RIP Robert Anton Wllson
Bob disincarnated at about 4:50 Pacific time yesterday morning.
My keenest memory of him was from a Thursday night jam at the Starwood festival, back in the old Whispering Winds/Devil's Den days. Pasha and Prudence had just sung "Kathusalem",
"Oh, Kathusalem,
whore of old Jerusalem,
prostitute of ill-repute,
the daughter of the Baba."
and RAW was misty-eyed. "I haven't heard that since my college days."
He seemed perfectly lucid, but I was told later what all he had consumed, and his adventures getting back to his campsite (a cabin or trailer or something, in deference to his age.)
For me, he was to personal psychology what Ayn Rand was to philosophy, Hazlitt to economics, Partch to the pitch spectrum...the guy who blew it all open and showed us the possibilities. He remained sanguine while the Endarkenment grew around him. I'm going to miss having that mind in this world.
Thanks to Beck. More memorials here and here.
Comments
Posted by: M.
Posted on: January 13, 2007 05:34 PM
Robert Anton Wilson was witty, strange and possesed of a syncretic imagination worth encountering. He was also vulgar, banal and not worth taking seriously on most subjects, particularly psychology, where his pronouncements, however pithy, were as shallow as Lazarus Long's. He was an entertaining fellow, and as such, he will be missed. As a philosopher or a psychologist, however, he was, well, an entertaining fellow.
Ayn Rand was simply detestable. The world would have been a better place had she never written a word. Somewhere in Hell, she's playing poker with L. Ron Hubbard.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: January 14, 2007 05:15 AM
OK, I'll grant that when covering new ground, one's surveying tools might not get full use. As for Rand, we'll have to disagree. But certainly she was not an angel to live with. I'm not a Randroid, but even if I were and somebody offered me a chance for daily exposure to the great mind by reincarnating as Frank O'Connor, I'd say "No way!" Your image of Rand and Hubbard is amusing though, particularly if I accept "poker" as a phonetic misspelling.
Posted by: Tom Jackson
Posted on: January 15, 2007 08:21 PM
It's really great to see somebody else in Cleveland who was a fan of Robert Anton Wilson. (I posted about him, too, not at the music blog, but at my other blog). I'll agree with "M." that he probably wasn't a very good psychologist, in the sense of being a scientist who really moved the field forward. But he was an excellent novelist and political theorist and has had a big influence on me ever since I read the "Illuminatus" trilogy many years ago.