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Summary: FNORD
Review: From the moment I began reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy, my life was warped forever. Robert Anton Wilson is either the greatest magus or most brilliant con-man since A. Crowley, who also held that same ambiguity. Like reading Timothy Leary and Aldus Huxley, but with a wit and style that make the subject matter flow together... There are many more books by R.A.W. that I would recommend, namely, all of them, starting with Ishtar Rising, Wilhelm Reich in Hell, Quantum Psychology, and that oh-so-wonderful book, Reality is What You Can Get Away With.
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Summary: Reveals the secrets "they" don't want you to know.
Review: This book was the key that unlocked doors in my mind that I didn't even know where there. It's intimidating in lenght but you'll be surprised when its over. Highly recomended mental aerobics.
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Summary: A poor man's Pynchon
Review: I hate to swim against the tide here, but this is a book for real intellectual lightweights. The book has fun passages but as a work is about as profoundly simple as they get. The question of whether reality is an illusion and consciousness a disease has been handled with much more erudition by better, funnier authors. As far as pure satire goes, try Douglas Adams first - he's funnier and less pretentious. If you're in that 'atheist/modernist/whateverist' school of thought, Pynchon answers this question much better in his novels (and he came up with the 'KCUF' joke first).And if you found the seventh grade epistemology in this book profound, well, you probably also thought 'The Matrix' was intellectual. In a bigger sense Umberto Eco solved the problem this trilogy asks in a much more profound and interesting opus, 'Foucault's Pendulum.' The difference? In 'Pendulum', the conspirator is the insane one.
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Summary: Worst book I ever read
Review: I know that this book's cover is really interesting, and that the synopsis is intriguing. That's why I bought the book in the first place. Well, I was duped. Like a fool, I and my money were soon parted. I wasted my money. Okay, first of all, this isn't a real conspiracy novel. It's an (intentionally) incoherent mess of rambling that happens to mention a lot of famous names. The tense changes mid-paragraph from past to present and then to past again for no reason, and the narrator changes abrupty without warning. None of the characters are likeable; I could care less about what happens to any of them. And it is filled with obscenity--take for instance a man in jail masturbating and saying to himself, "It's not my hand. It's Sophia Loren's tongue." If you find that entertaining, be glad, because that sort of thing is evenly distributed throughout the entire overly-long volume. What's worse, the authors wrote it nauseatingly on purpose. I can tell because the book itself contains a pretty accurate summation of itself, only it omits one important point: the book tries to be funny but fails miserably. This pointlessness isn't fun nihilism; it's boring nihilism. If giving this ZERO stars were an option, I'd take it. If you want to waste your money like I did, buy the book.
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Summary: The secrets of the univeres, and a bag of chips, oh yea.
Review: This is a great introductory work to Robert Anton Wilson's other books. It makes the deep seated psycho-philosophy accessable, sets up the patterns of thought required to digest his other, much more gnomic and deep works. You laugh, you'll cry, you'll read it backwards (or at least you should). Its interesting, the effect it has on the reader.. after you read it the first few times, all the twisting subplots, insane in jokes, future predictions, they all come together. Suddenly you realize what Dutch Schultz was talking about on his death bed (at least in the context of this novel's universe!)
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Summary: Joyce meets Burroughs meets Hoffman meets AUM...
Review: Shea and Wilson may be berated for using 800 pages to expose us to their verbal equivelent of a high-powered hit of blotter, but they've managed to do the one thing I appreciate most from any book: to unite authentic insight with a cleverly crafted story. Each page is heavily laden with enough pop culture and current commentary to appease any McLuhan-quoting jargon monkey, backed up with a wall of esoteric references thick enough to let one reminisce about "The Wastelands" and pull the Benet's Readers' Encyclopedia off of the shelf, laughing all the while. It's the sum philosophy of the past four decades: existentalist enough to have a pseudo-depth, bubbly enough to appease a prozac-eater, and filled with the same amusing gore that propelled "Pulp Fiction" and "Fargo" to fame. But there's something more; something that was tried for in "Youth & Revolt", and perhaps closely met by "A Confederacy of Dunces", but unique to this particular tome: a system of philosophy scientific enough to trick you into accepting it at the logicasl level, while all the while it sits in your subconscious, manipulating you after the read like a vile of AUM or, perhaps more accurately, those damn Fnords. It's the reversed tactic of every religion to pass across the earth, and an experience you shouldn't be without.
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Summary: "HOW TO THINK" for dummies!
Review: The magic of this mental roller-coaster rests in the way it will explain how & why everything is, then in the next chapter it will explain how and why the previous explaination was a lie spread as disinformation. By the last chapter, you're ready to believe that Leviathan really would want to wed a yellow submarine! This is a great primer for understanding Principia Discordia's dissolution and reconstruction of truth.
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Summary: One of the best trips I ever went on reading a book!
Review: An army of dead Nazis at the bottom of the ocean waiting to be resurrected! Hitler waiting to gain immortality! A woman having twelve orgasms! What more do you need in a story?
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Summary: an actually interesting conspiracy theory
Review: Most conspiracy theories are so ridicilous that they aren't interesting. Others are just way to crazy to be beliveble. The Illuminatus happens to be both. I thought that over 700 pages of "Who killed JFK?" and other such questions would be tiresome, but it is hilarious.
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Summary: Hail Eris - All Hail Discordia
Review: Confusing at times, but more than made up for by its fantastic story. I would suggest re-reading it a few months after your first dose of it, to achieve the full effect. This is the kind of book you don't want to read while you're sick/tired/high, because doing so could lead you into believing what's written. But on the other hand, maybe that's a good thing.
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