The delay of 'Illuminatus!' and five Robert Shea zines

As I wrote in yesterday's post, Bobby Campbell has released a lot of new Robert Anton Wilson material, but he also took the time to release PDFs of five Robert Shea zines. One of them illustrates that Shea and RAW originally thought Illuminatus! would be coming out much more quickly. It also confirms that the pair originally thought Dell would bring out one big book:

"Two Chicago authors (names kept secret for their protection) are threatening to produce a novel which will give the complete and total truth about the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria. Dell books is threatening of publish it. If all parties involved survive, the book could be out by 1971. Then the Apple will really hit the fan!" (The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette (formerly the Saturday Evening Post, Number 25, April 4, 1970, available here). 

I will be checking out the RAW material, too, although probably not thoroughly until I can finish reading A Non-Euclidean Perspective: Robert Anton Wilson’s Political Commentaries 1960-2005. 

But I don't want Shea to be overlooked (as if you couldn't tell)  so I've started by looking at  five Shea zines, dating from 1969 to 1970).

Here is yesterday's blog post, with reading recommendations from Bobby and a link to the whole archive -- lots of RAW material -- and links to Shea's five zines in the archive. 

Bobby Campbell releases RAW (and Shea) papers from Princeton library

The Princeton Library. Bobby Campbell photo, I think. 

As I mentioned the other day, Bobby Campbell recently visited the Ed Sanders papers at Princeton University's special collections in the university library, searching for Robert Anton Wilson papers. 

Bobby has now posted a collection of papers to make them available to everyone. 

Here is the announcement at the Maybe Logic blog: 

Enclosed please find a large collection of letters, articles, poetry, prose, and Discordian junk mail created by Robert Anton Wilson, usually under a variety of pen names and aliases, and all sent to, and preserved by, the poet and activist Ed Sanders.

(There is also material by Robert Shea, Arlen Riley Wilson, and even a cameo by Mal 2!)

This material was discovered by the brilliant esoteric scholar R. Michael Johnson, our resident Overweening Generalist, who identified its close proximity to my suburban NJ environs, housed in the Princeton Library's Special Collections Dept, and suggested I might do well to take a gander. Not being the type to turn down a magical quest, I did indeed take a trip up the turnpike and captured the cache of material, converted to PDF, labeled and organized to the best of my ability, and now present to the wider RAW/Discordian community for enjoyment and edification :)))

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: EARLY RAW - THE ED SANDERS COLLECTION

The majority of the material here was brand new to me, and does not seem to be available elsewhere on the internet, though I'll be curious to see how much of it is genuinely previously unknown writing. I direct your attention specifically to the "I" newsletter section, which appears to be an early forerunner of the Trajectories newsletter. It seems like RAW probably sent this stuff far and wide, but I've never bumped into it before. Maybe it's collected under another name? (Maybe housed in the famed Discordian archives?)

I also direct your attention to two prose pieces:

I Blew Pot at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Panty Raid at the Pentagon)

& Werewolf Bridge

Both of which Wilson refers to as proposed novels, of which these are presumably very short excerpts.

The Werewolf Bridge material shows up as a recurring theme in his work, but I don't think in this exact form. RAW's first hand description of his experience at the Pentagon protest is riveting! And again, previously unknown to me.

More here. 

Copies of 'Tales of Illuminatus 2' are being delivered

I made a Kickstarter pledge to back Tales of Illuminatus 2 and my comic book arrived on my porch Monday. So if you backed the project, too, and if you don't have your copy yet, I suspect that it will arrive Real Soon Now. Congratulations to Bobby for completing it! A job well done! 

 

'Liminal Currents' podcast interviews Rasa about RAW

Episode 23 of the Liminal Currents podcast features an  interview with Rasa. "On this episode he shares many interesting stories about RAW, his concepts and a bit about Timothy Leary as well!" I have not had time to listen yet, but I will check it out soon. I have linked to the Apple podcasts site, but it appears to be available at many of the usual podcasting locations and apps. The host apologizes for accidentally referring to Rasa as "Robert" in the podcast. 

The Liminal Currents podcast appears to have other episodes that might be of interest to sombunall RAW fans.

RAW and Shea material at the Princeton library

Letter from RAW to Ed Sanders. 

 Bobby Campbell on Bluesky: "I had a great day at the Princeton Special Collections Dept! Documenting a treasure drove of original RAW documents from his correspondence w/ poet Ed Sanders. (On behalf of the OG!) 213 pages of RAW & Shea material. Processing everything now. Decent chance there's some unique gems in here :)))"

Background on Ed Sanders. The Princeton library has a website for Ed Sanders Papers, 1939-2021 (mostly 1960-2010). I look forward to learning more. 

RAW Semantics on the new Shea book

 RAW Semantics on Bluesky: "I'm currently reading Robert Shea's 'Every Day is a GOOD Day' (the new collection edited by  @jacksontom.bsky.social - see my post above) & like it a lot. I've quickly warmed to Shea's voice, but I don't know enough about him to attempt a review such as this one."

Thanks, Brian, and thanks again for the review, Michael! As I noted earlier, Brian has posted notes on the new Robert Anton Wilson book, A Non-Euclidian Perspective. 

More here on Every Day is a Good Day. 

Five books about William Blake

Given that Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea were Blake fans and many RAW fans also love William Blake fans, I thought I would pass on this article recommending the five best books about William Blake, as chosen by Mark Vernon, author of the new book, Awake!: William Blake and the Power of the Imagination.

Don't forget that John Higgs also has written two books about Blake. 

John Higgs' book on David Lynch released

John Higgs announces that his new book on David Lynch, LYNCHIAN,  has been released in the United Kingdom. Go here to see the various places where the book can be ordered online. See the newsletter for new dates for appearances. 

