Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Dell (1983), 805 pages
Description
Filled with sex and violence--in and out of time and space--the three books of The Illuminatus are only partly works of the imagination. They tackle all the coverups of our time--from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on a one-dollar bill.
User reviews
LibraryThing member skholiast
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
This is the grand-daddy, big-bad-nobodaddy of all satirical conspiracy books, and anyone who tells you otherwise is fnording you. Shea and Wilson were the original Deleuze and Guattari (according to Wilson, the writing of "Illuminatus!" was finished in 1971--the same year
Whether Shea and Wilson deliver up a convincing alternative to the usual story was hardly the point; what they show, in a flabbergastingly entertaining way, is how the "usual story" is in fact a whole tension of competing stories, from the G.O.P. to the flat-earthers, whose surprisingly extensive common assumptions are unquestioned only because the surface tension between them distracts you from it. It's this hidden consensus Wilson and Shea want to take apart; and since to use the consensus’ own interrogation-devices would have defeated the purpose, they resort instead to the narrative equivalent of squirt guns, handshake-buzzers, whoopee cushions and LSD in the water supply (and where do you think they filled the squirt guns?). Their Pyrrhonian doctrine is not a plausible philosophy of life, but that isn’t the point either; it’s a very workable philosophy of literature, and the book itself is the demonstration. It was the first thing I ever read that patiently, by demonstration rather than argument, made clear to me: everything you know is words, words-strung-together. True enough, in this fashion "Illuminatus!" systematically undercuts *itself* as well; but that *is* the point.
The plot is unsummarizable. A dozen or two bewildered characters, of all degrees from sympathetic to make-you-cringe, blunder through a vaguely-familiar 20th century booby-trapped with Chicago gangsters, golden submarines, Cthulhian interstellar demons, boys from Brazil, coups-d’etat in tiny island nations, Jungian archetypes, Crowleyan magick,the Sacred Chao, the Law of Fives, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, an attack on the Pentagon (which must've seemed downright eerie to Wilson on 9/11), and (naturally) the final truth about That Day in Dallas. Curtain lifts upon curtain, over and over, revealing, quite intentionally, too many Men Behind the Curtain, too many Final Truths. In this meta-narrative, every great cloak-&-dagger Usual Suspect gets its fifteen minutes, but the real fallout of the matter is finally a kind of giant koan inherent in conspiracy theory and even American culture, a paradox at the heart of paranoia: the more your conspiracy theory explains, the less you can know; and if there could be a conspiracy powerful enough to control everything, you couldn’t trust anything, including the evidence that leads you to believe in the conspiracy. Which means, ultimately, that fear can contain the seeds of its own dissolution.
What's finally delivered here is conspiracy theory without the rage; paranoia without the helplessness. Some might fault it for recommending a cheerful apoliticism, or a cheeky glib nihilism; but the fact is, it’s a *satire*. In fact, this is how you have to read all of Wilson’s work, including his nonfiction. If you’re looking for a recommendation on how to live, it won’t really deliver. As a coherent philosophy, the radical skepticism he claims to offer is simply self-contradictory; Wilson has said he prefers "useful" to "true" as criteria for assertions about how things are, and that he doesn’t "believe" things but simply considers them more or less "useful" descriptions; but this simply means he *believes* that "useful" is *truly* a better way to talk about descriptions. Read his work as satire, though, and it’s the print equivalent to long-term continuous low-level exposure to nitrous oxide. Calling it satire is (obviously) not to say it isn’t serious. Wilson treats with consummate fairness all kinds of thinkers who more respectable intellectuals wouldn't touch with lead gloves and hospital-sterile forceps: Timothy Leary, Immanuel Velikovsky, Aleister Crowley, Wilhelm Reich--each receives more than one risky and provocative hearing, not just a token name-dropping mention. Wilson also draws insightfully from Pound, Joyce, Korzybski, McLuhan, and any number of other major figures, always, always, careful to offer not just one but multiple possible conclusions. All his work is provocative, and "Cosmic Trigger" (especially volume one) may be a minor classic.
Shea, too, was a gifted writer, author of number of historical novels set in a considerable range of milieu: samurai Japan, the Provence of the Cathars and troubadours, Illinois during the 19th century's Black Hawk war. But in Shea and Wilson's collaboration with each other, one discovers one of those mysterious emergent properties you hear about. Each of them wrote other works exploring the themes here, but "Illuminatus!" is where to start and where to come back to. Once you read it, you’ll never see the fnords the same way.
