Tramping about, a professor stumbles over RAW and znore

Alas, the discovery of Robert Anton Wilson by Canadian English professor Tim Conley (pictured) has not propelled RAW to fame in academic circles. (Publicity photo from Brock University) 

The good news: An English professor specializing in literary modernism includes your work in his new book about James Joyce. The bad news: He puts you in the chapter about crackpots.

The Varieties of Joycean Experience is by Tim Conley, professor of English Language and Literature at Brock University, Canada, where Dr. Conley spends much of his time "tramping about" works of "international modernism and contemporary literature." The book came out in December and it's the kind of book that will set you back $40 for the Kindle. The hardcover will cost you $125.

Dr. Conley must have worked really hard on his chapter titles. Robert Anton Wilson and znore, the blogger and author,  both appear on Chapter 10, "Hysterical-Exegetical: Petitions Full of Pieces of Pottery." This is the chapter that concludes the book, a publisher's blurb explains. The chapter discusses "what makes an interpretation untenable, and why do Joyce’s works inspire far-fetched and even crackpot readings?" RAW's essay, "Coincidance," from Semiotexte, is cited as "perhaps the greatest send-up of deranged readings of Joyce." Znore's insights receive similar treatment. 

Znore chooses to be amused rather than offended. He sent me an email to call my attention to the book, writing, "We're last on a long list of oddballs and lunatics with deranged views of Joyce. The professor does sort of redeem these types of perspectives in his final paragraphs. I can't really make out if he is being generous or patronizing. He doesn't seem to entirely get it, but I can't be too sure. It's pretty fascinating, I think."

If you want more of znore's "deranged views," see his book, Death Sweat of the Cluster: Selected Essays from Groupname for Grapejuice. I bought two copies, one for me and one for a friend. (Read my review here, Professor Conley!) 

'Moments of visionary enthusiasm' -- Eight questions for Znore

Znore is the author of Death Sweat of the Cluster (pictured above), a collection of pieces selected from his blog, Groupname for Grapejuice. 

I enjoyed the book a great deal, and I thought it would be fun to ask Znore to take a few questions about topics covered in the book. This is one of my favorite interviews that I've published here.

If you like this interview, see my earlier interview with Znore. 

RAW Illumination: When I read your book, it made me want to read or re-read many of the books you mention, i.e. I plan to read the new translation of "The Odyssey" by Emily Wilson and right now I am trying to read the Bible from start to finish, something I've never done, even though I read the New Testament when I was a teenager. I also plan to read more James Joyce, and I just wonder if that's one of the reactions you were hoping for.

Znore: Yes, this is exactly a response I was hoping for. Umberto Eco wrote, to paraphrase, that Finnegans Wake is the paradigm of his idea of the "open work". Essentially this means that there is no fixed and final reading of the text, that it is completely open to chance and novel interpretations, and that it continually urges us to venture outside of itself into the entire field and experience of literature and life in general. Riffing on this idea, I've thought that in the wake of the Wake all books turn into the Wake. All texts become open works; they can all be read as if they are incorporated into the webwork of Finnegans Wake. And with Jacques Derrida -- another thinker who was profoundly affected by the Wake, who said that it singularly did not need to be deconstructed because it is deconstruction itself -- there arrives the idea that there is nothing outside of the text, nothing in experience that cannot be "read". These are ideas that I'm playing with, that I may be misreading but that is also the point. Obviously I cannot rewrite the Wake, or even approach it, but I can try to emulate this aspect of it. These essays, now in my book, were written with the aspiration that they would inspire readers to open other books, to view the opening of books and the linking together of books as being a kind of adventure, and then to further extend this process throughout all media and all moments of perception. Not that humble! I'm happy if this book has provoked you and other readers to read more.

RAW Illumination: I liked your efforts to reclaim Ezra Pound's literary legacy, and I like your approach, i.e. acknowledging his terrible prejudices and not trying to excuse them, but also arguing that they don't invalidate his literary work. The world seems increasingly polarized politically -- do you worry that his reputation will fall? 

