"Robert Anton Wilson explains Everything" by RA Wilson

I was introduced to Robert Anton Wilson when I was interested in Peter Carroll and Chaos Magick in the mid-to-late 90s. RAW's books were recommended as essential for understanding the modern Magick paradigm. My good luck resulted in me reading 'Prometheus Rising' as my first RAW book and I was impressed. The book mainly details Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness, with which I was not acquainted at the time, and it appeared as a very lucid and intelligible model of what might be going on in people's heads. The second book I read from RAW was 'Quantum Psychology' (I actually purchased both of these books!), which was touted as second part of 'Prometheus Rising'. I was very disappointed with this book, which seemed to me a big pile of hodge-podge (not in the discordian way unfortunatey), lots of light prose, some repeats from the previous book, some perennial 'wisdoms' and common sensical things that you don't need to purchase a book to learn - and little else. I wrote a pretty bad review for it and almost forgot about RAW until last year when I got his notorious 'Illuminatus' as an audio book, and inflicted the, by no means small, pain upon myself of listening to the first 45 minutes. I could absolutely make no sense of anything. I never liked the 'stream of consciousness' books. I still haven't read Joyce. I didn't even know 'Illuminatus' was stream of consciousness book, and that RAW was such a great admirer of Joyce.

Anyway, the audio book titled above consists of 4 sessions where RAW talks to the editor of 'Sounds True', an audio book publishing house, plus 3 recordings from his lectures. The first part is much more entertaining, as I don't find RAW to be a great speaker, though I have read that he even did stand-up comedy. The interview with 'Sounds True' is very genuine, relaxed and informative. The reader/listener gets to hear RAW's stance on plenty of controversial topics popular today as well as reminiscences of people and events inhis illustrious past, and some comments about his own books. RAW never became rich from his books, which actually sold pretty well, but he could live comfortable. That is, he lived comfortable until the last year of his life, when his life-long fight with polio consequences was beginning to be lost. He appealed for funds to cover his medical expenses on his blog and posted a reply after receiving more than he expected about how touched he was that there were people who still cared about him. He passed away less than a week after the blog post.

This audio recording is very easy-listening and very entertaining, and can be seen as the best introduction to his overall work and positions on most issues he wrote and lectured about throughout his life. One of the sessions espouses Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness, to which RAW contributed, in a clear and intelligible knowledge. The lecture recordings that follow concentrate on particular topics in his writings, and there is an interesting question and answer period recorded. I didn't like the speeches as much as the previous conversation parts, but they definitely add value. Although I don't share the excitement about Robert Anton Wilson's writings that many people seem to hold, I do recognize his place in development of modern thought and exploration of fringe areas of science, and would recommend this audio book as a great introduction to the man and his work to everyone.