This is the grand-daddy, big-bad-nobodaddy of all satirical conspiracy books, and anyone who tells you otherwise is fnording you. Shea and Wilson were the original Deleuze and Guattari (according to Wilson, the writing of "Illuminatus!" was finished in 1971--the same year
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"L'Anti-Oedipe" came out in France ); but their book is way funnier (and sexier, too, as another reader opined to me). To be sure, it's huge and goofy and written in all manner of faux-Faulkner, -Joyce, -Woolf, -Pound, -Stein, -Burroughs pseudostyles, and is sometimes about as mature as a smirking too-smart teenager; but if you've ever been a too-smart teenager, you've at least wanted to smirk like this, to grin into the face of the principal or the priest, and deliver some stream of non-sequiturs. Yes, on one level that sort of mouthing-off is meant merely to provoke, but there’s a serious meta-message underneath: "I do not accept the bullshit you are telling me." Whether Shea and Wilson deliver up a convincing alternative to the usual story was hardly the point; what they show, in a flabbergastingly entertaining way, is how the "usual story" is in fact a whole tension of competing stories, from the G.O.P. to the flat-earthers, whose surprisingly extensive common assumptions are unquestioned only because the surface tension between them distracts you from it. It's this hidden consensus Wilson and Shea want to take apart; and since to use the consensus’ own interrogation-devices would have defeated the purpose, they resort instead to the narrative equivalent of squirt guns, handshake-buzzers, whoopee cushions and LSD in the water supply (and where do you think they filled the squirt guns?). Their Pyrrhonian doctrine is not a plausible philosophy of life, but that isn’t the point either; it’s a very workable philosophy of literature, and the book itself is the demonstration. It was the first thing I ever read that patiently, by demonstration rather than argument, made clear to me: everything you know is words, words-strung-together. True enough, in this fashion "Illuminatus!" systematically undercuts *itself* as well; but that *is* the point.
The plot is unsummarizable. A dozen or two bewildered characters, of all degrees from sympathetic to make-you-cringe, blunder through a vaguely-familiar 20th century booby-trapped with Chicago gangsters, golden submarines, Cthulhian interstellar demons, boys from Brazil, coups-d’etat in tiny island nations, Jungian archetypes, Crowleyan magick,the Sacred Chao, the Law of Fives, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, an attack on the Pentagon (which must've seemed downright eerie to Wilson on 9/11), and (naturally) the final truth about That Day in Dallas. Curtain lifts upon curtain, over and over, revealing, quite intentionally, too many Men Behind the Curtain, too many Final Truths. In this meta-narrative, every great cloak-&-dagger Usual Suspect gets its fifteen minutes, but the real fallout of the matter is finally a kind of giant koan inherent in conspiracy theory and even American culture, a paradox at the heart of paranoia: the more your conspiracy theory explains, the less you can know; and if there could be a conspiracy powerful enough to control everything, you couldn’t trust anything, including the evidence that leads you to believe in the conspiracy. Which means, ultimately, that fear can contain the seeds of its own dissolution.
What's finally delivered here is conspiracy theory without the rage; paranoia without the helplessness. Some might fault it for recommending a cheerful apoliticism, or a cheeky glib nihilism; but the fact is, it’s a *satire*. In fact, this is how you have to read all of Wilson’s work, including his nonfiction. If you’re looking for a recommendation on how to live, it won’t really deliver. As a coherent philosophy, the radical skepticism he claims to offer is simply self-contradictory; Wilson has said he prefers "useful" to "true" as criteria for assertions about how things are, and that he doesn’t "believe" things but simply considers them more or less "useful" descriptions; but this simply means he *believes* that "useful" is *truly* a better way to talk about descriptions. Read his work as satire, though, and it’s the print equivalent to long-term continuous low-level exposure to nitrous oxide. Calling it satire is (obviously) not to say it isn’t serious. Wilson treats with consummate fairness all kinds of thinkers who more respectable intellectuals wouldn't touch with lead gloves and hospital-sterile forceps: Timothy Leary, Immanuel Velikovsky, Aleister Crowley, Wilhelm Reich--each receives more than one risky and provocative hearing, not just a token name-dropping mention. Wilson also draws insightfully from Pound, Joyce, Korzybski, McLuhan, and any number of other major figures, always, always, careful to offer not just one but multiple possible conclusions. All his work is provocative, and "Cosmic Trigger" (especially volume one) may be a minor classic.