I don't see the book on Amazon, so U.S. readers apparently will want to order the book from Britain and have it shipped over here. 

A new book about Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley. Public domain photo by Carl Van Vechten. 

Dwight Garner reviews a new book about Malcolm Cowley for the New York Times, and the review (and apparently the book) highlights the role Cowley, a writer, editor and critic, played in reviving the career of writer William Faulkner:

"It’s hard to believe now, but in 1944 every one of William Faulkner’s 17 books was out of print except for 'Sanctuary,' a thriller he’d written to pay the mortgage. He was only in his late 40s but his career was in eclipse. Maxwell Perkins, the venerated Scribner’s editor, had declared: 'Faulkner is finished.' Faulkner’s publisher nudged him further into oblivion when it donated some of his novels’ printing plates — who’ll need these again? — to be melted down for the war effort.

"Among the books out of print were several interrelated novels written between 1929 and 1942, 'The Sound and the Fury,' 'As I Lay Dying,' 'Light in August,' 'Absalom, Absalom!' and 'Go Down, Moses.' Each was set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Miss. Each is now recognized as among the most vital and important novels of the 20th century, but that was hardly the case at the time. Faulkner’s work had never sold well, and it had long ago been pounded into dust by popular critics such as Clifton Fadiman of The New Yorker, who found Faulkner a puzzling bore."

The review relates how Faulkner's fortunes were reversed when Cowley succeeded in getting Viking to let him edit and publish The Portable Faulkner, despite the fact that "Almost no one at Viking thought the book worth doing."

The book Garner reviews is The Insider by Gerald Howard; Faulkner is not the only writer Cowley helped. See the link, above, and the Wikipedia bio. 

I mention this not just because RAW was a Faulkner fan (Faulkner gets a mention in Illuminatus!) but because the new book raises an important point: Who or what will help bring more attention to the works of Robert Anton Wilson (and Robert Shea)? Is there a Malcolm Cowley out there somewhere?

At least, thanks to Hilaritas Press, we don't have to worry about RAW going out of print. There's a lot currently available for any reader who discovers RAW and wants to get more. 

 

RAW letter in 'Heavy Metal' magazine

Harlan Ellison (Creative Commons photo by Pip R. Lagenta, more information)

Jesse Walker spots a "letter to the editor" from Robert Anton Wilson in the October 1981 issue of Heavy Metal magazine.

The text:

"Dear All,

"Loved the Burroughs article on immortality. That man is the greatest prose artist since Joyce. I was less impressed with the Ellison piece. His rhetoric always reminds me of the kind of speech that traditionally ends up, 'And let's get a rope and string the bastards up right now.' Doesn't he ever stop hating everybody and anybody in sight? Oh, well, that's his shtick I guess: different maps for different chaps, different scenes for different genes, different lanes for different brains ....

Live long and prosper,

                                                                                                                                    Robert Anton Wilson                                                                                                                                               Berkeley, Calif."

The Harlan Ellison piece, "Fear Not Your Enemies," is here.  It's an essay arguing for gun control that appeared after John Lennon's murder. It's reprinted in the Ellison collection Sleepless Nights in the Procrustean Bed: Essays. 

The William Burroughs piece is here. The AI summary when I searched  for it says, "William Burroughs' piece 'Immortality' was featured in Heavy Metal Magazine in May 1981. This work is a heavily edited version of an essay that later appeared in his book The Adding Machine. In "Immortality," Burroughs explores themes related to the human desire for eternal life and the implications of advanced medical technologies, such as transplant techniques, on society."

Michael Johnson on psychedelic research

Dr. Gül Dölen

Robert Anton Wilson, defending Timothy Leary, campaigned for research into the benefits of psychedelic drugs, and I often wished he could have lived to see the research efforts that have been going on in recent years. Michael Johnson's latest Substack newsletter, "Recent Psychedelic Drug Research and German Ethology," is an interesting primer on some of the work that's going  on. At the end of the piece, Michael loops back to Leary: "The Leary scholar James Penner thought Leary’s ideas around 'de-conditioning' and 'reimprinting' using psychedelic drugs were his biggest breakthroughs."

A book recommendation site

As this is a blog aimed at people who like to read, I thought I would pass on a suggestion from Mark Frauenfelder, from the latest issue of the newsletter Recomendo: 

"book.sv, is a free book recommendation engine built by scraping 43 million Goodreads users. I entered about ten favorite books, and the results impressed me. It surfaced other books I’ve read and loved, validating its taste-matching algorithm. More exciting were the new titles it suggested: intriguing picks I hadn’t encountered before (like Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze). Unlike Goodreads’ algorithm, this feels like getting suggestions from someone who actually understands my reading taste. — MF"

So I decided to  try it. I entered 14 favorite books, ones that I had read more than once, and it gave me 30 book recommendations. Most were titles I knew about, all were authors I had heard of. Nineteen were books I had already read, which I guess shows that the recommendations work; I liked almost all of the books I had read, although a couple did not impress me much. There were only a couple of books I don't know much about, Light by M. John Harrison and The Cunning Man by Robertson Davies. But the recommended book I am likeliest to read next is The Magus by John Fowles; Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea were both Fowles fans. I probably should also try The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. (I read The Floating Opera in college and liked it, but I've never read any other Barth. RAW liked him.)

Basic income for artists in Ireland moves forward

Photo from Unsplash

Here is some news that combines several of Robert Anton Wilson's interests: Ireland is moving ahead with a program to provide basic income payments to artists. The program was an experiment and is now being made permament. 

While I got frustrated trying to find one really good news story that answered all of my questions (what kinds of artists? How many people are likely to qualify in the future?) here are some articles: From Smithsonian,  also an article from Ocula, and also an article from Business Insider.