park in San Jose, where I worked during the summer between high school and college, but which was priced out by spiking land values and was torn down to become a condo complex. Jobs of Work includes a scene set in my favorite restaurant of all time, the Mexican eatery El Burro in Campbell, which went out of business in the late 20-teens, long after I'd moved to Hawaii. These places not only provide local color but also allow me to pay tribute to their passing.

"And a final addendum: There is one additional requirement I try to employ while writing any fiction, which also has three parts: Each paragraph (and if possible, each sentence) should serve at least one of these three functions:

1) move the plot forward; 2) develop the character; and/or 3) provide some local color (partly to assist the reader in visualizing the scene or location, and partly because of Point 3 above). I don't always live up to my own guidelines, particularly if one would force me to cut a good line or joke, but these guardrails are handy for keeping me on track from being (as I'm sure you noticed) overly verbose."

The Uncertainty Principle? includes a bookstore clerk character who is actually Apel's description of himself. But I asked Scott if the detective Alec Smart isn't also an alter ego of sorts. 

"Oh, yeah, of course, Alec is an alter ego. I've always thought of him as more extroverted than I am (since he goes out and runs around solving mysteries rather than sitting in his office writing about them) but not quite as smart as me (since I made up both the problems he has to solve and the solutions), which makes him vulnerable to occasionally saying and doing stupid things -- more than me, anyway -- I hope -- and occasionally failing to understand what's actually going on (which is essential to the plot of The Infinite Mistress, for example)."

All of the Alec Smart books remain available online. The ebooks from Barnes and Noble and from Amazon are very cheap. I am currently reading an ebook of The Infinite Mistress which cost me about $1. I assume everyone knows that you don't need a Kindle or Nook tablet to read such ebooks, you can use your smartphone with the Nook app (for Barnes and Noble ebooks) and the Kindle app (for Amazon ebooks). 

Rasa on Hilaritas Press, eight circuits and RAW's politics

I don't always get around to things I want to do, so I didn't listen to Rasa's appearance on the Liminal Currents podcast until yesterday, although it was released last November.

Rasa talks about the Eight Circuit model, something he seems to know a lot about, and goes into detail about RAW's politics but I particularly enjoyed his inside look at the origins of Hilaritas Press and how RAW books are put together there. The podcast was done as Hilaritas neared completion of A Non-Euclidian Perspective, so that is the example that is focused on. I know  how hard Rasa works on the books, based on the effort he put into my Robert Shea book, and I liked learning more about Hilaritas. Incidentally, Rasa mentions that there's been discussion about Hilaritas reprinting the original uncut three volumes of the Schroedinger's Cat trilogy. We can only hope! 

Liminal Currents also had an interview with Gabriel Kennedy about the RAW biography.  If you browse the podcast episodes, I see many focusing on magick, so this would be a good place to promote the RAW magick book when it comes out.