The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He… (edition 2003)

No matter what your opinion is of the JFK assassination, or even Thornley’s role in it, it is safe to assert that the madness and paranoia that plagued him in his later life was sparked in no small part by those who were either involved in the assassination or used the assassination to push their personal agenda. He started off as a sparkling trickster and died sick and paranoid, a very sad ending to be sure. I think this was one of the finer biographies and conspiracy books I have read in a while. Complex, interesting, mildly skeptical and interested in the truth but willing to admit it may never be known, and most importantly, evenhanded, open, scrutinizing yet ultimately kind to its subject. I highly recommend it. Read the entire review here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/?p=582 ( )

If there ever was a perennial scapegoat of the 60's counterculture it would have to be Kerry Thornley, one of the founding members of the patently anarchist Discordian Society. With a kind of insurrectionary bravado, he took it upon himself to sponge up the sordid projections of the Military Industrial Mafia Complex as well those from the plethora of intelligence revenants who trailed and taunted him for years, under various disturbing guises. He managed to keep ahead of the archetypal game by purging himself, from time to time, through various prankster like stunts, self published underground 'zines and the writing of fiction. However the Fool ended up occupying the Hanged Man's place in a Tarot deck that had been stacked against him from day one. As a result of such discouraging and divinatory odds, his self imposed role as Sin Eater freely dining at the table of the conspiracy funeral banquet is what probably turned him upside down and killed him in the end.

In Adam Gorightly's The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture, a most intriguing and vivid portrait of this essential and vital anarchist spirit is effectively painted. Kerry freely ranged about in the JFK/MLK/RFK assassination matrixes like a conspiratorial version of Diogenes, the ancient Greek who loved to mock the philosophers and statesmen of his day. In this case, KT was mocking the real assassins at large without anyone really knowing it, since he was drawing so much attention to himself. The author suggests that KT may very well have been an MKULTRA prodigy along with Lee Harvey Oswald himself since they were both in the marines together and stationed in Japan prior to 1963. Maybe KT's Discordian strategy was an attempt to break free of his handlers. It seems that both he and Oswald ended up being double crossed, the latter by some very real forces at work, namely in the form of a mind controlled entity named Jack Ruby, and KT by his ever snowballing delusions which genuinely got out of hand as the author so convincingly points out, thanks to his wide ranging, unbiased, thorough research and interviews with key players such as Robert Anton Wilson. Gorightly maintains a wonderful balance between compelling factoids surrounding the JFK hit, its aftermath and Thornley's proximity to it all and the elusive yet intriguing metaphysics of the Discordian Society he helped to create and promote. It certainly makes for a compelling and very hard to put down book, I can assure you of that. If you are looking to get a bead on the Thornley universe and how you may obtain a key enabling you to enter into it, The Prankster and the Conspiracy will certainly do it for you.
In spite of Thornley's Discordian extremism, mass consumption of LSD and being a target of intelligence forces, within and without, up to the time of his death, I tend to think that it was his early dabblings into Ayn Rand's so called 'Objectivism' that ultimately cracked him in the end. Aynny's I've-got-the-Hots-for-Capitalism philosophy served to malignantly magnetize the ever mutating vortex of KT's psyche and attracted some kind of negative free market investment forces into its realm. No amount of Discordian meme subterfuge could have de-railed the Rand dogma (or catma) from rapidly self replicating within the brain of this errant pixie who seemed to be able to defy everything else and get away with it. Not even the electronic dissolution of memory could neutralize these Objectivist toxins within him, no matter how many times his handlers kept pushing the button to keep him raving. I realize that I'm merely speculating in a possibly communist/socialist manner, but Gorightly's fertile biography is triggering my synapses to bridge so rapidly that I cannot help but entertain such cabals. Your own synapses will be triggered/bridged (and entertained too) when you order your own copy of this excellent proto- biography of an anarchist archetype gone delightfully awry.

While reading the final chapters of this sad, wonderful, tragic, inspiring/electrifying book, I flashed that the `evil' Goddess Eris, who brought a well known apple to a banquet on Mount Olympus celebrating the wedding of King Peleus and the Sea Nymph Thetis, decided to jump ahead a few thousand years into the 1960's and toss another solid, golden fruit into the chaos heart of a Discordian party, a fruit upon which was engraved, 'Who is the most paranoid of all?' No telling what kind of Trojan war her question would have caused if she had chosen to roll it into the mix at the time. Who amongst the group would have fought for the title? Fortunately Gorightly`s keen portrayal of Kerry Thornley gives us a sufficient starting place where we can all freely witness the scapegoat himself stepping forth from the shadowed margins and taking the full honors of the title, in the limelight ( )