The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1988)

13-January-2013, Edit: This just in! [Link]

Background
If you care to follow such things, you might know that the official story of who killed JFK is disintegrating.

I’m not kidding about this part. The official story of Kennedy‘s assassination really is unwinding like a cheap sweater as we speak.

For nearly fifty years, The Warren Commission expected us to believe that psycho gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, defeated Presidential security and ended Camelot for crazy reasons known only to him. Not a bad theory, perhaps, I guess, if you’ve got nothing else to go on. Then in 2007, we did have something else to go on. Anticipating his imminent death, long-time confirmed CIA operative E.Howard Hunt penned a detailed confession of the crime, offering confirmable details of who was involved, and how they acted. Here's the original article. The gist of it is that the CIA, acting as muscle for international banking concerns, took out JFK because Kennedy had signed Executive Order 11110 in June of '63. This order took the power to print money from the Federal Reserve Bank, and returned it to the Treasury Dept -cutting off a considerable source of power and revenue to Central Bankers. Vice President Johnson was perceived as more sympathetic to said bankers, and they felt they could rely upon him to stop action on order 11110. Turns out they were right; that's exactly what he did. This all forms a much more convincing explanation for the assassination than the lone crazy man story, but “somehow” Hunt’s confession didn’t get much media attention, and so far, hasn’t triggered any re-investigation of Kennedy’s murder. Last month, another crack in the official story appeared: Retired FBI agent Donald Adams went public with evidence that a suspect he had been investigating, Joseph Adams Milteer, was tied to the crime. Milteer was a regional figure in Florida’s organized crime world of the early 1960’s. Through his drug smuggling activities, Milteer had ties to the CIA, who has been caught smuggling drugs themselves as a revenue stream free of Congressional scrutiny. Adams had been assigned to investigate Milteer’s political activities in October 1963, and Milteer bragged (on a tape which Adams has produced) that he was going to kill JFK. After the assassination, Adams was eager to interrogate Milteer, but his superiors at the FBI assured him that Milteer had an ironclad alibi, and was “clear” of suspicion. It wasn’t until 1999 that Adams accidentally viewed classified photos of the assassination and identified Milteer quite clearly in several photos When Adams went to FBI files to check some details off the summary report he had turned in forty years prior, he found the record had been completely altered from what was originally submitted. Proof positive of a crime? No, but something is fishy here. This definitely deserves serious and thoughtful consideration. Is that what our press gave it? They are the watchdogs of the public interest and guardians of the truth, after all.
No, the story went virtually uncovered, and the scant reporting that does exist has a mocking, dismissive tone. I guess 1963 seems too long ago to care, and people "just want to move on with their lives" (as they say).

(DEEP BREATH)

Believe it or not, that’s not what I’m here to write about today. I’m here to tell you that I was discussing Adams and Milteer with a friend of mine last week, and what do you think her response was?
“That’s interesting; maybe I’ll look into that sometime”?
No.
How about “That’s shocking! You know, I’ve long suspected that our Press has been remiss in its duties as a vital Fourth Estate.”
No.
Well how about “I knew it!! That Oswald story is so improbable, so neatly wrapped up (with the assassination of Oswald just a few days later, to preclude further interrogation), I just knew it was too good to be true!”
No- definitely not! My friend’s reaction was “I have a good science fiction book you should read.”

It’s always nice to know how other people actually perceive you. I should probably be pissed off at not being taken seriously, but I’m kind of used to this sort of thing by now. Call me Cassandra.

Normally, I wouldn’t be interested in reading this book, especially considering how it came to be recommended to me. But then, there are other things to consider. Foremost is that other people have recommended this book to me under much different circumstances. The wife of a friend lent me this book almost a year ago, and she made it sound quite intriguing. I took it home and forgot about it, since (like most of you), I've got a ton of books on my "to read pile". I have been reading a lot of heavy stuff lately, so a quick, light read sounded appealing. I actually began to consider reading this book after all. What can I say? I've got an open mind. That's part of the problem, isn't it?

…and then there’s the Kindle. I just got one, and I wanted to use it. (despite having the copy lent to me laying around here somewhere...) (Did Amazon have this book on Kindle?) Yup.
Damn… they make it so easy…

So I read it.

