Paul Krassner is funny and interesting

Paul Krassner

When I was in college, I had a red, white and blue poster in my dorm room that proclaimed, "Fuck Communism!" I thought it was funny.

Many years later, and I've learned that Paul Krassner was involved in producing the poster. And there's a lot that I think is funny in his memoir, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut.

There's a section, for example, where Krassner decides to try LSD.

When I told my mother about taking LSD, she was quite concerned.

She warned me, "It could lead to marijuana."

I keep reading sections of the book to my wife, and she just looks at me.

Krassner knew just about every interesting person involved in the culture. His first interview at The Realist was with Alan Watts. He knew Timothy Leary. He was friends with Norman Mailer. And on and on and on. So, reading the book tells you a lot about 1950s hipster culture and the 1960s counterculture.

There's a more direct reason for RAW fans to be interested in Krassner, which I'll get into soon. But his book is interesting on its own merits.

Tuesday links

November 2016 Eris of the Month. 

National movement to ban cat declawing in U.S.  (Article by me, just wanted to get it out there.)

American writers urge Obama to pardon Snowden. There's a lot of good Obama could do before Trump takes over.

How is Facebook going to spot "fake news"?

Call them "alt-right," let them discredit themselves. 

Paul Krassner meets Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro, hanging out with the East German Politburo. 

Fidel Castro is dead, and as usual, I feel like the odd man out. On the one hand, I am totally opposed to  invasions, assassination attempts and even trade embargoes. On the other hand, I find it hard to summon much enthusiasm for praising Communist dictators. Judging from my Twitter feed, I've failed in my duty to choose sides.

By coincidence, I've begun reading Paul Krassner's Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut, his memoirs, and Sunday I came across a passage about his trip to Cuba and his encounter with the Maximum Leader.

Krassner's mentor in magazine publishing, Lyle Stuart, was treasurer of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and in December 1960 Krassner was invited to take a trip to  Cuba. He met Fidel at a reception, gave him a copy of Krassner's magazine, "The Realist," and asked for an interview. Castro told him to set it up with his secretary.

Krassner never got his interview. He writes, "In retrospect, I would like to have asked him, 'Do you believe in term limits?' "

More on Krassner's book soon.

Interview with Kevin Carson

Kevin Carson 

Over at Secret Transmissions, Jeff Wolfe has an interesting interview with Kevin Carson, the outspoken anarchist. Excerpt:

You have written in favor of circumvention as a tactic over resistance. Can you explain that position that includes examples?

Generally it is far less expensive and effort-intensive to circumvent authority than to work within the system to change it, or to confront it head on through insurrectionary politics. 
Enforcement is the weak link in any system of power. And technology is rapidly cheapening the cost of circumvention and further increasing its comparative advantage over enforcement. The classic example is encryption and file-sharing technology, compared to political lobbying to reform copyright law or roll back the surveillance state. 

This bit sounds like somebody we know:

At the same time, power distorts information flow from bottom to top so that those in charge of the hierarchy are living in imaginary worlds (much like the people at Gosplan in the Soviet Union).

In general, Carson's politics reminds me of Robert Anton Wilson's. I'm not claiming they would agree on every issue, but a dialogue between the two would have been interesting.

I couldn't tell reading the piece what Kevin Carson actually does for a living. Does he really support himself writing freelance articles about anarchist politics?

Kevin Carson's website. 

Why are the Iluminati in rap lyrics?

Beyonce, who says she's not a member of the Illuminati. “Y’all haters corny with that Illuminati mess.”

One reason that Illuminatus! remains relevant, in spite of the fact that it's also a product of a particular time, is that interest in the Illuminati has not faded. 

"Why Is Rap So Obsessed With the Illuminati?" by Steven J. Horowitz traces the first mention of the Illuminati in rap to a 1995 song, a 1995 remix of LL Cool J's "I Shot Ya." 

"It was the beginning of an entirely new school of thought in hip-hop, one as intelligent and informed as it was suspicious and paranoid," Horowitz avers.

