Bold opinions on jazz and literature

Cecil Taylor (Creative Commons photo by Michael Hoefner, source). 

Tyler Cowen, in a blog post from Thursday on what he's been reading lately: "Philip Freeman, In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor.  Call me crazy, but I think Sun Ra and Taylor are better and more important musically than say Duke Ellington.  Freeman’s book is the first full-length biography of Taylor, and it is well-informed and properly appreciative.  It induced me to buy another book by him.  The evening I saw Taylor was one of the greatest of my life, I thank my mother for coming with me."

In the comments, "It Ain't Necessarily So" replied, "With respect, this is a bad take. Duke Ellington wrote a host of standards that are widely remembered today and arguably is the single most influential figure in the history of jazz. He wrote dozens of standards including 'Mood Indigo,' 'Satin Doll,' 'Caravan,' 'I Got it Bad and That Ain't Good,' and the inescapable 'It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got that Swing.' Even today, it's pretty common to hear at least one Ellington tune during any set in a jazz club. As an illustration of Ellington's importance, Cecil Taylor continued to perform Ellington compositions for most of his career. Also, Ellington's band was one of the most important and influential during the era when jazz was the most popular music of the day."

"To say that Sun Ra and Taylor, who came along in an era when jazz had been marginalized and ceased to be popular music, were more musically important than a figure like Duke Ellington, is a poor revisionist take on musical history."

This is one of those instances where I wish I could ask Robert Anton Wilson his opinion, perhaps jazzbos in RAW fandom such as Eric Wagner and Steve Fly can weigh in? 

I am a huge fan of Duke Ellington. Although I consider myself reasonable conversant with jazz -- I've listened to Ellington, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Chick Corea, and other major figures -- I am not really familiar with music of Cecil Taylor or Sun Ra. I did some hasty Cecil Taylor research and borrowed Unit Structures from Hoopla, is there an obvious Sun Ra album to try, in the same vein that everyone who doesn't know Miles Davis is supposed to listen to Kind of Blue? 

When I thought about Tyler's post, I realized it reminded me of this statement from Wilson: "James Joyce is more important than Jesus, Buddha and Shakespeare put together. Pound is the greatest poet in English. Thorne Smith should be reprinted immediately, and would be enormously popular with the current generation, I wager. The novels that get praised in the NY Review of Books aren't worth reading. Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best (and only) literature of our times. All of these opinions are pompous and aggressive, of course, but questions like this bring out the worst in me."

Jim O'Shaughnessy on RAW's 'Cognitive Relativism—Ahead of His Time'

Jim O'Shaughnessy

In 1975's "The Illuminatus! Trilogy," Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea introduced cognitive relativism—the idea that our beliefs heavily filter our perception of reality. Wilson's concept of "fnords" (hidden messages in media that trigger unconscious fear) symbolizes societal propaganda that most people are conditioned to ignore. His core insight is relevant in today's AI era: absolute certainty in any belief system kills intelligence—rigid belief systems trap us, whereas a flexible mind yields insight.

(Posted at X.com)

John Higgs announces book tour dates

As you can see from the above, John Higgs has announced British tour dates for the imminent release of his new book, Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who, out April 10. If  you are British and nothing looks near you, keep an eye out for further dates to be announced later. 

More information from the latest issue of his newsletter. 

An Eight Circuit podcast

 

 

While Hilaritas Press released a new edition of Beyond Chaos and Beyond on Feb. 23, the podcast released the same day deserves some attention, too.

"In this episode, Hilaritas guest host Zach West chats with Rachel Turetzky, Doug Wingate, and David Jay Brown about their new book with Original Falcon Press, Eight Circuit Ascension: A Guide to Metaprogramming the Multidimensional Self."

Here is the official website for the book. You can buy the book on Amazon.   You can also look at the Original Falcon Press page for the book, where you can buy the book directly if you don't want to go through Amazon, or you want to buy an ePub rather than a Kindle ebook. 

As for the new book, here is my review of the original edition. 

Moby Dick online reading group, chapters 105-109

AI generated image of Melville, right, and Hawthorne in the former's study.

This week: Chapter 105, “Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish? – Will He Perish?”

to Chapter 109, “Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin”

By Oz Fritz
Special guest blogger

The question of creating an American Literature with a distinctly separate identity from its British counterpart appeared of great interest to Melville before, during and after he wrote Moby Dick. He expressed thoughts about this in a critical essay titled “Hawthorne and His Mosses” a review of a collection of stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne called Mosses from an Old Manse.  The review also addresses the subject of literature as a whole and Hawthorne’s place in it. Melville wrote the piece not long after meeting the elder writer for the first time. The two were part of a group of hikers along with other literary figures including Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. walking up Massachusetts’ Monument Mountain in August, 1850. Melville and Hawthorne were forced to take shelter from a storm under some rocks for two hours. The enforced intimacy formed and sealed a fast friendship between the two lasting the remainder of their lives. 

At the time of the hike Melville was in the middle of writing Moby Dick. Hawthorne’s publisher, a friend of Melville, encouraged him to review Mosses from an Old Manse which had come out a few years earlier. Melville took a break from writing his epic novel to do so. According to Wikipedia, the close encounter with Hawthorne led Melville to reexamine, reconsider and revise his monumental work in progress.  One scholar, Walter Bezanson declared the essay, “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” to be "deeply related to Melville's imaginative and intellectual world while writing Moby-Dick" and should be "everybody's prime piece of contextual reading" for said novel. Indeed, Melville writes: “[b]ut already I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germanous seeds into my soul.” In winter of that year, Melville unexpectedly paid Nathaniel a visit only to be turned away as he was busy writing and didn’t want visitors. Melville came back another time and was received. Later, Hawthorne surprised Herman by visiting his farm known as Arrowhead. The two spent the day “smoking and discussing metaphysics.” Historical accounts don’t clarify what they were smoking. Of course, we know that Moby Dick is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. This essay can be found in The Portable Melville, inexpensive copies of which can be had online. Another Melville expert speculated that he wrote it in part to help prepare readers to receive Moby Dick. 

