I think it was about the time Hitler, wearing the face of Oliver Hardy, turned around to say "now look what you made me do" I reached illumination through laughter. ( )

This book practically reviews itself.. no wait thats not right, it actually reviews itself :P
“Listen to this: ‘a pair of nursery Nietzsches dreaming of a psychedelic Superman.’ And this: ‘a plot that is only a put-on, characters who are cardboard, and a pretense of scholarship that amounts to sheer bluff.’ But this is the crusher; listen: ‘a constant use of obscene language for shock effect until the reader begins to feel as depressed as an unwilling spectator at a quarrel between a fishwife and a lobster-pot pirate.’ Don’t you think that will get quoted at all the best cocktail parties this season?”
“I suppose so. The book’s a real stinker, eh?”
“Heavens, I wouldn’t know for sure. I told you yesterday, it’s absurdly long. Three volumes, in fact. Boring as hell. I only had time to skim it. But listen to this, dear boy: ‘If The Lord of the Rings is a fairy tale for adults, sophisticated readers will quickly recognize this monumental miscarriage as a fairy tale for paranoids.’ That refers to the ridiculous conspiracy theory that the plot, if there is one, seems to revolve around. Nicely worded, wouldn’t you say?”

There's really no point leaving a gap between volumes of this, there's no gap in the story and its really just more of the same. Just great stuff, lots of weird fiction references if you know your Lovecraft, Machen, Bierce you'll be in good stead. Lot of good philosophising too its not all sex and Lloigors.
But the character and time switches are discombobulating to say the least. I think this made me stoned, can books do that? ;) ..no really, after a long reading session.. cause there arn't many chapter breaks... i was feeling just a tad woozy but wasn't going to mention it, till my cat came in.. his fur is SO soft you guys! I mean thats the softest fur ever... omg... definitely a little stoned... :lol

Proper review after volume 3. ( )

still waiting for it to actually go somewhere... ( )

I aaaaalmost got myself high enough (into dudgeon!) to not give this a perfect grade because the politics are so sleazy and awful - the word "libertarian" appears like once so far in the series, and Hagbard Celine's Discordians appear to prefer (insofar as they prefer to align themselves at all) to be "right-wing anarchists," which struck me at first as a low have-your-cake-and-eat-it compromise intended to imply that only fear and the Illuminati prevent humanity from thinking right and having it all. Also, it's the early '80s or whatever and we're still talking in terms of Black Panthers and hippie-yippies and the categories really are tired.

But,y'know . . . sure it's unfortunate that our sci-fi nerd writers weren't a bit hipper to what the culture was becoming (one mention of punk rock would have done wonders), but that's such a normal and understandable thing in "not-so-distant-future" writing. Two examples that come immediately to mind are Norman Spinrad's Little Heroes and that book I reviewed awhile ago by Stuart Archer Cohen - I feel like it was called "Children of the Revolution" or something? It's all oppressive state v. grey-haired hippies and Hot Teenz and nothing in between? In Spinrad they even say "boogie."

But who knows if I'd do any better, right? In 2006 the temptation to invent a better pop-culture future for 2009 would have been anmost overpowering, but if I'd tried to be real about it I'd have probably fallen back on some embarrassing crutch like "nu-rave" and you'd all be mocking the shit out of me on LibraryThing right now. Shea and Anton Wilson do try with their American Medical Association, even if they are a Kraftwerk rip and playing at a festival billed as "Euro-Woodstock" (in 1980!). And overall it really grants insight into a certain open-your-mind seventies project that tends these days to get reduced to comical Aquarian types in flowing robes with mighty tantric wisdom. Meaning, there was a time when this old concoction of "Eastern lore" and self-realization and astrology and flying like a demon from Kether to Malkuth actually seemed transformational and revolutionary, at least in a pot haze, and in all events was at least good for more than a throwaway scene in a retro film about Roman Polanski oor Brian Wilson or Dirk Diggler rabbiting shite about Eastern lore and self-realization and Kether and Malkuth as Steely Dan plays on the hi-fi, leading to a brief trendy resurgence for Steely Dan.

So maybe that shit's all a wash? Maybe what it comes to is this book is a pure joy(ce), plotted tight but still freaky-floaty-confuzzy in a Ulyssean way, and definitely you aren't shocked by the "revelations," and everybody is more or less what they seemed to be all along, and so I suppose that makes it a failure as a conspiracy novel, but it is a great, great seventies drug story about the tentativeness of civilization and fun stuff like lloigor and Atlantis, and there are a dozen scenes so indelible that I remembered them word for word after 22 years. Joe Malik and Miss Mao (the attitude of the era's "turned-on" counterculture towomen is something I'm not even going to touch) in the cab. "One of us is an alien." The replay of the scenes between Hagbard and George and Harry Coin in the sub from multiple points of view, a trick I never get tired of. The Dealy Lama, whom my early introduction to will always be responsible for a vague sense that the Dalai Lama's name is an ignorant illiteracy along "nukular" lines - silly as that is. "Goodbye, Mr. Chips." "Now look what you made me do." Others! ( )

Illuminatus 2