Informed? Maybe. I like the bit about Jay-Z wearing the "Do What Thou Wilt" sweatshirt. 

Nick Herbert on 'How to Contact Aliens'

Nick Herbert. Photo from his blog.

Posting at 4:23 p.m. about a week ago, Nick Herbert pens a charming poem, "How to Contact Aliens," which also reads like advice in the wake of the Cosmic Trigger reading group wrapping up. "We each attract the aliens we deserve," Herbert advises.

And if you haven't already, read "Nick Meets the Galactic Telepaths."

Happy Thanksgiving

Couldn't find the pictures I've taken of wild turkeys near my home, so here are Thanksgiving camels from The Wilds, near Columbus, Ohio. 

I'm grateful for all the people I've met through the blog. If you can believe what the experts say, gratitude is a major component of happiness. Happy Thanksgiving!

Link: What Supergee is grateful for.   Also, gratitude from Tyler Cowen.

Bruce Sterling, in full hipster snark mode

Bruce Sterling. Photo by Pablo Balbontin Arenas, published under a GNU Free Documentation License.

Bruce Sterling is an excellent science fiction writer (I particularly like the novel Islands in the Net, which I'll always think should have won a Hugo), and also a gifted essayist. Apparently his talents don't extend to literary criticism, at least when he's in hipster snark mode.

Check out Sterling, back in 1992, weighing in on the merits of Illuminatus! and The Illuminati by Larry Burkett, a novel put out by a religious publisher which without a trace of irony warns about the diabolical alliance between liberal Democrats and the dread secret society of the book's title. Sterling does a comparison and contrast piece. Guess which work Sterling prefers:

I recommend this novel highly.  Larry Burkett's ILLUMINATI has already sold some 100,000 copies through Christian bookstores, and it seems to me to have tremendous crossover potential for hundreds of chuckling cyberpunk cynics.   To my eye it's a lot more mind-blowing than any of Wilson's books.

And to MY eye, Sterling seems to value too highly whether the late Mr. Burkett's tome gives Sterling something to snigger about.

Here is a quote from the first review listed in the "Top Customer Reviews" section of Amazon's page for Burkett's novel. "It is clearly obvious that many of those who have posted a review of this book do not understand how the Illuminati operates or they want to keep people from buying this book to keep them in the dark. I encourage you to first do some research on the Illuminati (particularly in relation to 9/11)and then read this book. The book is mind blowing and highly suspensefully from beginning to end. Keep in mind it is a novel and does not clearly lay out information about the Illuminati it simply use brilliant characters to depict how the Illuminati operates. You must read this book if you want to know the truth and as you read it think about the world we live in and what is going on today."

No doubt to Sterling's mind, people such as the reviewer, who think that Burkett's novel reveals deep truths "about the world we live in and what is going on today," are only part of the fun. It's part of the joy of being a "chuckling cyberpunk cynic."

I'll note that Illuminatus! clearly shows compassion for people trying to make sense of a complex world; the characters are doing their best, but some of them fall short. The message, over and over again, is that everyone is trying to figure out what is going on, and it's no easy task. 

Thanks to Jesse Walker, for helping me find Sterling's piece.




 

Adam Gorightly on two sources for Illuminatus!

Illuminati Project: Memo #5 and Memo #7 from "Pat" to "J.M." (i.e. Joe Malik) in the Illuminatus trilogy has two particularly unusual citations: An article on "The Conspiracy" from Teenset magazine, and an article from the RogerSPARK, a small left wing magazine in Chicago.

Adam Gorightly has a new posting up which reveals that both of the cited pieces were written by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, "so in essence they were quoting themselves in Illuminatus!" 

Adam even has a PDF so you can download the entire issue of RogerSPARK.

If Illuminatus! ever enters the literary canon, future literary critics will have to acknowledge that Adam did much of the work of illuminating the novel's sources.

 

Wilson, Leary and William Gibson

William Gibson. Creative Commons photo by Gonzo Bonzo. 

Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary were fans of science fiction writer William Gibson's Neuromancer and other books. But it seems that Gibson's isn't particularly a fan of either of them.