The Review
The premise of The Eye in the Pyramid is “what if every crazy conspiracy theory about every crazy event in the history of mankind were true?” Despite all the background to this review, I have to admit that’s a pretty good premise for a science fiction yarn. Superficially, it starts off as a detective novel, starring streetwise Inspector Saul Goodman. A high-end jewelry store in Manhattan has been bombed, and the motive and perpetrators are unknown. Amidst the debris of the crime scene, the Inspector finds some very odd correspondence. Letters between unknown parties discussing some sort of secret crime-ring, and some archaeologic artifacts.
From there, the tale explodes, and I mean explodes into about ten different story lines, which variously involve the Mafia, the lost continent of Atlantis (it’s real!), superintellegent dolphins, the Illuminati (of DaVinci Code fame), the JFK assassination (it wasn’t Oswald! Tee-hee), the CIA (they aren’t just another government agency like the post office! Har-har), the Vatican, international bankers (they actually want to take over the world! Yuk-yuk), the Founding Fathers, ancient Egypt, UFO’s, fake moon landings, price fixing, and rigged elections. I probably left some things out, but you get the idea. It’s very disorienting -as the authors no doubt intended. It’s sometimes difficult to keep track of plot lines and characters, especially since the text sometimes changes narrators without warning. Oh, it also jumps around in both time and space, which sometimes reminded me of [book:Gravity’s Rainbow|415].

Apart from those stylistic elements, there is the unbalancing effect of shifting realities… things which were thought to be true in one chapter are revealed to actually be the opposite later on. And still later, when another layer is uncovered, they are revealed to actually really be the way we originally thought! The identity of Saul Goodman as actually being George Dorn… no actually really being Saul Goodman goes back and forth like this. Also, the question of whether John Dillinger is really dead. (sorry if that ruins the book for anybody, but I don’t think it is possible for this book to have spoilers)

It can be hard to get through in parts, but overall it’s a fun book. If you like quirky, bizarre, convoluted, science fiction/fantasy/mysteries, you’ll probably love The Eye in the Pyramid. Oh, and did I mention the sex? Lots of it, and quite graphic at times - just the way I like it! If you don’t take it too seriously, this is a solid four-star book.

Of course I can never leave well enough alone.

Post-game wrap-up
I’ve always got to ruin things by asking What’s all this mean?

Well? -What does it all mean?

Could this be COINTELPRO to discredit people inclined to believe Oswald didn't kill Kennedy? Well, maybe, but my guess is the authors are having fun, and maybe also trying to create the paranoid, uncertain mindset of somebody who actually believes all these things. A lot of the things thrown in here (e.g. the mysterious disappearance/death of Ambrose Bierce; the general weirdness surrounding Alistair Crowley, etc.) are actually true, which kind of adds to the confusion of it all.

So does anybody actually believe all these things? Aside from the mentally ill, no… but that hasn’t stopped a cottage industry from growing around the business of ridiculing “conspiracy theorists” ( i.e. anybody who believes in even one conspiracy)
Just one makes you crazy? Really?!?
Yup. Apparently, like Lay’s potato chips, you aren’t allowed to just take one.



If you happen to believe one or two events may contain an element of criminal conspiracy (and I’ll be perfectly frank; I think 9/11 stinks worse than JFK) you’ve bought the label. You’re a “conspiracy theorist”, and by definition, you have to believe in UFO’s, Sasquatch, and Chupacabras- sorry, you don't get a choice. Now try having a serious discussion with somebody! That's okay. I'm going to start calling anybody who believes in anything remotely religous a "religionist". That means as far as I'm concerned, they believe in Dianetics, radical Islam, fundamental Christianity, anamism, voodoo, and whatever Jim Jones was preaching. If they want to try to have a nuanced conversation about how really they're just mainstream Christians, or they're just saying they're "open to the idea of a higher power"... forget it, I've already made up my mind about them!

(grumble, grumble) "Crazy religionists, with their voodoo crystal blood sacrifices..."

Heh, sucks to be me, I guess. (Actually, it doesn’t; my wife is really hot. The “sucks” part is just a figure of speech.) It’s not like I’m going to stop writing and talking about the stuff I believe in. You can decide for yourself what to believe in. While you’re making up your mind what’s real and what isn’t, maybe you can take some time to read this book. It won’t help you, but it will entertain you. ( )

Probably the strangest and dirtiest thing I read in high school. Ah, youth. ( )

I agree with an Amazon reviewer who wrote that AT FIRST, this will only make sense to you if you've already read the works of Wilson, maybe some Aleister Crowley, etc. (which I haven't), but I am somewhat familiar with these ideas, and I did read some of Ramsey Dukes' work ("Thundersqueak") beforehand. So! As Illuminatus progresses, the themes do start to make sense (nonsense?) though unfortunately it's not until even later in the trilogy that you finally start to understand 1. what's going on, and 2. what the authors are trying to say. Since I don't have the benefit of previous chaos experience, this took me longer than it might take you, but it's still well worth your while. It will open up SO many new doors for further reading/study/thinking and make you question absolutely everything you think you know, and what you read (which you should). The authors succeeded very well in this effort, although it is not necessarily light reading and will take some mind-bending thought and a few sleepless nights (enjoyable ones, though!). The appendices alone, tacked onto the end, are worth the price of the book so don't forget to read those and prepare to spend some time with them as well. Have fun! ( )