Shea, too, was a gifted writer, author of number of historical novels set in a considerable range of milieu: samurai Japan, the Provence of the Cathars and troubadours, Illinois during the 19th century's Black Hawk war. But in Shea and Wilson's collaboration with each other, one discovers one of those mysterious emergent properties you hear about. Each of them wrote other works exploring the themes here, but "Illuminatus!" is where to start and where to come back to. Once you read it, you’ll never see the fnords the same way.
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LibraryThing member evanplaice
I found this book to be absolutely hysterical but upon reflection I'm not exactly sure why. The first 100 pages I approached it as I would any other book. Consume, analyze, and pick apart a plot. It was frustrating to say the least because I was expecting the plot to follow the same rigid generic
Unlike most novels that can be found on bookshelves today, the protagonist is dragged submissively from one point to another along the story. It's pretty rare to see a plot where the character is not in full control of at least a small part of the story. In this novel everything is so mindbendingly unstructured that I'd compare it to looking into the psyche of somebody deep into a drug trip. Aware and conscious but without any bearing or control over the present.
For those readers who are anally retentively focused on structure and detail within a story plot, save yourself the time and run away now. The only structure that this book presents is a complete lack thereof. I tagged it anti-structuralism because it is written in such a nonsensical manner that it forces the reader to draw their own conclusions. It bends our foundations of perceived structure so far that they eventually break. I honestly felt myself giggling uncontrollably at some parts because it felt almost naughty to travel so far beyond the perceptions that our society unconsciously accept as dogma.
Likewise, if you're a prude or your sex life has never explored beyond the use of the missionary position, turn and run. The first female character presented is libertarian porn (ideological not sexual porn) taken to the extremes. I imagine her as how Ayn Rand would really like to present her main characters if she had the brass to do so. The second female character is a little more strange. I won't bother classifying the characters any more because it takes the fun out of the story.
If this book is trying to prove a point I think it would be that, by presented seeming nonsense in a chained structure manner it forces the reader to attempt to connect the dots by bending his/her logic to make the pieces fit until that perception is shattered. At the least, it will make the reader aware that that system of structure and common perception actually exists in the first place. At the most, it will trigger a cascade of epiphanies.
Although I have never experimented with LSD, I can imagine that the experience would be something along similar lines. By becoming aware of common perception it becomes possible to distance yourself. By letting go of control, it becomes possible to change it. Not everything that we see/feel is set in stone as much as we believe.
At the very least it takes some patience and a sense of humor to make it through these books. The ladder of which isn't a trait that I'd expect to be in short supply among a community of book worms.
I would pay money to see a literature teacher attempt to systematically deconstruct (and ruin) the plot of this novel into neat little packaged literary stereotypes as they so often do. I think it would be like asking a computer to divide by 0. It's hilarious enough to see other reviewers blow their lid about incorrect historical facts and plot holes.
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structure that almost every other book I've read follows.Unlike most novels that can be found on bookshelves today, the protagonist is dragged submissively from one point to another along the story. It's pretty rare to see a plot where the character is not in full control of at least a small part of the story. In this novel everything is so mindbendingly unstructured that I'd compare it to looking into the psyche of somebody deep into a drug trip. Aware and conscious but without any bearing or control over the present.
For those readers who are anally retentively focused on structure and detail within a story plot, save yourself the time and run away now. The only structure that this book presents is a complete lack thereof. I tagged it anti-structuralism because it is written in such a nonsensical manner that it forces the reader to draw their own conclusions. It bends our foundations of perceived structure so far that they eventually break. I honestly felt myself giggling uncontrollably at some parts because it felt almost naughty to travel so far beyond the perceptions that our society unconsciously accept as dogma.
Likewise, if you're a prude or your sex life has never explored beyond the use of the missionary position, turn and run. The first female character presented is libertarian porn (ideological not sexual porn) taken to the extremes. I imagine her as how Ayn Rand would really like to present her main characters if she had the brass to do so. The second female character is a little more strange. I won't bother classifying the characters any more because it takes the fun out of the story.
