Or I read it for the plot.
The Illuminatus Trilogy- now almost always printed in an omnibus edition- are three shorter novels (The Eye of the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan) split into five further subdivisions of "Books" that represent the five stages of Discordian time (Which is an actual religion, who knew?), and the chapters are split into the ten sephirot.
Or known as complete nonsense wrapped up in enigma about a conspiracy with nix.
The novel is a very metafictional thing with there being shifts in tone, genre, narrator, and long diatribes about spiritualism, the Beat Generation, sexually deviant acts, and puns. A whole ton of puns.
Amid a drug fueled narrative about the island of Fernando Poo and the idea the the immanitizing the eschaton- a.k.a in layman's terms- ending the world sets up the overarching plot. It also takes on the ideas of Atlantis, the Illuminati, the Conan the Barbarian stories, the whole idea of the occult (with both the Necronomicon being a real book- along with my favorite fake university of Miskatonic and H.P. Lovecraft having a cameo of two pages.) Also the band H.P. Lovecraft does make a small appearance in one of our characters POV parts. And the JFK assassination, John Dillinger, and a cabal of Nazis that plan on using the death energy to become zombie supermen and conquer the world.
Really trying to explain this book makes me sound insane.
And James Joyce, the numbers 2,3,5, 8, 17, and 23 make a lot of appearances as well in regards to it being a book that parodies the idea of a conspiracy that has taken over the world and is so convoluted in the world structure that the leaders of the world might be tools for the Illuminati. (And possibly the same kind of person since the same paragraph was used three different times to describe the leaders of the U.S, Russia, and China.
But it begins with a bombing at a newspaper it soon devolves into science fiction, erotica, spy thriller (with a James Bond expy) a mythological farce, gangster film, art house film, and overall postmodern parody that makes its very non-segmented story both insane and dense to follow.
Very much like what House of Leaves- another favorite of mine did with the idea of footnotes and the meaning of fiction versus reality of the setting.
Just this book was written three decades before that.
The book makes Game of Thrones' sex scenes look like Kindergarten scrawls since the time period of the late 60's-70's were full of counterculture reactionary books against the older generation, so a description of a sex scene that takes two pages? Repeat that a lot. Makes sense since the writers were at one point, part of Playboy magazine. Ok. A book set ostensibly in a month time frame yet with most jumps happening whenever else? Sex scenes that happen a lot- like almost near constantly while other stories are bleeding into the narrative? Okay.
Its also about the greatest new band in the world- the American Medical Association. a sea captain/lawyer with a ship rivaling the Nautilus, fnords and whatnot.
A very weird book taking a whole long look at conspiracy and magic mystical fights against good and evil, order and balance, etc.
So what do I give this rambling book? I give it a good old 1970s/10 or the reminder that cell phones and email did not exist then.
In all semi-seriousness though, I give it a 8/10 in regards to it meeting most of my occult and storytelling interests, with a very small turn off for the Author Tracts against government and pro drug culture.
So read it maybe it you are intrigued. Its something all right.
