I read The Illuminatus! Trilogy as a teenager, it was a gift from my older sister’s now-husband. It was transformative to me then. I can see what appealed to me so much at the time — but if you’re on this side of 30, it’s probably too late.

It’s an 800-page conspiracy-driven stream of consciousness. It doesn’t make a ton of sense but it’s not designed to. It was published in 1975 and is heavily influenced by the drug culture, paranoia, anger and distrust of government that was prevalent at the end of the 60’s. The research that Shea and Wilson bring to the story is incredible, but it’s almost too close for comfort in 2024.

This review by John Fischer on Tin House says it better than I could:

Despite its remarkable depth of research, the trilogy refuses to distinguish between the credible and the credulous. Over the course of its wanderings, it presents a still-living John Dillinger (in hiding under an assumed identity), the lost continent of Atlantis, a talking dolphin, a battalion of hibernating Nazis, and a rakish proto-libertarian submarine captain named Hagbard Celine, who periodically makes reference to an Ayn Rand–satire text entitled “Telemachus Sneezed” while simultaneously expounding upon the value of free will and drug use.

We live in a unique era of dis- and mis-information. I was reading this NYT interview with Steve Bannon (gift link) the other day and feeling like Bannon’s people live in a different reality than me.

When I read this the first time, it was farce — the idea that a conspiracy could go this deep and wide was a lot of fun for my nerdy friends and I. Today it’s a little too close to home.

That’s not to say it isn’t compelling — I couldn’t put it down, I laughed out loud regularly, I was scandalized by the weird raunchiness, very 1970s language and cultural norms. There’s a ton of racist, sexist and homophobic language, and even if it’s mostly in a Mel Brooks-ish ironic sense, it’s overwhelming over 800 pages. It’s kind of like Kurt Vonnegut, with no self-control, on a bad acid trip.

The book is a cult classic for a reason – if you’re in the mood for a book like this (that is, rambling, ridiculous and absurd), it’s an incredible feat, and it can send you down a thousand cultural rabbit holes. It has been incredibly culturally influential. But it’s also very much a straight white guy thing.

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