We all live in a yellow submarine. Get it?Kick out the JAMS! Get it?Kraftwerk are really the Illuminati! Get it?I didn't enjoy this book as much as I did when I read it in college. It's the first book I'll be taking off my all time favorite reading list after a reread, but I would still recommend it to anyone looking for a funny thought provoking urban fantasy / alternative history novel. I was concerned it didn't meet the criteria of the Experimental Literature Book Club but rereading I thought its mix of camp, satire, religion, philosophy, deliberate befuddlement of the reader, and sheer length definitely qualify it as an experimental text. It seemed at the beginning Wilson and Shea (both possibly under the influence of drugs) were mailing each other their contributions without collaborating, then after the fact they brought it all together. I'm convinced that the Mavis / Maris ambiguity was the result of a typo and they just decided to work it in as a plot point. If you didn't make it that far, by the last hundred pages it does all come together and all the layers of the glass onion are revealed. The moral the story in contemporary parlance: sometimes its best to just let Jesus take the wheel and not try to control everything. Though parody is part of the program, the corny cover probably scares readers away. The master of wrapping complex philosophical ideas in pulp fiction clunker prose was (either by necessity or design) Philip K. Dick. It's notable that all Dick's works are a fraction of the length of Illuminatus!, even his trilogies. Some of the “offensive” passages are necessary as one of the core ideas of the novel are that important ideas (or at least esoteric knowledge) is sometimes hidden in low culture for everyone to see.I remembered the book being apolitical, but reading it again it seemed very political in the sense it was explicitly pro-anarchist. We'll each have to determine for ourselves the legitimacy of the anarchist viewpoint, but its important to remember there was time in our country that saying you were an anarchist was the equivalent of saying you are a terrorist now. Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed largely due to their anarchist affiliations. Joe Hill was executed because of the his association with the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization which could be construed as an anarcho-syndicalist organization. Now that anarchism has been discredited in popular culture, authors can give a (quasi) hero an anarchist viewpoint albeit within a satirical faux epic. I see the same ideological neutralization occurring with communism. I see the images of Marx and Lenin slowly becoming pop icons divorced from their original meaning.The plot alludes that all religions are intrinsically false, or at least misunderstood, by most adherents. Yet most of the characters utilize the practices of yoga and meditation. The idea that yoga will somehow gift you with any number of psychic powers is one the find all too frequently in popular culture. That's just my pet peeve. It seems to me an intrinsic Western bias against other cultures. We're lazy thinkers so we just appropriate what we want without having to fully comprehend what that something is or what it entails. Yeah, I know its a deliberately over the top SF wünderfest and I should just let it go.All hail discordia. ( )

I found this book to be absolutely hysterical but upon reflection I'm not exactly sure why. The first 100 pages I approached it as I would any other book. Consume, analyze, and pick apart a plot. It was frustrating to say the least because I was expecting the plot to follow the same rigid generic structure that almost every other book I've read follows.

Unlike most novels that can be found on bookshelves today, the protagonist is dragged submissively from one point to another along the story. It's pretty rare to see a plot where the character is not in full control of at least a small part of the story. In this novel everything is so mindbendingly unstructured that I'd compare it to looking into the psyche of somebody deep into a drug trip. Aware and conscious but without any bearing or control over the present.

For those readers who are anally retentively focused on structure and detail within a story plot, save yourself the time and run away now. The only structure that this book presents is a complete lack thereof. I tagged it anti-structuralism because it is written in such a nonsensical manner that it forces the reader to draw their own conclusions. It bends our foundations of perceived structure so far that they eventually break. I honestly felt myself giggling uncontrollably at some parts because it felt almost naughty to travel so far beyond the perceptions that our society unconsciously accept as dogma.

Likewise, if you're a prude or your sex life has never explored beyond the use of the missionary position, turn and run. The first female character presented is libertarian porn (ideological not sexual porn) taken to the extremes. I imagine her as how Ayn Rand would really like to present her main characters if she had the brass to do so. The second female character is a little more strange. I won't bother classifying the characters any more because it takes the fun out of the story.

If this book is trying to prove a point I think it would be that, by presented seeming nonsense in a chained structure manner it forces the reader to attempt to connect the dots by bending his/her logic to make the pieces fit until that perception is shattered. At the least, it will make the reader aware that that system of structure and common perception actually exists in the first place. At the most, it will trigger a cascade of epiphanies.

Although I have never experimented with LSD, I can imagine that the experience would be something along similar lines. By becoming aware of common perception it becomes possible to distance yourself. By letting go of control, it becomes possible to change it. Not everything that we see/feel is set in stone as much as we believe.

At the very least it takes some patience and a sense of humor to make it through these books. The ladder of which isn't a trait that I'd expect to be in short supply among a community of book worms.

I would pay money to see a literature teacher attempt to systematically deconstruct (and ruin) the plot of this novel into neat little packaged literary stereotypes as they so often do. I think it would be like asking a computer to divide by 0. It's hilarious enough to see other reviewers blow their lid about incorrect historical facts and plot holes.