The Illuminatus! Trilogy in Five Tons of Flax

Feb 09, 2009 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, conspiracy-theory, anarchism, satire

For me, this book was a moment of Awakening, and the changes I wrought in myself after first reading continue to reverberate today. I had been brought to it through playing the card game it inspired. A desire to Seek the Mysteries caused me to follow up on the "Bibliography" included with that game, and I picked up this book expecting a sort of "In Like Flint"-style spy thriller/parody that exploited theories of vast conspiratorial networks. What I found was an exploration of reality on various For me, this book was a moment of Awakening, and the changes I wrought in myself after first reading continue to reverberate today. I had been brought to it through playing the card game it inspired. A desire to Seek the Mysteries caused me to follow up on the "Bibliography" included with that game, and I picked up this book expecting a sort of "In Like Flint"-style spy thriller/parody that exploited theories of vast conspiratorial networks. What I found was an exploration of reality on various levels that deconstructed my assumptions about the nature of politics and existence. It won't work this way for everyone; all Awakenings are personal. It remains, however, a very funny book with a surprising amount of metaphysical insight - a pretty rare combination (although I daresay that the truly Enlightened laugh while reading the Bible or the Tao Teh Ching).
On re-reading it today, I perceive that I came upon it at a propitious moment in my life. It has also become clear to me that it works less well for others than it did for me - in the book club I was in, none of the women were able to finish even the first book, which seems to result from the rather adolescent attitudes toward sex expressed by the authors. It was healthy enough for me as a 16-year-old male, but it does occasionally make me wince as an adult. A more minor concern is that there is so much bad German (since the "Illuminati" were Bavarian, of course). It's pretty clear that neither author spoke German, yet they tried to insert it in various places to spice things up. When I read the German translation of the book, this led to some amusing moments as the translator often just left their nonsensical German phrases in the midst of the prose. The many English puns often went right over his head as well, so I guess it was even.
A lot of the book hinges on then-current political events, which makes it a kind of funky-hippy lesson in American history: Watergate, Vietnam, the Kennedy assassination(s), the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Woodstock, the Weather Underground and the Civil Rights movement all play their parts. Discerning between the parody and the reality may require some knowledge of the period, or perhaps one could create annotations to the text through frequent reference to Wikipedia. Part of the awakening aspect I spoke about for me was figuring out what it was everyone was so worked up about when I was a kid, and seeing the political world through the eyes of concerned and disillusioned adults.
I suspect one of the reason people have difficulty reading it is that it is written in an experimental and seemingly random third-person omniscient perspective, which floats into the first person and occasionally changes from past tot present tense. The sort of thing that was common enough at the time, but today gives editors (and many readers) fits. This may help to explain why I have such a hard time reading contemporary fiction - if the point of view hasn't changed after three chapters, I'm bored. I do think however that Wilson & Shea handle their transitions and pacing well, it just takes some getting used to if you're new to it.
I still enjoy the book greatly, and it belongs in the pantheon of "important" books of my life. It is not without flaw, but I owe it a great deal nonetheless. ...more

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Feb 11, 2015 Spencer Rich rated it really liked it

Shelves: humor, metaphysics-mystical, modern-lit, post-modern, sci-fi

I wish I had read it between the age of 17 and 22. Every bit as good as the Hitchhiker's Guide for that age group and fits nicely in with The Book of the Subgenius. As it is, as a middle-age adult, I still found it fun enough to rank it as a cult classic. The facts and fiction are interwoven pretty cleverly, and it will inevitably lead one to investigate its many pop culture, mysticism, and conspiracy theory references. As for me, it reminded me that I had yet to investigate Lovecraft or serious ...more

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Jul 11, 2008 Steve rated it it was amazing

I love this book and it is one of those works that addresses itself to you differently at different ages. Contemporary with Gravity's Rainbow, it gives Pynchon a run for his money and covers many of the themes of that novel. It is experimental, shifting perspectives and structuring chapters along Cabalistic lines. It offers an abundance of references that, if run down, will lead to an eccentric Renaissance education. It is also a parody of the kind of conspiratorial thinking that peaked in the l ...more

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Dec 06, 2007 Daniel rated it it was amazing

The first time I read Illuminatus! it was a struggle. It's a thick book. I don't know how much I retained.
The second time I read Illuminatus! I was able to follow it a bit more, and enjoy the individual scenes without worrying about how they related to the whole.
About 6 months after I read it for the second time, I had a sudden epiphany, and really grocked the book. It took a revolution of thinking to really follow the plot, and to see what the authors were trying to do, and to have so much goin ...more

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Sep 08, 2010 Liz rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2010

I love this book, and have read it before. But I had to stop this time, because it was doing things to my thought processes that were bad for my schoolwork and my relationship. It's deeply enough buried in my psyche that I can put off finishing it until I have more time and brain power. ...more

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Jul 06, 2009 Andrew Schwartz rated it it was amazing

I just re-read this for the first time in about ten years and it held up remarkably well. Though it is certainly a product of its time and some of its philosophy/politics seems hopelessly utopian, the book is overall brilliant and hilarious. I'm sure I'll pick it up again in a decade and fall in love with it all over again. ...more

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Jul 06, 2009 Jesse rated it it was amazing

Only acid cane make this *awesome* nonsense intelligible.

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Jun 26, 2009 Terra Bosart rated it really liked it

What I like about this book is the amount of factual information presented in a fictitious book. Like life itself, the truth in the book is subjective.

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