If this book is trying to prove a point I think it would be that, by presented seeming nonsense in a chained structure manner it forces the reader to attempt to connect the dots by bending his/her logic to make the pieces fit until that perception is shattered. At the least, it will make the reader aware that that system of structure and common perception actually exists in the first place. At the most, it will trigger a cascade of epiphanies.
Although I have never experimented with LSD, I can imagine that the experience would be something along similar lines. By becoming aware of common perception it becomes possible to distance yourself. By letting go of control, it becomes possible to change it. Not everything that we see/feel is set in stone as much as we believe.
At the very least it takes some patience and a sense of humor to make it through these books. The ladder of which isn't a trait that I'd expect to be in short supply among a community of book worms.
I would pay money to see a literature teacher attempt to systematically deconstruct (and ruin) the plot of this novel into neat little packaged literary stereotypes as they so often do. I think it would be like asking a computer to divide by 0. It's hilarious enough to see other reviewers blow their lid about incorrect historical facts and plot holes.
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LibraryThing member glammonkey
The first hundred pages or so were charmingly frenetic. The next hundred were less so. By the last hundred I couldn't wait to finish the damn thing. This is billed as the ultimate conspiracy book. Shea and Wilson throw in every conspiracy theory of the last century, tell it from a dozen points of
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view, and jump around in time. I admire their enthusiasm and willingness to try to take every cool thing they have ever heard and weave it into a grand tapestry. But at the same time, it's sort of like the 1970s distilled into book form. The drug stuff was just lame, but the treatment of women was revolting. Of the dozen characters the story is told through, only a few brief povs are from women. Most of the women show up merely to have sex with the male characters, often minutes after meeting them. In short, while the were good qualities to the book, mostly it just pissed me off. I doubt I'll read the rest of the trilogy. One star. Show Less
LibraryThing member JonathanGorman
Yes, the book is too long. Yes, they get a lot of facts wrong. Yes, it makes no sense. But you know, it's not supposed to really make that much sense. And for the love of god, don't sit down and try to read this whole thing in one sitting. Too much truth within untruths can make you sleepy and
That being said, I love how the perspective changes in the beginning of this series. It drew me in. After that, it was the characters and the bizarre groups.
Is it the equivalent of a literary scam? An attempt to reproduce utter psychosis and the mind of madmen by engaging in a free writing cyclic exercise and getting it published.
Probably. Still means it's good.
Now if you excuse me, I need to hang some posters stating that due to water rationing, employees are requested to only use fifteen seconds worth of hot water. I'm going to put it under the sign "Wash hands thoroughly before returning to work."
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unable to focus.That being said, I love how the perspective changes in the beginning of this series. It drew me in. After that, it was the characters and the bizarre groups.
Is it the equivalent of a literary scam? An attempt to reproduce utter psychosis and the mind of madmen by engaging in a free writing cyclic exercise and getting it published.
Probably. Still means it's good.
Now if you excuse me, I need to hang some posters stating that due to water rationing, employees are requested to only use fifteen seconds worth of hot water. I'm going to put it under the sign "Wash hands thoroughly before returning to work."
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LibraryThing member essaress
In reading this book, keep in mind that, in addition to dealing with the subject of myriad conspiracies, it is itself a conspiracy, an exercise in mind control. The authors confront the reader with endless contradictions, causing the reader's mind, in self defense, to grasp firmly to anything that
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seems to remain constant. Thus the author's points, unlike most of the plots, will remain with the reader. Show Less
LibraryThing member bragan
How to describe this book? The only adjective that comes to mind is "trippy," but that doesn't remotely capture my feelings about it. It's more like... Well, it's like taking the concentrated essence of conspiracy theory, every brand of mysticism known to man, the turbulent politics of the '60s and
The thing is, I do get the sense that there's a very funny postmodernist joke at the core of this book. I just didn't feel that it was worth wading through 800 pages of gooey wall-splatterings in order to be able to say I was in on it. Ah, well. At least now when I come across references to this series, as I sometimes do, I'll be able to, well, not understand them, really, but at least recognize them. And reading this has given me a new appreciation for the game Illuminati, which I enjoyed playing back in college. Amusingly, the game really does have the exact same plot and structure as the books (in other words, none), though it's approximately 2,300 times more entertaining.
