Bobby Campbell's RAW gif illustrating his new article.
To celebrate and explain the publication of his new Hilaritas Press book, RAW ART: The Illustrated Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson, Bobby Campbell has penned a brief memoir for the Hilaritas Press website, explaining how Robert Anton Wilson's writing (and later, contact with RAW himself) helped turned Bobby's life around. A key moment:
That same entirely excellent Indian Philosophy Professor recommended a book to one of my roommates, who in turn passed it on to me. On a particularly lovely Friday afternoon, I found the block-like tome of Illuminatus! beckoning imperiously from my nightstand, by Sunday evening I’d read all 800 pages.
The U of D library has a surprisingly robust collection of RAW books and I devoured them all. It felt like coming home. RAW was the last of the modern psychonauts that I discovered. I’d already found Leary, Crowley, Lilly, Watts, and McKenna, but it wasn’t until I found RAW that everything began to cohere.
You can also read my 2014 interview with Bobby, although no doubt it is out of date in some respects.
A word on the new book: There are two editions, a paperback that is $11.23 and a Kindle that is $6.66. (Obviously, the publisher is having some fun with the pricing). I actually bought the Kindle. Of course, it's nonsense trying to look at Bobby's artwork on the grey-white screen of a Kindle reading tablet, but with a Kindle reading app, Bobby's color artwork and comics displays nicely on a smartphone or a tablet. On my phone, Bobby's new tome is an art book I can carry with me everywhere I go.
7 comments:
Great piece, Bobby! You write really well.
Thanks so much for spreading the word on this, Tom! And for all your awesome support in general, it is very much appreciated!
Back in 2004 I made a short comic about the master what makes the grass green, and was surprised to find an enthusiastic comment from RAW in response. He said that Marshall McLuhan told Ezra Pound that he should use comic books to help spread his economic ideas, and that he was excited about what I might do for his neurosemantics.
I think at this point his neurosemantics are doing much more for me than I'm doing for them, but am hoping to one day return the favor :)))
Thanks so much, Eric! For that and everything else besides :)))
I'm buying. So happy to see this!
Can I order directly from you? And I have a follow-up Q:
If yes, Will you sign it?
Thanks so much, OG!
Unfortunately, RAW ART is the only one of my comix that isn't available directly from me, but I've got some other stuff I've love to send your way!
I'll zap ya an email :)))
Excelsior!
I've just checked and found that RAW ART is available from Barnes and Noble, if you want to support an actual physical bookstore.
A note about the price, yes, we were having some fun, but we were looking to make the price as affordable as possible which meant the print edition had to be over $11 and the eBook had to be over $6, according to Amazon's marketing rules. Pretty much every retail price in America has 99 cents added just to squeeze an extra dollar out of brains that are trained to mostly register the dollar amount. The added 66 and 23 cents seemed to be a nice commentary on that absurdity.
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