Znore: Ezra Pound is a vitally important figure to consider at precisely this time. His influence on poetry is enormous. And his influence on prose -- through Hemingway and others, and through his literary criticism -- is just as immense. And Pound, in his own time, tirelessly promoted other writers and artists and brought them to the attention of the world. Modernism without Pound would undoubtedly have had far less impact. On top of this, Pound's own writing in the Cantos and his earlier poetry is not to be missed. But -- Pound was also a fascist and an antisemite who eventually prodded, on Rome radio during WW2, U.S. and other Allied soldiers to support the Axis powers. Even though towards the end of his life he renounced his former antisemitism, this part of Pound's work and career should not be ignored. U.S. poet and reluctant Pound disciple, Charles Olson likely put it best:

It is not enough to call him a fascist.

He is a fascist, the worst kind, the intellectual fascist, this filthy apologist and mouther of slogans which serve men of power. It was a shame upon all writers when this man of words, this succubus, sold his voice to the enemies of the people.

Second generation Beat poet, Ed Sanders, in his Tales of Beatnik Glory, discusses the "Lb Q" or "Pound Question" that was on the minds of poets in the late '50s and early '60s: Pound is a poetic genius but he's also a complete reactionary; what can we do with him? Certainly his fascist influence has continued to the present day through groups like the CasaPound in Italy and followers of Eustace Mullins in the U.S. I don't think Pound's reputation can be completely redeemed. Without going extensively into it here, his fascist worldview is far too tied up with his thoughts on economics and history, his spirituality and even his poetics to entirely overlook it. Yet, especially by taking the perspective of what Pound called "Eleusis" in his work, there is much that is inspiring and beautiful in Pound also.

But I think the main reason why Pound is so relevant today, is that he represents a kind of archetype or figure from the interwar era: an avant-garde and libertarian writer and artist who was somehow seduced by the worst kind of political movement.  And echoes of this process can be heard and felt at this very moment. Just as Pound and other bohemian artists spiraled towards fascism, too many bloggers, artists, occultists, creative people have veered off in a reactionary direction over the past decade or more. (Maybe in response to excessive political correctness, which also had its parallels in Pound's day.) I've seen this happen in real time. The life of Ezra Pound can act as a cautionary tale in this regard.  

RAWIllumination: As I wrote in my blog post today, William Blake apparently is a more influential writer than I realized, and  you write a lot about Blake in your book. What is it about Blake that would particularly appeal to a Robert Anton Wilson fan?

Znore: I think there are many points of contact between William Blake and Robert Anton Wilson. The character Blake Williams in Schrödinger's Cat is an obvious hat tip, but there is a much wider shared understanding of the two writers. Even if RAW was not directly influenced by Blake -- which I'm sure he was -- he would have been affected by the poet's worldview through writers, like Joyce and Pound, who did deeply influence Wilson's thought. Aside from these influences, though, is simply the immense and almost atmospheric presence of Blake within the mid-20th century counterculture that RAW played a vital part within: from Allen Ginsberg's 1948 "Blake Vision" in Harlem, which set Ginsberg off on his career as poet-prophet, to Jim Morrison & the Doors (of perception), to the constant ubiquity of Blake within the pages of the underground press.   

Yet aside from this general influence, there are also quite specific overlappings of the ideas of the two. In Jerusalem, Blake wrote that “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” This emphasis on creating one's own system or set of beliefs and not getting "enslaved" or ensnared by someone else's belief system (BS) is at the heart of RAW's thought. A difference between the two might be that, in his prophetic epics and related poetry, Blake did create a vast and complex mythological/theological system, whereas Wilson, while he explored and played with countless ideas and philosophies, was content to take an ironic stance of "transcendental agnosticism" without constructing his own elaborate system (although one could argue that he approaches this in Prometheus Rising). 

What brings the two even closer together, though, is Blake's insistence that literal thought must be avoided altogether. The literal and historical existence of Jesus Christ, for example, was irrelevant to Blake. The thing that matters most is the mythological and symbolic significance of Jesus and his mission. Wilson, on the other hand, was an agnostic, but one that was entirely and quite uniquely open to mystical and visionary experience. The ultimate stress for both writers is the vigilant avoidance of moral dogmatism, be it priestly, governmental or scientific. Blake would have called himself a "Christian," but his Christianity was a non-dogmatic, visionary, life- and body-affirming gospel of the Imagination that RAW would likely have found little to disagree with:

I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.

