Moby Dick online reading group, conclusion of the novel

I particularly liked this image from the Jan. 27 blog post, so I'm going to post it again. 

Chapter 135, "The Chase -- Third Day" and "The Epilogue."

So we conclude the reading group that began on Nov. 4. Of course, if my fellow bloggers, Oz and Eric, want to add something and do another post, I would be happy to run it.

I would suppose that some of the people who might be reading along with us are reading the novel for  the first time, and don't know what happens at the end. So I would prefer to avoid spoilers!

Still, I feel comfortable noting one more time that Melville does well when action is taking place.  

"What a lovely day again! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world." A lovely passage about a day that will be filled with horrors.

"Time itself held long breaths with keen suspense." A moment of calm before the action.

And the ending has a couple of nice ironies to it, but I can't explain that without giving away the ending!

The last sentence of the novel is referenced in the title of "Another Orphan," a 1982 novella by John Kessel, a story about a contemporary man who goes to sleep and wakes up to find himself aboard an old-fashioned sailing ship with a diverse crew: "The crew was an odd mixture of types and races: there were white and  black, a group of six Orientals who sat  apart on the rear deck and took no part  in the work, men with British and German accents, and an eclectic collection of others — Polynesians, an Indian, a huge, shaven-headed black African, and a mostly naked man covered from head to toe with purple tattoos, whorls and swirls and vortexes, images and symbols, none of them quite decipherable as a familiar object or person." 

Plus, the ship's captain offers a pretty good clue about the situation: "Fallon looked back with him and saw the black figure there, heavily bearded, tall, in a long coat, steadying himself by a hand in the rigging. The oil lamp above the compass slightly illuminated the dark face — and gleamed deathly white along with the ivory leg that projected from beneath his black coat. Fixed, immovable, the man leaned heavily on it. 'Ahab,' the sailor said."

Kessels story won a Nebula Award, so some of the science fiction fans reading this blog entry may well remember it. Discussion here, the particular issue of F&SF is available on the Internet archive. 

Thank you to Oz and Eric, and to everyone who has followed along with us for weeks!

 

Sunday links

 Mike Gathers on "My Lyme Journey." 

Radio interview of Joseph Matheny from 2003. 

Lessons from Steven Spielberg. 

New supersonic airliner is on the way. 

New interview with Steve "Fly" Pratt

Steve's album for the Tales of Illuminatus project, available on Bandcamp. Also, see my interview. 

R.U. Sirius interviews Steve "Fly" Pratt about his use of AI in making music. Here's the first question and answer of the Mindplex magazine interview:

RU Sirius: How do you view your creative project (in the broadest lifelong sense) as a process that benefits from integrating current AI systems?

Steve Fly: The latest iteration of my quarter-century (and counting) of research into Robert Anton Wilson’s Tale of the Tribe is a collaboration using some AI tools. Tale of The Tribe is a mountain range whose size and scope requires training to traverse, hill-climbing toward coherence. So far I’ve produced over 65 stanzas with corresponding audio. The first iteration is structured on 60 stanzas to represent the 60 vertices of the Buckminsterfullerene. This is prompted from a line in Ezra Pound’s Cantos “buckie has gone in for structure.” The structure of the poem/album is a tribute to Buckminster Fuller, whom RAW admired and studied with, and it snugly sits as one of the 13 primary inspirations in the way RAW conceived/perceived the universe.

These first 60 stanzas are a proof of concept, to be built on in the next iteration. The goal is for each stanza to also function as a concept for a new core ontology, the totality of the 60 stanzas. As Ben put it: “an overlapping yet somewhat diverse set of perspectives on the core ontological concept”.

More here. 

Timothy Leary's space migration plan

A space colony from Gerard O'Neill's book,The High Frontier. (Public domain image, via Wikipedia). 

In "Mine the Moon, Seed the Stars," the space migration part of Timothy Leary's SMI2LE proposal gets a nice writeup in the November 1976 issue of Mother Jones magazine. The writeup by  Don Goldsmith does a good job of covering the details of Gerard O'Neill's proposal for colonies in space. 

Goldsmith's article opens with a description of Leary talking to several dozen listeners in a house in Berkeley. "The man's name is Timothy Leary. Berkeley made him a PhD, Harvard a professor, LSD an ex-professor, the media a devil, the government a convict, prison a space-oriented philosopher. He is, perhaps, sane. But what is this elixir he is pushing? Space travel to other star systems? The aging process slowed by a factor of ten, halted entirely before long? Can you get behind it?" I thought the article would tell us more about Leary, but it shifts quickly to O'Neill and the pros and cons of his proposal. 

Goldsmith, 82, has written many space-related books and also is an astronomer.

Hat tip, Jesse Walker. 

The number 23 from RAW Semantics

 

From RAW Semantics on Bluesky: "Oh crap - after all the time I spent trying to get this "Escher" 23 blueprint image right, I forgot to add it to my goddamn blog post! Now inserted, near the end. (And it's a good, long blog post - check it out!)"

I really liked the artwork, so I am sharing if you missed it in the earlier version of the post. 

Jesse Walker reviews the RAW biography

 Jesse Walker in Reason magazine: The time an "acquaintance informed me that he had met a member of the Illuminati at a Grateful Dead show ... Every now and then, one of them would approach him at a Dead show just to check in on how he was doing and how well he was working toward his innate potential. Then another Deadhead piped up to say that he'd had the same experience."

This is part of a roundup reviewing two books: Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today, by Phil Tinline and Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson, by Gabriel Kennedy.

About Chapel Perilous, Jesse writes, "Gabriel Kennedy has drawn on everything from Wilson's early journalism to his cameos in the Chicago Red Squad's surveillance files. Not just an in-depth look at Wilson's life and career, Chapel Perilous is an ably conducted tour through the many milieus that Wilson passed through—worlds of mystics and atheists, scientists and Playboy staffers, the antiwar and civil rights and libertarian movements. Not to mention pranksters and conspiracy theorists."

Read the whole thing.

Tuesday links

From Bobby Campbell on Bluesky, quoting Israel Regardie's intro to Prometheus Rising. 

Many of these probably deserve a blog posting all to themselves, but there's been a lot of news lately, so I am getting caught up.

New blog posting from RAW Semantics: "Cosmic Trigger 4 'is' you." As usual, the art is good, too. Spookah and I have weighed in, come  join us. 

Vayse podcasting interviewing Sequoyah Kennedy, co-author of Ong's Hat: COMPLEAT. In his newsletter, Joseph Matheny strongly recommends it, writing, "I’d go so far as to say this episode can be considered a COMPLEAT companion piece while retaining its strength as a stand-alone."

New John Higgs newsletter. New London dates have been added to the book tour. 

The Mycellium newsletter from Michelle Olley: Three new Discordian events at The Cockpit in London. 

Michael Grossberg on Lionel Shriver's novel, Mania. 

Moby Dick online reading group, chapters 131-134

 

This Week: Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," to Chapter 134, "The Chase -- Second Day."

By OZ FRITZ
Special guest blogger

Around about the early 1850s Herman Melville predicted that America would be the most powerful country in the world by the turn of the 20th Century and it most definitely required a robust national literature equal to its stature. This goes a long way toward explaining why he put so much into Moby Dick – all the Biblical and Shakespearean references and allusions and a plethora of other academic indicators afforded by a broad, rich and interested education in the arts combined with well-traveled life experiences; his philosophical questions and realizations; the vast panoramic scenes used as a canvas to create his masterpiece. Moby Dick became a cornerstone of the new, American Literature. 

