'Tales of Illuminatus' No. 3 out soon

Here is Bobby Campbell's update for the Tales of Illumnatus comic book project. For your convenience, I'll just reproduce the announcement here:

Hey everyone!

Quick update just to confirm that everything is proceeding as planned :)))

Todd and I will be finishing up our pages over the next couple of weeks and fulfillment will begin before the end of the month.

The KS campaign is officially concluded and we will not be taking any further orders.

You should have received a notification to confirm your shipping address, if applicable:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbycampbell/tales-of-illuminatus-3-opus-chao/backing/redeem?ref=creator_share

Just a quick reminder of our fulfillment schedule, so you know what to expect and when:

Summer shipments:

Issues 1, 2, and 3 (Print and Digital)

Music Collections (Digital)

Video Game (Digital)

Poster (Print)

Fall shipments:

The First Trip - Collection (Print and Digital)

Skeleton Key Zine (Print and Digital)

Jukebox Musical Cassette Tape (Physical)

Thank you so much for your support, I can't wait for you to see what we've built!

<3<3<3

bc

'Modern Occultist' on RAW

This is a Maybe Day piece I had missed, but Modern Occultist published a good-sized article on RAW on July 23, discussing Wilson and several of his books. There is also discussion of Eric Wagner's An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson. Here is the intro:

On July 23, 1973, a former Playboy editor turned novelist sat in California running himself through a battery of yogic breathing exercises and ceremonial magic techniques he'd adapted from Aleister Crowley, trying to see what would happen if he took his own skepticism and set it down for a while.

Somewhere in the archive of human letters there is a category of writer who cannot be summarized. You can describe their books, chart their influences, document their controversies, quote their more memorable lines—and still the essential thing will have slipped away, grinning at you from behind the nearest conspiracy theory. Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) was that kind of writer. He was a novelist, a philosopher, a stand-up comedian, a chaos magician by temperament if not always by practice, and—in the formulation he most favored for himself in his last years—“a Damned Old Crank.” He was also, by any honest reckoning, one of the most genuinely liberating thinkers of the twentieth century, a man who devoted his entire career to the single project of helping people think more carefully about how little they actually know.

More  here. 

'Modern Occultist' interviews Eric Wagner

Eric Wagner, ready for action when he was a bit younger (Facebook photo).

 Modern Occultist has just published a new interview with Eric Wagner, I thought it was pretty substantial. The interview is by C.M. Kushins, Here is one of the questions and answers:

MO: You document Wilson’s lifelong devotion to Ezra Pound’s Cantos—the phrase “hilaritas et amor” from the Paradiso section even became Wilson’s email signature. Yet Pound is a deeply problematic figure—which both you and Wilson acknowledged. How did Wilson square that particular tension, and how do you square it as someone who has spent decades in both men’s work?

EW: Bob did a very good job of separating the dancer from the dance, as Yeats put it. He would learn from people despite their more problematical aspects, as one can see from his discussions of Pound and Crowley, etc. I started reading Pound in 1982, and I would to read a bunch of Pound, become disgusted, and leave him alone for a while. Then I would read a bit of Pound, go “Wow!”, learn a lot, read a bunch more by and about Pound, get disgusted, and leave him alone for a while. As with Crowley, Pound has influenced me very profoundly, more so than with Crowley. I have also had the good fortune to teach number of Pound’s books in high school and community college classes.

In the 1990’s Bob invited me to participate in a discussion of Pound online at the Zero City Amphitheater. In our discussions there Bob compared me to St. Paul because he found me too judgmental of Uncle Ezra. 

More here. There's been other items of interest in Modern Occultist News, which I'll cover in a follow-up blog post. 

The biography of Mr. Kushins is interesting: "C. M. Kushins is the author of Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon (2019), Beast: John Bonham and the Rise of Led Zeppelin (2021), and Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard (2025). He has been a freelance journalist for over twenty years and his work has appeared in High Times and The Daily Beast, among others. His love of esoteric history began with both Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, as well as Western Hermeticism, which he lectured on in Berlin."

'The Classical Style' reading group, week twelve

A 1789 miniature of Mozart (public domain). 

2. String Quintet 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

One Christmas in the 1990's my grandmother asked what I would like for Christmas. Inspired by this book, I asked for a CD of Mozart string quintets. The record store didn't have one, so she got me a terrific CD of Mozart string quartets instead. In the 2010's Rafi recommended the recordings of the Mozart quintets by the Griller Quartet with William Primrose playing the extra viola part. I bought that two CD set and loved it, but I haven't listened to these works for as many years as I have some of the other works discussed in this book. Media and economics help shape the music we listen to and appreciate.  

