Robert Anton Wilson’s ‘Tale of the Tribe’

(The following are the class assignments with commentary of “Tale of the Tribe,” the class Robert Anton Wilson taught at the Maybe Logic Academy in 2005. Tale of the Tribe was also the name of the book Wilson was writing but never finished at the time of his death in 2007.)

The Tale of the Tribe was the title of Robert Anton Wilson’s unfinished last book. It was advertised by New Falcon press as “coming soon,” for many years. However, the only portion Wilson produced was a prologue for the book that described its major themes. Wilson, moving like an intellectual DJ, dug through the historical crates and presented a theory stating that Marshal McLuhan, James Joyce and Ezra Pound shaped the look and feel of today’s internet more than most of us realize. If we open our trembling ear holes and listen to the breathing substrate beneath the digital code, then maybe we can find our own ways on how to navigate the Digi-swamps that increasingly invade the Internet like barnacles beneath a steamship traversing the dangerous tides of deep treacherous waters far beyond our intellectual comfort zones.

Wilson’s prologue for Tale of the Tribe presented a “cast of characters,” like McLuhan, Joyce, and Pound, and the thinkers who influenced them. People like Giordano Bruno, the medieval Italian hermeticist who was burned at the stake in 1600 for suggesting that space was infinite. Another fellow of influential heft was Nicolas of Cusa, a medieval German cleric who suggested the notion of the “union of opposites.” One last influence on Joyce was Giambattista Vico, who among many things, suggested a trajectory of humankind that he called the Four Ages of Man. (More on all three of these thinkers in future posts.) Wilson also invoked the work of Claude Shannon, whose 1948 article, A Mathematical Theory of Communication sparked the “Information Age.” Another thinker Wilson presented along with Shannon was Norbert Weiner, who was one of the inventors of “Cybernetics,” which stated how feedback helps complex systems behave, creating a new metaphor to think about topics within the social sciences. (More on Shannon and Weiner later)

Since Wilson’s death in 2007, no other documents have been uncovered regarding his unfinished book. At the moment, it appears as if Wilson never wrote anything besides that prologue. However, he did host a class at his Maybe Logic Academy in 2005 called The Tale of the Tribe that discussed the themes and characters of his unfinished symphony. I was a participant in this course. In all there were approximately 23 students taking the class. Others I remember off the top of my head were: Steve Fly Agaric, Toby Philpot (aka Bogus Magus), Philippe Borsky Vermeersch, Nick Helweg-Larsen, Bobby Campbell, Oz Fritz, Eric Wagner, Eva David, Mike Gathers, Stein Leirvik, and a few others.

Over ten weeks, Wilson unpacked his ideas behind the book that he was working on before he died. A book that had the promise to be one of Wilson’s finest. A book that was perhaps not completely his story to tell, for it is the Tale of the Tribe, after all. A story that we must all tell together.

Recently, there has been renewed interest in the Tale of the Tribe course hosted at the MLA all those years ago. In order to add on to the conversation growing around Wilson’s work, I have dug into my files and uploaded the original assignments from the class. Presented below is the first week’s assignment in RAW’s ToTT course:

Wilson titled the second week’s assignment as “Things in Motion, Motion in Things.” He asked participants to read the work of Ernest Fenollosa and to think about Ezra Pound’s poetic method which he called “Ideogram” or “Ideogrammic.” A brief note about the Ideogrammic method, Pound wanted to translate action and flux in his work. He believed that the English language failed in comparison to the Chinese Ideogram in properly communicating tangible actualities that are observed in nature. Wilson believed that us humans are constantly hypnotizing ourselves and others with creations of our imaginations that we then project out onto others, regardless of how much they may protest to our projections. In the assignment, Wilson asked what sort of difference it would make if children were educated in the Ideogrammic method. I believe Wilson was reaching for a new theory of Digital Humanities in his unfinished book.

Check the Vibe:

Wilson called the week 3 assignment, “Synchronicity and Isomorphism” drawing attention to two overlapping topics that Wilson dedicated much ink to. Wilson defines his terms and provides his definition of “isomorphism” as simply “similarity in structure.” He gets the term from Korzybski’s Science and Sanity. Expounding further that K thought that we can really know structure about something and the similarities in structure between any two things/events.

