Rating: 
Summary: -
Review: This was fuel for my discordian high school thoughts. Fun and enjoyable.
Rating: 
Summary: Will change your outlook
Review: Yes, it will change your life. However, be warned, the path it leads you down will change your life even further. This is a Great Work.
Rating:
Summary: Nice Little Epic
Review: I'm always on the search for bigger, more intricate, more experimental stories. Is this one? Sure...although it lacks a tight plot. But to have to a tight plot would defy the meaning of this book. If you are wondering if this one of the dreaded 'concept' books, ie a barrage of ideas and monologues that are scattered around in no particular context, well, it's not. Not really. What really makes it worthwhile, though, is it's staggeringly satiric tone, an irreverence for everything surpassing even that of the Simpsons. Though it feels a bit cocky and impressed by itself at times, it's all an illusion. This book is legit, and if you're the type that's always predicting the plot 2 chapters in advance, I defy you to do that. Matter of fact, I defy you to concisely summarize this plot. And if this review seems overly bizarre, let me put it plainly: BUY THIS BOOK.
Rating:
Summary: The BEST book I have ever read.
Review: Alright, I don't even like to read. I am a product of television and movies... I would rather watch reruns of Full House then read Dickens, but THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT. After the first 100 pages I didn't see what all the hype was about, but by the time I was finished with the first part of the trilogy I was hooked. I never put this book down. I never stopped thinking about it. I never wanted to read anything else ever again. All I can say is, if you like history, comedy, fantasy, and just plain odd and original stories... I can't imagine finding a more entertaining book. -MGT
Rating:
Summary: A Ruttle
Review: I might just be imagining things, but it seems that many people are either dislikeing this book for the disjointedness, or the fact that it's quite a hippy/yippy book.Forst off the tense changes aren't a slap in the face of all literature, when you read to a certain point you understand why there's the tense changes, it's the ideo of a Faustian universe...well RAW and RS's Faustian universe, ie the tommorow-today-yesteday approach to time. this also makes sure that those who really want to learn anything from the book are willing to alter their mind (even without drugs, such as sleep depravation) to understand a little better, or will just toss it aside because it's "not good literature." If you wanted that, the books you're looking for are usually considered in the classicals. as for the hippy/yippy influence...well remember both authors are contemps with Tim Leary. (And are more than likely Malcalypse the Younger, and Omar Ravenhurst.) other than that, alter your mind and read, and as the plaque on Hagbard Celine's wall says, "Think for yourself, Schmuck"
Rating:
Summary: Not the answer to everything but darn entertaining
Review: I bought this years ago after a friend swore to me that it was one of the greatest things ever written. The question then remains, after finishing it last night, was it worth the wait and effort? Sure, I found it highly fun, a lot of the stuff was hard to follow at first but once you get into the book (which requires some patience) and just accept everything, the story become much easier to follow and things start falling into place. The plot seems to take a backseat to everything else but it seems to focus on the Illumininati controlling everything for some end that might have to do with the government, Atlantis, or aliens from outer space. Or something. The characters are fun even if they are more than mouthpieces for different ideals (the liberal, the skeptic, etc) and some are too smug for their own good. The hopping around is extremely disconcerting at first and is used at some points to just hide a lack of ideas but there are some parts in here that rank among some of the best stuff I've read, some of it due to the crisscrossing back and forth among the different narratives. I think some people take the book too seriously, I know the authors seem to postulate the answers to the reality behind everything but to me they don't seem to be taking themselves all that seriously and while the story isn't one big joke they do seem to be having some fun here. But like all great books it makes you think at parts, even as you're disgusted, bored, confused or a combination of all three. Fortunately this was packaged as three books because I can't imagine reading these separately at all, the entire novel just blends into itself, with chapers and parts just seeming like convenient divisions to make life a little easier on the reader. After a while you'll find yourself devouring it pages at a time. Highly recommended, and you don't even need psychedelics to enjoy it fully.
Rating:
Summary: The bad reviews here are the best reason to READ THIS BOOK!
