John Higgs, optimist (and bookseller)

British author John Higgs has been trying to make the case for optimism lately, here is some optimism from  his latest newsletter:

I've just read This Could Be Our Future by Yancey Strickler, the ex-CEO and co-founder of Kickstarter. It's about the flaws in making decisions based on short-term financial maximalisation - the unfortunate default in our culture - and how to avoid thinking like this. Heartily recommended!

It didn't receive much of a fanfare, but it's still worth celebrating: UK non-nuclear renewables have, for the first time, generated more electricity than fossil fuels. There's a lot of reasons for optimism about how quickly renewables are growing at the moment.

Out Of All This Blue, the new single by The Waterboys, seems entirely in sync with this list.

And while we're at it, it's worth noting that optimism is good for the heart, according to a huge meta-analysis of 300,000 people.

For more optimism, and news on Higgs' new online bookstore (you can get signed books) , go here.

Blogger isn't letting me upload images this morning, and I don't have time to deal with Google's nonsense, so no illustration today.

Lots of reading groups

Bobby Campbell's illustration for the Illuminatus! online reading group. 

As we continue with the online reading group for The Widow's Son, I want to point out for anyone who might be new to the blog that we've done a bunch of reading groups at this blog for books by Robert Anton Wilson.

If you read (or re-read) The Earth Will Shake, Email to the Universe, Cosmic Trigger, Coincidance: A Head Test, Illuminatus!, Masks of the Illuminati or Quantum Psychology, there's a reading group that's been devoted to it;  you can read the book and read comments from me and from others. (We've also taken on a couple of books Robert Anton Wilson didn't write) Unfortunately, there's some spam in the comments for some of the older reading groups, but there's a lot of good comments from readers, too. Access the archived reading groups on the right side of this page.

It seems to me we ought to do a Prometheus Rising reading group.

Next year in Columbus?

I am planning to attend the NASFiC in Columbus, Ohio,  in August 2020.

The North American Science Fiction Convention is held in years when the Worldcon is overseas; the 2020 Worldcon will be in New Zealand, so we get another NASFiC, which while not quite a Worldcon is pretty big.

The Columbus NASFiC is August 20-23; details at the official site.  I've already bought a membership.

I hope to help organize some sort of activities for RAW fans, much as I did at Confluence, a SF convention I attended in 2018 in Pittsburgh. All of  this is very preliminary and relevant details haven't been announced by the convention yet, but if you like going to SF conventions and  you are a RAW fan, keep next year's NASFiC in mind.

The 2021 Worldcon will be in Washington, D.C.; I hope to make it there, too.

Cat Vincent news update

Ian "Cat" Vincent

Ian "Cat" Vincent reports that his blog has made a comeback and he'll do a magical working on Halloween:

"My next major magical action is HEXIT on Halloween night.
https://radio23.co.uk/hexit.html."

Details at the link, but "On October 31st 2019, the United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.

"To mark this event, Radio23, in association with the Indelicates and cunning-man Cat Vincent, will broadcast a distributed magical working designed to strike at the spirit of Brexit. This will be completed shortly after 23:00 GMT, the time when Britain is due to leave the UK."

So you can listen if you can't be there.

Main Radio23 site. "The regular programming includes We pilgrim mixes from the Librarian, the Pillock and the Phonomancer - more content to follow. Tech provided by The Walker."

To obtain Mr. Vincent's email newsletter, Caterwauling ("Thoughts on Fortean journalism, magic, religion, High Weirdness, kink, genre media and the oddness of living in a Yorkshire hippy town") sign up here.

To reach him, contact him on Twitter: @catvincent.

A Harlan Ellison synchronicity

Harlan Ellison in 1986. (Creative Commons photo by Pip R. Lagenta)

After I posted yesterday's blog entry, about Harlan Ellison on a blog devoted to a writer named Wilson who had various esoteric interests, I read more of The Harlan Ellison Hornbook and came across this passage:

Wilson looked like a Martian to me ....He was, to me, a weird and fascinating man. He was into the Fortean Society and all its unexplained phenomena, Korzybskian General Semantics, heavyweight physical sciences, occultism ...

It's actually about a guy named Al Wilson in Cleveland, where Ellison grew up, but I enjoyed the synchronicity.

