A Cosmic Trigger tribute

Kate Sherrod, a blogger previously unknown to me, pens a nice tribute to Robert Anton Wilson, and Wilson's Cosmic Trigger 1. "My appreciation for Wilson and what he had to share has only grown over the years," writes Sherrod, who goes on to explain why.

A hippie physicist's blog

I've just finished David Kaiser's How the Hippies Saved Physics, about the unusual group of physicists that Robert Anton Wilson hung out with the 1970s, and wrote about in Cosmic Trigger 1.

One of the "hippie physicists" portrayed in the book, Nick Herbert, comes off especially well. Herbert's schemes for using the principles in Bell's Theorem (on nonlocality in quantum mechanics) to invent a faster-than-light communications device did not turn out to be viable, but in Kaiser's telling, Herbert's clever ideas forced physicists to think about important issues and helped give rise to quantum encryption, a method for encrypting messages that are theoretically impossible to intercept and decipher. There is a whole burgeoning field of quantum information science, and the "hippie physicists" in general and Herbert in particular deserve credit for helping to spur it, Kaiser says.

Well, it turns out that Herbert has an interesting blog, Quantum Tantra, and he doesn't just write about physics. He writes about many topics that might interest folks who read this blog.

Here is the obituary Herbert wrote for Robert Anton Wilson.

More RAW on Twitter

"My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything."

-- Robert Anton Wilson

This is one of my favorite Robert Anton Wilson quotes, but I am reprinting it here to call attention to the source that just reposted it -- the @Robert_A_Wilson account just launched by the folks at Temple Illuminatus.

New 'Email' from RAW

More Bobby Campbell news: He did the artwork on a new edition of RAW's Email to the Universe. It was Wilson's last book, and also is one of my favorites.

Aldiss and RAW

I always enjoy seeing connections between my favorite authors. Years ago, I attended a panel discussion at a science fiction convention that featured two personal favorites of mine, George Alec Effinger and Kim Stanley Robinson. The two shook hands before the panel, and I remember wondering if they liked each other's work, and if the panel was the first time they had met.

I've enjoyed science fiction writer Brian Aldiss for a long time. He's a wonderful short story, and also very adept with novels (perhaps my favorite of the latter is The Malacia Tapestry. So I am intrigued that some of RAW's books have the following quote from Aldiss on the cover, concerning RAW: "Here is genius with a G!" It's from a review published in the Guardian.

Searching on the Internet suggests that it was a review of Sex & Drugs -- A Journey Beyond Limits. Does anyone have any other information, such as how I could read the actual review?

How the Hippies Saved Physics

I've begun reading How the Hippies Saved Physics by David Kaiser, which as I wrote earlier, is all about the physicists RAW wrote about in Cosmic Trigger 1: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (and many other places.)

Two of Robert Anton Wilson's writings are cited in the bibliography: Cosmic Trigger 1 and "The Science of the Impossible," an article that appeared in the March 1979 issue of Oui magazine. The article is not posted at rawilsonfans.com, so it's one more article for someone to track down. (I'd reprint it here if someone could send me a clip.)

In addition, the text quotes from an article Robert Anton Wilson wrote for an underground newspaper in the Bay Area in 1976. No exact citation is given. The notes explain that the clipping was provided by Saul-Paul Sirag, who believes that it originally appeared in a local underground newspaper.

'Maybe Logic' available on net

"Maybe Logic," the documentary on Robert Anton Wilson, is currently streaming on Snagfilms.com. Hat tip, Julian Sanchez (via his Twitter feed.)

Do RAW fans frown on dissent?

Ted Hand, mentioned in Friday's blog post, Tweeted on July 19, "Sometimes I marvel at how many really embarrassing things Robert Anton Wilson said, or RAW-fan defensiveness/But maybe it's a real deep game." (@t3dy, a really interesting Twitter feed.)

Naturally, I wondered what he was referring to, so I asked. He explained, "Every so often I get flamed for some criticism I make of RAW's less valuable writings. Ironic that RAWfans get so smug about his skepticism!" (Hand is a fan of many of RAW's writings, as his Tweets make clear).

