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> put it down, and thought, like hundreds of thousands of other readers, I suspect, What The Hell Was That About? Oh, there was a story, there were characters,
by drivers99 4y ago
> put it down, and thought, like hundreds of thousands of other readers, I suspect, What The Hell Was That About? Oh, there was a story, there were characters, and it was possible to say what the book was “about” in banal terms. But I didn’t understand it at all.
That's how I felt after reading the "The Illuminatus! Trilogy". Wikipedia says it's also postmodern so maybe that's why.
- lubesGordi 4y agoEvery time I read a description of GR I think Robert Anton Wilson was probably inspired by that when he wrote The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Illuminatus is probably easier to understand though. Lots of references to Joyce in Illuminatus also. It's probably good prereq reading to GR.
- mherdeg 4y agoI powered through Illuminatus! -- it felt like a beach read version of Foucault's Pendulum to me. I loved it, but it's kind of astonishing that only a few things have stuck with me * Posters signed "The MGT" * The charming Rand satire * The idea of the word "fnord" * The feeling of the counterculture -- a kind of sheer weird paranoia where magic can be real. I have a paper copy I still leaf through but what stuck with me is that there was a time and place where it made perfect sense to go out and levitate the Pentagon. This book explains, or purports to explain, a certain kind of weirdness that underlies a lot of the stories about the 60s and 70s.