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'70s, H.P. Lovecraft, fractured fragments of history, bad puns and bits of Philip K. Dick's brain, spiking it with LSD, spiking it with more LSD, adding Viagra, putting it all into a blender, and turning it on without the lid in place so that it makes gooey, chaotic spatters of prose all over the walls of your kitchen. Except that that sounds kind of cool and fascinating. And maybe it is in concept. But in execution? Not so much. As I was reading, part of my brain kept thinking things like "Well, in theory what the authors are doing here is very interesting" and "You have to admire their audacity," while the rest was thinking, "Oh, god, how many more pages of this do I have to get through?!" By the end of the first volume, that second reaction had more or less won, though I kept going, anyway, because I'm stubborn like that.The thing is, I do get the sense that there's a very funny postmodernist joke at the core of this book. I just didn't feel that it was worth wading through 800 pages of gooey wall-splatterings in order to be able to say I was in on it. Ah, well. At least now when I come across references to this series, as I sometimes do, I'll be able to, well, not understand them, really, but at least recognize them. And reading this has given me a new appreciation for the game Illuminati, which I enjoyed playing back in college. Amusingly, the game really does have the exact same plot and structure as the books (in other words, none), though it's approximately 2,300 times more entertaining.
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LibraryThing member DanielZKlein
One of those books I gave up reading halfway through and didn't notice until a few months later. I normally read one or two books at the same time, sometimes more. It is quite natural that I gravitate back and forth between those books depending on my mood and how engrossed I am by the story. At
So what's the problem? Many people have commented on how chaotic and seemingly random the book is. I don't mind experiments, and I've been known to read post modern books where plot was nothing but a vague suggestion. I quite enjoyed Donald Barthelme's _The Dead Father_, for instance. I get what Illuminatus! is doing, the jumping back and forth between plot strands, and at first it was amusing and pleasantly confusing, but in the long run the most pronounced effect on me that this skittishness had was one of bored apathy. I don't care what's happening to any of these people because I've long since given up on keeping their stories apart or making sense of any of the shocking revelations. There are brilliant scenes all over the book and moments of truly entertaining and funny insight, but the story has failed me and so everything feels very pointless.
I am pretty sure I will return to this book some day and hope I will change my mind, but at the moment I don't feel any strong motivation to open it and attempt to make sense of it again.
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some point I simply noticed that Illuminatus! had been passed by by about four other books and I kept putting it away again after a few pages.So what's the problem? Many people have commented on how chaotic and seemingly random the book is. I don't mind experiments, and I've been known to read post modern books where plot was nothing but a vague suggestion. I quite enjoyed Donald Barthelme's _The Dead Father_, for instance. I get what Illuminatus! is doing, the jumping back and forth between plot strands, and at first it was amusing and pleasantly confusing, but in the long run the most pronounced effect on me that this skittishness had was one of bored apathy. I don't care what's happening to any of these people because I've long since given up on keeping their stories apart or making sense of any of the shocking revelations. There are brilliant scenes all over the book and moments of truly entertaining and funny insight, but the story has failed me and so everything feels very pointless.
I am pretty sure I will return to this book some day and hope I will change my mind, but at the moment I don't feel any strong motivation to open it and attempt to make sense of it again.
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LibraryThing member keristars
During thirteen years of visiting Internet, especially the weird and shadowy geeky places, I came across references to the Illuminatus! trilogy all the time it seemed like. Eventually, the Wikipedia page wasn't cutting it, and I resolved to keep an eye out for the books when I was at the bookstore,
I regret doing that so much.
This trilogy is frigging awful. It's practically unreadable, even allowing for the postmodern, jumbled style. I figure that for it to make any kind of sense to anyone - or to just be readable, I suppose - the reader must be high. Lord knows that the characters within the book are high all the time anyway.
That's actually probably the worst part about the trilogy: every other sentence is about sex or drugs or murder and it's like two words without some expletive is two words too long. The conspiracy theories and weird philosophy stuff is actually pretty interesting and compelling, but the sex!drugs!murder! gets old real fast. I would turn the page and the point of view would shift again and, oh look, another sex scene. I don't think they're supposed to be titillating - I actually suspect that the sheer amount of sex and drugs in the book is supposed to be a desensitisation thing - but it doesn't have to be tedious and mind-numbingly boring, either.