Joseph Kerman wrote: 

Years ago I floated an idea about Western music history, that it might be  viewed as falling into millennium-long phases: initially an oral tradition, with people performing music from memory; then a period of literacy (a term Leo Treitler was using at the time), predicated on scores and partbooks to sing and play from; and now a new model determined by sound recording and the activity (or passivity) of listening.  - Opera and the Morbidity of Music, pg. 85 

As a musician in the 1980's I felt guilty about reading about music. Pianist Gary Graffman called his memoir I Really Should Be Practicing. Musicians sometimes looked down their noses at reading about music. Most of my professional musician friends have next to no interest in writers like Rosen and Kerman.  

When I started taking ballet classes in 1990, my teachers explicitly told us not to practice ballet at home so that we would not practice wrong, since we really knew next to nothing about ballet at the time. Ballet class did reawaken my interest in classical music, so I reread Erich Leinsdorf's The Composer's Advocate in which he recommended Kerman's The Beethoven Quartets. I read that book and loved it and proceeded to read all of Kerman. Kerman raved about The Classical Style, so I read that, loved it, and read all of Rosen's books and listened to a bunch of Rosen's CD's.  

 

Two Maybe Day articles, Oz and Michael

Oz Fritz and Michael Johnson both published new pieces within a few days of Maybe Day, July 23.

Oz' piece is "Crowley, Joyce, Lewis Carroll and the Night of Pan," published on his blog, The Oz Mix. I did not realize that Lewis Carroll was so influential on other authors until I saw Oz' piece. Oz' thesis that Joyce and Crowley could have met in Paris seems reasonable to me.

Michael's article is "On the Decadent Pleasure of Reading Difficult Books."  Michael remarks, "It’s kinda my thing to not be a part of Idiot Culture, so those of us - the sorts that read the OG - seem to be part of a cyclical monastic life of readers."

In the comments on Michael's piece, Spookah wrote, "I do not know if this post was inspired in part by Oz' recent 'Crowley, Joyce, Lewis Carroll and the Night of Pan', but I find that they complement each other nicely." Michael replied, "Oz’s recent post on Carroll, Crowley, Joyce and the Night of Pan was definitely one of the spurs for me here: good catch!"

Michael got a lot of comments for his piece, and I weighed in, too. 

Saturday links

 

PQ on Finnegans Wake and the Pluribus TV show (also the movie Dance First). 

John Higgs newsletter with lots of recommendations. 

My dog would be a better president than Trump. 

Neal Stephenson: Writing by hand is good for your brain. 

Totally automated classic rock radio station. 

Update on 'Chapel Perilous' audiobook Kickstarter

 Gabriel Kennedy/Prop Anon has posted a sample of the upcoming audiobook of the RAW biography Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson. 

Production is being funded by a Kickstarter campaign, which as in other Kickstarter campaigns offers a tier of rewards for people willing to help.  The deadline is September 3 for reaching the goal, so if you are interested, get on board sooner rather than later. 

Ezra Pound's daughter has died

 Brunnenburg castle, where Ezra Pound's daughter lived. (Creative Commons photo, details here). 

A fascinating New York Times obituary records the death, at age 101, of Mary de Rachewiltz, "Ezra Pound's daughter and defender," as the obituary puts it. 

My link gets  you behind the paywall, and you should read the obit by Trip Gabriel, as it has a lot of fascinating details, both about her and her famous dad.  The obit gives fill details on Pound's fascist tendencies and his neglectful parenting style. A couple of sentences: "In 1958, Pound won his release through the intervention of Eliot, Robert Frost and other poets. On his return to Italy, he gave a fascist salute to reporters."

Kickstarter launches for 'Chapel Perilous' audiobook

Gabriel Kennedy/Prop Anon has launched his Kickstarter to fund the audiobook version of his RAW biography, Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson. 

Details at the Kickstarter page, which lists the levels of support and the goodies you'll receive for various pledges. The goal is to raise $3,500. Bobby Campbell has announced his support. 

Steve Fly's tribal tale

When I did my Maybe Day article, "Reading about Robert Anton Wilson: Biographies, criticism and more," I listed three books under the "Critical Studies" heading -- Eric Wagner's two books, and Steve "Fly" Pratt's Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson. And as I mentioned in my recent post on what I read last month, I finally read Steve's whole book last month. Here are a few notes.

At the end of Robert Anton Wilson's TSOG: The Thing that Ate the Constitution and Other Everyday Monsters, there's an outline for a planned RAW book called Tale of the Tribe. Steve's book is a collection of essays about (or related to) RAW, usually on topics or figures mentioned in the outline. 