Blake's affirmation of the desires and delights of the body -- to the point of practicing sex magic, according to certain scholars -- would have also appealed to RAW, as would Blake's insistence that "State Religion" is "the source of all Cruelty," and that the real battle is the "mental fight" between genuine and uncompromised visionaries of the imagination and those that use their creative talents to help justify power. These are just a few of the many points that unite Blake and RAW.

RAWIllumination: Where does the title of Death Sweat of the Cluster come from?

Znore: Well, one thing that the title does not have anything to do with -- contrary to what some have guessed -- is the "clusters" of the infected or of the fevered "death sweats" of COVID-19. This book has been in the making since 2016 and the title was chosen early on, so any connection of the title of the book, and its publication in 2020, to the ongoing pandemic is purely a "coincidance". In fact, the title is the opposite of anything morbid. And it is related to your last question because it's taken directly from the final sections of Blake's The Four Zoas. On one level, the "cluster" is a cluster of grapes and the "death sweat" is the juice or wine. In this way it is related to groupname for grapejuice. But on a deeper level, this is also Blake's culminating vision of the apocalypse; the spilling of the blood of tyrants and also the communion festival for the great harvest of the ascending era. There's a kind of unsettling ambiguity in this symbolism -- at once containing the end and the beginning, tragedy and comedy, night and day -- that I try to probe and linger within throughout the book.

RAWIllumination: I have started reading the entire Bible (partially influenced by your book) and it seems to me Finnegans Wake is a kind of modernist Bible, in the sense that reading and understanding Joyce is almost as fundamental to understanding modern literature as reading the Bible has been to understanding older literature for centuries. (At the end of TSOG, RAW remarks that Joyce invented the "New Yorker" story with Dubliners, invented multiple viewpoint novels with Ulysses and invented a new hologrammatic style with Finnegans Wake.)

Znore: Yes, I would agree that Joyce and Finnegans Wake are pretty crucial to understanding modern literature. I notice traces and obvious winks to the Wake in the works of Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, William Gaddis, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, William Gass, Jorge Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallis, Mark Z. Danielewski and on and on, whether this influence is acknowledged or not. It's actually quite difficult to avoid the vortex. So in that sense Finnegans Wake has this parallel with the Bible. 

The difference, of course, is that it would be very hard to base a religion -- at least a traditional one -- on Finnegans Wake. Like I said before, the Wake is an entirely open book. It is impossible to give just one interpretation of it. It resists any form of dogmatism, any ethical or moral systematizing, completely. And it constantly demands that the reader doubt its own seriousness. We are never really certain if the whole thing might not simply be a colossal practical joke. This would seem to be the exact opposite of what the Bible is. But is it?

In the book, I mention that Norman O. Brown (another influence on RAW) wrote that only after understanding the Wake, could Westerners ever hope to grok the Koran. He meant that the Koran itself is such a rich and "avant-garde" text that it requires a heightened literacy to appreciate it. But could the same be said about the Bible? In other words, is the Bible itself just as much of an open work as the Wake is? Do we only now have the capacity to read it as the open and multi-dimensional text that it truly is? Yet we must always remember that kabbalists, poets and mystics of all sorts have for centuries interpreted the biblical writings in non-reductive, creative and esoteric readings. Finnegans Wake, in actively encouraging these types of readings, is merely a part of this deeper tradition.

RAW is right to say that the Wake has a "hologrammatic style," but it should be remembered that this idea appears in Blake, -- "to see a World in a Grain of Sand" -- in the Hermetic writings -- "that which is above is like to that which is below" -- and back to Plato's Timaeus and earlier. But the Wake, maybe uniquely, captures these ideas in a "style", embodies the living microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondence within its every page. And it not only does this, but it transforms and enables one to read all other books as this also. So if the Wake becomes the Bible, the Bible -- alive to this same tradition --  also becomes the Wake.

RAWIllumination: I'm curious why you decided not to do an ebook of Death Sweat of the Cluster. Do you ever read ebooks, or do they seem like not "real" books to you?

