Robert Wilson - The Illuminatus! Trilogy

GENERAL LAWRENCE STEWART TALBOT. Actually, there was something between him and that girl from Red Lion, Penn.

MALACLYPSE THE YOUNGER, K.S.C. Author of the Principia Discordia. Disappeared mysteriously in late 1970. His last recorded words were, typically, "Comes the dawn, the sun shall rise in the west." Then he walked into the Pacific Ocean.

JOHN HERBERT DILLINGER. When Simon Moon read his biography in search of 23s, he missed a good one: John committed 26 robberies during his publicized career, but only 23 were for money. The other 3 (police stations) seem to have been strictly Art For Art's Sake.

SIMON'S FATHER. Tim Moon. He told Simon the lives of Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Sacco and Vanzetti, and Frank Little at the age when most boys are being told about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Simon remembers: Joe Hill the night before his execution, wiring Wobbly headquarters in Chicago, "Don't weep for me, boys: organize." Bartolomeo Vanzetti: "Your laws, your courts, your false god will be a dim remembering of a cursed time when man was wolf to the man." Tim and his cronies singing in the living room, "Which side are you on, man / Which side are you on?" until Molly complained, "You'll wake the neighbors." Tim explaining Big Bill: "Oh, yes, and he had a glass eye. Funny I should forget that. The real eye was knocked out by a cop during a strike." But you'll understand Tim best if you see Simon, age six, entering grammar school for the first time and addressing the first boy he meets: "I'm Simon Moon; what's your name, Fellow Worker?"

PADRE PEDERASTIA. His real name was Father James Flanagan.

TOBIAS KNIGHT. The only quintuple agent in the history of espionage.

JAMES JOYCE. After death, he met Yeats on the fifth plane and said, "Sir, I am now willing to learn from you, since you appear to have been right about Death after all." Yeats replied, "Not at all. You're dreaming this." The remark so vexed Joyce that he immediately sought reincarnation (the fifth plane was full of mystics like Yeats and George Russell and Madame Blavatski, and Joyce knew his rational Aristotelian sensibility would be constantly abused by further conversation with them), entered the womb of Elizabeth Mullins of Ver-non, New Jersey, October 11, 1942, and was aborted December 10, 1942. Entered the womb of Rachel Stein of Ingolstadt, January 18, 1943, and was gassed with her, one month before birth was due, at Ausch-witz, September 1, 1943. Thereafter, he retired to a monastery on the sixth plane and wrote his funniest, most bitter book. Parts of it, which he has been transmitting ever since, have been picked up by mediums on the six continents, all of whom assumed they were flipping out and refused to transcribe it.

CHARLES WORKMAN. An entrepreneur.

MENDY WEISS. Another entrepreneur.

JIMMY THE SHREW. A third entrepreneur, more successful than the above. See entry under CHARLES MOCENIGO'S FATHER.

ALBERT "THE TEACHER" STEIN. Not only did he lose his gamble with immortality when it was proven that he didn't kill Dutch Schultz, but almost every book on the case misspells his name as Stern, a tradition which the present work has mostly refused to shatter.

HENRY FORD. By importing the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and beginning the mass production of automobiles, he managed to pollute both the mind and the air of the United States, but he meant well, or at least he meant something.

GEORGE DORN'S OLDER BROTHER. His successful scientific career made George envious (and helped determine George's choices of a liberal-arts curriculum at Columbia). He had an adventure with talking dolphins before George did (which set up a psychic resonance that made George's recruitment interesting to Hagbard); this story is recounted in Tales Of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by August Derleth (Arkham House, 1969).

MARKOFF CHANEY. He slipped away from Saul and Barney shortly after they returned to Las Vegas, and none of our characters ever saw him again. However, one day in 1984 Hagbard Celine, using an alias and engaged in nefarious business, happened to be in the U.S. Government Printing Office on Capitol Street in Washington and noticed a bundle of pamphlets that had been stamped with both blue TOP SECRET: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and red FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO ALL MEDIA. Many loyal government servants would have headaches before it was ever clarified who had been responsible for which of those stamps-if, indeed, that ever could be clarified. Hagbard recalled much that Saul had told him about the Las Vegas caper and looked around thoughtfully. In one corner he saw a large coffee urn. He lit one of his long black cigars and strolled out into the street. The sun was bright, the air was clear, and it was Spring, which may explain why Hagbard began whistling as he walked with a brisk and determined pace toward the Senate Office Building. The tune was "My Heart's in the Highlands."