He sets the literary bar high in the second paragraph of the review with the egolessness of a Saint:

“Would that all excellent books were foundlings, without father or mother, that so it might be, we could glorify them, without including their ostensible authors! Nor would any true man take exception to this – least of all, he who writes. When the Artist rises high enough to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while the spirit possesses itself in the enjoyment of its reality.”

In attempting to substantiate the body of American literature, Melville compares and contrasts Hawthorne with Shakespeare saying that the distance between their greatness is not immeasurable. Writing about “The Old Apple Dealer,” a sad, melancholic story concerning a man who sells gingerbread and apples at a railway station, Melville says:

“Such touches as are in this piece cannot proceed from any common heart. They argue such a depth of tenderness, such a boundless sympathy with all forms of being, such an omnipresent love, that we must needs say that this Hawthorne is here almost alone – in his generation at least – in the artistic manifestation of these things.”

He continues, and this, I believe, applies to Moby Dick as well: 

“Such touches as these – and many, very many similar ones, all through his chapters – furnish clues, whereby we enter a little way into the intricate, profound heart where they originated. And we see that suffering, some time or other and in some shape or other – this only can enable any man to depict it in others. All over him, Hawthorne’s melancholy rests like an Indian Summer, which though bathing a whole country in one softness, still reveals the distinctive hue of every towering hill, and each far-winding vale.” 

It seems that Melville believes a great writer can transmit and engender a sense of compassion and empathy in the attentive reader. Related to the above, responding to other opinions about Hawthorne, he writes:

“He is immeasurably deeper than the plummet of the mere critic. For it is not the brain that can test such a man; it is only the heart. You cannot come to know greatness by inspecting it; there is no glimpse to be caught of it, except by intuition; you need not ring it, you but touch it, and you find it is gold.” 

I regard intuition as a form of Intelligence of the Higher Emotional centrum; Leary’s C6. Intuition grows and becomes stronger as one explores that territory. It seems that one of Melville’s points holds that great literature can help get one there. 

Melville prepares readers for Moby Dick by extolling the virtue and making a case for the dark side of Hawthorne’s writing so that they might be able to appreciate and more easily digest the shadow side of his own forthcoming (published slightly more than a year later) masterpiece. “For spite of all the Indian-summer sunlight on the hither side of Hawthorne’s soul, the other side – like the dark half of the physical sphere – is shrouded in a blackness ten times. But this darkness but gives more effect to the ever-moving dawn, that forever advances through it, and circumnavigates his world. Whether Hawthorne has simply availed himself of this mystical blackness as a means to the wonderous effects he makes it to produce in his lights and shades: …” 

Coincidentally, a few days before reading “Hawthorne and His Mosses” I commented on this technique of blending light and darkness in regard to chapter 12 in the Sex Magicians by RAW as part of the discussion group working with that book (https://dovestamemoria.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-god-sex-magicians-chapter-twelve.html scroll down for my comment). I also mentioned that Pynchon uses this technique multiple times in Gravity’s Rainbow. (The first time I typed it I mistakenly called it Gravity’s Whale.) Some people maintain that not only did Moby Dick influence Gravity’s Rainbow, but that the latter novel represents a re-imagining of the former. I haven’t researched this enough to have an opinion, yet. I call the blending of literary light and darkness “chiaroscuro” after the artistic technique that does this visually. 

Synchronistically, we find a taste of this literary chiaroscuro in this week’s assigned section, in chapter 106, “Ahab’s Leg.” “For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heart-woes, a mystical significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur;” It continues a bit further in this vein. I consider this a synchronicity because when I started this piece, I thought I would write more about the establishment of American literature, not the chiaroscuro technique. Reading RAW’s use of chiaroscuro in Sex Magicians prepared me to recognize it when Melville makes the argument in the Hawthorne piece, but I was surprised and astonished to find Melville continuing his point here in chapter 106.

The two phrases, “all heart-woes, a mystical significance” recalls the concept of betrayal in the poetry of the Sufi mystic, Rumi. Rumi held that emotionally painful experiences can lead to inner growth and transformation. I tell people going through a rough romantic patch that when the heart gets broken, it can grow back stronger if one doesn’t completely capitulate to the pain. The passages in and around what I quoted reminds me of Nietzsche’s valuation of tragedy in The Birth of Tragedy published slightly more than 20 years after The Whale. Previously I mentioned that Ralph Waldo Emerson influenced both Nietzsche and Melville. Some scholars say that Moby Dick influenced the maverick German philosopher.

The title of chapter 105 seems pretty self-explanatory – “Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish? – Will He Perish?”.  Some of the size measurements given appear quite exaggerated as is a typical whale’s life-span. Melville appears to believe literally in Adam as the first human. The second half of the chapter considers the question: will humans kill all the whales and render them extinct like they nearly did with the buffalo? Some weeks ago, Tom mentioned a book called The Manifesto of Herman Melville by Barry Sanders that considers Moby Dick a warning about humans destroying nature. This chapter aligns with that premise.