Over the weekend, I noticed Oz Fritz's post on "Neuromancer, Leary's S.M.I L.E. and the 23 Enigma."

Oz wrote, "Gibson seems so tuned in and turned on to Leary's vision that I attempted to find out what kind of influence Leary had on him before he wrote the book.  I couldn't find any evidence that he'd ever read Leary or Wilson, but also didn't have much time to research it. Leary and Gibson certainly bonded after Neuromancer published.  Leary developed the video game Neuromancer based on the book.  He also included the two obvious life extension methods Gibson put in the novel in a 1991 essay for Magical Blend magazine: 22 Alternatives to Involuntary Death.  This got expanded and is currently available as the book Alternatives To Involuntary Death."

I knew that William Gibson is on Twitter, so I thought I'd try to get Oz's question answer. So Sunday I posted a question and got an answer.

@jacksontom No. Nor after! Utterly unimportant to me, the both of them.

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) November 20, 2016

Oh, well! Kudos, by the way, to William Gibson for answering the question. He has about 202,000 followers on Twitter.

There is one connection between RAW and the "cyberpunk" movement.  Although I liked Gibson's Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, I haven't really kept up with him. My favorite "cyberpunk" author was Bruce Sterling, and I've read many of Sterling's books. I don't know if Sterling ever read any RAW. But another fine writer, Lewis Shiner, was part of a group of Austin, Texas, writers who associated with Sterling, and Shiner, a big Illuminatus! fan, did one of my favorite interviews of Robert Anton Wilson. Shiner kindly assisted me in making the interview available online. 

British girl, 14, gets wish to be cryogenically frozen

Cryonics Institute building near Detroit, Michigan. By Cryonics Institute (Cryonics Institute) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Today's posting is a kind of footnote to our recent discussion of Cosmic Trigger: A British girl, 14, won a court case to be cryogenically frozen after her death from cancer, in hopes that she someday may be revived.

The Telegraph had a long story about this. You can also read about the Cryonics Institute, where the girl's body wound up, in Michigan, near Detroit.  It's not terribly far from where I live, a drive of about two hours and 45 minutes, according to Google Maps.

Sean Gabb, director of the Libertarian Alliance, discussed the case in a BBC interview (about 12 minutes).

For an American, one startling aspect of the case is the way the judge was able to issue dictatorial pronouncements about news coverage. From the Telegraph: "The case can only now be reported because Mr Justice Jackson ruled that nothing could be published until one month after JS’s death. He also ruled that her parents’ names and other specific details should remain secret."

Mitch Horowitz' modern esoterica classics

Mitch Horowitz

Mitch Horowitz has posted a new article, "An Incomplete List of Must-Read Modern Esoterica." 

He lists 14 books, including The Rosicrucian Enlightenment and The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age by Frances A. Yates, a book often cited by Robert Anton Wilson.

None of Wilson's own books are cited, but I think we have to cut Horowitz some slack. He jokes on Twitter that the list "Comes with a coupon: 'What!! You didn't list____________?? Are you CRAZY?' "

Moreover, he's the guy publishing the new Robert Anton Wilson biography that's in the works.

A RAW meme on democracy

Thought I'd share a meme I found on Twitter. Hat tip, Angela. 

The quotation is from Chapter Eight of Prometheus Rising.

Scott Sumner, however, argued a few weeks ago that while democracy often produces bad outcomes, it remains the best available system. 

Replying to Bryan Caplan, he writes,

"I wonder if Bryan is too sensitive to the 10% of the glass that is still empty, because of the stupidity and corruption of politicians, and not sensitive enough to the miracle of our modern rich and free society, which is a product of the 90% of decisions that they get right and that we never even think about because they are not hot button political issues. Decisions like, 'Americans can own their homes.' Or 'Americans can read pretty much any book they choose.' Or 'Americans can buy cars from Japan.' Etc., etc.

"Perhaps a North Korean peasant farmer would have an easier time appreciating the 90% of things we get right."