 D.H. Lawrence helped codify this nascent body of writing with the publication in the early 1920s of Studies in Classic American Literature featuring two chapters on Melville, one of them on Moby Dick. According to Deleuze, Lawrence described “the new messianism, or the democratic contribution of American literature” … as a “morality of life in which the soul is fulfilled only by taking to the road, with no other aim, open to all contacts, never trying to save other souls, turning away from those that produce an overly authoritarian or groaning sound, forming even fleeting and unresolved chords and accords with its equals, with freedom as its sole accomplishment, always ready to free itself so as to complete itself.” 

Perhaps we now see this from the other side – having been a Great Power since the end of WW II, America seems to be exiting stage left (as Snagglepuss* might say) from the world stage with its new protectionist policies, trade wars, and threatened abandonment of allies. Not to mention the brutal, scorched earth policy of dismantling government.  American ideals may yet survive in its literature having outlived their existence in the morality of the power possessors who steer the ship of state (currently like drunken sailors).

*Snagglepuss, a pink, anthropomorphic mountain lion with a black tie and upturned collar, was a character in Hanna-Barbera cartoons, known for his catchphrases like "Heavens to Murgatroyd!" and "Exit, stage left!" After reading or watching the news these days I often catch myself exclaiming “Heavens to Murgatroyd!”

Great American literature with its joyful and tragic expressions of freedom from oppression will live on; there appears much to discover.  A case in point, partly built on the template of Moby Dick, is Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. In the first week of this reading group Jesse Bob commented:

“Lately, I've had my nose in another American novel that explores America's history, and many mysteries of metaphysical, existential and Fortean nature: Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, who influenced Robert Anton Wilson, but perhaps not as much as Moby Dick influenced both of them. Mason & Dixon presents itself in the style of an 18th century novel -- more Gulliver's Travels than Moby Dick -- but one can nonetheless detect the influence of Melville in its pages. Mason & Dixon places our heroes in Sumatra to chart the transit of Venus in its second episode. Moby Dick has Lazurus reaching for the Northern Lights before placing him in Sumatra in its second chapter.”

Sumatra mentioned in chapter 2 in both novels shows a direct resonance, the same opening note. I will point out more. Pynchon turns the Northern Lights into a communications medium for Jesuits at their headquarters in Quebec to send signals over the North Pole to conspirators. I’m also of the opinion that RAW influenced Pynchon – evident in Mason & Dixon (M&D). 

I find M&D an excellent read after Moby Dick (MD). In one sense, it could be its 20th Century sequel, taken several levels beyond. Like MD, M&D doesn’t concern itself with lot of plot or action. It’s framed around the work and partnership of an astronomer and surveyor. What the former does for whaling and the sea, the latter does for the land, the earth, and drawing precise lines on it. Both novels use the stars to navigate, one on land, the other in the sea; a little more so in Mason & Dixon. The detailing of every aspect connected with drawing the famous Mason & Dixon line including the context that led up to it, from complicated engineering details to a wide variety of human interactions with the locals and their crew and the politics of everything going on in America in the mid 1760s reminds one of the scale of Melville’s comprehensively covered ocean world.

Mason and Dixon has its own Ishmael, the Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke who ostensibly narrates the entire book in the form of bedtime stories to his nephews and nieces and surrounding relatives. He was the  Chaplain on the expedition and, earlier, also happened to accompany Mason and Dixon on their mission to observe the transit of Venus around the southern tip of Africa. Like Ishmael, Cherrycoke sometimes becomes an omniscient narrator, relating things it seems the character couldn’t possibly know or have seen.   

By chapter 4 Pynchon has the two, newly met, on a long ocean voyage aboard the Seahorse (a name combining the sea with a land animal; also horse = Horus) recalling the nautical mood of Moby Dick. The back story of Dixon is that he had a teacher, Emerson, – a sort of incognito magician/wizard and early electromagnetic technician who gives a nod to Moby Dick: “– a Ship to him is the Paradigm of the Universe. ‘All the possible forces in play are represented each by its representative sheets, stays, braces, and shrouds and such, – a set of lines in space, each at its particular angle. Easy to see why sea-captains go crazy, – god-like power over realities so simplified ….”

Earlier I presented Deleuze’s view that great writers create a foreign language within the language they write in. For Moby Dick that foreign language consists of the ocean and whales. Spookah pointed out that the foreign language of Finnegans Wake often appears more prevalent than the English language it’s written in. Mason & Dixon has the foreign language of 18th Century literature that takes a little getting used to; written as if done circa 1786. So, we find a lot of Capitalization, mostly, but not always nouns; also not all nouns get capitalized – Pynchon has fun with this Style. Often, usually at the end of a word, the letter “e” gets replac’d by an apostrophe. Some words are too strong for the religious sensitivity at the time to spell out completely like the D___l, or d___‘ d.  Famous historical figures turn up like Ben Franklin and George Washington. The details around the drawing of the Mason and Dixon line seem obsessively accurate. He also throws in anachronisms from the future without warning such as having Mason take the Staten Island Ferry which didn’t come into existence until 1817. This recalls the kind of guerilla ontology Robert Anton Wilson puts into his novels. We find overlaps, folds and atmospheric resonance between Wilson’s final Historical Chronicles novel, Nature’s God and Mason & Dixon. The former novel came out in 1991, the latter 6 years later in 1997.  

Learning to comprehend and assimilate the foreign language of great writers like Melville, Joyce, Pound, Wilson, Pynchon, (who, btw, all use Cabala) and others (Burroughs, Kerouac, P.K. Dick, Heinlein, Bester, etc. etc. etc.) seems an entertaining and effective method of Intelligence Increase. Learning this language  comes from frequent reading and re-reading. Often I’ll reread a paragraph or section of Mason & Dixon  right away, sometimes a few times until a flicker of understanding begins to kindle.  Occasionally the brain just kicks in, going inside the language to easily to follow the text. At that point you’ve earned another notch on your neural wings, so to speak. It appears a tautology that solving one maze or puzzle makes it easier to solve others even more difficult. Cracking Joyce might help you to understand Pynchon or vice versa. Reading Moby Dick has made you smarter, possibly helping to open the door upon Joyce or Pynchon or the deeper strata found in Wilson, or now for something completely different. 

Similar to Moby Dick, what I especially love about Mason & Dixon is the frequent Bardo Exploration the reader traverses through. On one level it has all the earmarks of a Book of the Dead. Entry to the Bardo comes through a variety of surrealistic ways like paradoxes of time or dreams or encounters with non-human Intelligence of one stripe or another. The story begins with Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke coming to Philadelphia to attend Charles Mason’s funeral in 1786. He’s late getting there, misses the funeral, but visits Mason’s grave every day for his months long visit. Cherrycoke is able to stay with his sister and brother-in-law, the LeSparks, on the condition that he entertain his young twin nephews and older niece with stories, which of course, turn out to be all about Mason & Dixon. The book ends shortly before Mason’s death.

This form of a postmortem looking back on a main character’s life up to their death bears a strong similarity to another classic of 20th Century American literature, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry, another Bardo classic with a strong presence of Magick. Lowry’s novel begins on the Mexican Day of the Dead one year after the demise of the main character, Geoffrey Firmin aka the Consul. The rest of the novel looks back on the Consul’s life leading up to his death on the very last page. Pynchon possibly pays homage to Lowry by naming a minor character in M&D, a revolutionary, Captain Volcanoe. Another parallel: Under the Volcano starts with a look at the lay of the land: “Two mountain chains traverse the republic roughly from north to south, forming between them a number of valleys and plateaus.” The lay of the land, how it’s affected by drawing lines upon it and various other telluric effects (ley lines, Fung shui, Geomancy, etc.) appears a major theme of M&D. We see the word “traverse” in Lowrey’s first sentence, a word that Pynchon utilizes in M&D, but rises to great prominence in his next novel, Against the Day, where he makes Traverse, the surname of his primary protagonists. Traverse has bardo implications; one always traverses the Bardo, going from a “death” to a “rebirth,” never remaining in a static or steady-state in that territory; the only constant is change.  Both novels show a strong influence from Moby Dick. According to the AI Overlords, “Lowry's text contains multiple allusions to Moby-Dick," including references to the final words of Chapter 1 of Moby-Dick: ‘one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.’” Lowry would explicitly acknowledge the influence of Melville.