If you want to try a collection of Ellison stories, I suggest I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. It's not a very long book, but the selection of stories seems particularly good to me.

Harlan Ellison bleg

I've been reading The Harlan Ellison Hornbook, a collection of Ellison pieces originally written in the 1970s for the Los Angeles Free Press. Yes, I know he could be an asshole, but I like his writing. If you read his writing,  you get the best thing about him.

There's a discussion in one chapter of what Ellison read as a kid:"  .... I was already reading the classics and An Introduction to General Semantics (introduction by S.I. Hayakawa) while the rest of my classmates were heavy into Lad: A Dog and Star Third Baseman by John R. Tunis .... " (from "Installment 23," i.e. chapter 23 of the book.

Apparently it wasn't just Heinlein and Robert Anton Wilson; a lot of writers from a certain generation read Korzybski.

If your vices include reading Harlan Ellison and using ebooks, watch for sales; often one of his  books goes on sale for about $2. As I write this, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World: Stories is on sale.

Another Harlan Ellison blog post. 

The Widow's Son reading group, Week Ten

Portrait of a Woman, or The Music, by Neapolitan painter Giuseppe Bonito c. 1750-1765

Week Ten (pg. 139-160 Hilaritas edition Part Two, Chapters 3 & 4 all editions) 

By Gregory Arnott

Special guest blogger

I believe the letter to Mother Ursula from Maria shows why Tom Jackson considers her to be the roundest female character in RAW’s oeuvre; despite the not-so-great-time-to-be-a-woman she still sparkles and demonstrates that she has her attention on the events that would become history. She’s intelligent enough that she is able to surprise Benjamin Franklin with her acumen, overcoming his prejudice towards southern Europeans; her meeting with Franklin and the corresponding footnote that brings up de Selby’s allegedly freehanded nature with women in interesting to read in the years after #metoo and the continuing cultural dialogue. 

I’d have to say that I have found myself becoming fond of Jean Jacques Jeder. RAW uses Jeder’s appearance to inject some bitter irony into his internal celebration over finding such a “nice” job. Like Armand, we can see that Jeder did not choose to be a ruffian and dreads the occupation. The idea that someone would celebrate a 14 hour job increases the sense of how maladapted Jeder is through no fault of his own, as many people at different points in history assuredly are. Today I think of the rather draconian views that society has towards the homeless and ex-convicts with no consideration of how hard it is to become, and remain, socio-economically stable. 

In The Earth Will Shake Sigismundo often appears as a damned fool whereas in this novel he appears increasingly capable; his Masonic training has given him emotional discipline that readers should envy. 

Chapter 4 is another initiation pageant that combines accurate depictions of “mainstream” Masonry with more esoteric flavor added in as well as RAW’s own confabulations. For the record, the only true degrees of Masonry, at least according to the US Grand Lodge, are the first three. The remaining thirty are found in Scotch Rite Masonry which is considered a concordant rite. The other popular concordant rite is the York Rite, where the Rosicrucian degree is found. Babcock’s initiation goes all in on the recurring symbol of the cornerstone that the builders rejected and shows, once again, that occultists are much better at displaying the richness of Biblical texts than any orthodox Christian. 

The final part of Sir John’s initiation as a Mark Mason is a direct parallel to Sigismundo’s attitude as he dangles from a window in the Bastille: a Mason, or illuminated person, should not give in to despair. Fear is Failure and the Forerunner of Failure. 

The De Selby footnotes have incorporated what must have been one of RAW’s favorite conspiracies, the P2 scandal that he wrote extensively about since the details were published in the early eighties. 

From Eric Wagner: “Reading about sexism in Maria ’s world, I thought something by Francesca LeBrun might work this week.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWiz13fdnpE

'Most connected human' cites RAW

Chris Dancy in Stockholm in 2016 (Via official website). 

There is apparently a current genre of nonfiction I had not been quite aware of before, self-help books that focus on our relationship with technology, more specifically our relationship with cell phones. Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, mentioned in an earlier blog post, is one such book.

