The ILLUMINATUS! cuts -- how substantial?

Jason Pilley sent me an email recently, asking, "You know it just struck me, has *anyone* ever considered whether those 500 missing pages of "Illuminatus!" might be a typical RAW joke?"

I enjoyed Pilley's witty suggestion. It would also be comforting to learn that ILLUMINATUS! was, in fact, published substantially as Wilson and Shea wrote it. But I think the weight of the evidence is that ILLUMINATUS! was, in fact, cut before publication, although the size of the cuts may be a matter of dispute.

In various interviews, Robert Anton Wilson complains that (1) Although he and Robert Shea conceived of ILLUMINATUS! as one long work, it was published as a trilogy by Dell and (2) That Dell made large cuts in the published version.

There is independent verification for (1). When I interviewed Dell editor David M. Harris about his role in the book, Harris recalled insisting on publishing the book as a trilogy, over Wilson's strong objections. Harris said it was the only way to actually publish such a long book, by unknowns, as a genre science fiction book. (He did not say "by unknowns," but I think that is implied. Robert Heinlein only got away with publishing very long, unedited books when he was a celebrity who could dictate terms to his publishers). Fred Feldman, another Dell editor who worked on ILLUMINATUS!, told me much the same thing. (Harris also recalls pushing ILLUMINATUS! along into publication and deserves credit for helping to make sure it was published at all.)

As for (2), if you read my Harris interview, you can see he doesn't recall (or may not have been in a position to know) if ILLUMINATUS! was cut or revised in a major fashion.

I have not yet published my Fred Feldman interview, but I listened to it again as I drove home from work today. Feldman, who apparently finished the job of preparing ILLUMINATUS! for publication, recalls two things about his work (1) He reshaped it to give it more narrative drive and more of a beginning, middle and end and (2) he made cuts that he describes as "significant," although he would not describe them as "substantial." I remarked that the trilogy as published includes long speeches by the major characters, and he replied that he did not alter the didactic nature of the book.

It is possible that the cuts were not as draconian as Wilson has represented them. Pursuing this latter theory, I wrote to three people who I thought might remember what Shea said about whether ILLUMINATUS! was subjected to drastic cuts.

All three replied. While it is dangerous to argue from silence, none  recalled Shea complaining about the matter.

Shea's son and literary executor, Mike Shea, said he could not tell me anything. Arthur Hlavaty, the well-known SF fan who knew both ILLUMINATUS! authors but was closer to Shea than Wilson, likewise remembered nothing. Hlavaty queried Bernadette Bosky (mentioned in the acknowledgments for Shea's excellent All Things Are Lights), who did not remember anything, either.

Finally, I tried Dr. Patricia Monaghan, the author, Maybe Logic Academy member and Shea's widow. She did not remember Shea complaining about the matter. She wrote, "As for the cuts to the original ms--they must not have been overwhelming, because Bob never mentioned them, or at least not in such detail that I remember."

It is also possible that Shea was more accepting than Wilson about the realities of dealing with a commercial science fiction paperback publisher. Harris and Feldman both describe Shea as being easier to deal with than Wilson.

New 'Guerrila Ontology' blog

Emily Waddle, who has a degree in philosophy and is working on a degree in linguistics, has launched a new blog, Guerrila Ontology.

The first entry, "Hail to Pope Bob," collects some of her favorite RAW sayings. Some of them were new to me.

Eric Wagner's 'Cat' course outline

Eric Wagner has posted a detailed outline of his Maybe Logic Academy course on Robert Anton Wilson's Schroedinger's Cat trilogy. Obviously, it would be best to enroll in Eric's class, but his outline of readings, music and movies would make self-study possible for those who can't attend. I hope not t miss the chance to take Eric's class.

For information on Maybe Local Academy enrollment and other classes, go here.

Assorted links

A forum on the Godlike Productions Web site: Was Donna Summer an Illuminati sacrifice victim? (The cancer report is what "they" want you to believe.) Hat tip, Jesse Walker.

Free audio book of James Joyce's Ulysses.


A new insect species, nanocthulu lovecrafti.

RAW on science fiction authors

Eric Wagner,  author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson, has posted an answer to my question, "In one of your blog postings, you mention that you and RAW mostly talked about movies and books. Can you tell me if he talked about science fiction very often, and what he said about who his favorite science fiction authors were?"

For more on RAW discussing science fiction, see part two of the Lewis Shiner interview and the first part of this interview.

Rihanna's pyramid, and her eye

During a performance in the season finale of American Idol, Rihanna begins her performance by emerging from a pyramid, and at one point she is the pupil when her female dancers form the shape of an eye. At the VH1 Web site, Bene Viera comments, "Judging by Rihanna’s performance on last night’s American Idol season finale, she has no intention of killing the Illuminati rumors any time soon. If anything she’s laughing at the ridiculous conspiracy theorists by feeding them exactly what they want." More here.