The emphasis on Death and the Bardo begins immediately in Mason & Dixon. After establishing the presence of Cherrycoke in his sister’s household and mentioning the purpose of his daily visit to Mason’s grave: “– “that like a shade with a grievance, he expected Mason, but newly arrived at Death, to help him with something”, the Revd begins his story of Mason and Dixon:

“’It begins with a hanging.’

‘Excellent!’ cry the Twins.

The Revd, producing a scarr’d old Note-book, cover’d in cheap Leather , begins to read. ‘had I been the first churchman of modern times to be swung from Tyburn Tree, – had I been then taken for dead, while in fact but spending an Intermission among the eventless corridors of Syncope,. . .’”

Corridors appear often in the Bardo domain. Tyburn Tree marks the spot in London of the principal location of public executions for over 650 years. 

For the majority of the novel, Mason is haunted by the death of his wife Rebekah: he experiences multiple Bardo encounters with her, in dreams and alternate realities. In one of the final chapters after completion of the Line, Mason reflects back on his life and her death: 

“That other Tract, across the Border, – perhaps nearly ev’rything, perhaps nearly nothing, – is denied him. “Is that why I sought so obsessedly Death’s Insignia, it’s gestures and forumlæ, its quotidian gossip, – all those awful days out at Tyburn, – hours spent nearly immobile, watching stone-carvers labor upon tomb embellishments, Chip by Chip, – was it all but some way to show my worthiness to obtain a permit to visit her, to cross that grimly patroll’d line, that very essence of Division?” He has another encounter with Rebekah in the next paragraph. She seems to be advising him what to do now that the Line is finished.

It's no secret that Pynchon loves puzzles, codes, cabala, cryptography, conspiracies, secret societies and mysteries of all sorts. The “sc” letter code seems on steroids in M&D particularly in the first half to two thirds of the book. It feels like Pynchon hits you over the head with it, so blatantly obvious does it appear. I don’t fully understand why (I have my guesses as you know) and tend to regard this “sc” ubiquity along the lines of a Zen koan. The code even turns up in the name of our faithful narrator, Revd Wicks Cherrycoke with the last letter of his first name followed by the first letter of his last name.

I’ll leave it here, for now, with one last quote that strongly suggests the influence of RAW:

“The Ascent to Christ is a struggle thro’ one heresy after another. River-wise up-country into a proliferation of Sects and Sects branching from Sects, unto Deism, faithless pretending to be holy, and beyond, – ever away from the Sea, from the Harbor, from all that was serene and certain, into an Interior unmapp’d, a Realm of Doubt. The Nights. The Storms and Beasts. The Falls, the Rapids, . . . the America of the Soul.

"Doubt is of the essence of Christ. . . . The final pure Christ is pure uncertainty.”

This comes from Undeliver’d Sermons by Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke. It can also easily read as the same “Christ” Crowley writes about being able to produce in “Postcards to Probationers” Equinox I Vol. II. Two allusions to Crowley: his initials, AC, at the top of the quote, and “Beasts” later on. Crowley’s oft mentioned and taught by RAW early piece on Skepticism, “The Soldier and the Hunchback: ! and ?” appeared in Equinox I Vol. I.

You may not want to read another difficult and dense novel immediately following Moby Dick, but I highly recommend giving Mason & Dixon a try at some point especially if one likes historical novels. In my opinion, it’s one of the greatest books ever written. Meanwhile, back on the Pequod the pace picks up.

Chapter 131 “The Pequod meets the Delight” foreshadows their final fate. There seems a reason Melville called the other ship the Delight, a paradoxical moniker given the circumstance, he calls it “most miserably misnamed.” 

Chapter 132 “The Symphony” does indeed have a very lyrical prose style reminiscent of Tolkien for its excellent descriptions. Starbuck starts to play the counter-melody of trying to get Ahab to change course.

Chapter 133 “The Chase–First Day”. Ahab smells Moby Dick before she’s spotted. These are some of the more epic chapters in the book . . . the Symphony starts to build to its climatic crescendo. 

Chapter 134 “The Chase–Second Day.” I found this bit very interesting for its synch with Thelema: 

“for of what present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port.

"Inferable from these statements, are many collateral subtile matters touching the chase of whales.”

For the last note of this Symphony I’ll quote different famous literary cetaceans: “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

Next week: Almost done! Please read  Chapter 135, "The Chase -- Third Day" and "The Epilogue."

Hilaritas podcast interviews Gabriel Kennedy

 The Hilaritas Press podcast released today features an interview of Prop Anon/Gabriel Kennedy, author of the Robert Anton Wilson biography, Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson. Zach West serves as the guest host for the episode, although regular host Mike Gathers does an intro.

The home page of the podcast has links to various Prop Anon sites and sites promoting the book, although as usual the podcast should be available in a wide variety of podcasting sites and apps. 

Jim O'Shaughnessy launches new book publishing company

[Jim O'Shaughnessy, as many of you know, is a Wall Street wizard and a big promoter of the work of Robert Anton Wilson, so his announcement Friday that he is launching a book publishing company seems like good news. And when I read the press release for the announcement, I recognized the name of Jimmy Soni, the CEO and editor in chief for Infinity Books. Soni is the coauthor, with Rob Goodman, of A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, a book I gave five stars to on Goodreads when I read it in late 2022. Of course, one of the reasons I read the book was because of Wilson's interest in Shannon. Here is the full announcement, more interesting than the usual press release. The Management].

NEW YORK, March 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- O'Shaughnessy Ventures LLC (OSV) today announced the launch of Infinite Books, a new publishing venture reimagining the relationship between publishers, authors and readers. Award-winning author Jimmy Soni has been appointed CEO and editor in chief.

Infinite Books will publish a wide range of fiction and nonfiction works that stand the test of time, combining the quality standards of traditional publishing with innovative approaches to contracts, editorial support and marketing.

"The publishing industry is at an inflection point," said Soni. "While books remain magical, almost everything about how we discover, create and share them has evolved. At Infinite Books, we're building the publishing house that authors deserve—combining editorial excellence with the speed and flexibility modern creators expect. By rethinking everything from contract structures to the editorial process, we believe we can create a new model that serves both authors and readers better."

Jim O'Shaughnessy, executive chairman of Infinite Books and founder of OSV, commented: "In Jimmy, we've found a leader who uniquely understands both the creative and business sides of publishing. His track record speaks for itself—he's written acclaimed, bestselling books of his own and helped shepherd numerous other authors to success." O'Shaughnessy is himself a veteran author, having written the investment classic "What Works on Wall Street," now in its fourth edition and widely regarded as one of the most influential books in the field of quantitative investing.

Jimmy Soni (provided photo)

About Jimmy Soni

Soni brings substantial publishing credentials to the role. His most recent book, "The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley," was a national bestseller and was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker. Based on hundreds of interviews, including exclusive conversations with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman, the book earned widespread acclaim, with The New York Times calling it "an intensely magnetic chronicle" and Walter Isaacson praising it as "an indispensable guide to modern innovation and entrepreneurship."

His previous work, "A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age," won the prestigious 2017 Neumann Prize from the British Society for the History of Mathematics and the Middleton Prize from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Soni's other works include "Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato" and "Jane's Carousel," co-authored with the late Jane Walentas.