Znore: The main reason for not publishing an ebook is that almost all of this material is still available -- as blog posts -- online. I wanted to shift this writing into a different medium, a printed book. I wanted a tactile object that could be touched, smelt and even tasted if desired. In certain ways, the once dominant and totalizing medium of print has somewhat surprisingly become, in McLuhan's sense, an anti-environment. It at least has the potential to temporarily release the reader from the current tyranny of networked screens. Blog posts, ebooks and even audiobooks do not have the full ability to do this, in my experience, as they remain more or less disposable or interchangeable files within the neverending feed. Physical books, even if they were published and distributed through these networks (as mine is unfortunately by Amazon), can be set apart, and in reading them the reader can -- for a time -- be set apart as well. I'm not opposed to ebooks or audiobooks, but I understand that they are certainly different sorts of media and that their "message" changes accordingly. 

RAWIllumination: Do you have a favorite literary critic whom you read for pleasure or insight?

Znore: Ezra Pound cautioned that readers should avoid critics who have not published any notable creative work themselves. I get where Pound is coming from -- there should be some proof that the critics really know their business -- but I've also found that certain literary criticism can be inspired and inspiring in itself. The work of Northrop Frye on Blake I'd include in this, and Frye himself is a fascinating foil and "rival" to his University of Toronto English department colleague, Marshall McLuhan. In fact, McLuhan's work can be viewed as "extended" literary criticism, and I certainly value his insights. Kathleen Raine, an accomplished poet who would handily pass Pound's test, is an excellent literary scholar of Blake, Yeats, Shelley, etc. I also enjoy Marsha Keith Schuchard's work on Blake's possible sexual magic. Frances Yates' many books on Renaissance esotericism -- though I'm not sure if these can be classed as literary criticism -- are always exciting.

In general, I'm not that interested in criticism that tends to emphasize the merely formal or stylistic elements of writing. Yet these elements can be fascinating if they are related, as they often are, with the visionary architecture of the work. I think what I'm looking for in lit crit are "clues," explanations of signs, cyphers and symbols that I may have overlooked, a kind of solidarity of enthusiasm with someone more dedicated than myself; guides that make the way clearer and point outside of the text to the greater and endless weaving of influences and pulses that holds and runs through all lasting verse and prose. Emerson, another inspired poet and critic, wrote that often critics are too much concerned with the "material" side of literature -- what the writer "does" over what he/she "says". In contrast, he states that poets know that they are expressing themselves "adequately" when speaking "somewhat wildly." 

This, even though far from poetry, is essentially the "method" in Death Sweat. The book is not meant to be academic literary criticism or even to resemble it. I have too much respect for real criticism to pretend otherwise. So it's not criticism and it's not journalism. It's loose, it's "wild" -- even silly and embarrassing at times -- and it's primarily concerned with burrowing into moments of visionary enthusiasm in books & films & pop culture & current events & in my own experiences, moments of "bust thru". It's a flawed and stumbling ode to that sort of gibberish and doggerel which somehow captures a glimpse of the eternal. And that's also the category of both lit and lit crit that I find most attractive.

RAW Illumination: I am generally up for reading difficult or demanding books and authors, but to tell you the truth, whenever I read a passage from Finnegans Wake, I am worried about actually being able to read it from start to finish. What can you tell me (if you wish to) to assuage my anxiety?

Znore: Just a short answer for this. I remember RAW somewhere saying that the Wake should be read out loud, and if at all possible read with other people while drinking Irish stout (weed would also do). I heartily agree. I read Finnegans Wake as music, as a sort of unhinged free jazz with Celtic instruments. If you read and listen to it as music, you will quickly notice repeating or "rhyming" themes and motifs and eventually these will take on meaning and then constellate into greater patterns of meaning. Yet attaining the precise or "correct" meaning is secondary. When Joyce was asked about the accuracy of the French translation of the Wake, he replied that the sound was most important. As long as the sound (in French or whatever) carried the reader along it's "message" had been successfully transmitted. Of course the many existing guidebooks help, too. I think RAW also said that FW was the funniest and sexiest book he'd ever read. I wouldn't argue with that either. Nothing to be intimidated by!

The 108-year Rosicrucian Cycle

As I wrote recently, I really enjoyed Znore's new book, Death Sweat of the Cluster.

The book opens with an essay on "The 108-year Rosicrucian Cycle," and you can read the online version to see what I am talking about here. 