Hat tip,  Jesse Walker on Twitter.

Also, via Mr. Walker: A singer in Kenya denies being a member of the Illuminati.

Haiku, and Timothy Leary

A couple of recent haiku from Pipzi Williams (@lordfanny1723 on Twitter)

my haiku are not
about the world -- only my
own nervous system

(#RAW)

looking through these eyes
being in just this moment
not any other

(#senryu)

William Gibson remembering Timothy Leary:

"We’d bump into one another on the VR rubber chicken circuit. Barcelona, Linz, Venice… He was really great to have at your table. Kept the evening in flux. And people would come up to him and give him drugs, which he’d give to someone else, usually a perfect stranger, as soon as the gifter was gone. He said that this was a win-win proposition, as the first person could now say that he’d given drugs to Timothy Leary, and the second person that Timothy Leary had given him drugs. I never saw him look to see what was in the envelope."

Hat tip, Jesse Walker. More here.

A couple of RAW mysteries

I have a post up at RAWilsonfans.com that brings up a couple of questions I've written about here: What has happened to the Robert Anton Wilson-Robert Shea correspondence? Who at Dell bought ILLUMINATUS!?

More on 'Reality Tunnels' photos

I have heard back from Scottish photographer Andrew Smith (now a resident of England) about his "Reality Tunnels" photographs that he placed with the Guardian. (I wrote about this in an earlier blog posting.) I asked him to give me a bit of background for the photos and he obliged:


"Background is that they were taken for the Guardian Camera Club  which have a monthly assignment that is run via their flickr group and for May the theme is conceptual photography, with the photographs having to have been taken during the month. The Guardian photography team select some sets for review as they get submitted and they publish them on the Guardian website and I've been lucky to have had a review and positive comments.

"I came up with the idea of taking photographs in a stark urban setting and decided on using some of the under-road subways in Croydon as the setting and I also came across the Prometheus Rising quote: "When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented." I felt that the photographs fitted this quote very well due to the different viewpoint and the selective and limited focus which gives a different image than you would expect."

Mr. Smith is on Flickr here.

Oz Fritz spots an interesting book

Oz Fritz calls attention to an interesting book and to a radio broadcast (available online) about "the controversial Solar Lodge, a Thelemic community that flourished for five or six years in the 60's and early 70's in the Los Angeles area."

The book Oz mentions, Inside Solar Lodge — Behind the Veil, is kind of odd, and I'm not just referring to the subject matter. Oz includes a link on where to buy it, but it doesn't seem to have been "published" in a normal sense. It's not available on Amazon, for example (although a similar book is, for just $280) and it's not available as an electronic book.

Give Dell's editors some credit

My favorite mystery writer is Lawrence Block. This morning, as I was finishing reading his collection of short stories about unlicensed private detective Matt Scudder, The Night and the Music, I came across a passage in Block's afterword in the book that's of direct interest to Robert Anton Wilson fans.

Block explains that when he came up with the idea for the Scudder books, his agent made a deal with Dell, and the first three Scudder books came out in the early 1970s, beginning with The Sins of the Fathers in 1976.

He writes, "Paperback distribution in general was problematic during those years, and Dell's troubles were greater than most; they returned much of their manuscript inventory, paid for but unpublished, to authors and agents, and but for the personal enthusiasm of editor Bill Grose, Scudder might never have seen print."

Dell, of course, was the publisher that brought out ILLUMINATUS! in 1975  which launched the writing careers of Wilson and Robert Shea, and as it is a rather long, unusual book, it probably only wound up in print because of the personal enthusiasm of its editors. I have so far not been able to track down who the Dell editor was who bought it, but I do know that editors Fred Feldman and David M. Harris pushed it into publication.

I haven't published my interview with Feldman yet, but my interview with Harris is here.

Footnote: The Sins of the Fathers is available for 99 cents for Kindle; I believe that sale will expire very soon. Block attended Antioch College in Ohio.

'Masks of the Illuminati' a 'gateway' book

Some  months ago, I suggested The Earth Will Shake as a "gateway" book for readers who prefer conventional fiction and would like to try Robert Anton Wilson's writing.

Some of you held out for Masks of the Illuminati, and it appears that the author of Josephine's Reader's Advisory would agree. "I’ve always found Masks of the Illuminati to be Wilson’s most approachable book; I’ve made several attempts at the Illuminatus (written with Robert Shea) and Schrodinger’s Cat (written alone) trilogies but never gotten more than a few pages in before losing track of the plotline and wandering off to something more straightforward."

I haven't read Masks in years but I plan to re-read it later this year. I'll note that it's available as an electronic book as well as in print editions.

"Robert Anton Wilson (come down from sirius" by Benny Zen

Link is here. Thanks to Bobby Campbell for the tip.