Rereading The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Having run out of newer books to read, I pulled my copy of The Illuminatus! Trilogy down from the shelf and started reading it again last night. This will probably be my fifth time through. If you haven't read it before, and you liked The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then I recommend it. The humor is somewhat similar, but more subversive, and more surreal.
I just noticed that today is the anniversary of the death of one of the authors, Robert Anton Wilson. I read another book of his, an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, that was entertaining. I think I might pick up some more of his fiction work.
Wise men have regarded the earth as a tragedy, a farce, even an illusionist's trick; but all, if they are truly wise and not merely intellectual rapists, recognize that it is certainly some kind of stage in which we all play roles, most of us being very poorly coached and totally unrehearsed before the curtain rises. Is it too much if I ask, tentatively, that we agree to look upon it as a circus, a touring carnival wandering about the sun for a record season of four billion years and producing new monsters and miracles, hoaxes and bloody mishaps, wonders and blunders, but never quite entertaining the customers well enough to prevent them from leaving, one by one, and returning to their homes for a long and bored winter's sleep under the dust?
-from The Eye in the Pyramid