The essay argues that a 108-year cycle began with 1904, which Znore links with the transmission Aleister Crowley received in 1904, launching the Age of Horus. June 16, 1904, is also the date for all of the events in James Joyce's Ulysses. The cycle ended in 2012. Znore ties 2012 to Terence McKenna's suggestions about the importance of the date.

"There is some evidence that Robert Anton Wilson also was aware of the 108-year cycle from 1904 to 2012," Znore writes. "Cosmic Trigger, first published in 1977, was one of the first books to feature an analysis of Terence McKenna's speculations about 2012."

It amused me to think that if Znore's theory was correct, I ought to be able to tie other important cultural events to 1904 and to 2012.

It seems to me 1904 is important as the first year of aviation. The Wright Brothers first flew their airplane in December 1903,  so 1904 was the first entire year there was such a thing as an airplane. 

I can certainly argue that 2012 was important, too, particularly for Robert Anton Wilson fans. That's the date that a court decision paved the way for the creation of the Robert Anton Wilson Trust. According to RAW's daughter, Christina Pearson, "The Trust was initiated as part of the probate court judgment that finally closed the RAW estates probate in October of 2012. The court required a Trust to be created, and assigned me as Trustee. The RAW Trust was established in January of 2013 with the responsibility of protecting Bob’s literary legacy (his only resource)."

All of the activities of the Trust, including the establishment of Hilaritas Press and that small press' efforts to preserve Wilson's literary legacy, can be dated to that 2012 court decision.

Znore's new book

Znore had talked about turning his excellent "Groupname for Grapejuice" blog into a book, and now he has done it.

From the announcement:

27 essays taken from Groupname for Grapejuice from 2012 to 2015 plus one yet unseen introduction. Four hundred and two pages, seven major sections, their titles composing a Lovecraftian tale of seven lines. 

Gorgeous original cover and interior art by Kaylee Pickinpaugh -- a new zodiac gyring out or spiraling into an interior empyrean of the Earth and transfiguring the whole text into a magic item. Endless curling details. Flanked by Moon and Sun, bridged at usura and Eleusis, shining throughout. Thoth and Pan.

Editing and layout wizardry by Alan Abbadessa and Jason Barrera of Sync Book Press. A melange of fonts, formats and letter dimensions: start it anywhere, bibliomantic and aphoristic. A tactile object that's exactly the right smoothness, size and weight in one's hands.

The Amazon book page also is worth a look, and here is the book blurb from there: "An inebriated exploration of reality and other myths featuring Finnegans Wake, William Blake, Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K. Dick, Emma Goldman, Ezra Pound, Robert Duncan, Terence McKenna, Gertrude Stein, Carl Jung, Marshall McLuhan and others as guides and waylayers. A cast of hundreds. Blog becomes book becomes new medium entirely. Synchronicity, siddhis, numerology, psychedelics, anarchy, the gods, yes. The poetics of anti-authority. Beautifully illustrated. Read with tea."

Talking with Znore, blogger at 'Groupname for Grapejuice'

Not too long ago, I listened to a podcast that featured Znore, who lives in Japan and who writes the wonderful Groupname for Grapejuice blog, which I've been a fan of for quite awhile now.

There were several people in the podcast, but I felt Znore dominated it. I was a little jealous of the folks in the podcast. Imagine being able to have Znore to myself for a little while and to be able to ask some questions, too!

So I wrote to Znore and asked him if he would take some questions, and he said yes! I hope I asked some of the questions you would ask if you had some of Znore's time and attention.

About Znore himself, I can tell you little, other than what you might work out reading his blog (and listening to the podcasts in which he takes part). When I asked him to tell me a little bit about himself, he replied, "There is not much to say about me. I work in Tokyo, I have a family and I am blessed to live close to the beach."

RAWIllumination.net: What moved you to begin your Groupname for Grapejuice blog in July 2012? Isn't the title of the blog a James Joyce reference?

ZNORE: I guess the blog can trace its roots back to 2008, RAW, and magic mushrooms. In Sept. of that year I picked up a used copy of Cosmic Trigger 1 in Toronto. I had read a bunch of Wilson's books in the '90s, but I never managed to get my hands on the Trigger. I was super excited to crack it open because it always seemed, when reading his other stuff, to be the main hinge of his work. I ended up reading it back in Japan that Fall around the same time as I had a very memorable mushroom trip in the forest. The trip was important both because I hadn't shroomed for quite a while, and also because it broke me out of a severe absolutist-conspiracy-theory loop that'd I been trapped in for about three years. Within minutes of feeling the effects of the psilocybin in the woods, I realized that a unitary and omnipotent power structure was just impossible. And Cosmic Trigger confirmed this revelation.

