Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Book Two
With the passing of Bob last week I decided to delve into the second book of the Illuminatus! trilogy.
I read the first book of the series last year, and it didn't really speak to me like Wilson's nonfiction and interviews do.
Book Two I'm enjoying more. One thing I like is the variety of (often conflicting) perspectives.
My favorite scene so far is one in which the CIA, FBI and Army Intelligence are working at odds to find a prostitute that an army scientist (infected with a lethal bioweapon) slept with before dying. They find two men who seem to be dying of the same disease. They give them the antidote, and question them about how they got it. Rather than tell the truth, both men tell the authorities what they think the authorities want to hear rather than what actually happened.
The authorities end up with two different descriptions of a prostitute....different names, different heights, difference races (one black, the other a blond white girl), etc.
And, of course, they're looking for a prostitute in the city of Las Vegas....each government bureaucracy is trying to beat each other to the punch.....and spying on each other like crazy.
I read the first book of the series last year, and it didn't really speak to me like Wilson's nonfiction and interviews do.
Book Two I'm enjoying more. One thing I like is the variety of (often conflicting) perspectives.
My favorite scene so far is one in which the CIA, FBI and Army Intelligence are working at odds to find a prostitute that an army scientist (infected with a lethal bioweapon) slept with before dying. They find two men who seem to be dying of the same disease. They give them the antidote, and question them about how they got it. Rather than tell the truth, both men tell the authorities what they think the authorities want to hear rather than what actually happened.
The authorities end up with two different descriptions of a prostitute....different names, different heights, difference races (one black, the other a blond white girl), etc.
And, of course, they're looking for a prostitute in the city of Las Vegas....each government bureaucracy is trying to beat each other to the punch.....and spying on each other like crazy.