Anyway, I now have this enormous brick of a paperback book taking up precious shelf space, and I don't plan to go any further than the 1/5 or so I've managed. The Wikipedia descriptions of the book and everything therein are more than enough for me.
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so I could become familiar with it firsthand. Luck would have it that I found the omnibus version at Barnes & Noble before long, so I took it home.I regret doing that so much.
This trilogy is frigging awful. It's practically unreadable, even allowing for the postmodern, jumbled style. I figure that for it to make any kind of sense to anyone - or to just be readable, I suppose - the reader must be high. Lord knows that the characters within the book are high all the time anyway.
That's actually probably the worst part about the trilogy: every other sentence is about sex or drugs or murder and it's like two words without some expletive is two words too long. The conspiracy theories and weird philosophy stuff is actually pretty interesting and compelling, but the sex!drugs!murder! gets old real fast. I would turn the page and the point of view would shift again and, oh look, another sex scene. I don't think they're supposed to be titillating - I actually suspect that the sheer amount of sex and drugs in the book is supposed to be a desensitisation thing - but it doesn't have to be tedious and mind-numbingly boring, either.
Anyway, I now have this enormous brick of a paperback book taking up precious shelf space, and I don't plan to go any further than the 1/5 or so I've managed. The Wikipedia descriptions of the book and everything therein are more than enough for me.
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LibraryThing member TimmyMac
To say this book changed my life would be an understatement. Were it not for reading this in ninth grade, I'd probably be a stockbroker right now. Instead, I'm kind of an underachieving bum, and I will be eternally grateful to Wilson and Shea.
LibraryThing member Brendan.H
Pynchon on 'shrooms I guess. It's a fun read if you like absurdist comedy, conspiracy theories, broad ranging allusion, or '60s revolutionary stylings.
LibraryThing member jvalka
This is a frustrating book to read, comparable to Philip K. Dick, William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon. I skimmed over vast portions of the text, pausing to read the more coherent and/or sexy parts. The primary message here seems to be "think for yourself," that reality exists to be shaped by
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imagination, that both everything and nothing is true. I like the ideas much, much more than I do the execution here. Show Less
LibraryThing member endersreads
I'm a conspiracy nut. I love Alex Jones, Tex Marrs, Jim Marrs, David Icke, et cetera (I could go on for a bit). These people make society worth living in, and they fit perfectly into the idea of what a Discordian should offer society. I have some advice for all of you--never, never take this
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alleged reality too seriously. I will never forget this experience, as, as is with hallucinogens, it has left my perceptions permanently altered--for the better. I won't even begin to try to explain the plot--as one cannot explain such things, one must experience them. What seems to be a chaotic immersion in nearly every conspiracy theory known, and some not known, along with an indefinite timeline; at first one is awed and perplexed. One soon gets the gist of things, and starts experiencing synchronicity on a high level. I love that numerous other real works are mentioned--James Joyce, Hoover's "Masters of Deceit", the I Ching, Aleister Crowley, August Derleth, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith--it goes on and on. The authors are quite intelligent and well read and steeped in the Occult. I hope after reading you will examine the Church of the Subgenius and Discordianism, as well as Satanism, Kabalism, Rastafarianism, Buddhism, Christianity--don't let yourself go stale... Fnord; and stay away from the sodium flouride, Aspartame, and CIA tainted ganja. Show Less
LibraryThing member librarianbryan
We all live in a yellow submarine. Get it?Kick out the JAMS! Get it?Kraftwerk are really the Illuminati! Get it?I didn't enjoy this book as much as I did when I read it in college. It's the first book I'll be taking off my all time favorite reading list after a reread, but I would still recommend
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it to anyone looking for a funny thought provoking urban fantasy / alternative history novel. I was concerned it didn't meet the criteria of the Experimental Literature Book Club but rereading I thought its mix of camp, satire, religion, philosophy, deliberate befuddlement of the reader, and sheer length definitely qualify it as an experimental text. It seemed at the beginning Wilson and Shea (both possibly under the influence of drugs) were mailing each other their contributions without collaborating, then after the fact they brought it all together. I'm convinced that the Mavis / Maris ambiguity was the result of a typo and they just decided to work it in as a plot point. If you didn't make it that far, by the last hundred pages it does all come together and all the layers of the glass onion are revealed. The moral the story in contemporary parlance: sometimes its best to just let Jesus take the wheel and not try to control everything. Though parody is part of the program, the corny cover probably scares readers away. The master of wrapping complex philosophical ideas in pulp fiction clunker prose was (either by necessity or design) Philip K. Dick. It's notable that all Dick's works are a fraction of the length of Illuminatus!, even his trilogies. Some of the “offensive” passages are necessary as one of the core ideas of the novel are that important ideas (or at least esoteric knowledge) is sometimes hidden in low culture for everyone to see.I remembered the book being apolitical, but reading it again it seemed very political in the sense it was explicitly pro-anarchist. We'll each have to determine for ourselves the legitimacy of the anarchist viewpoint, but its important to remember there was time in our country that saying you were an anarchist was the equivalent of saying you are a terrorist now. Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed largely due to their anarchist affiliations. Joe Hill was executed because of the his association with the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization which could be construed as an anarcho-syndicalist organization. Now that anarchism has been discredited in popular culture, authors can give a (quasi) hero an anarchist viewpoint albeit within a satirical faux epic. I see the same ideological neutralization occurring with communism. I see the images of Marx and Lenin slowly becoming pop icons divorced from their original meaning.The plot alludes that all religions are intrinsically false, or at least misunderstood, by most adherents. Yet most of the characters utilize the practices of yoga and meditation. The idea that yoga will somehow gift you with any number of psychic powers is one the find all too frequently in popular culture. That's just my pet peeve. It seems to me an intrinsic Western bias against other cultures. We're lazy thinkers so we just appropriate what we want without having to fully comprehend what that something is or what it entails. Yeah, I know its a deliberately over the top SF wünderfest and I should just let it go.All hail discordia. Show Less
LibraryThing member kukulaj
Reading this with Trump in office... I guess it just reminds me that things were really nuts back when Nixon was in office, too! Scott Adams, the cartoonist for Dilbert, pointed out that Trump, well, I don't remember the words, but Trump is like a sorcerer. And then this nutcase shoots up Las
At the metaphysical level, I would say this book is rather nihilistic. I recently watched a video where Camille Paglia rants against Derrida & co. for being careerists yeah but also nihilists. She points out that the authentic heritage of the 1960s involves reconnecting with the body. Yeah it is interesting, the various strands of the 1960s and how they veer off target one way or the other. A background thread in this book advocates interplanetary colonization. Definitely one strand of the 1960s, like say Stewart Brand, goes off into techno-utopian fantasy land. Except to a large degree that's the nightmare we're living. Steve Jobs, for example.
Yeah postmodernism has a kind of veneer of the left but actually it is very reactionary. Thich Nhat Hanh vs Julius Evola. Worth careful study and analysis!
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Vegas. We're really living in a kind of nightmare. And that's what this book points out. At the metaphysical level, I would say this book is rather nihilistic. I recently watched a video where Camille Paglia rants against Derrida & co. for being careerists yeah but also nihilists. She points out that the authentic heritage of the 1960s involves reconnecting with the body. Yeah it is interesting, the various strands of the 1960s and how they veer off target one way or the other. A background thread in this book advocates interplanetary colonization. Definitely one strand of the 1960s, like say Stewart Brand, goes off into techno-utopian fantasy land. Except to a large degree that's the nightmare we're living. Steve Jobs, for example.
Yeah postmodernism has a kind of veneer of the left but actually it is very reactionary. Thich Nhat Hanh vs Julius Evola. Worth careful study and analysis!
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LibraryThing member mensenkinderen
This gem was published long before Dan Brown made conspiracy theories into mediocre bestsellers. "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" is a crazy, globe-spanning rollercoaster, incorporating and parodying elements from the sixties counterculture movement, age-old secret societies and mythology. I don't think
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this novel could have been written in any other era than the seventies. Show Less
LibraryThing member 100yards
I've tried at least twice to make my way through this book. Now I'm about to try for yet another time. I know it has two authors. They appear to pick up a pen and write without too much reference to what the other has just written. I also get the impression they were stoned most of the time.
LibraryThing member nkmunn
Humorous backgrounder to many things conspiracy theory related and other wackiness that may be more entertaining for male readers than female, but regardless of gender, if you are comfortable with the wacky and prefer to be entertained by the absurd with a twist of intelligence and a shaker full of
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crazies then this book's for you. Show Less
LibraryThing member ChadReasco
A sum total of everything written before and after it; quite possibly the best candidate for replacing most religious text, if you can believe that.