This did not mean, however, that I gave up on the idea of occult conspiracies. On the contrary. I only realized that any conspiracy, as on any other level or layer of nature, would have to be matched by several other competing and cooperating conspiracies. The absolutist view is a dull yet insidious fiction. It is like saying that nature is Euclidean when it is actually made up of n-dimensional, multi-sensory, protean fractals. Or something even more than this. This of course is also RAW's view.

Anyway, reading the Trigger triggered a whole series of somewhat disturbing synchronicities involving the star, Sirius. I now know that these kind of Sirius syncs were happening to quite a handful of people from about 2007-2012, in some cases catalyzed like mine by Cosmic Trigger, but in other cases quite independently of it. I went on this mad Sirius research binge for a couple of years, taking notes on all of the esoteric connections to Sirius from Ancient Egypt on up to Leary and Wilson, and this eventually led me to an online researcher calling himself Monk. Monk is an expert in astronomy and calendars and a fellow Sirius fanatic. The emails I was sending to Monk got longer, more complex and more frantic and finally, as the 2012 London Olympics were creeping closer, I decided to share what I was writing to anyone else who might be interested.

Along this road I also found my way to Joyce, another author I had wanted to study for many years. I began Ulysses, by happenstance or otherwise, on 3/11/11, the day of the big earthquake and tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. I finished it and began Finnegans Wake on the following Bloomsday. Both blew me away, but the Wake especially affected me. It seemed, and still seems, to be the culmination of everything that I was looking for. It directly extended into my blog. The title, Groupname for Grapejuice, was chosen "randomly," by a sort of bibliomancy, but in retrospect I see it as being planned in some fashion. The phrase is found on p. 261 as a snarky footnote by Issy on "Ainsoph." I now see this Dionysian intersection with the Kabbalah as containing galaxies of meaning. My blog is trying to explore these.

RAWIllumination.net:  I read "Dubliners" for the first time when I was in high school and tried to read "Ulysses" right after I graduated and couldn't finish it. I got serious about reading James Joyce a few years ago when I realized how important his writing was to Robert Anton Wilson, and so I read it all the way through, and then read it a second time. I am planning a third reading, partially inspired by your recent podcast. Did Robert Anton Wilson influence you to read Joyce?

Robert Anton Wilson says that James Joyce's "Ulysses" should be read 40 times. How many times have you read "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake"? What did you notice the last time you read "Ulysses"?

ZNORE: From reading Wilson's books, I knew that Joyce was a very big influence on RAW. Yet this is true for several authors that I'm into. Definitely Wilson was a big prod to read Joyce, but not the only one. I didn't read his masterful essays on the Wake in Coincidance, though, until well after I had read Finnegans Wake. I wonder if they would mean anything to someone who has not read Joyce. It's a shame that those essays have not been seriously considered by the academics.

I've read Ulysses straight through about 3 times, and the Wake twice. Yet with the Wake I have been dipping into it constantly since I first started reading it. I don't know how many times that would work out to be in total. It's on the table beside me now. Definitely I've missed parts in these subsequent "readings." For a time I was using it as kind of a day book (reading the page whose number corresponds to the present date) and I also use it as a sort of I Ching oracle. I flip through it when suffering from insomnia (as Joyce suggested) and I also consult it when something significant happens in my life or in world events. Joyce seriously (with his usual ironic spin) considered it to be a work of prophecy, and that is pretty much how I take it. I have also read an enormous amount of critical material on Joyce and this always brings me back to the texts.

