RAW on James Joyce and Joseph Campbell

The Only Maybe blog has posted a long interview with Robert Anton Wilson on James Joyce, and also on Joseph Campbell and also on Giovanni Bautista Vico. The posting includes video and a transcript.

A couple of RAW quotes from the interview: "To me it’s not only the greatest novel ever written, it’s the greatest poem ever written, the greatest detective story ever written, and the most entertaining work in all literature, and as William York Tindall of Columbia says, it’s the funniest and dirtiest book in the world.   People are intimidated by it.  If the publishers just had the sense to put on the cover, “the funniest and dirtiest book in the world - Tindall, Columbia”, it would sell a lot better, and people would make the effort to decipher it."

"My style is heavily influenced by Joyce; everything that I do has a Joycean element in it."

Maybe libertarianism IS advancing?

I've wondered why libertarian ideas never seem to get much traction in society at large, but perhaps my time horizon is a little too small. A Reason obit for Ronald Hamowy, the libertarian scholar, written by the important scholar of libertarianism, Brian Doherty, makes the point that libertarianism has, in fact, come a long way:

While he embraced libertarianism for both truth and fellowship, he [Hamowy] told me he was never expecting its ideas to conquer the world--though he was surprised at how far the movement he and his pals helped launch in the 1950s had progressed by the 21st century.

"I thought we were doomed to fail, if we got 50 people in the world who agreed that would be great," he told me. "I still think we’re doomed," he said, laughing. "But now we have more than 50. I really believed [libertarianism] was correct, and I wasn’t going to adopt incorrect views because they were popular, but I didn’t think we were going to go anywhere."

Doherty's article explains Hamowy's role in the movement and links to other articles. Doherty's book on the movement, Radicals for Capitalism, has a chapter that focuses on Robert Anton Wilson.

Here's a great anecdote about Hamowy and Ayn Rand, from Stephen Cox's obit:

One person who resisted Ronald was Ayn Rand. As one of the young libertarians (Ronald’s friend Murray Rothbard was another) who were invited to her apartment for intellectual discussions, he was cast into oblivion after a difference of opinion about . . . Rachmaninoff. Guests were asked to say who their favorite composers were, and when Rand’s turn came, she said “Rachmaninoff,” with specific reference to his second piano concerto. “Why?” Ronald asked. “Because he was the most rational,” Rand responded. At which Ronald laughed, thinking it must be a joke. He knew that the composer had dedicated that concerto to his psychiatrist — and anyway, rationality had nothing to do with its greatness. But Ronald’s laughter resulted in exile, and the loss of friends who were dear to him.

Philip K. Dick and RAW, the anthology

Have you noticed that Philip K. Dick fans tend to be Robert Anton Wilson fans, and vice versa? Probably you have. Before I discovered Illuminatus! in college in the 1970s, I read and enjoyed Dick (i.e., I read him before he was "cool."

Ted Hand, the hard-working Philip K. Dick scholar, has a long blog post about the two writers that seems to collect and link to much of what RAW wrote about PKD.

Quantum Psychology, Chapter 12

[I reproduce here Robert Anton Wilson's original exercizes, although I would argue that researching and presenting  almost any theory or ideology that most of us would reject also would work -- The Mgt.]

1. Let one member of the group write to the Flat Earth Research Society. Let him or her present to the group some good arguments that the flatness model of Earth fits the facts better than the sphere model.

Let all members attempt to listen calmly, rationally, objectively.

Let all members observe that this attempt to listen without prejudice seems very much more difficult than you would expect in advance.

2. Let another member of the group similarly research and present a defense of Islam (especially its attitude toward women.)

Again, attempt to listen without prejudice, and observe how hard this seems.

3. Let another member research the brilliant scientist Nikola Tesla, father of alternating current grids, and present to the group Tesla's reasons for rejecting Relativity.

4. Let another member research and present the case against Evolution.

Again: More profit will come from doing these exercizes than from merely reading about them.

A Couple of Changes

I've altered the links on the right side of the page, adding a "Sangha" section to make it easier to keep up with blogs that likely would be of interest to many of you.

I've also set up a new area to make it easy to access all of the chapters in Quantum Psychology that have been discussed so far, and to make it easier for new visitors to the site to get caught up, if they so chose. When we are finished, the links will be there for anyone who wants to read the book and join the discussion. I will probably re-read the book right away when we are finished, and go through all of the comments again.

Off topic: I have launched a new blog, Sciencefictionbargains.com. Please consider taking a look if you are interested in science fiction.

The Politics of Pot

Three states actually have measures on the ballot this fall to legalize marijuana: Colorado, Oregon and Washington. The news comes via Jacob Sullum, who closely follows drug matters for Reason magazine.

A letter in Playboy magazine

Here is a nice goodie, courtesy of Jesse Walker: A letter to the Playboy Advisor asking about the Illuminati, and the magazine's reply. You can read it here.

Mr. Walker explains that the letter purporting to be from a reader was cooked up by Robert Anton Wilson, an editor at "Playboy" at the time, possibly in collaboration with Kerry Thornley and also includes a reply written by RAW.

"A portion of this appeared in Illuminatus!, but not all of it. From the April 1969 issue," Walker says.

RAW and Ralph Nader

A note from one of our British correspondents,  Nick Helweg-Larsen:

I was wondering if you would do a post which would lead to discussion etc. on RAWs thoughts on Ralph Nader. I get the impression he didn't like him. eg. in Reality is What You Can Get Away With:

SHELLEY MCCLOWN
Just tell us about the Space Brothers, please.