As a ghostwriter, Soni has penned commencement speeches, inaugural addresses and several No. 1 New York Times bestsellers for some of the nation's leading voices in business, politics and media.

Initial Publishing Slate

Infinite Books has picked up early momentum, having already published its debut title "Two Thoughts: A Timeless Collection of Infinite Wisdom," and relaunched Melanie Conklin's beloved "Counting Thyme." Upcoming works include former professor and renowned podcaster Dr. Alex Petkas's exploration of the ancient concept of Zeal; "White Mirror," a collection of fiction stories from Tinkered Thinking; and a new edition of Michael Gibson's "Paper Belt on Fire."

"Our initial slate represents exactly what Infinite Books stands for," said Soni. "From fresh philosophical explorations to powerful fiction to books that deserve a second life—these works exemplify our range, ambition and commitment to enduring ideas and excellent writing."

Infinite Books continues to accept submissions and plans to announce additional titles throughout 2025. For more information, visit infinitebooks.com and follow Infinite Books on X/Twitter @InfiniteB88ks. Authors and agents interested in submitting manuscripts can contact us at contact@infinitebooks.com

Jim O'Shaughnessy

About O'Shaughnessy Ventures

OSV is a creative investment firm that empowers and inspires creators to bring their ideas to life. Founded by O'Shaughnessy, a pioneer in quantitative investing, founder of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, and author of four books on investing, OSV aims to provide financial support and to partner in growing the next life-changing creative ideas.

OSV combines O'Shaughnessy's deeply rooted interest in art, science, investing and tech with his long-held desire to establish scenarios designed to help promising creators and their inspiring ideas succeed, regardless of age, location, job history or level of education. For more information, visit OSV's website.

Coming next month: 'Straight Outta Dublin'

Straight Outta Dublin, Eric Wagner's new book on James Joyce's influence on Robert Anton Wilson, is coming out April 23, according to a post from Eric on Facebook. The book also has a substantial essay from R. Michael Johnson. The arresting cover is from Rasa.

Preorders for the Kindle are available on Amazon; information on other editions should be coming soon. 

Mike Gathers on his planned book on the Eight Circuit model

Mike Gathers. Photo from the Mike Gathers Coaching website. 

Mike Gathers, known to many of you as the founder of the RAWilsonFans.org website and the host of the Hilaritas Press monthly podcast, is hard at work on his planned new book on the Eight Circuit model of consciousness invented by Timothy Leary and promoted by Robert Anton Wilson.

That's the news in his latest Substack newsletter, Intelligence Increase, his first newsletter in just over two years. 

Mike has some other writing topics he wants to pursue, but the Eight Circuit project is the main focus of the newsletter, which details how he has worked with Grok 3 to get going. 

"I went from fleshing out ideas that were half baked to generating a detailed outline of the book. I have been feeling recent pressure to write this book and haven’t made much progress in the six or so years I’ve been 'seriously' thinking about writing a book, but I have made a huge amount of progress in the last month," he writes.

The newsletter has an outline of many of the ideas Mike has come up with for the book, and more writing via Substack is promised soon. The newsletter is free. 

Wednesday links

 RAW Semantics responds (on Bluesky) to my recent post about the ebook for Everything Is Under Control being on sale in the U.S. for about $2: "Definitely worth it for the long intro alone, which I've been raving about for years as one of Bob's best pieces of writing."

Last interview with Orson Welles in 1985. RAW Semantics posted the link on Bluesky (which unlike X.com doesn't punish users for posting links) and wrote, " 'I'm not being fake-modest talking about luck. I do really think it has everything to do with anybody's life' - from the last interview of a real genius (as opposed to the self-regarding born-rich billionaire frauds imposing themselves on us)"

New book on how the "empire never ended." 

Jefferson Morley on the release of the JFK files. Also, here is a link to the files. 

The Discordian Ordination of Jefferson Poland

What did we learn from torturing babies? 

Tyler Cowen interviews Ezra Klein. 

Joseph Matheny announces big 'Ong's Hat: COMPLEAT' sale

Joseph Matheny has announced a sale for the Ong's Hat COMPLEAT package of an ebook and an audiobook. 

Starting today, and extending through Saturday, March 22, the U.S. Amazon site will offer the Kindle ebook for free. 

During that same time period, the accompanying audiobook at the SendOwl audiobook, ordinarily $14.99, will be offered at a 10% discount. Go to the website  and " enter your email and the discount code COMPLEAT-PRINT for 10% off on the audio bundle."

"That’s a $14.99 E-book free and a 10% off of the audio bundle.

As I’ve said numerous times, this work is in two parts. The text version is one half, and the audio is the other half—two components of a whole," Joseph writes.

More information here, including a video explaining the package and early reviews. 

Moby Dick online reading group, Chapters 125-130

 This week:  Chapter 125, "The Log and Line," to Chapter 130, "The Hat." Image by Lisel Jane Ashlock, more information here. 

Chapter  126, "The Life-Buoy," was the most vivid for me in this section, as it seemed to have a sense of foreboding: "Making so long a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene."

The crew is startled by the "plaintively wild and unearthly" cries of seals: "The Christian or civilized part of the crew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers remained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman—the oldest mariner of all—declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were heard, were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea."

An unnamed crew member of the Pequod falls into the sea and is lost when the life-buoy tossed into the sea to save him also sinks below the waves and disappears. A coffin is then refashioned to replace the buoy:

“'A life-buoy of a coffin!' cried Starbuck, starting.

“' Rather queer, that, I should say,' said Stubb."

In a comment to last week's blog post, Oz Fritz, who's been working hard in this reading group, wrote, "I don't see Ahab as a straight up villain subject to a simplified reduction. I think he does show some control over his emotions up to a point. For instance, he eventually capitulates to Starbuck's rational position in chapter 109 regarding looking for the sperm oil leak despite clearly and emotionally not wanting to."

Of course, Oz seems correct. It wouldn't be a very good novel if Ahab was an unconvincing cardboard villain, would it? And yet Ahab seems a villain to me. This was underscored for me in Chapter 128, The Pequod Meets The Rachel, when Ahab callously refuses to briefly interrupt his vendetta to search for the missing son of the captain of the Rachel.

"But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not." This is a Biblical reference, Matthew 2:18, "In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not." Explanation here. 

Speaking of Ahab as a villain, Aaron Gwyn, the writer and English professor I've mentioned before, recently posted his "Top ten villains in literature" on X: 

1. Judge Holden (BLOOD MERIDIAN)
2. Iago (OTHELLO)
3. Satan (PARADISE LOST)
4. Humbert Humbert (LOLITA)
5. Ahab (MOBY-DICK)
5. Popeye (SANCTUARY)
6. The Misfit (“A Good Man is Hard to Find”)
7. Blicero (GRAVITY’S RAINBOW)
8. Claudius (HAMLET)
9. Henry Drax (THE NORTH WATER)
10. Arnold Friend (“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”)

Next week: Please read Chapter 131, "The Pequod Meets the Delight," to Chapter 134, "The Chase -- Second Day."

Housekeeping notes

Artwork by Bobby Campbell 

I've published a lot of material in the years since I began this blog, and I try to make much of it easy to browse by putting up links on the right side of the page.

I've gotten behind on that cataloging, but I am trying to get caught up. I've started a new "More Feature Articles and Interviews" listing (scroll down) on recent pieces that might be of lasting interest. This is going to have to be a work in progress, but so far I've added my recent nick black interview, Tracy Harms' review of the novel A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys, John Wisniewski's interview of Nick Herbert, my podcast interview with Bryan Caplan on his self-help book, blogger Scott Alexander on RAW and philosopher Michael Huemer on RAW. 

