The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson

Comments

[redbird]

Many years later, what I most often remember (and occasionally even quote) is bits from the appendices, like the snarky comment about Henry Ford "but he meant well, or at least he meant something" (which seems applicable to many people/situations).

I am fairly sure that while the books were influenced by psychedelics, the authors weren't tripping while they were writing or revising them. "Fairly sure" in this case is remembering what one or the other said in an apazine back in the 1980s--but even if I am remembering that correctly, he might have found it amusing to mislead people on that point.

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't side by sided the original MMPBs with the omnibus (though I own all of the above), but the omnibus keeps the authorial peeving about Dell's cuts.

On the other hand, the omnibus of the Schrödinger's Cat books has less material than the corresponding MMPBs. (What is removed is mainly the bow-chicka-wow-wow scenes repurposed from The Sex Magicians; Wilson's dunningkrugery about quantum mechanics is retained in toto.)

[dormouse1953]

Never read the books but I remember a stage adaptation done by the great Ken Campbell in the seventies. It opened the Cottesloe Theatre (now the Dorfman Theatre) at the National Theatre in London. Wikipedia tells me it originally ran for nine hours. That sold out but it transferred to the Roundhouse in north London in a cut down version where I saw it. I also see from Wikipedia that Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy were in the cast.

[voidampersand]

I remember about two thirds of the way into the first book when I put all the pieces together and the plot became coherent. I felt very disappointed.

[jessie_c]

...written in a brief window when it seemed as if presidential malfeasance could have actual consequences.

Which makes it, by modern terms, a fantasy.

[dragoness_e]

Oh, this was a fun satire of every conspiracy theory in existence, with bonus swipes at "Atlas Shrugged" thrown in. Sadly, it fell apart in the last chapter, which ended the series rather like "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", though I have been told that wasn't supposed to be the last chapter, and the real last chapter got lost in the mail or something. I don't know if someone was pulling leg or what?

[(Anonymous)]

Am I correct in thinking that Matt Ruff's "Sewer, Gas, Electric" must have been deeply influenced by this book?

[jsburbidge]

AFAIK, Ruff has said that the similarities are coincidental.

(Or, of course, there's a conspiracy and he'd say that anyway...)

[(Anonymous)]

Hm. Both could be independently influenced by Crying of Lot 49, I suppose.

[scott_sanford]

Also, the coincidences are synchronicity.

[redbird]

I have no idea who was pulling our legs and when, but Wilson once said (approximately) that 1/3 of the book was written by Shea, and the other 2/3 was either written by him or dictated to him by alien intelligences. So maybe the last chapter got lost somewhere; maybe each of them thought the other had agreed to write the ending; or maybe they ran out of time. (Having read some of each author's other work, I'd say Shea at least was capable of writing a reasonable ending for a novel.)

[beamjockey]

I made the mistake of reading Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow before being introduced to the Illuminatus Trilogy.

It would have been better to read them in the order of increasing quality.