GUEST
Well, they look like dwarfs, and they’re all Ralph Nader fans. They kept talking about wearing your seat belt when you drive and eating wholesome foods and never farting in church.

and from a quick Google: RAW says, "Every time I have to attach a seat belt I say 'God damn Ralph Nader' ..."

Do you think it was uncomfortable to him with his polio, or he was just grumbling, wanted the choice of seat belt/no seatbelt etc.?

My  guess would be the latter -- I figure RAW didn't like being told what to do -- but what do the rest of you think?

Assorted links

The conspiracy theorist as artist (hat tip, John Merritt and Jesse Walker). Lots of counterculture stuff at the  blog, which was new to me.

The Brandy of the Damned is out in paperback.

An artist listens to Robert Anton Wilson as she paints.

Lots of interesting book reviews from Michael Johnson.

Eric Wagner, Sept. 15, in Anaheim

Eric Wagner will give a talk on "The Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness" developed by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson and discussed in many of Wilson's writings (notably, in Prometheus Rising.) His talk will be from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sept. 15 at The Learning Light Foundation, 1212 East Lincoln Avenue, Anaheim, Calif. Eric is the author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson, still available from Amazon and other outlets. Information on Eric's upcoming online course at Maybe Logic Academy is here.

Quantum Psychology, Chapter 11

I love this sentence from the chapter, about maps or models of the universe: "Some maps seem to contain fairly large areas of fiction, also -- a possibility we always seem to remember when considering other people's ideas but quickly forget when considering our own."

The second exercize in the chapter seems meant for a group meeting together so I've omitted it, but here is the first:

Brief Exercise:

Meditate on the differences between the two sentences following, and note how coding (typographical convention) helps us distinguish between the two meanings:

1. Water is not a word.

2. "Water" is a word.

Got it? No, you probably haven't. Not yet. You only think you've got it ...

Also, returning to an earlier exercise in dividing objects into two categories, Eric Wagner suggests dividing them into "good" and "bad." Here is the list of objects; Eric suggested the images, although I lost Eric's turkey feather and had to substitute another one.

RAW and his editors

I've mentioned before that Robert Anton Wilson didn't seem to have much good to say about any of his editors, and Michael Johnson makes much the same point in his comment to yesterday's post, which I've "promoted from the comments" for today's post:

RAW was a lot like Pound here: he held publishers (and others who would seek to alter his words, like editors!) with contempt. Pound eventually had James Laughlin, fer cryin' out loud! Nary the encomium for Laughlin in Ez's later work.

 I think RAW's attitude toward potential handlers of his work really hurt him, because he answered that Falcon/New Falcon let him publish what he wanted. But he did need at least a pro proofreader (the Falcon stuff seems riddled with typos and RAW often gets names wrong); but the worst thing about NF was their poor distribution and they spent, it seems, ZERO on promotion.

I had long held out hope that RAW had kept a secret stash of his correspondence; when I asked him if he had that he said no. NOW: he could've been paranoid about THAT, too, if we only take into account what the FBI did with Michael Horowitz when they wanted Leary's papers.

But this is conjecture. As for now, I'll consider Joe Schlabotnick as the guy who worked at Dell and talked the brass into publishing it. Someone said he was "cute."

My comment: James Laughlin was the founder of  the publisher New Directions. RAW, typecast as a science fiction writer, generally had editors for  his novels who were science fiction book editors. But his editors were among the best in the business. David Hartwell, the editor for Schroedinger's Cat and Cosmic Trigger 1, is a legendary editor (he edited Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, and founded the New York Review of Science Fiction, still going strong.)

Jim Frenkel helped keep Illuminatus! in print and edited a couple of the "Historical Illuminatus!" books. His copyeditor for The Widow's Son, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, a big RAW fan and well-known as a fan, copyeditor and blogger, worked very hard to fix the mistakes in the book, as I documented. 

I can't remember any interviews where RAW refers to any of these folks. The only editor I can remember he ever had anything good to say about was Paul Krassner, in Coincidance, whom he thanks for giving RAW's writing space in The Realist when RAW had trouble getting published elsewhere.

The Shea article on Larry Shaw shows, perhaps, a more realistic and fair attitude toward editors, so perhaps the answer to who bought Illuminatus! is somewhere in Shea's writings.

More on the search for an Illuminatus! editor

Well, I still don't know the name of the editor who bought Illuminatus!, my posting topic a couple of days ago, but I've coaxed a couple of good jokes out of Arthur Hlavaty. Linking to my post at his Supergee blog, he wrote, "I think it's incredibly appropriate that we can't find the editor who originally bought Illuminatus!"

In a comment to my post, he wrote, "At around the time the manuscript arrived, someone brought in a coffee  urn." (It's a reference to  the coffee urn is how Markoff Chaney is smuggled around in Illuminatus!; example here.)

Commenting on the Larry Shaw piece reprinted yesterday, Michael Johnson remarks that if Shaw had played a role in getting Illuminatus! published, it's odd that Shea  never mentions it in his essay. Fair enough, and this leads me to an observation: Whichever editor bought the work played a huge role in the writing careers of Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. Shouldn't they have written, somewhere, "I'll always be grateful that Joe Schlabotnick at Dell took a chance on us when we were unknowns by buying Illuminatus!" Have I just missed it?