There are more pieces to add as time permits. And if you scroll down the page, you'll see a lot of links to browse. I've also gotten caught up on official news from Hilaritas at the top of the page. 

'Everything Is Under Control' is a cheap ebook again this month

Every month I check Amazon's monthly Kindle sale, and I noticed that the ebook for Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-ups by Robert Anton Wilson and Miriam Joan Hill is on sale again for about $2.

Other books and authors mentioned here also on sale as ebooks: Grimoire For The Apprentice Wizard by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, about $4; and Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Alec Nevala-Lee, about $4.  Philip K. Dick book available cheap include The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick , Galactic Pot-Healer, The Man Who Japed and Solar Lottery.  The Magus by John Fowles, listed as one of RAW's favorite books,  is available for about $3. Robert Shea was also a Fowles fan. 

Erik Davis explains 'How to Navigate the Weirdness'

 

Erik Davis. Creative Commons photo by Michael Rausner. 

An event in Berkeley, California, featuring Erik Davis has been announced, part of it will be online:

"The world is weird, and only getting weirder. In this set of two talks (Wed March 19 and Wed March 26), Alembic co-founder Erik Davis will wrestle with the strangeness in our midst — political meltdown, UAPs, simulation hypthesis, AI oracles, conspiracy theory in the White House, corporate shamanism, jhana-on-demand, media psychosis, and all manner of climate chaos and apocalyptic foreshocks. There is a thread running through all of these: the apparent unraveling of consensus reality, and the mind- and resource-war for the attentional future. Taking and developing concepts and strategies from his classic book High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, Davis aims to both honestly assess our impossible situation and to identify a few navigational tools for sanity, sense-making, and creative engagement.

"The first hour’s talk will be available for streaming; the group discussion in the second half will be reserved for in-person attendees."

More information and ticket information here. 

High Weirdness is an interesting book with three parts, focusing upon Terrence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K.  Dick.  Here is my original review. 

A right wing blogger's book list cites 'Illuminatus'

In response to the question, "What are some books you hold dear to your heart?  life changing or inspirational," the right wing podcaster Martyr Made posts the following list on X:

-Chantal Delsol’s Icarus Fallen

-Mircea Eliade’s Sacred and Profane

-Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Cosmicomics, and If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler

-John Gardner’s Grendel

-Philip Roth’s American Pastoral

-The Book of Job

-Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground

-Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle

-RAW’s Illuminatus Trilogy

-Jean Gebser’s Ever Present Origin

-All of Rene Girard’s stuff

There is some brief discussion about RAW and Stephenson in the replies. I haven't listened to this guy's podcasts (his real name is Darryl Cooper). His book list interests me because, aside from Illuminatus!, I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson and I also liked Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. Possibly I should read the other two Calvino titles. 

Hat tip: Jesse Walker. 

Discordian letterheads

 

Grouchogandhi , KSP posted the above on X.com/Twitter, writing, "Various Discordian letterheads designed by Harold Lord Randomfactor (of ILLUMINATUS! fame) used in Operation Jake, wherein selected politicians received weird letters on weirder letterhead, circa 1970." Harold Lord Randomfactor is Tim Wheeler, see this posting on Adam Gorightly's website. 

My favorite of the four was the Bavarian Illuminati letterhead, so I asked if there is a separate, higher resolution one for people who might want to use it for their own letterheads. I then got the image below!

A Robert Shea 'commercial'

[This is a bit of prose from All Things Are Lights, one of my favorite novels by Robert Shea,  that appears at the front of the book. I've always thought it was a good "commercial" for the contents and decided to share it. All Things Are Lights is set in in medieval France; while  many characters in the historical novel are fictional, St. Louis, Louis IX (1214-1270) is one of the characters. Roland de Vency, a knight and troubadour,  is the protagonist of the novel. His friend the Templar also belongs to a secret society within the Templars. Free version in HTML, you should also be able to hunt up a used version that doesn't cost very much. The Mgt.]

“How much jousting have you done?”

“A little,” replied the young troubadour.

“A little!” the Templar said ironically. “In tournaments all over Europe, Count Amalric has bested hundreds of knights. Many times he has killed men. Of course, it is against the rules. But he is a master at making it look like an accident.” He looked at Roland with an almost fatherly kindness. “Indeed, Messire, the best advice I could give you would be not to enter the tournament at all.”

Roland laughed. “Such cautious advice from a Templar?”

“We fight for God, Messire. Have you as great a motive?”

“Yes, I do,” said Roland, seeing Nicolette’s eyes shining in the darkness before him. “I fight for love.”

Moby Dick online reading group, chapters 117-124

Chapter 117, "The Whale Watch," to Chapter 124, "The Needle."

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

Chapter 118 suggests Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle when Ahab says to his quadrant, “Thou canst not tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be tomorrow noon.” Or perhaps it just suggests the limits of science. 

In the late 1980s I heard Ray Bradbury talk about his experience writing the screenplay for the John Huston film of Moby Dick. He felt a little apprehensive as he began the project since he had not read the novel before. He went to the library and picked up a copy, and he felt relief as he leafed through it. He thought, “This is just Shakespeare and the Bible.” These do not seem like the only influences on Melville, but they certainly seem like big ones. When Starbuck stands outside the cabin of the sleeping Ahab and imagines Ahab bound in chains, it made me think of the fate of Iago in Othello, especially in the Orson Welles film. (Of course, Bob Wilson loved Welles’ stage production of Moby Dick Rehearsed.) 

I think of the Bible when reading the prophecies in Moby Dick, especially the prophecy about how Ahab will die. I wonder when reading the Bible how Pharoah knew about the coming of Moses, leading him to murder the Jewish infants. If one treats the Bible and Moby Dick, one can see the authors creating prophecies which may or may not come true. 

Next week: Please read Chapter 125, "The Log and Line," to Chapter 130, "The Hat."

 

Elon Musk: The SNAFU principle in action?

Elon Musk (public domain photo, source.)

Most of you are likely familiar with the SNAFU Principle articulated in Illuminatus!: e.g. "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth."

For those of us who admired Elon Musk's achievements years ago in making rockets and electric cars, the word "disappointing" is not strong enough to describe his recent decision to become a James Bond movie villain. Richard Hanania, the writer and pundit, has two new Substack newsletters excoriating Musk. The latest, "Liberals Only Censor. Musk Seeks to Lobotomize," explains why it's been so damaging that Musk punishes X.com users for posting links to credible news sources. "The new X elevating trolls, liars, and fake news accounts means that the reach of more sensible and honest voices declines in relative terms," Hanania writes.

But the essay that is more relevant for this blog is "Why Billionaires Go Insane," which does not reference the SNAFU Principle but reaches remarkably similar conclusions. (The subtitle for the piece is "Great wealth creates unusual personal dynamics.") Here is one paragraph (the emphasis is mine):

If the billionaire puts forward an idea, the successful flatterer won’t jump up and down and say “oh my God. YOU’RE A GENIUS.” Instead, he will think about it, start looking for confirmatory evidence for that idea, and come back and say “You know that theory you told me about? I was skeptical at first, but I looked into it, and wow, let me tell you, it explains so many things you didn’t even consider.” Occasional diplomatic pushback is fine, and in fact adds credibility. But the flatterer wants the billionaire to feel like he is fundamentally correct on the big picture questions he cares about the most. Telling him he is simply wrong on core issues or that he needs to rely on completely new sources of information to have a sensible worldview is not going to work. The billionaire therefore gets more and more convincing sounding feedback that serves as confirmation bias.