When I read Ulysses again in May/June, the big thing that struck me was that the language itself is part of the plot. Joyce is trying on the style of authors throughout the history of English literature and offering them to the Muse. The Muse, in this case, is Penelope/Molly Bloom/Nora Joyce/ALP. Every artist, especially every male artist, who has been filled with the Muse -- who has created a true work of vision -- is ultimately a cuckold. Her light shines on each artist only temporarily, in moments of "inspiration," but then it moves on to someone else. The line of suitors to the Muse is without beginning or end. Realizing this on one level, Leopold Bloom finds "equanimity." The whole idea of the "cuckold" is exposed as nonsense here. No legal ownership or exclusive marriage to the Muse is possible. We are, if we are extremely blessed, merely one of a series. The language of a particular author flows through the Muse, but it no way binds her. That, I think, is the main lesson of Ulysses. Joyce is bringing back the acknowledgement of the Muse to Western literature. She has always been there, of course, but she was not fully recognized for centuries. This error is the folly of paternity, or of the Demiurge, which is a major theme throughout his work.

RAWIllumination.net: You obviously know a lot about the topics you write about. Can you suggest 1-2 favorite titles to get someone started in studying myths? And do you have one or two favorite books to recommend for people beginning a study of James Joyce's work?

ZNORE:  I don't know what to suggest about getting people started in studying myths. I'm reading D'Aulaire's Book Of Greek Myths to my kid, and the art and the writing in it is excellent. As a very basic starting point this book is great. I think everybody, though, should read The Iliad and The Odyssey. From there Hesiod's Theogony and Ovid's Metamorphoses are essential for a wider scope. Ovid is really fun. As for more modern takes, there is Robert Graves' two-volume Greek Myths, but likely the most readable and enjoyable book is Robert Calasso's The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. And if you want to getting deeper into the pre-Homeric, pre-Olympian, fertility-cult roots of Greek religion then check out the work of Jane Harrison, old but still inspiring. But this all is just the Greeks.

For the study of Finnegans Wake, say, I'd recommend trying to find James Atherton's The Books at the Wake. This examines most of the major "structural books" that Joyce uses in the Wake as well as many of the minor books. This book began an ongoing plunge into literature for me. Finnegans Wake open all books. Then there is Campbell and Robinson's Skeleton Key, of course, which is good but it has its own spin like everything else. For a general book on Joyce's work, I've found Tindall's A Reader's Guide to James Joyce to be helpful. But just read Joyce. Out loud if you can. Let it wash over you like free jazz and consult the guides afterwards, if necessary.

RAWIllumination.net: I had never heard of Jane Harrison, but I looked her up on Wikipedia, now I need to read her! I've read books on Joyce, but now it's time to try Tindall.

I wrote in my blog entry today that I think you are a "really good literary critic." Would you talk about who some of your favorite writers are?

ZNORE: Thanks, but I don't think that I would call myself a literary critic. When I read the work of Hugh Kenner or Kathleen Raine or Northrop Frye or Richard Ellmann, I realize how far short I fall of that profession. I haven't got the patience to defend the connections I make with academic "rigour". I'd rather be poetic about it and let readers find their own connections or not. So I'll likely remain as some sort of mutant hybrid of inadequate critic and bad poet. My only hope is that if I persist in my folly that I'll find some wisdom somehow.

I have a huge list of favourites. Joyce is at the top and RAW is right up there, but I'd also include William Blake, Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, Robert Duncan, H.D., Tolkien, Dante, Henry Miller, Thomas Pynchon, D.H. Lawrence, Kerouac, Burroughs, Paul Bowles, Gertrude Stein, Gustav Meyrink, Herman Hesse, Dostoyevsky, Aeschylus, Stanislaw Lem, Rabelais, Charles Olson, Ovid, C.S. Lewis, Thomas Traherne, Herman Melville... There are others who don't come to mind, but these are all authors who have helped to shape my perception.

Outside of literature I'd include Emma Goldman, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Jung, Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, the Bible, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Allen Upward, Plato, Nietzsche, Giordano Bruno, Robert Graves, Deleuze, Derrida, Baudrillard, Lev Shestov, Nagarjuna, Rene Guenon, Ioan Couliano, Georges Bataille, Frances Yates... I've likely forgotten a few here, too. Pretty white, male and dead, I'm afraid.

[A little later]. I left out McLuhan! [And then a bit later]. ...and Terence McKenna (this is probably going to keep happening so I'll stop here).

RAWIllumination.net: In your blog entry for May 31, 2016, you wrote that you are working on a book. How is that coming along? Do you have any news? 

