Enclosed please find a large collection of letters, articles, poetry, prose, and Discordian junk mail created by Robert Anton Wilson, usually under a variety of pen names and aliases, and all sent to, and preserved by, the poet and activist Ed Sanders.
(There is also material by Robert Shea, Arlen Riley Wilson, and even a cameo by Mal 2!)
This material was discovered by the brilliant esoteric scholar R. Michael Johnson, our resident Overweening Generalist, who identified its close proximity to my suburban NJ environs, housed in the Princeton Library's Special Collections Dept, and suggested I might do well to take a gander. Not being the type to turn down a magical quest, I did indeed take a trip up the turnpike and captured the cache of material, converted to PDF, labeled and organized to the best of my ability, and now present to the wider RAW/Discordian community for enjoyment and edification :)))
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS: EARLY RAW - THE ED SANDERS COLLECTION
The majority of the material here was brand new to me, and does not seem to be available elsewhere on the internet, though I'll be curious to see how much of it is genuinely previously unknown writing. I direct your attention specifically to the "I" newsletter section, which appears to be an early forerunner of the Trajectories newsletter. It seems like RAW probably sent this stuff far and wide, but I've never bumped into it before. Maybe it's collected under another name? (Maybe housed in the famed Discordian archives?)
I also direct your attention to two prose pieces:
Both of which Wilson refers to as proposed novels, of which these are presumably very short excerpts.
The Werewolf Bridge material shows up as a recurring theme in his work, but I don't think in this exact form. RAW's first hand description of his experience at the Pentagon protest is riveting! And again, previously unknown to me.
and that's just scratching the surface!
As a whole this collection seems to capture a distinct stylistic period in RAW's writing, where his revolutionary fervor is piping hot, and he seems to find himself at the crossroads of being a respectable family man with a good career and wild acid-tinged artist with grand visions of humanity's glorious future!
It's kind of funny because RAW stamped a lot of his correspondence with a warning that it may be an "important historical document," a self-fulfilling prophecy now realized, as I accessed the pages within an Ivy League Special Collections Dept, after washing my hands, locking away my possessions, agreeing to all sorts of rules and restrictions, under the watchful eye of an attendant, and several security cameras.
You just never know where your stoned out anarchist memes may end up!
Happy searching! LMK if you find anything cool :)))
P.S. I deny all the rumors that this is an elaborate stunt to promote Tales of Illuminatus! I know people are saying it's the greatest comic since the Bayeux Tapestry, but that's neither here nor there!
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