Chapter 107, “The Carpenter” starts by asking the reader to shift their perspective to way out in space, specifically to the moons of Saturn. This resonates with Arthur C. Clarke's’novel, 2001 A Space Odyssey where the ship Discovery travels to Lapetus, a moon of Saturn. Kubrick changed it to Jupiter in the film because he wasn’t satisfied with the attempt to represent the rings of Saturn. The description of the duties and abilities of the unnamed carpenter sounds quite extensive and remarkable. Melville sums him up thusly: “this omnitooled, open and shut carpenter, was, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few drops of harthorn, there is no telling.” Omnitooled recalls the language of Buckminster Fuller and his fondness for using “omni” as a prefix. Fuller was the nephew of Margaret Fuller, a friend and literary colleague of Emerson. The two possible “subtle somethings” seems metaphorical and suggest the concept I associate with the number 68. Quicksilver = Mercury (Hod 8). Harthorn is an archaic term for the chemical compound ammonium carbonate, a kind of ammonia used in baking, medicine and smelling salts. Looking at “harthorn” as a Joycean type of pun we can see “heart” (Tiphareth 6) plus “horn.” Also, recall the famous, mythical carpenter that corresponds with Tiphareth. We’re told, three times in this final paragraph, that the carpenter is a soliloquizer “talking all the time to keep himself awake.” I’m reminded of Sufis who use the metaphor of being “awake” to indicate consciousness that transcends the automatic (automaton), mechanical consciousness which they call “sleep.”

The term “soliloquy” gets frequently used in plays to indicate a character’s speech to the audience. The next chapter, 108, “Ahab and the Carpenter” gives what appears to be stage directions suggesting the form of a play without directly imitating one. This chapter has a nod to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Ahab calls the blacksmith Prometheus then orders from him a fifty-foot tall “complete man after a desirable pattern.” The full title of Shelley’s early 19th Century novel is: Frankenstein Or, The Modern Prometheus. In esoteric circles, Frankenstein often appears as a metaphor for the alchemical creation of higher bodies. Mel Brooks’ hilarious film, Young Frankenstein, gets highly recommended for this reason.  Bob Dylan uses this metaphor as the central theme in the song, “My Own Version of You” from his album Rough and Rowdy Ways. For example, in the lyrics we find:

“If I do it upright and put the head on straight

I'll be saved by the creature that I create”

Can you look at my face with your sightless eyes?

Can you cross your heart and hope to die?

Got the right spirit, you can feel it, you can hear it

You've got what they call "the immortal spirit"

You can feel it all night, you can feel it in the morn'

It creeps in your body the day you were born

One strike of lightning is all that I need

And a blast of electricity that runs at top speed

I wanna bring someone to life, turn back the years

Do it with laughter, and do it with tears”

It works better with the music, but you get the idea. I highly recommend listening to it multiple times over time. 

Chapter 109 presents a revealing confrontation between Ahab and Starbuck about the ship’s priorities. Ahab lets him know who is boss, then ends up following Starbuck’s suggestion after initially and forcefully resisting it. 

To bring it back to Melville, I’ll leave you with the comment Sophia Hawthorne said after reading Herman’s essay for her husband:

"the first person who has ever, in print apprehended Mr. Hawthorne." She called him "an invaluable person, full of daring & questions, & with all momentous considerations afloat in the crucible of his mind."

Sophia, of course, means “wisdom.”  Some branches of Gnostics considered her the feminine aspect of the Divine, and she was also known as the “Bride of Christ.”

Next week: please read Chapter 110, “Queequeg in his Coffin” to Chapter 116, “The Dying Whale.”

 

New from Hilaritas: 'Beyond Chaos and Beyond,' new podcast

One of my favorite posthumous Robert Anton Wilson works, Beyond Chaos and Beyond, has been issued in an enhanced new edition by Hilaritas Press. In the newsletter announcing the reissue, Rasa explains, "This new edition is essentially the same written material, but it features enhanced photographs and many upgraded design elements."

As Rasa explains, the book has an excellent biographical essay about RAW penned by Scott Apel and reprints a great deal of RAW material, including writings from the newsletter Trajectories that Apel and RAW put out. It also has a particularly good interview with RAW, maybe my all-time favorite, dating back to 1977.

Also announced today, a new podcast: "Hilaritas guest host Zach West chats with Rachel Turetzky, Doug Wingate, and David Jay Brown about their new book with Original Falcon Press, Eight Circuit Ascension: A Guide to Metaprogramming the Multidimensional Self." 

I will have more on the podcast and the new book. 

Mycelium Parish News is a nice Discordian catalog

I do my my best to cover Discordian doings and Robert Anton Wilson/Robert Shea news at this blog, but there's a lot out there and there is interesting news I miss. For much of that, see the 2024 edition of the Mycelium Parish News, which I ordered a few weeks ago. It's available on Etsy.

The publication covers much of the news I had up here, such as the release of Chapel Perilous, the RAW biography by Gabriel Kennedy, and last year's releases from Hilaritas Press. But there are many items new to me. 

For example, Forklore Rising was new to me. "Inspired by an encounter with druids in London, Ben Edge set out to record the folk rituals of Britain. Folklore Rising features Edge's paintings, along with accounts of these ceremonies, from Obby Oss events in the West Country, through to churches filled with clowns. This is a fantastic portrayal of Britain's strangeness."

I like surrealism, so I went to download Patastrophe No. 9. The link was bad, but I found it here.  And here is a link to their publications. 

I suspect that most of you who send off for the Mycelium Parish News will find something to like. 

Three new podcasts

Three new podcasts sombunall of you may be interested in:

The Team Human podcast, featuring Prop Anon, Grant Morrison and Douglas Rushkoff,  The focus is on Prop's Chapel Perilous biography of RAW. 