The catalogue of ships in the 'Iliad'

nick black (the author of midnight's simulacra, see my recent interview) has a link on his website to one of my old posts from 2011 on this blog, on John Merritt's proposal for an Illuminatus! reference book. 

When I mentioned seeing the link (I have not heard from Mr. Merritt in years), nick wrote,

"one thing i immediately noticed was his comment about:

'At the beginning of Leviathan is a long list of rock bands  going to the big festival at Ingolstadt. How many are/were real and how many fictitious at the time that Illuminatus! was written?'

"looking through the individual bands is interesting, but he's  missing the higher-level reference: Homer's Catalogue of Ships!"

As nick notes, that's the list on Book Two of the Iliad of the various units of the Greek army that arrived in ships to take part in the attack on Troy. A few sentences (the Samuel Butler public domain prose translation:

And they that held the strong city of Athens, the people of great Erechtheus, who was born of the soil itself, but Jove's daughter, Minerva, fostered him, and established him at Athens in her own rich sanctuary. There, year by year, the Athenian youths worship him with sacrifices of bulls and rams. These were commanded by Menestheus, son of Peteos. No man living could equal him in the marshalling of chariots and foot soldiers. Nestor could alone rival him, for he was older. With him there came fifty ships.

Ajax brought twelve ships from Salamis, and stationed them alongside those of the Athenians.

The men of Argos, again, and those who held the walls of Tiryns, with Hermione, and Asine upon the gulf; Troezene, Eionae, and the vineyard lands of Epidaurus; the Achaean youths, moreover, who came from Aegina and Mases; these were led by Diomed of the loud battle-cry, and Sthenelus son of famed Capaneus. With them in command was Euryalus, son of king Mecisteus, son of Talaus; but Diomed was chief over them all. With these there came eighty ships.

And so on. I suspect nick is correct about the literary reference. 

BTW, when author Ada Palmer was at the Confluence science fiction convention in 2023, I asked her which translation of Homer she prefers, and she recommended Robert Fagles. I bought the ebooks, so I now have the Fagles translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey on my Kindle. 

Related: Tyler Cowen's new series on "An Economic Approach to Homer's Odyssey."

Jim O'Shaughnessy interviews Prop Anon on the RAW bio

The new Infinite Loops podcast features regular host Jim  O'Shaughnessy interviewing Prop Anon/Gabriel Kennedy on Kennedy's Robert Anton Wilson biography, Chapel Perilous: The Life and Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson.

The page I link to has a video of the podcast, useful show notes and, perhaps most usefully to me, a transcript; I find reading a transcript to be much faster than listening to a podcast.

The top of the page also has highlights of the interview, and they are fine, but they aren't MY highlights, which I propose to share with you now. 

I was intrigued by Prop's suggestion that right now might be the time RAW comes into his own:

"But Robert Anton Wilson, it's high time for him to be rediscovered, because as you said, he's ahead of the curve man, and he knew that in a way, he accepted that. He swallowed that pill that it might take some time for his stuff to ultimately hit. He hoped that people would get it immediately, but sort of like Philip K. Dick, his contemporary, the irony of Philip K. Dick is he got so famous a year after he died. And then so Bob, it's taken a few more years, but the water is percolating. Orson Welles, one of Bob's favorite artists once said about Ernest Hemingway, that everyone completely forgot about Hemingway for about 10 years after he died, he was completely out of the conversation. But then he noticed after 10 years, there was this explosion of awareness and celebration of Ernest Hemingway.

"And I think the same goes for Bob. Welles said it was about a 10,15 year clip. Bob died in 2007, so it's been 17 years, I think that we're approaching a time of rediscovery of Wilson's work and insight."

The other bit I particularly liked was when Prop talked about how RAW was able to use the good points of Ezra Pound's art and thought and discard the bad, and how this runs counter to the way social media and modern world presses up to put everyone into a binary Good/Bad category:

"Wilson was so great at taking what he wanted and leaving the rest, if you will, and he wasn't afraid to... So, say, take for instance Ezra Pound, right? Ezra Pound, recognized as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, right? But Ezra Pound is also a fascist, right? I mean, he was probably, to the day he died, a fascist. Maybe not, though, but I'm guessing yes. Not a good look. And also an anti-Semite during many, many years of his career. That needs to be said. But Wilson was very clear, and he wrote about it as well. He was like, "I think that Ezra Pound's poetry is absolutely amazing. And it struck me so well. I've learned so much from it. But I think his political views as a fascist and anti-Semite are absolutely disgusting and horrible.

"We don't live in an age like that right now, right? We live in this constant age of, 'Gotcha,' and, 'You suck,' and, 'You piece of shit!' It could be anybody. Your favorite pop singer from the '80s turns out to also be an anti-Semite or fascist or whatever. Or even worse, you take Diddy, someone who created such funny, fun music, dancing around like a goofball on stage. Little did you know he was having these Diddy parties and really taking advantage of people. And Picasso, et cetera, et cetera. What do you do with that? What do you do with these terrible aspects of people? And are you able to take a jewel that they offer and then kind of see the truth in it and digest it through your own reality tunnel, if you will?"

Documentary about 'Ong's Hat' wins award

 Joseph Matheny, creator of Ong's Hat: The Beginning and (just out this year) and the just-out Ong's Hat: COMPLEAT, announced Wednesday that the Audible audiobook This Is Not a Game by Marc Fennell, about Ong's Hat, has won the 2025 Best Audio Documentary Award from the Australian International Documentary Conference. 

The AIDC's website says, " 'This is Not a Game’ is the extraordinary untold story of the internet’s first conspiracy theory, the legend of Ong’s Hat. Marc Fennell will dive deep into a previously unexplored world of tech hippies, eccentric web subcultures and simmering paranoia, uncovering how this tongue-in-cheek artistic experiment backfired on its creator and went on to influence much of what’s wrong with the internet today. Creator: MARC FENNELL"

nick black on Illuminatus!, James Joyce and his novel, midnight's simulacra

nick black 

nick black is an Atlanta based software writer, engineer and writer who in early 2024 published his first novel, midnight's simulacra, influenced by James Joyce's Ulysses and also Wilson and Shea's Illuminatus! I thought the book was good, also interesting and original, see my earlier review.  As I mentioned in the review, readers familiar with Ulysses and Illuminatus! will notice many references in black's novel, and there are many other references and sources; I caught a reference to Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren, for example. 

As you can see from the interview, the protagonist of midnight's simulacra, Sherman Spartacus Katz, is largely based on black, just as Stephen Dedalus was a version of James Joyce. 

I originally read midnight's simulacra as an ebook and then sent off for a paper copy; nick published it himself, although the publisher is listed as Gold & Appel Publishing. The book can be purchased directly from the official website in all of the usual formats (buying a paper copy from there gets you an autographed inscription) but you can also get it from Amazon. The paper copies are the preferred edition (they have illustrations, for example) but the ebook works fine and costs a manageable $9.  

As you can see from his Goodreads postings, nick is a busy book consumer who reads widely, although his main interests appear to be heavy-duty modern fiction and technical works. At some point, I would like to catch up with him -- I haven't gotten around yet to reading Pynchon or David Foster Wallace or Cormac McCarthy. (Although nick reads quite a bit of science fiction, he generally does not hand out rave reviews for SF; hilariously, Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, gets just two stars and this review: "some good lines, an interesting idea or two, but most of this was just abjectly silly, and heinlein's crotchety old manism is hard to take."  I find nick's reviews more useful than the ones from people who routinely pass out four and five stars).  Aside from being busy with various software and engineering projects, Mr. black also is a book collector and information about his literary interests can be gleaned from his book collection documents; see this posting on Reddit and also this section of his official website.