ZNORE: My book project -- really getting previous blog entries published in book form -- is creaking along slowly. I'm trying to get it done independently so both the friends involved in the project and I are trying to squeeze working on it into already very busy schedules. I hope it is still relevant when it finally arrives. On the plus side, the cover art is completed and it is wonderful. My goal is to try to have the writing measure up to the cover.

RAWIllumination.net:  I'm interested in people's reading habits, and you obviously are a serious reader. Do you stick to paper, or do you also read ebooks? Do you listen to audiobooks? And when you are going on a trip, do  you stew about which books to take with you to read? Do you usually get  your books online or in bookstores? 

ZNORE: I have never read an entire ebook, but I have printed out books that I've found online. I don't read as carefully when I'm looking at a screen. I don't own a smartphone and a big reason why I don't is because I like to read books on the train while commuting. I know that if I did have a smartphone that my reading would suffer. I get enough Internet at home. I do occasionally listen to audiobooks, but usually I don't have time to do this. I have ordered many books online, but I prefer finding books randomly at the last remaining used bookstores. There is a magic in finding a dusty book on a back shelf that you've been seeking out for a long time. Used books, especially with penciled-in marginalia, lead to insights that you can't find with ebooks or new copies. I make huge lists of books I'd like to read over the year. Usually I get diverted into one subject or another and the lists branch off into other lists. The problem with going on a trip is deciding which books not to take. 

Znore on Kek and Finnegans Wake

In his latest entry at Groupname for Grapejuice, "How Finnegans Wake Predicts and Obsolesces Esoteric Kekism," Znore writes about Kek/Pepe, discusses Finnegans Wake and Aristophanes "The Frogs," and writes this paragraph about James Joyce:

Joyce's own political leanings, as far as they were political at all, were individualist and anarchist, much like Shem's. But he was also a humanist and a universalist. He was equally scornful of British imperialism and Roman Catholic dogma as he was with xenophobic and narrow Irish nationalism. Beyond both the nation and the empire is the creative artist who, in a Blakean sense, creates his or her own system and is subject only to the Imagination. Priests and kings and presidents and parties are all worthless shams compared to it.

Among other attributes, Znore strikes me as a really good literary critic.

znore continues to impress on his blog

Roberto Calasso

When I read znore's Groupname for Grapejuice blog, I often learn about books that I want to read. When I read his latest piece about a month ago, I wound up downloading a free copy of Jessie Laidlay From Ritual to Romance for my Kindle (I haven't had time to read it yet.) When I read his recent "On the Forgotten Art of Turning into a Tree," he convinced me to read The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso. 

In any event, znore has been a busy guy — two new blog posts in the last few weeks. "On the Forgotten Art of Turning into a Tree," about how unusual experiences harden into religion, may perhaps particularly interest fans of RAW's first Cosmic Trigger book. The new one, "Generic Theography as a Slab of Text," also goes into the history of belief. I liked both pieces.

Is Bloomsday tied to the Illuminati?

The excellent Groupname for Grapejuice blog has a new post up, "A Blooming, Buzzing Infusion," which investigates the possible occult links to June 16, the date that is the setting for James Joyce's Ulysses.

The Dublin Hermetic Society, which included W.B. Yeats, held its first meeting on June 16, 1885, blogger Znore explains.

[Joyce biographer] Ellmann does not suggest, to my knowledge, that this opening meeting of the Dublin Hermetic Society had anything to do with Joyce setting Ulysses on June 16th. It is quite a coincidance, though, that this magical order first met on the same day in Dublin that Nora first performed her own version of sex magick with Jim during a walk through the same city streets. Yeats's profound influence on Joyce is clearly evident and the question is begged: was Joyce in on the conspiracy?

Znore then demonstrates how June 16 is tied to the Zoroastrian religious calendar and provides citations to show how the Bavarian Illuminati were inspired by the Persian fire cult. His long post also discusses the neopagan calendar created by Ezra Pound and how Robert Anton Wilson was very familiar with it. If his post is correct, Illuminatus! is even more inspired by the work of James Joyce than we already thought.

I can't really do justice to Znore's post with this short blog entry. I had missed, for example, the fact that Aleister Crowley gave Ulysses a rave review, although Steve "Fly" Pratt knew. 

I've belatedly added Groupname for Grapejuice to the "Sangha" blog list on the right side of the page. This was an oversight on my part and I'm pleased to finally correct it.