Description: Book is a bit curled, spine is slightly cocked. Interiors are unt ouched and clean. Shea and Wilson's sprawling journey through pa r anoia and conspiracy culture; Omnibus comprising the novels " T he Eye in the Pyramid", "The Golden Apple", and "Leviathan"... read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Dell Publishing Company
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780440539810ISBN:0440539811
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Pages are clean, though there is a remainder mark; wraps have edge wear and a reading crease. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 805 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Dell Books, New York
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780440539810ISBN:0440539811
Description: Good-Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. 805pp. 15th Dell prtg. Covs rubbed; edges & corners worn. Sp a bit concave, creased; edges & ends worn. It was a deadly mistake. Joseph Malik, editor of a radical magazine, had snooped into rumors about an ancient secret society that was still alive and kicking. Now his offices have been bombed, he's missing, and the case has landed in the lap of a tough, cynical, streetwise New York detective. Saul Goodman knows he's stumbled onto something big--but even ... read more
Description: Very Good. 0440539811 Paperback, Condition: Very Good; this book is in very good condition with light curve to the spine / light reading creases to the covers. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Dell
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780440539810ISBN:0440539811
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. VG+ 805 p. Omnibus trade paperback edition from Dell, 1988. VERY GOOD PLUS. Contains The Eye In The Pyramid, The Golden Apple, and Leviathan. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Dell Books
Date Published: 1989-10-01
ISBN-13:9780440539810ISBN:0440539811
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780440539810. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Dell
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780440539810ISBN:0440539811
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: Illustrated.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Dell Publishing Company
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780440539810ISBN:0440539811
Description: New. No dust jacket as issued. Brand New! Support Radical Independent Pacific Northwest Booksellers! Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 816 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. Filled with sex and violence--in and out of time and space--the three books of The Illuminatus are only partly works of the imagination. They tackle all the cover-ups of our time--from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on a one-dollar bill. read more
Edition: Later printing
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Dell Publishing, New York
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780440539810ISBN:0440539811
Description: 805pp. Octavo [20.5 cm] Black illustrated wrappers. Fine. Filled with sex and violence--in and out of time and space--the three books of The Illuminatus are only partly works of the imagination. They tackle all the coverups of our time--from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on a one-dollar bill. read more
Edition: Ninth Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Dell Books, New York
Date Published: 1988
ISBN-13:9780440539810ISBN:0440539811
Description: Very Good. 8vo. 805 pp. All three titles in a single volume. Edge and corner wear with an uncreased spine; no interior markings. read more
Description: Acceptable. Well-worn copy. Book is ACCEPTABLE with noted wear to cover and pages. Binding intact. May contain highlighting, inscriptions or notations. We offer a no-hassle guarantee on all our items. Orders generally ship by the next business day. Default Text. read more
"This book drove me nuts. I think it was mostly because I was substitute teaching at the time, so I had a lot of time on my hands to tackle this monster. Had this book been better edited and abridged I think it would be more accessible and wider read.
This book is very funny and witty, yet takes a certain amount of patience. Wilson tends to ramble on at times a la stream-of-conscious writing which was once edgy or experimental, but has grown weary. It is like looking at certain modern art... it is easy to dismiss if you don't know what the artist is attempting to accomplish.
For one born in the seventies I have a good background knowledge of the sixties and that eras counterculture. Someone who does not will not appreciate or understand what is being written about.
I found it very interesting and I find myself rereading bits of it, but it is an experiment in self discipline on part of the reader."
"This trilogy was loaned me by my roommate along with a bunch of other distinctly odd materials. Unlike the others, however, this story is not serious, but plays off long-standing conspiracy theory traditions, primarily those concerning the Illuminati, a short-lived group of Bavarian liberals who attempted to start a progressive movement under the cover of their Bavarian lodges in the eighteenth century.
The story is pretty silly, the writing mediocre, but if you've been into this stuff, this, like Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, is a pay-off for all your study. Many of the jokes are arcane."
"When I first read this book in the 90s, I would have given it five stars. It was transgressive, subversive, heretical, anti-establishment, and all that stuff you think is cool when you are young.
Now, I think it's gimmicky, cliched, dated, and rather embarrassing. It does, however, have one redeeming value: It has no good guys or bad guys. Or, rather, the good guys might be the bad guys or the bad guys might be the good guys. There are still no shades of grey (subtlety seems to be beyond Mr. Wilson's ken), but it does change your perspective enough times during the course of the trilogy that you might begin to question your own judgment.
This might or might not be a good thing. I'll let you decide."
Was much more impressive when I first started reading it some time around 2000 or so. Perhaps my memory of its excellence had inflated in the intervening years. Or perhaps I have gotten much more fluent in conspiracy literature since then, making the originally mind-blowing "revelations" (fictive or not) less so now. And even back then I found the writing pretty bad.
Still, it remains impressive, first, because it manages to keep all its crazy threads going until the end, if they disappear for long stretches, and even manages to more or less resolve all of them (even if in one of the appendices); related to this, the book stays true to its pseudo-Joycean form (which they freely admit to emulating, in their cheeky way), and anticipate Gravity's Rainbow by a few years (though I have not read Pynchon's earlier works, and if those are similar they quite possibly may have had some influence on Wilson and Shea.) Second, the scholarship and research behind the book is undeniable. Also, while playing with and even mocking a lot of ideas that no doubt had become clichés to the authors' generation by the time they wrote the book, they are able to come up with some creative and unexpected twists to them, even if you can sense them pushing and pulling and working at it. I never did LSD, and pot never worked for me, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of their better ideas came to them while they were stoned on those and/or something else.
One serious problem with the book is that it is misognystic. All the female characters are around twenty years old with the bodies and sex appeal of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, the brains of PhDs, and the hearts of your sweet sister or devoted wife. The exceptions are a 15-year old Sicilian girl, two Las Vegas prostitutes, a 30-year old tarot card reader who makes herself to look middle-aged, a matronly conservative activist who prostitutes herself to obtain a donation for her organization, an aging secretary who appears in only one throw-away scene, and a ambitious, manipulative sex pot charlatan. There is one woman who undergoes some level of character development, a sort of rebellion, in fact, which is quite sharp and striking, and stands out from the rest of the book. Perhaps the sexual caricaturization -- and consequent demeaning -- of all the women who count in the book was intentional on the part of the authors, and that one rebellious woman's rejection was meant to put this into relief. I am not sure. But even if true, it would not redeem this book from its narrow and superficial treatment of women, whom the authors clearly -- and sincerely, I believe -- want to elevate, in fact, to put it mildly.
But this gripe aside, the authors' philosophical project is well taken and appreciated for its optimistic and even philanthropic message.
Last minor note: The appendix is actually a lot funnier and feels much more spontaneous and successful in its humor than the book itself. Maybe Shea and Wilson thought of the book as a labor they had to "get right", but the appendix was a "freebie" that had far less import, so they could relax and have more fun with it, with the result that in some ways its superior to the book."
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