Robert Anton Wilson article from Oui magazine

How the Hippies Changed Physics by David Kaiser is a new book about the oddball physicists that Robert Anton Wilson discusses in Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati — people such as Jack Sarfatti, Nick Herbert, and so on.

In the notes, Kaiser references an article by Robert Anton Wilson from Oui magazine, published in 1979, which discusses quantum mechanics and many of the topics which the "hippie physicists" obsessed over. In fact, if you read Wilson's article first, you can read the Kaiser book as a "sequel" to many of the topics Wilson raises. (For example, Sarfatti and then Herbert both used Bell's theorem to try to invent a way to achieve faster than light communication. Both ideas were not viable, but according to Kaiser, Herbert's idea was so clever, it helped give birth to quantum cryptography.)

Anyway, I have now obtained a PDF of that Wilson article, which is a valuable explanation of certain concepts of quantum mechanics and has much other useful material. (It's surprising that it's never been reprinted, to my knowledge.) You can read it here (right click to download, then read it in any PDF viewer. Google "PDF viewer" in the unlikely event your computer doesn't already have one.) I also have posted it under "Feature Articles and Interviews." I gratefully acknowledge the help of Michael Johnson, who supplied the article from his copious RAW files.

Encyclopedia Britannica probably ignores this topic

Wikipedia actually has an article on "Celine's laws." That's as in Hagbard Celine, one of Robert Anton Wilson's more memorable characters. The first law: "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." The second law: "Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation." (I prefer Wilson's paraphrase that communication occurs only between equals.) The third law: "An honest politician is a national calamity"

A pragmatic suggestion for sombunall

On at least some of the laptop computers that I used for reading articles on the Internet, the type can seem rather small -- an obstacle for reading long articles such as some of the pieces listed in the "Feature Articles and Interviews" section on the right side of the page.

When I am reading a long article, I often find it useful to use Readability, a free browser app that blows up the type for an article and eliminates much of the distractions (such as advertising). (I don't have any tie with the Readability folks and I gain nothing by pointing you to it -- it's just a useful tool I sombunall of you might be interested in.)

Somebunall is the term Robert Anton Wilson coined for "some but not all." You can read an explanation of the term at Michael Johnson's recent blog post, "Somebunall Philosophical Problems," which I just used Readability to read. (But you'll have to hit the back button on your browser to watch the video Michael posts.)

'Was missing pilot snatched by aliens?'

If you don't have enough conspiracy theories involving terrestrial players to worry about, you can always wonder what the off-planet "folks" are up do. "Was missing pilot snatched by aliens?" is the headline for an article at stardrive.org, Jack Sarfatti's Web site.

"RUMOURS a RAF Binbrook pilot was abducted by aliens have been published in newly-released Government files on UFOs.

"Reports describe how Capt William Schaffner was never seen again after his Lightning plane merged with a UFO over the North Sea on September 8, 1970. A second later the UFO is said to have sped off travelling at more than 20,000mph."

Lots of other unusual stuff at stardrive.org, too.

Reality outpaces satire

It must be hard to be a satirist in today's world. The boldest satire can't keep pace with current events.
An Islamic terrorist group in Nigeria has claimed responsibility for setting off a bomb that killed 18 people.

The group's original leader, Mohammed Yusuf, rejected the idea that the world is round because the contention is not Islamic. Further Islamic wisdom from Mr. Yusuf is not available, as he died in police custody, "officially as he was trying to escape." The group, Boko Haram, originally rejected guns as too Western and carried bows and arrows instead, but a massacre by the Nigerian army convinced the group it needed a weapons upgrade.

Meanwhile, in domestic news, the U.S. federal government is insisting that trucking companies are obligated to allow admitted alcoholics to work as truck drivers.

Best Tweet after the earthquake

From Bobby Campbell (@RGC777), "Is this a bad time to plug my new cover for RAW's "The Earth Will Shake"?!" http://lockerz.com/s/132239094

Jesse Walker announces new book

Reason Magazine managing editor Jesse Walker has announced he has secured a contract with a major publisher for his second book, The United States of Paranoia.

The new book, tentatively due out in fall 2013, is a history of American political paranoia and discusses the role conspiracy theories have played in American politics and culture.

"The central argument is that conspiracy theories aren't just a feature of the fringe but have been a potent force across the political spectrum, in the center as well as in the extremes, from the colonial era to the present. I also argue that conspiracy stories need to be read not just as claims to be believed or debunked but as folklore," Walker says.

Robert Anton Wilson is expected to figure prominently in the new book as the godfather of what Walker calls "the ironic style of American conspiracism." Walker says this is "a sensibility that treats alleged cabals as a bizarre mutant mythos to be mined for laughs, metaphors, and social insights."