Review: Aside from the one scathing review I read here that was obviously a Discordian prank, the outrage of crypto-moralists, the snotty dismissal by more "seriously academic" (i.e. full of themselves and in need of a good pie in the face), and the lovely "turd" review by one unfortunate Objectivist offended by the "Telemachus Sneezed" portion of the book lampooning Ayn Rand are the best reasons I can think of to run--don't walk--and buy this book. Whether you love it or hate it, your intellectual and humorous juices will flow. Wilson and Shea never set out to answer anything, only to question everything. The subversion questions "upright morality" but spins around to question itself before long. The book contradicts itself gloriously, and gives a near-perfect mixture of high thought, low camp, and pure optically-absorbed LSD. The whole point is summed up in the line from the painting on Hagbard's wall in the yellow (well, golden) submarine: "Think for yourself, schmuck!" And as for the parts which were derivative, well...are you really uptight or naive enough to think that the authors didn't know this? They show in the course of the book that they did. My only regret after reading the trilogy was that it ended. Thank goodness for Wilson's other work! As an aside, Pynchon, Eco, et al would probably laugh at their own partisans using them as an excuse to trash this imperfect, vexing, and above all FUN piece of work!
Rating:
Summary: Think For Yourself, Schmuck!
Review: What this book is not: snooty self-congratulatory exercise in masturbatory obsession over ontology. This book isn't meant to have the literary gravity of Pynchon and company, though it does evince the same sort of ontological pluralism one would hopefully get from a reading of the literary heavyweights in the field. What this book is: an 800-pages-long trade paperback with a cool image on the cover, written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson fancies himself as a guerilla ontologist, meaning he tells you a story and sneaks his ontological meaning into it, tweaking your brain while your attention is focused elsewhere. What this book might be: Metaphysics for the mass of cultural malcontents (like me) - the literary equivalent of an acid trip, pulling your mind through the wringer as you are jerked through space and time in multiple viewpoints ("reality-tunnels"), existing in past, present, and future (is there such a thing as time?). What this book might also be: incredibly difficult to read if you're not into it. What this book could do for you: bore you to tears, maybe even annoy you, particularly if you take yourself too seriously, have an ego-complex about your particular take on reality, or are overly wedded to your conceptions of the real. What it could do for you, 2: The end result, if Wilson succeeds in exposing to you your own limiting reality-tunnel, is a sort of model-agnosticism - an ability to see the world AND the reality tunnel without being wedded to either. With this newfound awareness, one would be able to use various reality-constructs, as appropriate to any given situation, without imprisoning oneself within any of them. In essence, Wilson points out that we all see the world through our own lens, and that we need to recognize that fact (opinion?) in order to move beyond the limitations of a singular vantage point. Presumably we'll still have a preferred lens, but now we'll be able to use more than just that lens, and, knowing that we have choices in the matter, will use and view that preferred lens differently (if i could walk a mile in another man's eyes, they'd probably be really dirty afterwards). And, lest I forget, the book is filled with sex, drugs, rock and roll, and conspiracies aplenty to always keep you guessing (and entertained), much like life. Life is hysterically funny. Laugh a little. Wilson laughs a lot.
Rating: 
Summary: Elsewhere
Review: A great example of how size and complexity do not equal depth or worth, this large, culty trilogy is more or less a white-noise barrage of meaningless events splattered over a thousand or so pages. As a proper novel it's a big shaggy-dog story, and as a reading experience it's just not interesting enough. By the end I was reading it as a grudge, just to prove that I could do it. It's dated, too - the female character(s) are/is there for the men to have sex with - and the time- and space-hopping narrative isn't nearly as clever as it seems to think. It has some memorably smug characters, too, and the air of something dreamed up and written down one night whilst bored.
Rating:
Summary: Just read the book!
Review: People get too caught up in trying to decide whether or not this book is a bunch of garbage or something real. I think that the reader should decide for themselves. No one can deny that RAW was extremely creative in writing this book. The fuss over the book lies in the state that the book puts the reader. You are constantly thrown around... not knowing what to believe or what is real. From what I have read, RAW drew a lot from Zen Buddhism. Zen asks you to question many things. Everything in fact. Forget everyone argueing whether or not the book is true or not. Forget the people who say it is a cult book. Just read the book and be ready for a very entertaining story and a lot of brilliant creativity. Choose for yourself what you will believe.
|
