The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, Leviathan

I am reading this for the second time, and bought it for the Kindle because the paperback is so fat it was making my wrist and thumb ache. The Kindle version is very well presented. The first 300 pages are the most difficult, but it is worth plodding on. It is also worth looking up a lot of the references to other events - I was very surprised by what I read about John Dillinger, for example. I suspect that this is one of the best books ever written. It owes something to James Joyce, but has more depth of relevant meaning. Just try it. Look it up on the Web first, to get some signposts for understanding. Above all, have fun. Lots of it.

in some sense, truein some sense falsein some sense meaningless!i also arrived here on the back of the k.l.f., john higgs, and the principia discordia (of which i'd say would be a great help, read before commencing this book), and as illuminating as the journey turned out to be, i was completely knocked on my eris, flat out battered into wonderment! i'll be coming back here often, as it has the feel of a place where all the relevant action is - you don't want to miss a minute or you'll be forever lost, or worse, subject to a greyface downer!the 'conspiricy' content is endlessly fascinating, and perfectly well covered in other reviews, so i'll go on the things that struck me the most. and the first must be how fresh and un-dated the book is - the 'real' characters of the time being the only giveaway, otherwise it's timeless and could have been written yesterday. the second thing was a notion of w.s.burroughs influence, which increased the more mentions he received, in fact i'd say that his 'hauser and o'brien' routines were a major factor in the 'gumshoe' set-up with goodman and muldoon, as a base line anyway! but the greatest thing is the total (operation) mindf*** as things unfold (or don't!), possibilities and credibility are stretched to the point where belief is suspended - 'nothing is true, all is permissable' - and your head is scrambled! direct hit then? easy to see why this book has the reputation it has, playing with folk's minds like that!as a card carrying 'pope' (isn't everyone?), i stand behind this book, or mibbe, in front of it, to the side, on top of it, i don't know, just as long as it's there! seriously, this has shot into my top ten books ever - get yourself down to mad dog, texas, and join in mr hagbard's wild ride! hail eris!

Well, how do you try to encapsulate this trilogy into a short review that gives someone insight and may sway them towards/away from purchasing it?OK, heres an attempt;Conspiracy upon conspiracy all uncovered/expounded/explained during the journey of a guy who is broken out of a southern US state jail in the presence of a Nemo like submarine commander(although he is not really because everyone is equal) as they head towards a conflict between two ancient warring groups of folk who want to rule the world, accompanied by a man who has several identities well known in US history and a sexy woman who is not all she seems, not forgetting a talking dolphin.This trilogy is a real mind bending read, thought provoking on many levels, and contains scenes of sex and violence.I reckon I would have to read it again in order to make better sense of it.

The style is way out, its a little dated, probably late 60's or early 70's.Anyone who can start a chapter "Jesus Christ rode past on a bicycle" gets my vote.Its the ultimate conspiracy theory, explaining everything from the fall of Atlantis, through JFK to Roswell.Hard work, but worth it.

This book honestly changed my perceptions about nearly everything, although I didn't have much of an idea what Shea and Wilson were talking about half the time.First time I read it, I researched all the things I didn't understand that were referenced and they gave me a much deeper understanding of 'stuff' (I feel I have to be vague here).I read it again a year later and having researched and understood alot more, it was much easier to read and was even better than the first. Alot of thing fell into place and it made so much more sense.I aim to read it one more time purely because of something that's mentioned in it.Don't listen to any of the naysayers. Read it with an open mind right till the end and do what I did.My favourite book of all time.

"Its a dreadfully long monster of a bookThe authors are utterly incompetent - no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. The time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell. I'm sure the authors - whom I have never heard of - have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposinga real conspiracy. "Well, I hope the authors don't mind my repeating their words. I found it a bit like I do Shakespear. I am sure there is a joke or a political dig in there, but I am just not sufficiently familiar with the necessary context to quite get much of it, and feel a lot is going right over my head.I read it quite quickly, which probably says something good about it, but whether I enjoyed it ? I am really not sure. Perhaps I need to read it again. Perhaps you need chemical assistance, or perhaps you need a schoolboy sense of humour, and I am just too old.It is without doubt a monster of a shaggy dog story.Hail Eris !

a1

A clever, iconic book, possibly too clever for its own good. I lived through the sixties and am still missing some of the jokes. Just take it the good humour that was intended and don't worry about who really does rule the world.