Jim O'Shaughnessy, the Reason Magazine interview. O'Shaughnessy is a major RAW fan who helped with the fundraising for the first issue of Tales of Illuminatus. And he does talk about RAW in the interview -- interviewer Nick Gillespie has posted a clip on X.com. 

Also, Jesse Walker appears on the Non Serviam podcast, and I am told RAW comes up in this conversation, too. 

I've supplied links but these should also be available on your favorite podcasting app. 

Paul McCartney's early British tour

Paul McCartney with his wife, Linda, in 1976 (public domain photo). 

I have been reading The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1, by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, which covers McCartney's solo career from 1969 to 1973 in great detail (more than 700 pages.) Volume 2, which covers McCartney from 1974 to 1980, came out in December.

Paul's first tour as a solo artist was a low key affair in February 1972, in which he and an early version of Wings would show up unannounced on college campuses and book shows on the spot for audiences of usually only a few hundred people. (The Kozinn book says the Oxford show on Feb. 23 listed at the link did not take place.) 

As Liverpool has been important to the British Discordian movement, I thought I would share what happened when Paul tried to line up a show there. Of course, Liverpool was the hometown for him and the other three Beatles:

Visiting Merseyside without trying to set up a concert was unthinkable, but cruising the streets of Liverpool unnoticed was impossible for one of the city's best-loved sons. On Sunday afternoon Paul asked his roadies to drive around town and sniff out a venue. Their mission did not go well. Being a Sunday, the University of Liverpool campus was deserted. Quickly devising a backup plan, the brothers-in-law figured one of Liverpool's many playhouses would roll out the red carpet for Paul and his group. Strolling into the Everyman Theatre, Ian found a carpenter fine-tuning the set for a new production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, due to open on February 23. He happily took a message to the theatre's boss, Alan Dosser. "There's a group here called Wings who want to play a gig here tonight," the carpenter ventured. Dosser, not a follower of popular music, and having a schedule to meet, snapped, "Fuck off! Can't they see we're in the middle of a tech! Fuck off!" Walking in late on the conversation, musician Terry Canning dashed out of the theater onto Hope Street to see the van disappearing around the corner.

McCartney's return to the Liverpool concert stage would have to wait. (Page 373.) (Canning composed incidental music for Ken Campbell's production of Illuminatus!). 

The book has very detailed accounts of Paul in the recording studio and his interactions with other musicians, record producers and recording engineers. I knew who some of these folks are (e.g. Alan Parsons), but some of my favorite bits in the book describe encounters with more obscure figures, who suddenly find themselves working with the most famous pop musician in the world. Here's a bit about a guy named Paul Beaver:

"On Thursday afternoon I was scheduled to do a session at Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, but they wouldn't tell me who it was for," Beaver remembered with a smile. "I got there, set up the synthesizer and I sat in the recording engineer chair behind the console. Then this guy walked into the control room and with an intimidating English accent said,  'Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?' It was Paul!" (Pages 244-245).

 

'Illuminatus!' tops list of 'weird but brilliant' books

We have a winner!

A new article at AOL Online, "35 Weird But Brilliant Books If You Are Seeking To Read Something Different, As Shared Online," supposedly based on "netizens in various online threads" (a methodology isn't spelled out) has 35 works of fiction ranked. The top-ranked book is Illuminatus! by Wilson and Shea. 

The author of the article, Denis Krotovas, ventures opinions on some of the 35 works bur is silent about Illuminatus! There is actually no information about Illuminatus! at all in the article, just a cover image. Still, it's good for the work to get some coverage, I guess.

Of the 35 rankings (confusingly, for some rankings more than one title is listed), I've read (besides Illuminatus!, of course) Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveller, Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany, 334 by Thomas Disch and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Draw your own conclusions as to whether I am a weirdo reader. I really do need to get around to reading Tristam Shandy. 

Hat tip, Nick Helseg-Larsen. 

Review: midnight's simulacra by Nick Black

 

"code stoned. debug sober. document drunk.and never trust the nuclear regulatory commission."

midnight's simulcra is a challenging but interesting novel from Nick Black, an engineer who attended Georgia Tech University; the novel is largely set on the campus of Georgia Tech or in Atlanta. It is consciously modeled on Ulysses by James Joyce and also draws much of its inspiration from Illuminatus! 

It was published last year. The official website bills it as "a hysterical, scientifically rigorous, slow burn of a thriller, a modern picaresque, a portrait of autists as young men, and unlike any other novel you've read" and as "An autofiction of rogue engineering."

I would describe it as an ambitious work of modern fiction. Anyone who is familiar with Ulysses will see many references to it in midnight's simulacra. There is for example an interior monologue by a a woman in the novel obviously modeled after the one by Molly Bloom. The plot is driven by the interactions of two males with intersecting lives: Sherman Spartacus Katz and Michael Luis Bolaño, although the action takes place over many  years, not in just one day.  They meet at an academic quiz bowl and decide to both attend Georgia Tech. They eventually get into large scale LSD manufacturing and distributing and then Katz gets interested in smuggling and enhancing yellowcake  uranium.

Just as Ulysses fans can visit actual places in Dublin that are mentioned  in the novel, midnight's simulacra takes place in numerous real Atlanta locations. For example, there's an important confrontation in an Atlanta bar, where Bolaño buys a drink for the "Molly Bloom" character. I looked it up, and it's an actual Atlanta bar; you can go there  and buy the same drink. 

Nick Black's Goodreads account shows that he has read many important modern novels (David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which I haven't gotten around to, is apparently another favorite). 

