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Masks... is great. I think the point with the Joyce word play is that RAW loves showing his skill at pastiche, which in turn is pastiche Joycean style. Joyce, in Ulysses for instance, has a chapter written in various styles of writing including faux-Shakespearean text, and he also attempts to destroy language (see Finnegan's Wake, calssic alchemical text). RAW does the same, so in his Joyce character he is writing a pastiche Joyce, writing pastiche, in a pastiche Gothic Novel. Nice. The end trip for instance seems to be a homage to the end of Ulysses with Molly's monologue, which an old friend of mine reckons is an orgasm and so is an alternative method of acheieving an illumination or altered perception type thing, like the drugging by Crowley.
RAW has written several essays on Joyce mostly collected in his book Coincidance (his spelling) in which he analyses the texts of Joyce's books and comes to the conclusion they are like a hologram (if you cut out a part you don't get a part of the hologram but the whole thing more diffused and smaller) and he goes on to prove this at some length. The Illuminatus trilogy itself is RAW's equivalent of Ulysses (although not happening over just one day I admit) in that it's an enormous book which makes no sense the first few times you read it but has a profound and lasting effect on the rest of your life.
Oh, and there is nothing wrong with having a hard-on for Joyce. The man is a genius, occult master, and name-checked in the Invisibles by King Mob in 1924 when he credits Joyce with being the beginning of the future. So there. |
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