I have no information about what any of the disagreements were, so I can't take sides, but one of the most appealing aspects of Robert Anton Wilson's writings and philosophy is that he didn't behave like the Pope, or Ayn Rand, or L. Ron Hubbard — he didn't insist that anybody had to swallow all of his pronouncements. It's a delicious irony that when I disagree with RAW, I am agreeing with his "system" for evaluating the opinions of others.

One example of that system (dozens of examples could be cited) comes from the chapter, "Important! Read This Carefully" from Cosmic Trigger Vol. 2 (which I'm reading now):

What I have been saying — the important lesson of this book — can be put into two simple imperatives:

1. Never believe totally in anybody else's BS.

2. Never believe totally in your own BS.

(The boldface is in the original. Besides the obvious, BS stands for "Belief System.")

And isn't this one the main lessons of ILLUMINATUS! ? The characters in the novel can never be sure they have the real story ...

New 'Insider's Guide to RAW' out

A new edition of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson by Eric Wagner has been released, according to Bobby Campbell, who did the new illustrations. Mr. Campbell's blog posting offers a sneak peak at his arresting artwork. I have read Wagner's book — I've repeatedly re-read many portions of it — and I recommend it for all serious RAW fans.

Giordano Bruno news

Via Ted Hand's Twitter feed (a useful source of information, @t3dy) I found Laura Miller's interesting review of a new book about Giordano Bruno, Ingrid Rowland's Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic. A sentence from Miller's review about the Bruno monument in Rome: "Every year, on the anniversary of his death, free-thinking Romans cover his statue with flowers." The inquisitor who pursued Bruno (and Galileo) was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1930, Miller says.

Hand's Tweets also pointed me to a map of Bruno's travels in Europe.

An impressive new music service

Apologies in advance for those who think I've veered wildly off-topic, but Spotify, a music service that is the rage in Europe, has finally launched in Europe. I've been reviewing and writing about music services on the Net for years (I do an Internet column for my old paper in Oklahoma) and Spotify's free service is the most impressive I've ever seen. I like to think that RAW, with his interest in music and the Internet, would have been interested, but no doubt someone will correct me if I'm wrong. (Arguably tenuous RAW link: You can use Spotify to immediately listen to any Beethoven music he mentions in his writings.)

Invitations to join are here. My invitation took about a week to arrive.

An Ezra Pound conspiracy theory

I've been reading The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt, about the city of Venice. It's a lot of fun.

Chapter 9, "The Last Canto," has a conspiracy theory about the fate of many of Ezra Pound's literary papers, which naturally I am sharing with you.

Many of his papers wound up being preserved and placed in collection in a library at Yale University.

Berendt's theory is that an expatriate American, Jane Rylands, took advantage of Pound's mistress, Olga Rudge, by forming the "Ezra Pound Foundation," enriching herself in the process. All of the elements of the theory cannot be proved, because the alleged conspirators concealed some of the evidence.

The three officers of the foundation were Rudge, Rylands and a Cleveland lawyer (not named in the book.) Any decisions of the foundation would be made be a majority vote of the three.
In other words, when Rudge realized that she was being taken advantage of, she was outvoted.

The foundation was dissolved after the papers were sold to Yale. "There were rumors that Yale had paid Jane Rylands a considerable sum of money for the papers, but they were only conjecture." (Page 210).

The Olga Rudge Papers at Yale consist of 208 boxes of materials. Scholars can read the material in 207 boxes. One box, No. 156, has the papers of the Ezra Pound Foundation, and Yale has placed that box off limits until 2016. According to Berendt's book, Rylands and the unnamed Cleveland lawyer insisted upon that condition.

The William Burroughs curse on Capote

From RealityStudio a "William S. Burroughs Community," comes the odd tale, with overtones of magick, of how Burroughs put a "curse" on his literary rival and enemy, Truman Capote. Whether by coincidence or not, Capote's career faded, the article says. (via @tedgioia on Twitter.)