I enjoyed the book. As you might expect with Steve, there's a lot of ideas and inspired notions. There are pieces on John Sinclair, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Claude Shannon, Alan Moore's Jerusalem, plus excerpots from Steve's email exchanges and interviews of RAW.  There are many references to Finnegan's Wake. Here is a bit Steve wrote about FW, comparing it to the more experimental work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sun Ra: "Now we can better constructively criticize their arts based on a lifetime of output and analysis of the evolution of their artform over time, we can now see and share a deeper coherence in their music."

Oz Fritz liked the book. Here is his review, written in 2019. 

A note on availability. While paperbacks of the book remain available in several places, including Walmart,  the inexpensive ebook I bought from Amazon and read last month (about $4) is no longer offered. Steve says he is working on a revised version of the book. Here is most of his email to me when I asked about the matter:

"Yes, I removed almost all my Kindle books, and some paperback in a fit of disgust at Amazon, Bezos and the nazi cia Mossad US led broligarchy. Fuck them! I hope I may find a real publisher some day and some interested entities in my work. 

"I have a completely rewritten edition, but things change so fast I can't get happy with it all. I have several introductions now." 

'The Classical Style' reading group, week eleven

 

Fortepiano by Johann Andreas Stein (Augsburg, 1775) – Berlin Musical Instrument Museum.
Creative Commons photo by Gérard Janot. Source. 

V  MOZART 

 1. The Concerto 

By ERIC WAGNER
Special guest blogger

On page 251 Rosen begins discussing K. 503, Concerto No. 25, my favorite. Joseph Kerman edited the Norton critical score of this concerto. I saw that book in a Tower Records in the 1990's, but I couldn't afford it. I later got the book from the library and loved it, and I have a special affection for that concerto.  

The footnote on page 255 deals with changes in pianos over time. When Mozart composed this concerto the piano had fewer keys than the standard 88 key piano of the last two hundred years. Pianists sometimes ask what they think Mozart would have wanted to hear on the longer keyboard. Would he have wanted to hear notes not possible to play on the keyboard for which he originally conceived the piece? 

These last eleven piano concertos, number 17 to 27, seem to me among the greatest creations of humanity. If you find yourself struggling with Rosen's analysis in this book, I recommend just putting the book aside and listening to the music. I think this marks my sixth time reading this book. It covers so much music, I get lost sometimes, but I feel grateful that I get to return to the music, and I feel grateful that you have chosen to join me on this voyage. 

In 1985 I went to London for the first time. Most nights I went to a play, but the theaters closed on Sundays, so I went to hear a concert with Andre Previn playing and conducting a Mozart concerto (I don't remember which one) and conducting the Brahms Requiem. I had read articles condemning pianists conducting from the keyboard, so I found myself most looking forward to the Brahms, but the Mozart performance ended up blowing me away. A few weeks later I found myself in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, on July 23 where I heard the original German version of Falco's song "Amadeus" in a nightclub called Wonderland. The next night in Munich I saw Berman's film of The Magic Flute. 

What we read last month

 

Here is what Mark K. Brown read last month:

Neuromancer by William Gibson 7/23 
Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon  7/26   
Anti-Sartre, with an Essay on Camus by Colin Wilson  7/27  

Mark is traveling, so he has less reading time. He also is plugging away on Charles Rosen's The Classical Style.

Here's what I read in July:

The Warlord of Greenline Town, J. Kenton Pierce.
The Story of Russia, Orlando Figes.
Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, Richard Hanania.
Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson, Steven James Pratt.
Master Alvin, Orson Scott Card. 

Starting in July, I am trying each month to read at least two books nominated for next year's Prometheus Award (I am a judge), hence the Pierce and the Card.

So, what did you read last month? 

New ebook version of 'Neurologic'

After I tried (and failed) to make an epub version of  Neurologic by Timothy Leary and Joanna Harcourt-Smith, the short book on the Eight Circuit model that is not in print but available on the Internet (see this post for background), Mike Gathers tackled the job. At this link, you can download the original PDF file, or a zipped epub file, which quickly unzips into a working epub file. I have tested the epub on my smartphone and it seemed to be fine. 

This seems worth mentioning in a blog post because an epub of the book seems more convenient to me. You can much more easily read an epub file on your phone than a PDF; I use a well-reviewed app called Readera but there are many others. (Here is a guide to reading apps.) Also, you can use the send-to-Kindle feature to read the book on your Kindle, or  your Kindle app.

Here is a Wikipedia article about Neurologic. Apparently the book dates to when there were seven circuits, not 8. 

I need to look more closely at the book just recovered by Bobby Campbell, The Periodic Table of Energy, would it work as an epub, too? 

Thanks, Mike!