Another is Don't Unplug - How Technology Saved My Life and Can Save Yours Too by Chris Dancy, which I recently finished. Dancy is billed as a "mindful cyborg" and "the most connected human on Earth" and advocates a number of strategies, including obsessively monitoring your life and use of technology. One of his more interesting suggestions is "iPhone palmistry," looking at a person's smartphone and the apps on his/her/their home page to learn about the person. Notice, Dancy says, whether it's an Apple phone or Android, whether it has a case, if it is new or old, battered or in good shape, and what apps the person keeps handy on the home page and how they are organized.

Anyway, the acknowledgements section caught my eye; after thanking various other folks, Dancy writes, "Last, I'm often asked, who do you read, study, etc. I'm never quite sure how to answer this question as I go out of my way not to be biased or influenced by any particular school of thought, until I have formed my opinion.  To that end, there are a few historical figures who I have taken time to study, read and re-read.  Douglas Rushkoff, Alan Watts, Terence McKenna, Søren Kierkegaard, Andy Warhol, Antoni Gaudi, Carl Jung, Robert Anton Wilson, Alvin Toffler, Winston Churchill and Victor Frankl."

Does RAW's work disappear from libraries?

Toby Philpott (from official site.)

My recent post on "Keeping RAW's work alive" didn't get much of a response, but Alias Bogus (aka Toby Philpott) posted a comment recently suggesting that Robert Anton Wilson's work is not much evident in libraries because it tends to get stolen. The library in question is, I believe, in Wales; does this apply to the United States? Here is his comment:

I love libraries, and after a long career as a self-employed performer I got my first steady job as the computer whisperer for my local library, and did that job for about 17 years.

One of the reasons you don't find much of RAW's works in libraries arises from the fact that it (sadly) becomes impossible to hold onto copies. Unlike bookshops, we had no 'store detectives' guarding the stock against shop-lifting, and anyway, people can simply borrow things (quite legally) and just never return the items. It seems that many people these days do not understand the principle of "borrowing", and "shared resources".

Part of my work involved assessing stock turnover, using the computer inventory, and certain kinds of items always disappeared and had to get replaced, until (with many restrictions on budget) several departments simply stop buying new copies of those kind of items.

Generally, cult material, or relatively rare imports. RAW, The Invisibles, Mondo 2000, etc. All sorts of occult and conspiratorial stuff. Also, obscure reference material that you might need for more than three weeks (like silversmith's hallmarks).

Sad, but true.

Today's movie star news

Kate Alderton

Ian "Cat" Vincent reports in the latest issue of "Caterwauling," his email newsletter, that starting on Halloween, a new movie, The Armageddon Gospels, will become available on Apple TV.

In his review of the movie at Daily Grail, Vincent writes, "Armageddon Gospels is a true and timely work of magic in every sense: often delightful, firmly anchored in British myth, consciously an act of ritual, and deeply profound." Actress Kate Alderton, who played Arlen Riley (RAW's wife) in Daisy Campbell's play based on Cosmic Trigger, appears in Armageddon Gospels, Vincent notes. (I can't find a website to sign up for Mr. Vincent's dispatches, but contacting him on social media likely will work.)

Alderton is on Twitter. She also follows me. This is a literary blog, so I'm not going to make a big deal out of the fact a beautiful British actress follows me on Twitter. You'll notice I barely mention it.

Adam Gorightly

Meanwhile, Hollywood movie star* (and author of books on Discordianism) Adam Gorightly appears in The Hill and the Hole, based on a Fritz Leiber story. The movie was only recently completed and is being offered to film festivals; I'll let you know when it's available for screening.

* Mr. Gorightly lives in California; I am actually not sure if it's Hollywood or Malibu. See his web site for some of his books. 

Monday links

Oz Fritz on "The Esoteric Transmission of V. by Thomas Pynchon."

Rob Latham on High Weirdness.  Via Supergee's blog which is worth a regular look.

David Henderson on "Getting Rich on Low Pay."

Tyler Cowen says Stephen King should get a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Slate on the new HBO Watchmen series. 

The Widow's Son reading group, Week Nine

Frederick, Elector Palatine and Elizabeth Stuart 

Week Nine (pg. 105-138 Hilaritas edition or Part Two, Chapter 1&2 all editions)

By Gregory Arnott, special guest blogger 

I have to apologize for being late this week- I’ve started a new job that required a lot of planning last week in anticipation for the next. Regrettably these two chapters contain an extraordinary amount of information and this will be a short write up. 