A need to read book. It is really one of a kind.

Unnecessarily hard to follow. Too many twists and time jumps and unnecessary changes in the narrator.Foucault pendulum much better read.

Weird words weird story weird characters. Almost impossible to follow but engaging and gripping at the same time.

Lo consiglio a chi è appassionato di fantapolitica, esoterismo e avventura.Un viaggio magistralmente guidato dagli autori, che ho molti anni fa letto nella traduzione italiana sviluppata attraverso 3 volumi e pubblicato nel nostro Paese da Shake e di cui purtroppo mi manca il Leviatano, (prestato e non più ritornato).Quale migliore occasione di riaverlo in lingua originale per gustarne la trama e migliorare il mio inglese?Per me un capolavoro che non può mancare nella libreria di casa.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a pretty weird book, even by postmodern conventions. The narrative jumps back and forth between 3rd person and any given character without warning. There are quite a few plot threads, and the transitions between these threads are practically nonexistent; nothing is really there to signify a change in scene, and sometimes one thread even jumps to another mid-sentence. Oh, and there are tons of characters, many of whom make low-key entrances only to show up again much later in the story. If this all makes Illuminatus! sound similar to Gravity's Rainbow, don't worry, the former is considerably easier to digest. Whereas Pynchon uses his vast wealth of knowledge to go off on tangents and add more historical background to any given event than what might be necessary (don't get me wrong, though, his books are very entertaining in their own way), Shea and Wilson essentially poke fun at all the insane (and not-so-insane) facts they dig up. Of course, half of these "facts" were made up, but that's where Illuminatus! really shines as an example of what postmodern literature can accomplish.It is, to put it one way, the Skeptic's Bible, and if that sounds like an oxymoron, good job for noticing. Illuminatus! is filled with contradictions and outright lies, although unlike certain books that claim to be historically and factually accurate but are really not, the trilogy goes out of its way to make the reader question what he/she is reading. There is, of course, a lot of true information scattered throughout the book, and it becomes obvious that Shea and Wilson put a great amount of research and insight into writing this, but for every true story there are at least two false leads, two red herrings. Truly it doesn't take long to get why—for about 15 years—Illuminatus! was the quintessential work of conspiracy fiction, and the best part is that the book has so much fun with the genre; nowadays we're used to reading conspiracy thrillers that take themselves too seriously, but Illuminatus! satirizes such novels before they even became as famous as they are now. Not only that, but the trilogy takes shots at too many groups, individuals, and ideologies to count, but here are some notable examples: conservatives, communists, socialists, libertarians, feminists, Christians, cops, politicians, hippies, racists, not-racists, Satanists, spies, drug dealers, drug takers, prudes, college professors, the book itself...Illuminatus! is arguably one the greatest philosophical novels ever written; it has a stance, sure, but it pulls the reader in numerous directions by presenting different philosophies. It then has the audacity to ask the reader, "Do you believe that?" Governments and authority figures as a whole get criticized, sometimes vehemently, but Shea and Wilson clearly had a message they felt needed to get out there, and even though the trilogy was first published back in 1975, its anti-authoritarian message still holds up today. In the post-Patriot Act United States, some of what happens in this book is eerily prophetic, and many of the socio-political issues being faced today were going on over 40 years ago. History repeats? I suspect that the more whacked-out portions of the book are Wilson's writing, although the man himself said that it's hard to tell who wrote what for the most part. The fact that this was written by two authors with differing writing styles and backgrounds and yet feels surprisingly cohesive for such a long and unwieldy tome is something to be praised, I think. 800 pages and I still feel like there wasn't quite enough to take in; it felt like we could be stuck in this huge fun-house of a book for a few hundred more pages. Of course, there was much more material written than ultimately published—about 500 pages were cut from the final product—but I kinda wish we eventually get an unabridged edition of the trilogy. Probably never gonna happen, though. Hail Eris!