By the way, "nick black" is the official spelling, and nick considers getting that name officially recognized as canon by the Microsoft Corporation as one of his best achievements, see below. He also has succeeded in getting another corporate behemoth, Amazon, to accept his spelling. 

Hoping to learn more about nick and his book, I asked for an interview. I think this is one of the most interesting interviews I have ever published here. 

RAWIllumination: Could you begin by telling us a little bit "about the author" and introduce yourself?

nick black: Katz is quite autobiographical. Born in Atlanta, GA 1980, the child of evangelical Pennsylvania transplants. My parents were more religious than most of our neighbors, but despised the whole Southern thing. We started Catholic, but ended up in a non-denominational evangelical parish with services eating five hours every Sunday. I was prohibited secular music, movies, or television, but books were open season, thank goodness. When it came time to pick colleges, it was either the Ivy League for competitive literature, or Georgia Tech for computer science. I looked at the debt I'd go into studying lit at Harvard, decided I could read books on my own, and headed down to Atlanta.

I dropped out at 19 due to fucking things up, and was hired by a local startup to lead their development efforts. Spent five years there honing skills and developing discipline. Came back to GT at the age of 23, still working eighty hours a week, and secured undergraduates in CS and Math. Developed a nasty methamphetamine addiction which would persist for a decade, but which allowed for tremendous study and effort. Ducked back in and got masters in CS and Nuclear Engineering while doing my second startup. Went to Texas and worked for a young NVIDIA on their compilers team. Built up a fairly serious drug distribution enterprise over this time, and funded my third startup with the proceeds. Was raided by the DEA 2013-05-13 after an ex dropped a dime. Not much was found in my condo--thankfully--but it forced a reevaluation of my life to that point.

Since then, I've worked for Google in NYC and Microsoft in ATL, and done a shitton of open source work (I'm a Debian Developer, if you're familiar with Linux). I still code for at least eight to ten hours a day. Married an incredible woman in 2015, but got divorced in 2020. No children. My code and my writing are my legacy.

I'm quite loud, enjoy making outlandish statements and agitprop, haven't driven in twenty-plus years, and am financially independent thanks to the good life of software engineering.

RAWIllumination: What sort of readers are you hoping to reach with midnight's simulacra?

nick black: My goal was to write a Serious Novel about engineering and engineers. I wanted to reach people like me, ones who lived in the world of science but drew their culture and insights from the world of literature. I wanted to tell a story of someone like myself, an extroverted, loud, slightly oblivious and easily agitated but fundamentally kind engineer; I don't like the stereotypes of engineers and scientists one typically sees. I wanted to write a book that serious scientists could read and be satisfied by, where everything could be backed up by real research.

I furthermore had spent some significant time reverse engineering the (still) classified SILEX process of uranium enrichment via laser, and wanted to put that information out there.

More than anything, I had always told myself that I would one day write novels, and wanted to see whether I had it in me. I left a 650k/year job to finish it: I knew I was one of the best in the world at low-level, high-performance UNIX programming, but had no idea whether I could write a good book. I never expected the book to sell many copies, and it's actually done better than I had hoped.

An illustration by Justin Barker for midnight's simulacra that did not wind up in the book after the scene it illustrates was cut from the book's final version. 

RAWIllumination: I found the website for  the artist that you used to illustrate your book, Justin Barker. Why did you decide to include illustrations, and how did you select Barker?

nick black: i had access to a phenomenal artist in Mr.  Barker, and i asked him to do a drawing or two for the website.  i thought the results so good that i asked for a full set of  illustrations. i thought he did a fantastic job. i know  illustrations have passed out of common use, and the  "illustrated by" might draw some sideeye when people are looking  at the book, but call it a throwback to a more elegant era.

Illuminatus comics from Nick Black's book collection

RAWIllumination: Can you describe how you discovered Illuminatus! and what the effect of the work was on you? 

nick black: Oh, man. I was working at Media Play (a music/book/movies/software retailer), and someone came in looking for it in 1997. I special-ordered it for them, as we didn't have it on hand, and asked "is it good? I've never heard of it." The customer with no small mystery looked me in the eye and said, "hold on to your pineal gland." I found this sufficiently weird and foreboding to justify ordering myself a copy. The summer after I graduated high school, I was doing software development in a downtown Atlanta tower, riding MARTA a half hour each way and smoking cigarettes in their pleasant garden. I brought it with me for a week, devouring it on the train and outside.

I thought it absolutely mesmerizing. It presented a completely different philosophy than anything I'd come across until then. It fused mysticism with engineering in a way that seemed, if not plausible, at least interesting. It was esoteric but not obstructed--you could look up all the references, especially using a burgeoning internet (this was the summer of 1998).

I had two years prior found a Libertarian newspaper accidentally, with a lengthy opinion piece on legalizing drugs. Until that time, the idea of legalizing drugs had literally never occurred to me (much as I had assumed, younger and dumber, that it was against the law to be an atheist, and was surprised and shaken to find otherwise). Illuminatus! was like that, in that I was suddenly presented with ideas and systems of ethics that diverged so completely from the norm that one had to take serious time to absorb them. Yet this was clearly no crackpot author; the book was rich with reference to serious literature and respect for science. Joe Malik being a fallen Catholic-turned-engineer appealed to me, though not so much as the magnificent Hagbard Celine, who has remained a role model all my life. More than anything else, the idea of taking a slightly bitchy minor Greek goddess as one's deity and inspiration was marvelously out there.

I have called myself (and voted as) a Libertarian since finding that newpaper in 1996, and have called myself (and prayed as) a Discordian since finding that book in 1998. I've pressed it on at least twenty people, and gone through at least five personal copies (I reread it at least once a year, and have long stretches memorized). It cemented my beliefs in personal liberty, personal responsibility, the lifelong quest for learning, and doing all of this in an absurd and hostile universe. It gave me Eris, the goddess who dwells inside me and serves as a focus and justification for my efforts, my toil, my failures and successes. I consider the most important paragraph in that book to be:

 “Hagbard,” George protested disgustedly. “Are you telling me Eris is real? Really real and not just an allegory or symbol? I can’t buy that any more than I can believe Jehovah or Osiris is really real.”

 But Hagbard answered very solemnly, “When you’re dealing with these forces or powers in a philosophic and scientific way, contemplating them from an armchair, that rationalistic approach is useful. It is quite profitable then to regard the gods and goddesses and demons as projections of the human mind or as unconscious aspects of ourselves. But every truth is a truth only for one place and one time, and that’s a truth, as I said, for the armchair. When you’re actually dealing with these figures, the only safe, pragmatic, and operational approach is to treat them as having a being, a will, and a purpose entirely apart from the humans who evoke them. If the Sorcerer’s Apprentice had understood that, he wouldn’t have gotten into so much trouble.”

Everything is true in some way, false in some way, and true and false in some way. This becomes clearer to me with each day.

Plus it was FUNNY.

I stopped smoking cigarettes 136 days ago, but sure wish I could light one up in honor of old Robert Anton Wilson right now. What a guy.

RAWIllumination: Why did you decide to model your novel after Ulysses? Were you trying to do for Atlanta what Joyce did for Dublin?

nick black: Because Ulysses was long my favorite book (as it clearly was one of RAW's), but mostly because it gave me a framework from which I could hang my story. In short, cowardice.

I hoped to tell a story of Atlanta, but knew I wouldn't have the depth of Joyce's Dublin. With that said, I did very much have in my mind the low opinion held by most of the nation for the Deep South, and wanted to make it plain that, just like California, or New York, or Ohio, we have our dullards and mehums and neophobes, but are also contributing that rare one percent of human talent. As Smokey the Bear says, don't shit in the woods -- I live here!