LibraryThing member narwhaltortellini
I picked this up from a used book sale attracted to the quotes calling it a hilariously funny cult scifi. I started out wondering if it would be anything like the Hitchhiker's Guide, and while it became pretty obvious fairly quickly that this novel was something different, I still found the first
On the other hand, after I started reading on the thing just seemed like a vessel for an endless stream of (made up, I assume?) conspiracy theories, and I wasn't able to finish. The frequent and slightly jarring skipping around reminded me of Catch-22 and the attitude of Journey to the End of the Night, only instead of slowly becoming more coherent (awesome, and funny) like the former, it just seemed to keep going on in a mess of random blabbering and prose. It reads like something some conspiracy lover punched out for word count during NaNoWriMo. And, well, I never really did like Journey. I can't even say whether or not this is a bad book, but I definitely can say it's most thoroughly not my sort.
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pages endearingly quirky.On the other hand, after I started reading on the thing just seemed like a vessel for an endless stream of (made up, I assume?) conspiracy theories, and I wasn't able to finish. The frequent and slightly jarring skipping around reminded me of Catch-22 and the attitude of Journey to the End of the Night, only instead of slowly becoming more coherent (awesome, and funny) like the former, it just seemed to keep going on in a mess of random blabbering and prose. It reads like something some conspiracy lover punched out for word count during NaNoWriMo. And, well, I never really did like Journey. I can't even say whether or not this is a bad book, but I definitely can say it's most thoroughly not my sort.
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LibraryThing member dkhiggin
Perhaps the most incoherent drivel I have ever read. I am convinced you have to be as stoned as the characters (and probably the authors) in order to actually enjoy this book.
The blurb on the cover said it was "deliciously raunchy." In my opinion, it was disgustingly raunchy. Absolutely not worth
I would give it less than 1/2 star if I could.
The blurb on the cover said it was "deliciously raunchy." In my opinion, it was disgustingly raunchy. Absolutely not worth
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my time. The truly mind-boggling thing is that they managed to find someone to publish *three* books full of this rambling nonsense.I would give it less than 1/2 star if I could.
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LibraryThing member skylightbooks
If you're wondering what possible connection there could be between UFOs, John Dillinger, Aleister Crowley, JFK, H.P. Lovecraft, Nazis, atlantis, Albert Einstein, quantum physics, freemasonry, LSD, the CIA, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, George Washington, marijuana, the Knights Templar, Hassan I
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Sabbah, Karl Marx, numerology, the I Ching, the Rosicrucians, the Comte de St. Germain, Buckminster Fuller, Timothy Leary, Wilhelm Reich, Emperor Norton, Al Capone, Henry Ford, Stonehenge, and the Lost Continent of Mus... then this is the book for you. The pop culture classic that made 'conspiracy theory' a dirty word. -Charles Show Less
LibraryThing member heinous-eli
Brilliant, rollicking, and bizarre, this is quite possibly the best work of fiction of the 20th century. It immortalizes the free-wheeling, sexually-charged, anti-establishment sentiment of 1960s America.
LibraryThing member Pattern-chaser
Drug-induced surrealistic 70s nonsense, incorporating the only truly believable account of the asssassination of President John Kennedy. Hail Eris!
LibraryThing member ablueidol
Its very much a cult classic. The authors were writers at playgirl(!) in the 60's and decided to write a conspiracy story about all the conspiracy stories they were getting in correspondence. So we find out the "truth" who shot JK who controls congress, who Washington really was etc as the various
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fractions from the infighting at the fall of the 1st Atlantis continues to the modern day. Its written as a stream of consciousnesses (well I suspect when they were stoned) so plot and character change in mid sentence. Gorillas and Dolphins are part of the struggle...oh and endless sex and drugs and bad trips man. Enjoy it as the glorious piss take that it is and its sheer 60's grove baby but don't expect memorable characters and logical plotlines. Show Less
LibraryThing member Larkken
An entirely impressive book, full of enough pop-culture and scholarly references to make your eyes bug out, all wrapped around a jaunt through conspiracy theories and the possible end of the world.
Awards
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1975
Physical description
805 p.; 7.97 inches
ISBN
0440539811 / 9780440539810