His novel's most daring innovation is the various nonfiction essays and explanations on various aspects of science, including how to manufacture LSD, the history of modern cosmology, the history of illicit LSD manufacturing in the U.S., and many other topics. Many of these lectures-within-the-novel are quite dense with mathematical  formulas and technical terms. In the introduction to the book, Black gives the reader "permission" to skim the portions of the book that are too difficult. I really learned a lot from this book, although sections were opaque to me. I use Linux for example, but I'm not a coder, and I could not follow everything that was happening when Katz fears his machine has been compromised and he reinstalls Debian Linux (a form of Linux considered more difficult to use than, say, Ubuntu or Linux Mint, distros that cater to nontechnical users. Among his numerous interests, Black is a Debian developer). 

So portions of the book can be difficult, although having said that, the main story is not difficult to follow. I would say that while Ulysses is largely driven by Bloom's interest in sex, midnight's simulacra tends to focus on drugs (some of the characters use a bong named after a Klein bottle, a good example of the intersection of interests). In addition, while Ulysses is generally life-affirming, midnight's simulcra can be read as kind of a tragedy. 

The five main sections of the novel are named after the five main sections of Illuminatus!, and references to Eris and to phrases such as "Hail Eris!" and "All Hail Discordia" figure prominently. As with Ulysses, there are more references to Illuminatus! that careful readers will catch. 

And here is a bit of synchronicity, one that I don't know if Nick Black knows about: As far as I know, the only literary award Illuminatus! ever received was the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, given at the Worldcon in Atlanta in 1986. (I attended the Worldcon, one of my favorites, but did not know about the ceremony and missed it). 

Portions of the book are quite funny in a dark, sardonic way, e.g. "You can always know the right way to interpret a situation by where Sartre, history's biggest piece of shit, stood on it." 

midnight's simulacra is available for purchase at the official website and also at Amazon, in hardcover, paperback and ebook. (The paper editions are the preferred editions and  include illustrations the ebooks don't have; I have ordered a copy of the paperback). 

The official website also has a hefty "try before you buy" excerpt of the first part and interesting background on the novel, including a partial bibliography of the references. 

Moby Dick online reading group, chapters 101-104

 

Pompey's Pillar, referenced in the text, Creative Commons photo. source. 

This week: Chapter 101, "The Decanter," to  Chapter 104, "The Fossil Whale."

I have written that, for my money, the best passages in Moby Dick are in the chapters in which action takes place. In this section, we get (1) A discussion of the food aboard well-stocked whaleships; (2) A discussion of the bones of the whale; (3) Measurements of a whale's skeleton; and (4) a discussion of fossil whales. Not a lot of drama!  Nonetheless, I have a few notes. (After I read this section, I went out to eat in a local Cambodian restaurant. I'm struck by how well people can eat in the modern United States, as compared to Melville's time). 

A couple of annotations:

"I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far beneath the skin of an adult whale." (Chapter 102, "A Bower in the Arsacids"). A kayaker recently was briefly swallowed by a whale. 

[After Melville imagines the spine of the whale being piled up vertically] "But now it's done it looks much like Pompey's Pillar." (Chapter 103, "Measurement of the Whale's Skeleton"). Pompey's Pillar is an ancient monument of the city of Alexandria in Egypt, it still stands, see this article (it was set up by Diocletian, not Pompey). 

"And here be it said, that whenever it has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased for that purpose; because that famous lexicographer’s uncommon personal bulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author like me." (Chapter 104). This references Samuel Johnson. 

In the Dec. 30 episode of this chronicle, Oz wrote, "Encountering strange beings in literature inevitably brings comparisons with H. P. Lovecraft and his unique talent for otherworldly moods, atmospheres and gnarly life forms that can seem terrifying. I don’t know if Lovecraft read Moby Dick. He was encouraged to read classics of literature at an early age, but Moby Dick didn’t really start to get on anyone’s radar until the 1920s." (Note that in the comments I point out evidence that Lovecraft did read Moby Dick.) Anyway, I thought of Oz' comments when I read this passage  from Chapter 104, "The Fossil Whale,"

"When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebræ, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with man. Here Saturn’s grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world’s circumference, not an inhabitable hand’s breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world was the whale’s; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab’s harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh’s. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the unspeakable terrors."

This bit, from the same chapter, seems self-referential:

"One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it."

Next week: Please read Chapter 105, "Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? == Will He Perish?" to Chapter 109, "Ahab and Starbuck in the Cabin?"

Sunday links

 Erotic Secrets of Pompeii

I did not mean to do links two days in a row, but I have some things to get caught up on:

"Erotic Secrets of Pompeii play wild, weird apocalyptic lounge music - a twisted amalgamation of angular art rock and transgressive post-punk, transmitted directly from the heart of the forbidden zone.

"ESOP's music is populated by grotesque imagery and vivid symbolism, drawing from artists across different mediums, such as Terry Gilliam, Salvador Dali, Leonora Carrington, Francis Bacon, William Blake, Robert Anton Wilson and Leigh Bowery." Official website.  (Thanks, Nick Helweg-Larsen).

“If cannabis use ‘causes’ schizophrenia,it is absolutely impossible that the rate of schizophrenia would not be going up with the rates of cannabis use increasing 1,000-fold,”said Dr. Peter Grinspoon, a cannabis specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Occult Elvis. 

Jason Louv podcast, "The DARK TRUTH About Wilhelm Reich." I have not seen it. 

Philip K. Dick as a prose stylist.

Saturday links

Jesse Walker on Tom Robbins: "Tom Robbins was also secretly a bridge between my two books. He was a DJ at KRAB in the '60s (check out one of his shows here: https://krabarchive.com/playlist/1967-07-07-nftu.html) and he credited a Robert Anton Wilson article with converting him to anarchism." Also, see Bobby Campbell's comment on yesterday's post. 