He loops Joyce and Pound into the conversation asking the participants what they thought they would have thought about K’s theory of isomorphisms.

RAW asks participants to read four segments. Two of his from his book Coincidance, “The Doodles Family,” about Joyce’s symbol system of organizing his thoughts on human consciousness. He calls it “the system-function” and they are explained on the paper.

(Maybe the Doodles family part is in the article that was in Coincidance. “Synchronicity and Isomorphism in Finnegans Wake.”

Next, he asks the MLA crew to read the first seven paragraphs of Finnegans Wake again. This time being attentive to all the references to Jonathan Swift and Lawrence Sterne. He asks, “Why do you think Joyce gave them so much prominence?”

Then he wants him to read Pound’s Cantos 8–11 with the commentary that he provided for the class. These are Cantos about Sigismundo Malatesta (brief description). RAW asks people to wonder if Malatesta could be seen as an “ideogram for the Renaissance Man.”

RAW named week four “Contra Usura” which was a reference to Pound’s Cantos and the practice of Usury. Wilson spent much time unpacking Usury and how the definition changed of the years. Usury used o mean any interest added to the exchange of money to today’s more pliant definition which say its only Excessive interest tacked onto the exchange of money that is usury.

In week four’s assignment, he asked participants to read Cantos 12–15, and then look at the commentary he wrote for it. (I have the commentary somewhere in my notes and will produce them soon enough)

Cantos 12–15 introduces some major themes in Pound’s mega-poem. Wikipedia has this to say about this section:

Canto XII consists of three moral tales on the subject of profit. The first and third of these treat the creation of profit ex nihilo by exploiting the money supply, comparing this activity with “unnatural” fertility. The central parable contrasts this with wealth-creation based on the creation of useful goods. Canto XIII then introduces Confucius, or Kung, who is presented as the embodiment of the ideal of social order based on ethics.

This section of The Cantos concludes with a vision of Hell. Cantos XIV and XV use the convention of the Divine Comedy to present Pound/Dante moving through a hell populated by bankers, newspaper editors, hack writers and other ‘perverters of language’ and the social order. In Canto XV, Plotinus takes the role of guide played by Virgil in Dante’s poem. In Canto XVI, Pound emerges from Hell and into an earthly paradise where he sees some of the personages encountered in earlier cantos. The poem then moves to recollections of World War I, and of Pound’s writer and artist friends who fought in it. These include Richard Aldington, T. E. Hulme, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Wyndham Lewis, Ernest Hemingway and Fernand Léger, whose war memories the poem includes a passage from (in French). Finally, there is a transcript of Lincoln Steffens’ account of the Russian Revolution. These two events, the war and revolution, mark a decisive break with the historic past, including the early modernist period when these writers and artists formed a more-or-less coherent movement.”

Next in the assignment, Wilson asked MLA’ers to re-read the first 7 paragraphs of Joyce’s Wake again(!) This time he asked us to look for any references to Dublin’s geography and history, especially resistance to occupation (i.e., terrorism)

He leaves the week with two quotes, both expressing his Anarchistic view of history.

The title of the Week five assignment was ‘The Third World.’ Such a title and assignment indicates the role that Third World countries have historically played in the development of Tale of the Tribe as well as a future where “third world” nations play a vital role in a more peaceful equitable future for all of humanity.

Wilson asks participants to discuss as a Ireland ‘Third World,’ nation and also to discuss the work of James Joyce as a Third World artist. Wilson is using the term ‘Third World’ interchangeably with Colonized Nation, which Ireland was fir hundreds of years. The term ‘Third World’ was first used during the Cold War to distinguish the countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. Ireland has never joined NATO and it never went along with the Warsaw Pact. So, by all accounts, Ireland was a ‘Third World’ nation both during the time of Joyce as well as through the Cold War.

In the assignment, RAW lays down three quotes from Pound’s Cantos. Each quote deals with the notion of Empire and its relationship to those being oppressed by them. That’s what I think anyway.