I'll have much more soon about Mr. Walker, 40, his new book and his insights into Robert Anton Wilson. His first book, Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America, remains in print.

Feminist musicologist: Beethoven the rapist

Beethoven is my favorite composer. I have all of the symphonies and all of the piano sonatas on my MP3 player along with various other pieces. So I was amazed when I read that a feminist musicologist, Susan McClary, considers the Ninth Symphony was a "musical hymn to rape."

Or so Robert Anton Wilson claims in his book, Cosmic Trigger 3: My Life After Death.

McClary wrote, "The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music… which finally explodes in the throttling, murderous rage of a rapist…”

Wilson commented, "Although I write a lot of satire, I didn’t make this up. You can find McClary’s analysis in Minnesota Composers’ Forum Newsletter, January 1987. She also doesn’t like Western classic music in general, because of its 'phallic violence' and 'pelvic pounding.'

"I insist I did not invent McClary or any of her ravings. Honest to God. Some Femigogues just happen to sound like satire when you quote them verbatim."

I didn't think he made it up, but I did wonder if there was more to the story. Perhaps he was quoting some long-forgotten fringe figure. Wilson was not always generous in his later years in his references to feminists.

But when I did a little research, I found Wilson was not being unfair at all. Susan McClary is considered a prominent feminist musicologist, and she's in the Cleveland area, where I live. She is a professor of musicology at Case Western Reserve University. She is married to a heavy metal musicologist who also is on the faculty. (You can't make this stuff up.) I don't know if she considers Beethoven more sexist than, say, Whitesnake.

If you read the entry on her on Wikipedia, you'll see that her Beethoven-as-rapist thesis has been solemnly debated, with musicologists who actually know something about Beethoven rejecting it.

A genuinely scholarly, feminist analysis of classical music would be useful, because perhaps it would explain why there are so few famous composers who are women. Maybe somebody has done it, somewhere.

As it happens, I ran across the McClary passage as I was reading Ted Gioia's new second edition of his The History of Jazz. It is a marvelously erudite and judicious work. Gioia obviously works hard to be fair-minded, often taking time to defend musicians who he believes have been unfairly attacked. Guess which musicologist is the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant?

ILLUMINATUS! further study

Yesterday's posting prompts me to pose a question, and supply a partial answer. If you are a Wilson fan who is particularly a fan of the ILLUMINATUS! trilogy, where do you go to deepen your understanding of that novel?

In a sense, everything Wilson wrote after ILLUMINATUS! can be read as a sequel or prequel (in the case of the novels) or as an extension of the appendix. Still, I have a few suggestions.

Michael Johnson's article is useful. Eric Wagner's An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson has two good articles that focus on the trilogy, one on the role of Kabbalah, and the other a timeline of events. Among RAW's own works, I would particularly suggest Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati and The Illuminati Papers.

Review of ILLUMINATUS!

Zack Kopp, a writer in Denver, writes a review of ILLUMINATUS! One nitpick: I don't remember any references to the Church of the Subgenius in the work, and in fact Stang founded Subgenius in 1979, well after the trilogy was first published. Kind of cool that Zack got Tessa Dick, one of Philip K. Dick's ex-wives, to drop by in the comments.

Something I missed

In the comments to yesterday's post, Jesse Walker points to a snippet of Robert Anton Wilson on Ubuweb that I missed: a panel discussion at something called Novacon, featuring William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Timothy Leary, Les Levine and a heckler. It's here, 7:10 long (last track.)

RAW material for RAW

Two of the best compilation sites on the Internet, Open Culture and Ubuweb, contain no Robert Anton Wilson material, as far as I can tell. But they do have writings, recordings and films by people who influenced him.

Ubuweb, for example, has William Burroughs recordings and Aleister Crowley documentaries. Open Culture has a full version of Orson Welles' "The Stranger". There's plenty of other interesting stuff. Both sites are well worth exploring.

What are the core classics?

The Library of America has gotten more interesting in later years, featuring work by H.P. Lovecraft (I read that anthology for Halloween, a couple of years ago), Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., although so far they've skipped Robert Heinlein, which I would think would be an obvious choice.

Anyway, I like to fantasize that someday there will be Library of America editions of Robert Anton Wilson, and even that those folks will call me for suggestions on what to include. (No doubt that will happen any day now.)9

So,what to choose? It seems to me some of the best stuff would be ILLUMINATUS!,the Schroedinger's Cat trilogy, the first two Historical Illuminatus books and the three Cosmic Trigger books. I do like several of the anthologies, but I guess my thinking is they wouldn't release enough volumes to include everything. What would be your picks?