Paul Giamatti to play Art Bell.

One ghost town for all 50 states (video link starts with Ong's Hat). 

A promising opioid alternative. 

Sitting Now podcast with a long interview of Prop Anon.

 Twin Peaks survival guide (if you don't want to watch or rewatch every single episode).

Robert Anton Wilson, Tom Robbins fan!

 The above is via RAW Semantics on Bluesky, Brian writes, "Letter from Tom Robbins printed on the feedback page of RAW's Trajectories #2 newsletter (Autumn 1988),"

There was a time, decades ago, when it seemed like everyone in the U.S. was reading Tom Robbins, I asked Brian if Robbins was popular in Britain, too, he wrote, "Not very well known, Tom, AFAIK. He's another that I first heard of from RAW."

Then again, I think Brian may be young, at least compared to me (I'm 67) and I  suspect the people who remember when Robbins  was popular in the U.S. tend to be pretty old. 

A quote from Tom Robbins, via Todd Purse

 

The above is from Todd Purse, Bobby Campbell's Tales of Illuminatus collaborator. Todd writes, "Hey y’all! Sorry it’s been a minute, had the worst flu in years that completely wiped out the whole house for over a week! I’ve been feeling better the last few days but today is the first time I feel 100% human again! So much going on and to get caught up on, but for now here’s a drawing of a beautiful Tom Robbins quote in honor of his passing, one of my favorites to ever do it and just love these words so much right now."

RIP Tom Robbins

 

Tom Robbins (public domain photo)

Novelist Tom Robbins, a Robert Anton Wilson fan, has died. His heyday was decades ago, but I enjoyed his work. Here is the New York Times obituary (gift link).  And you can also read the Seattle Times obituary. 

'Tales' website revamped, 'New Trajectories' webring fixed

 

As Bobby Campbell prepares to launch the second Kickstarter campaign for the second issue of his Tales of Illuminatus comic book series, he's done some renovations to his Internet presence, as announced in his latest newsletter. 

The Tales of Illuminatus website has been revamped. The site now has newsfeeds from Bluesky, you can sign up for the prelaunch for the second issue and Bobby has decided after getting feedback to restore the free web version of the first issue. 

As for the webring, Bobby explains, "Back in 2022 we established a Discordian webring as part of that year’s Maybe Day celebration, though due to the limitations of some of the walled garden platforms people use, or trouble with placing HTML code, many of the sites weren’t able to display functioning navigation links, so the webring didn’t quite work as a ring, and was rather more of a directory.

"Though as part of network updates leading into issue #2 I thought it would be interesting to create a fully functioning webring. So I’ve limited entrees to those sites with functioning navigation links.

"(If anyone’s site was removed that would like to rejoin, LMK and I’ll help with installing the code!)"

Eleven websites are currently listed in the webring, including this one, and Jechidah, which has just added  another entry in the ongoing Sex Magicians reading group. 

Moby Dick online reading group, Chapters 95-100

 

William Carlos Williams (portrait by Man Ray, public domain photo)

This  week: Chapter 95, "The Cassock," through Chapter 100, "Leg and Arm"

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Chapter 96 reminds me of Lovecraft at times:  

Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm. 

Coincidentally, I have mentioned Ecclesiastes repeatedly to my seventh graders this week, which Ishmael calls “the truest of all books.” I find it interesting that optimistic Bob Wilson loved Moby Dick so much, and Ishmael seems very pessimistic. Perhaps Melville did not share Ishmael’s pessimism. Or perhaps I oversimplify Ishmael’s perceptions. 

In chapter 99 various characters interpret the doubloon as we interpret the novel and the interpretations of the doubloon, and then we interpret each other’s interpretations of the interpretations. 

Look at

                                                what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
                        despised poems.
                                                It is difficult
to get the news from poems
                        yet men die miserably every day
                                                for lack
of what is found there.

- “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”, William Carlos Williams, 1955 

“I have nothing to say and I am saying it.” - John Cage. I think I first encountered this quote at a concert for composer Elliott Schwarz’s fiftieth birthday on January 19, 1986. Cage loved Finnegans Wake. 

I feel grateful to this study group for helping me make it through the transition to the second Trump presidency. I don’t feel like I have much to say about the novel, but it helps me put things in perspective. I still don’t understand the connection with Koko’s lucky harpoon in the “Yacht Rock” web series. The final episode of the series does remind me of the ending of Bob Wilson’s The Homing Pigeons. 

I don’t think of Moby Dick as poetry, but I do read it out loud usually. When I read that quote by Williams, I often think of Homer, but I don’t know what Williams really had in mind. Our current situation, what Bob Heinlein called “The Crazy Years”, does feel like finding oneself lost at sea. 

Next week: Please read Chapter 101, "The Decanter," to  Chapter 104, "The Fossil Whale."

Alternative cover 'Tales' released [UPDATED]

 

As promised, a new alternate cover Tales of Illuminatus has been released, with a new cover by Todd Purse. Get it here. This is a limited edition second print run. 

UPDATE: Shortly after I posted the above, Bobby dropped another Tales of Illuminatus Substack newsletter, chock full of news.  So check it out, I will have a followup blog post. Relevant to the above: "We started with 50 and are already down to 37, so haste may be warranted."

What I read last month

Alliance Unbound, C.J. Cherryh and Jane Fancher. An enjoyable space opera. Cherryh continues to write very readable books after decades of producing SF novels.

Love and Loss: The Short Life of Ray Chapman, Scott Longert. A book about the Cleveland Indians shortstop who was hit in the head by a New York Yankee beanball pitcher in a 1920 game in New York and who died hours later. Also an interesting look at professional sports back in the day. 

Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come, Danny King. I'm doing a lot of reading for the Prometheus Award. This one is a satiric novel about a woke, left wing Britain in which cancelled people are sent to concentration camps. Pretty well done, funny and grim. I had never  heard of the author before, but apparently he is prolific. 

Terra II ...A Way Out. Timothy Leary and collaborators. Inspirational Hilaritas Press reprint of a key Leary text. Here are some of my comments on the book. 

Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy, Michael Huemer. Feeling the need to get a general background in philosophy after getting interested in Epicureanism, I read this introduction, which is interesting and had plenty of humor. Among other opinions, Huemer is a libertarian and a vegetarian. 

Interstellar MegaChef, Lavanya Lakshminarayan. Another book I read as a Prometheus Awards judge, about a woman who flees Earth to participate in a cooking competition on another planet. Not terrible, but I have  no desire to read the sequel.

Waffle Irons vs. the Horde, Dr. Insensitive Jerk. Another Prometheus Awards assignment, an unusual novel by an unusual author. As with his other books, lots of cruelty, lots of amusing bits. 

I am on Goodreads. 

Social media update

Artwork for the "Robert Anton Wilson" Bluesky account. 

While there are still RAW fans on X.com, there has been a definite shift over to Bluesky, continuing a trend I wrote about earlier. 

I'm still on both, as I still find both useful. There are quite a few accounts that seem to mostly if not always post on Bluesky rather than Twitter. A couple of examples: the "Robert Anton Wilson" account maintained by Bobby Campbell is only posting daily on Bluesky now, and Bluesky also is where to go to follow RAW Semantics. But the Robert Anton Wilson Trust is only on X, at least for now. Many post at both places, e.g. Jesse Walker for example. 

On both services, I tend to rely on my own lists rather than the feeds offered by the company. On Bluesky, for example, I mostly rely on my "Illuminating" list. 

I am on Facebook, too, but try not to spend too much time there. 

Book review: 'A Half-Built Garden'

[My friend Tracy Harms, formerly of Cleveland, now in the mountains of Colorado, came back into town a few months ago and mentioned he was reading a really interesting novel. When he finished it, he offered to give me a book review, and as this is by definition a blog for people who like to read, I thought sumbunall of you might be interested. The Management.]

By TRACY B. HARMS
Special guest blogger

What If? What if climate change actually is an existential crisis, but humanity gets on top of the problem? What if the political climate shifts to reprioritize around Earth's ecology? What if technology is deployed to reverse the accumulated effects of early industrialization, while providing an improving standard of living for humans? What if technology is directed toward understanding the biosphere, understanding economic production trade-offs, and helping people come to agreement using such information?

What if, in getting our act together, humanity winds up Woke As Fuck?

A Half-Built Garden is a 2022 novel by Ruthanna Emrys that's utopian, introspective, tech-savvy, intricate, and full of amusement.  It's totally conformant to the familiar formula of first contact stories.  There aren't a lot of surprises to be had here at the large scale. The title tips us off to the optimism that pervades this story. The dance of attempts between humans and aliens at mutual comprehension proceeds with rather few twists and turns; this isn't a display of dazzling plot construction. It is, however, an intricate accomplishment of character development, relationship nuance, social variety, and cultural tensions.

This novel is indisputably Hard Sci Fi, at least if one concedes the familiar allowance that the aliens show up with a faster-than-light hack.  Who among us will not happily allow that in?  It's required for the classic First Contact motif and does not grate.

Insofar as we look at the technology of Earth in this near-future setting, it's an extremely plausible extension from today, with features that are impressive advancements for the few years it rolls the calendar forward. Computer interface improvements stand out, but the innovations in communication networking are a foreground topic.  Biology is also prominent as a science continually relevant to story development.  The one tech aspect I thought might be unrealistic was an absence of AI-chatbots; even new SF novels can't help being dated.

What we yearn for in science fiction is not just portrayals of technologically improved futures, though, right?  We (or at least, I) want a story that shows how people live in some imagined world of the future.  How are their lives different? What's normal then that's not normal now?  What new problems do they have?  What tensions are they carrying from the past, especially around whatever changed in the world between our Now and this fictional Later?

A Half-Built Garden delivers big-time in that regard.  Learning about society on Earth is arguably more interesting than learning about the society of the newly arrived aliens, which is saying something.  The aliens are indeed alien, with various complexities among them that lead to suspenseful situations.  But the humans are alien, too.  Or maybe they're extremely familiar.  It will depend on who you know, what circles you frequent, and what counts as normal in your family and among your friends.

Which is why I capitalized "woke" near the start of this review.  If that word sets you off, and if adding to it ideas like "trans" make it worse, you might find this novel difficult to get through.  The dominant powers that be in this world of the future might be called commune-dwelling eco-freaks or even "radical left lunatics" to borrow a phrase from a successful politician.  There's nothing between this book's covers that's going to buffer the reader from ontological shock if these sorts of people aren't part of the reader's ontology.

Yet, everyone is up against this problem, not just readers of A Half-Built Garden but also the characters within it.  Diversity rubs everybody the wrong way, at some limit, and this story is about hitting those limits and having to find ways to overcome the frictions. It's a tale of problems and problem-solving where social problems are prominent and their solutions vital.  Yet these clashes are frequently very funny.  I grinned and laughed out loud often!

Between the plausible and distinctive personalities we're introduced to and the unfamiliar layers at which these people clash, the story is propelled by psychological engagement. Yes, it's a slow burn; this is not begging to become an action movie.  There's a good deal of cooking, eating, and cleaning up. There's child care to be done.  There are crops to be grown and pollution to be monitored.  Real life doesn't stop just because the aliens popped in unexpectedly.  That's part of the implicit message of this book: how we choose to live had better be viable for the long term if we're actually serious about survival over the long term.