Chapter 1 moves the action to Ireland and introduces us to Simon Moon’s ancestor, Seamus Muadhen. This chapter was presumably written while RAW was living in Ireland and his interest, enthusiasm, and expertise on Irish history is on full display. On the first page alone we are given a vivid slice of history that is mind boggling, especially when one is considering annotation.  Naturally much of the subjects brought up are of interest to Joyce scholars; Howth and Vico Road are both in the famous opening line of Finnegans Wake, the discussion of Hamlet is the subject of one of my favorite parts of Ulysses, “Scylla and Charybdis,” and we are provided with Dedalus’ famous opinion on history via Muadhen’s musings. Dalkey Island, where Seamus is introduced to conspiracy and a different fate than his Plan’s intentions, shares a name with Flann O’Brien’s novel The Dalkey Archive which was the first published appearance of de Selby. I’m sure some of the readers caught more relations than I did and am looking forward to reading about them! 

RAW gives us a handful of the atrocities committed by the English against the Irish as Muadhen boats about the bay but balances these accounts; he makes sure to mention the James II and Edward Charles Stuart weren’t the Romantic figures of Jacobite lore and that the violence between Catholics and Protestants are an ugly cycle. I remember while studying in my Tudor and Stuart History seminar the point made by my professor about the reign of Queen Mary and why exactly the English would never suffer another Catholic to sit the throne. Maybe it’s my affection for John Dee, whom she imprisoned, but Mary has always struck me as an abnormally ugly figure in history and I’ve always hated the revisionist attempts to paint her otherwise in popular history. There are many stories being told in this chapter. 

Interestingly enough, in the long footnote concerning the Rosicrucians in Chapter 2 RAW doesn’t mention that part of Dame Yates’ study of the marriage of Elizabeth of England and Frederick V in the light of the Rosicrucian hoax/heresy/revelations focuses on the implications for the balance of power between Protestantism and Catholicism on the Continent. According to Yates, it was widely hoped that the marriage between Frederick and James Stuart’s daughter would ensure Protestant British support if and when the Elector Palatine challenged the Catholic Habsburg hegemony over some strongly Protestant German/central European states. The joke was on them because James evidently didn’t give a shit and the Winter King was defeated at the Battle of White Mountain which served as an overture to the Thirty Years War. But they sure got those Habsburg ambassadors when they tossed them out the window. 

We are (re)introduced to Wilson’s historically accurate portrait of Washington as a hemp-smoking, taciturn, and all-around-bizarre giant of a man. Aside from Wilson, Thomas Pynchon’s George Washington is also a pot-smoking gentleman whose views on liberty and slavery are drawn into sharp contrast while he meets and discusses all-and-everything with Mason and Dixon in the novel of the same name. Although the scene is improved in Pynchon’s novel by the inclusion of a slave character who is Jewish and much smarter than the other three men, a situation he begins to take advantage of when the grass starts burning. 

In the Bastille Sigismundo is going through all the emotions that one would expect a new prisoner to experience: regret, desperation, sorrow, fear, and the need for a shoulder to cry on. Thankfully he is provided with the council of Father Benoit, a Fellow in the Craft. Sigismundo is again able to find strength in his training and initiations. 

In de Selby news we find out that the Professor Hanfkopf has most likely murdered O’Broichain, La Puta, and Le Monade. If they were ever real in the first place. 

From Eric Wagner: “I thought this week we would use the song Seamus thinks about on page 120.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuugoISmrmY

A bit on Bill Maher (and Kevin Williamson)

Bill Maher (Creative Commons photo)

Thanks to Chad and Oz for posting at my Kevin Williamson interview blog post. 

After I read their comments, I wondered if Williamson had appeared on Bill Maher's current show, and he has. A podcast of the August 23  show is available free (and legally) here on Sticher;  Williamson shows up at 30:15. I agree with Williamson on free speech and with Maher on abortion.

You can read an article about the show from a friendly source,  and also read an attack on Maher and Williamson from a left site. We report, you decide!

The Mediaite piece attacks Maher for given Williamson a national platform, but of course Maher is also the only talk show host I know of who gave Robert Anton Wilson a national platform.  (Check the date!)