RAWIllumination: Ulysses is a famously difficult book. Your book "can be a nontrivial read," as you yourself say. You made a decision to have hardcore engineering and science passages, with lots of formulas. (At one point when I was frustrated, I went back and re-read the passage in the "Invocation" allowing readers to skip a few paragraphs if necessary, so I decided I could skim the bits I didn't get and just see what I COULD get from the book). There are other writers who have lots of technical stuff in their works -- Neal Stephenson and Richard Powers come to mind -- but they also try to make it more approachable for people without a technical background. Why did you decide to take the approach you did?

nick black: Four reasons: one, as you say, other people try to make it more approachable. if you want that, there are plenty of authors providing it. the science fiction i enjoy the most is "hard" scifi, particularly Greg Egan, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Fred Hoyle.

Fiction pitched at the expert is rare: it sells fewer books, and if you know expert level things, you can generally make more money practicing them than writing =]. i wanted my fiction book to still be an engaging bit of nonfiction, even for the expert.

Secondly, once again: cowardice. when i was stuck, or when i felt something was weak, i could spergily fall back to spewing hard technical data. i won't do it again in any further writing.

Third: it is a book about engineers, who by definition went to engineering school. engineering school is kinda fundamentally different from other majors. i talk to people from other schools, and they're like, "yeah we had a great discussion in class about [whatever]." We had very few discussions in engineering school, because it's understood that you are a worthless, brainless, skillfree piece of shit, and have nothing to add. The majority of people are chronically behind things. There's a constant sense of fear and loathing. even if you're feeling confident going into, say, an electromagnetics test, the prof can choose a problem that requires some weird type of diffeq solution, perhaps not even with intentional malice, and, whoops, that's a C for the semester. I've gone into a classroom and come out understanding nothing more than when I went in more times than i can count. You put on a brave face, and submit, and when you draw the occasional say 8 on an exam you exclaim "Allah, the All-Powerful, has fucked me again!" and drink. i wanted people to feel a little bit of that =].

I tried to ensure you could skip most of that and still follow the plot and characters without trouble. at the same time, there are lots of secrets and details in those sections for the people who closely read. the correlated concurrent development of a thermonuclear explosion, a cancer, and a human child is something i'm particularly proud of, and i really like the playful alliteration on p.361.

Four: i was often writing about forbidden knowledge. You've gotta give the details for such to establish street cred.

I'm glad i typed all that out. i might put it on my site.

RAWIllumination: As I understand it, you got permission to take six months off from work at Microsoft so you could write the book. Can you give us a taste of what that conversation was like?

nick black: I can give you the exact mail I sent. I would prefer that this not be reproduced, though i guess it's no big deal. It's kinda bombastic but that's how shit went down at the MSFT. I was pleased with getting this, though i thought getting my name officially lowercased in the company directory was a greater achievement. that involved fifty+ emails and three years.

[Editor's note: I did read the email, and in fact Nick carefully listed many arguments in favor of his request, not the least that he pledged to still work about ten hours a week during the six months of leave, and made other promises to avoid leaving Microsoft in the lurch. -- Tom]

RAWIllumination: Do you have other works of fiction in the works, or did  you have to set that aside to concentrate on your "day job" for a bit? 

Nick Black: i am unemployed at the moment! i do some consulting now and again, but am kinda living a post-dayjob life. I wrote about 200 pages of another novel and then put it aside. I might pick it back up. iIve got another planned which I've not yet started.

I'm working on a textbook, High-Performance Systems Programming. I designed a high-temperature filament dryer for 3dprinting that got picked up by CrowdSupply (https://dankdryer.com/). I spent most of the past four months studying electronics. i hope to start on the next novel, hesitantly titled Infernal Columns, RSN. If that one goes out and doesn't see some more pickup, i'll probably call it a day, fictionwise. The money isn't an issue, but i don't want to write stuff that nobody's reading.

Page from nick's copy of Finnegans Wake

RAWIllumination: As my readership has many Joyce fans, tells us about your "signed kinda beaten up first edition of Finnegans Wake."

Nick Black: hahahaha, it's got some fairly serious water damage in the back, serious enough that no real collector/library would want it anyway. i keep it in an airtight box in an attempt to keep it from developing mold or spreading said mold in a great bibliocide.

it's cool to own, but you can only look at a signature or even rub it on your testicles so many times, you know? but i got it at an excellent price, a gift to myself after finishing my masters.

RAWIllumination.net: Robert Anton Wilson told his friend Eric Wagner that Eric should read Ulysses 40 times, how many times have you read  it? Do you have advice to people on how to read it when you are recommending it?

nick black: So a reread in my experience usually jumps around a good bit. i have read the lengthy Shakespeare argument of Stephen Daedalus  in its entirety exactly once and don't expect to do so again. i  likewise tend to skip the early elements of Nausicaa. the beginning and end of Oxen of the Sun are not really meaningfully read IMHO. With that said, i'd read the book at least five times through by the end of high school, by which time i'd memorized most of "Proteus", having read it at least a hundred times. Remember, compile times were generally much longer then =].

My advice is: do not bother with annotations the first time, but *do* read a quick summary of each chapter before and after you read it. Let things flow. Joyce does not expect you (the educated but not expert reader) to understand everything. at times he doesn't expect you to understand much of anything. If you were plopped into somebody's brain, able to sense their thoughts as they rose to the surface, how much would you understand? Not too much, for any interesting brain. Sometimes he is drilling this fact into you. There's a reason why you get two unexceptional (language-wise) chapters, then slapped in the face with "ineluctable modality of the visible". You're *supposed* to ask "what the fuck?" and angrily claim that you're an educated reader and ought be able to understand everything you come across. No! he is taking that away from you, and it's a critical part of the form.

i do not claim to understand a single page of Finnegans Wake, which i like much less than Ulysses.

Portrait of the Artist is like any number of books that came before it. Ulysses is an experiment and a revolution because it is not, and you have to accept that it is not, or you're gonna have a bad time. if you go in expecting to treat it like a standard novel, reading it for a ten-question fill-in-the-blank quiz to be administered at the beginning of class, you failed before you started. 

There's shit in my book that no one without serious research in the subject is going to "understand". that's intentional. you ought feel at times buffeted by waves of uncertainty. hence the "invocation", which it pleased me to hear you cite regarding skipping some paragraphs.

RELATED LINKS

Official midnight's simulacra page 

nick black's website, dankwiki

Read part one of the novel

Danktech videos

Dankblog

self-publishing and nuclear secrets (Interesting background on the novel). 

TECHNICAL NOTE

Some of you may care, maybe some of you like computers, too. An interesting feature of the book is that it has sentences in many different languages, using fonts for the characters used by the original language.  The book's credits note that it was "Created on a Debian Linux workstation using exclusively Free Software (git, Vim, LuaTEX, Memoir, GNU Make, polyglossia, CircuiTikZ, PyMOL, and GIMP) and free fonts (Gentium Book Plus,Kanit, Noto, Hack, and Symbola)."

nick comments: i put a lot of effort into formatting and the way i  did footnotes. my girlfriend was yelling at me all the while, saying "if LaTeX is causing you such problems, why don't you use Word like everyone else?" and "no one is going to care whether you have the Belarusian!" to which i replied, "because LaTeX is how serious work is done, and i can fix it if i need to, and it'll look unbelievable when it's done" and "i will care."

Some of nick black's library. The cabinet with the blue light on the right has autographed books and rarities, "a signed Illuminatus!, a signed Schrodinger's Cat, and the original three paperbacks of Illuminatus (as opposed to the omnibus edition) lurk within."

Note: In the interview, sometimes nick capitalized "I" sometimes he used a lower case letter, I decided to go with both.