By the climax of the story we have come to know roughly a handful of factions that are contending to shape the future according to their own sensibilities.  All of them have the long-term, large-scale flourishing of all people as their goal.  It truly isn't clear which options are best, but it is clear that some possibilities would be tragic.  The author succeeds at communicating several conflicting perspectives rather than collapsing the crisis into a sermon as to How We Should Solve Global Warming, a possibility one guesses might have been tempting.

What arrives instead is a sense of priority to problem solving and how the adoption of appropriate means is itself a valuable end.  It's a meditation on the necessity of change, the discomforts of change, and an optimism of approaching impending change with resolve to cherish one's values in the process.  Pretty cool if you ask me.  With the final page turned, I'm going to miss the people I got to know in A Half-Built Garden.

Prop Anon podcast interviews Jesse Walker

 

"The United States of Paranoia: A Conversation with Jesse Walker" is a new episode of the Prop Anon podcast. 

About the podcast, Jesse wrote on Bluesky, "I had a good conversation with @propanon.bsky.social about literature, politics, conspiracy theories, and why it sometimes feels like history is in a holding pattern."

Prop's blurb says, "In this episode, I spoke with Jesse Walker, books editor at Reason magazine and author of The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory, about his book and the five "primal myths" of conspiracy theories, the literary legacy of Robert Anton Wilson, and the incoming Trump administration. Are we living in the United States of Paranoia?"

New Bobby Campbell video

 

Thought I would share Bobby Campbell's video on YouTube, commenting on the current situation. You can subscribe to Bobby's Weirdoverse channel. 

Moby Dick online reading group, Chapters 88-94

 

Ambergris in its dried  form.  (Creative Commons photo,  source.)

Moby Dick online reading group, Chapters 88-94,  “Schools & Schoolmasters” through “A Squeeze of the Hand”

Chapter 88

This chapter, describing schools of whales, also was one of my favorites. I liked this passage about the "rock stars" among the whales: "For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic."

And I liked this passage about whales becoming solitary savants when they get older, like Sigismundo in the woods in Nature's God: "Almost universally, a lone whale—as a solitary Leviathan is called—proves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets."

Chapter 90

Anything involving the British royal family seems to be a case of "you can't make this shit up." According to Wikipedia, "Under the law of the United Kingdom, whales (mammal) and sturgeons are royal fish, and when taken become the personal property of the monarch of the United Kingdom as part of his or her royal prerogative." We are also  informed, "Under current law, the Receiver of Wreck is the official appointed to take possession of royal fish when they arrive on English shores. The law of royal fish continues to excite some notice and occasional use, as evidenced when a fisherman caught and sold a sturgeon in Swansea Bay in 2004.[7] After informing of the sturgeon to Queen Elizabeth II, the fisherman, a man named Robert Davies, received notice that he could use the 264lb catch 'as he saw fit'."

I'm sure any British person can tell  you what the Receiver of Wreck is, but I'm an American, so I looked it up: "The Receiver of Wreck is an official who administers law dealing with maritime wrecks and salvage in some countries having a British administrative heritage. In the United Kingdom, the Receiver of Wreck is also appointed to retain the possession of royal fish on behalf of the British crown."

Chapter 91

The chapter about a ship called the Rose-Bud made me think of Citizen Kane. 

Chapter 92

"Now this ambergris is a very curious substance ...  " I've posted a photo, above, if anyone is curious about what it looks like. 

"Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors ..." Even when I read  19th century novels, I am nagged about taking care of my health.  

Chapter 93

I wasn't quite sure what this passage about poor Pip meant, but I thought it was quite striking: "He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God."

Chapter 94

I liked this passage about getting pleasure: "I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country."

Next week: Please read Chapter 95, "The Cassock," through Chapter 100, "Leg and Arm"

Gabriel Kennedy update

 

Many of you have probably read the well-researched Robert Anton Wilson biography by Gabriel Kennedy (e.g. Prop Anon), Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson.

If you want more, Mr. Kennedy has done two recent podcasts. Details and links via his most recent Substack newsletter, where he writes, "I’ve sought to include differing information about Wilson in each interview. So, one can listen to each and gain a deeper wider expanse of knowledge around Wilson’s life and times."

The Hilaritas Press podcast interview with him, previously announced for this month, apparently has been pushed back to March. 

John Higgs: Dr. Who book, David Lynch and the current moment

 The Palmer House from Twin Peaks. Interesting article here. 

The latest newsletter from John Higgs gives an update on his new Dr. Who book, and there's also an interesting essay on David Lynch and the current political moment.

The new book is Exterminate/Regenerate: The Story of Doctor Who and it will be out in April, at least in the UK; I don't see a listing on Amazon, so it may be an import for American readers, at least for  now. If you live in Great Britain, chances are good you'll have a chance to see John talk about the book: "So far I’ve got events lined up in York, Liverpool, Stratford, Bath, Margate, Shoreham, Laugharne, Belfast, Wendover, Sheffield, London, Lewes, Clevedon and Cardiff. Keep an eye on my events page, where I will be posting further links and details as soon as I have them."

The death of David Lynch inspires a new essay from John, also in the newsletter. I don't want to try to summarize it, but one aspect of the essay is that he contrasts Agatha Christie style mysteries with David Lynch mysteries:

"Lynch-type mysteries tend to be shunned by the mainstream, but they linger in the mind in a way that Christie-style mysteries don’t. Once seen, they can never really be forgotten. And the fact that his work affects people so profoundly, I think, can teach us something valuable about the digital world."