review by daniel widrew

I will begin my book review (commissioned for the princely sum of Some Strawberries) with an example of stirring honesty: I haven't finished reading the book yet. It is around 800 pages (including the appendices), and I have 100 to go. Judging by the previous 700, I don't think not having finished it yet will impede my ability to review it.

Most of what goes on in The Illuminatus! Trilogy (which originally was released as an actual trilogy--The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan--but is now commonly found in one volume) would be completely unacceptable in any other book. The characters are absurd and have no believable development, they all speak like they're reading off of shuffled cue cards, and the plot is as ridiculous to as it is followable. Not only does this all somehow work in this sprawling mess of a book, but anything else would feel out of place.

It all begins (after an introduction featuring a dolphin and a squirrel) as a detective novel. The building housing Joe Malik's underground newspaper (and some rare tropical fish known as Egyptian Mouth Breeders) has been bombed, and Joe has disappeared. New York City police officers Saul Goodman and Barney Muldoon arrive to investigate, and soon decide they'd better go into hiding when it becomes clear that there is more involved than a simple bombing. It quickly becomes much much more-- psychics, Atlantis, aliens, solar flares, gods (probably including yours), and nazi zombies all make an appearance, and Satanists may be either trying to end the world or save it--with dizzying speed. Essentially, the idea is that every conspiracy theory ever is true, and all these groups are battling each other over an ominous mystical event known as Immanentizing the Eschaton. The Illuminati and the Discordians and the Erisian Liberation Front and hippies and rock stars and the FBI and the mafia and any other group you could name are all battling for control of your head. As Epicene Wildeblood, a character in The Illuminatus! Trilogy, says in his review of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, it is "a fairy tale for paranoids."

You will not be able to keep up with the plot. You will not be able to keep track of all the characters. You will not catch all the references. You will not care. You could read every 5th page and follow the plot just as well, but you would miss out on all the beautiful wordplay, kinky sex, bad puns, subculture in-jokes, good puns, political and philosophical treatises, incredible puns, and cultural pot shots. The actual writing style is somewhere between bizarre and gibberish; the setting, time frame, and speaker will often change mid-sentence, characters suddenly become each other in a Mulholland Drive moment and then just as quickly go back to being themselves. It is an experimental stream-of-multiple-consciousnesses type of novel, but don't let that scare you off. The first 100 pages will not make a lot of sense to you, and really it never makes any more sense, but you quickly stop caring and begin to notice how utterly brilliant all the nonsense is.

The most fascinating part of the book is how much of it is absolutely--or at least partially--true. There really are groups called the Discordians (which is either a joke pretending to be a religion or a religion pretending to be a joke, depending on who you ask; the Discordians themselves claim to be both and more), the Illuminati (many different groups have used this name in the past, often at the same time), and most of the other conspiracy groups bouncing through. Many of the characters were real-life people, who were probably either honored or horrified to be used in this fashion. There are numerous quotes from sources both real and imagined discussing events that both did and did not happen in places that both do and do not exist. Many plot developments are rumored to have been taken from unpublished Playboy letters, where both of the authors worked while writing.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy should not be picked up for a fun read, though it is very fun. Its main function is make you laugh at the stupid things we all believe, and hopefully get you believing a few more stupid things. It exercises your mind the way laughter exercises your sides. It is Gravity's Rainbow on a prodigious amount of pot. It is subversive garbage in the best sense. As you read it, just keep in mind that only the false parts are true, and remember the sign Hagbard Celine--the closest thing to a main character--has hanging in the guest bedroom of his submarine: "Think for yourself, schmuck!" You'll do fine.

As a historical side note, I will point out that one of the authors, Robert Anton Wilson, recently established the Guns and Dope Party in an attempt to win the California Governorship. Failing this, he has changed his party's platform to "Everybody for President!" Gets my vote.

review by jeremiah gould

When I mention the name Robert Frost, usually one or both of the following statements rings true. 1. He's a pretty good poet and you probably "like" him, and 2. That "The Road Not Taken" was read at your high school graduation. I am almost positive that if you've heard "The Road Not Taken" one too many times. In fact, if I hear " . . . And that has made all the difference" at my UNH graduation this year, I will riot harder and possibly more violently than the rest of the school last year after the NCAA hockey finals.

Don't get me wrong; I love Frost more than almost any poet around. However, compared to the rest of the poems in this complete collection, "The Road Not Taken" is pretty mediocre. In all honesty, the narrator states at the end of the second stanza, "Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same." If the roads are equally worn, then why make the point you "took the one less traveled by?" maybe I've missed something here. Maybe I'm not as smart as the countless high school valedictorians who seem to flock to that poem like flies to a bug zapper, but I doubt it.

I'd much rather read some of the other poems in the 600+ page anthology. Yes, 600 pages. Frost is one of the best American poets, as shown by the quality of this collection. From "Mending Wall" and "Home Burial" to "Two Tramps in Mud Time" and Five Nocturnes, Frost changes styles and subjects without losing his distinctive voice and focus. After reading this collection I was left amazed and astounded with by the range Frost had in his work. Through his ability to write long, unrhymed narratives like in "The Bonfire," as well as short, rhymed bursts such as "A Question" and "The Secret Sits," Frost finds a different angle to approach poetry. He seems to find a new subject such as the neighbors in "Mending Wall" or the family in "Home Burial," a fresh image like "an old-stone savage armed from "Mending Wall." Or a sharp sound like Eaquimaux" in "V. In the Long Night: in almost all of his work. "We make the discovery that the object in writing poetry is to make all poems sound as different as possible from each other, and the resources for that of vowels, consonants, punctuation, syntax, words, sentences, meter are not enough. We need the help of context-meaning-subject matter," states Frost in his introduction. Through these poems we grasp this concept at its best.

To explain each of the poems in this collection would require more magazine than we have, not to mention more time than I can possibly offer during the school year, so I'll just mention a few. I found myself enjoying his shorter poems the most, like the section entitled Quantula. Perhaps it's my short-attention-spanned, 21st century mindset or my love of distilled short verse, but poems from this section, such as "Assurance," "A Question," and "The Secret Sits," were some of my favorites. They are short, sometimes tongue-in-cheek one-stanza poems which set-up the setting, conveyed their purpose, and were done before I could find fault in their content.

I also enjoyed the poems "A Lone Striker" and "Two Tramps in Mud Time," which hold a structured steady feel and a wonderful narrative story to them. Frost uses a long, slow tempo and rhyme scheme as well as simple language to open to the reader the world of the lower classes and address the problems of hard work and he spirit of the common man.

Frost wrote a poem about New Hampshire, Creatively titled "New Hampshire." It is a long, thirteen-page poem that often winds through places unexpected, like a section about the difficulty of writing "the Russian novel in America." Frost seems to be writing for those with a vested interest in either New Hampshire or his other poetry. The poem's length and voice makes it read like a narrative rather than a poem. It is sometimes slow and arduous to read, but to boil it down for readers Frost says, "She's one of the best states in the union. /Vermont's the other." I'd say that I have to agree with Frost.

If you haven't read more Frost than what you could pick up while in high school, I suggest you grab a copy of his complete poems. Not only will you get the best possible sense of Frost, but you might, just maybe, find a poem to negate those old graduation memories. Heaven knows I have, "and that has made all the different-" . . . you know what I mean.