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Was Wilson really an ideas man? He's either good fun or dreadful, according to taste, as a satirical novelist. And as a cultural (I'd say ontological, but I'm not entirely sure what that means) theorist/philosopher/non-fiction author he's arguably a synthesist, rather than a source of original material.
He's good on explaining quantum physics in layman's terms, I assume (I mean I sort of understood it, at the time, with very little background in the way of the post school exam sciences) and then linking that up to James Joyce, comparative religions and so on in a thought-provoking way. But for the most part, he's considering other people's ideas, not advancing his own.
There's the scene in 'Cosmic Trigger One', I think, when in spite of the intimations of the divine he's been talking about throughout, he decides to cryogenically preserve his recently-deceased daughter because when it comes down to it, he can't accept her tragic, early death as anything other than a scientifically alterable accident. Because he doesn't trust the alternatives.
I'm not saying everyone should read everything Wilson wrote, but having been over a lot of it, the idea that he ever had a manifesto, let alone that it, had it existed, would have had much to do with the Wavy Davey material he made up for a laugh to pay the bills while he was writing for Playboy is a little unfair, I think. |
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