CHAPEL PERILOUS

Kennedy presents a biography of the controversial cultural figure and author.

Robert Anton Wilson was a dramatist, philosopher, satirist, playwright, author, and stand-up comedian who, according to celebrated comic-book writer Grant Morrison in his foreword, motivated “a secret psychedelic insurrection of punks, Discordians, pagans, Chaotes, acidheads.” Kennedy’s meticulously detailed biography, which starts with the subject’s birth in Brooklyn and ends seven tumultuous decades later, when an aged and largely bedridden Wilson was confronted not only with failing health requiring multiple hospital visits but also a hefty bill from the IRS for back taxes (“Wilson now also faced the possibility of eviction and dying homeless,” Kennedy writes, phlegmatically adding, “Things were suddenly looking very bad for Bob”). Along the way, readers follow Wilson through his lifelong advocacy for legalized marijuana, his experiences with psychedelics, his embrace of the obscure quasi-religion of Discordianism, his general all-purpose agnosticism (which he tried to apply to nearly everything, not just religion), and, of course, his huge body of published writing, including his best-known work, the Illuminatus! trilogy, and what many of his fans consider to be his masterpiece, Prometheus Rising (1983). Kennedy approaches his subject with thoroughness and a wry humor Wilson would likely have appreciated (paragraphs open with deadpan lines like “Back in our dimension ...”). Occasionally, Kennedy’s immersion in his subject can leave the author sounding as loopy as Wilson (“dissipative structures exist within a dynamic tension between negative entropy, which is coherent order, and entropy, which is a chaotic disorder”), but this hardly diminishes the book’s impact. This is the chronicle of a thoroughly literary life, filled with discussions not only of Wilson’s copious writings but of all the authors whose work this omnivorous reader consumed.

An engaging, readable work detailing the life and career of a cult-favorite author.