After the quotes, Wilson then gives the assignment. He asks participants to read two of his pieces from his book, Coincidance. The first “Death and Absence in Joyce,” as well as his interview of ex-IRA veteran and founder of Amnesty International, Sean MacBride. An interesting story about his interview with MacBride, the founder of one of the most celebrated human rights organizations in the world, was that Wilson was unable to find any European magazines that would publish it. Wilson was unaware, it seems, of Section 31 of Ireland’s Broadcasting Authority Act, which ran from 1968 to 1994, and censored interviews with spokespersons for Sinn Fein and the IRA. MacBride was no longer a member of the IRA, but for whatever reason, Wilson’s interview with the legendary fellow was never published until it appeared in Wilson’s book.

To cap off his assignment, Wilson asks a most interesting question in this assignment, “What do you foresee when the Third World comes on-line?”

Wilson also tells MLA’ers that Pound, in his Canto 18, was referring to Sir Basil Zaharoff. Zaharoff was a Greek weapons dealer, who through being the most ruthless arms dealer around, became the one of the richest men in the worked during his lifetime. Another reason for his wealth was that he had no qualms selling weapons to opposing sides in conflicts. A real merchant of death.

Wikipedia says that Zaharoff likely served as the primary inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond super villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who in turn, served as the primary inspiration for Mike Meyers’ Austin Powers character Dr. Evil.

Sadly, there was nothing funny about Zaharoff, as he set the template for the future that we live in today, one that is drowning in weaponry.

The title for the Week 6 assignment was called “Friends of Thomas Jefferson,” which lets you know what RAW was pontificating upon during this week of the course. He opens the assignment with a quote from Ezra Pound about “two civilized men” who “reigned in America” from 1760 to 1824. Next, RAW asked MLA’ers to identify who Pound was referring to. (Spoiler Alert! He was talking about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams)

Next Wilson asked participants to read Cantos 31–34 from Pounds Epic Poem. These Cantos, which included Canto 32–41, are part of the New Cantos section of the poem. The first four of these Cantos use lots of quotes from Thomas Jefferson. John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren. All of these quote’s deal with the emergence of the American banking system.

Wilson also asked readers why Pound started his Jefferson Canto with the Malatesta family crest. (“Tempus loquendi, Tempus tacendi” translated means “A time to speak, A time to be silent.”

Wilson also asks participants why they thought Pound repeated the John Adams’ quote “The revolution took place within the minds of the people.”

He also asked participants why they thought Pound placed quotes of Adams and Jefferson followed by quotes from Karl Marx.

Wilson titled week 7 of his class, “The Wrath of Rita.” In the assignment Wilson asked participants to contemplate Nietzsche’s notion of ‘Eternal Recurrence.”

Then he says to read Cantos 49 and 53

Then he asked us to read the Prankqueen episode in Finnegans Wake pages 21 to 23 in the book. Page 23 contains the second of the ten 100-letter thunderwords Joyce sprinkled throughout the story. Put as briefly as possible, the Prankqueen was Joyce’s reference to the legendary tale of Ireland’s Pirate Queen, Grace O’Malley who is said to have arrived at Howth Castle in the late 1500s, or early 1600s, seeking a place to sleep for the night. Ancient Irish tradition had it that castles always kept their doors open during dinner time, however this time, the Earl of Howth, most likely not a local Irishman, refused her entry. In response, O’Malley kidnapped the Earl’s child, but instead of money, her ransom, so to speak, was that the doors of Howth Castle were to remain open ever after. Many a Wake reader sees the Prankqueen episode as Joyce’s way of describing the rising feminine force necessary to set right the ancient traditions of hospitality. Joyce’s choice of utilizing a fierce female pirate as the heroine calling forth the return of ancient customs perhaps alludes to the personality necessary to make such a change more permanent.

The title of Week 8’s assignment was ‘The Divine Age,’ and was a reference Giambattista Vico’s “theory” of the Four Ages of Man. (Quickly break down the 4 Ages)

Wilson asks participants to read Canto 88 and from Finnegans Wake to read ‘The Mookse and the Gripes’ episode. Mookse and the Gripes was Joyce’s retelling of Aesop’s Fable of ‘The Fox and the Grapes.’ Again, an extremely brief description of this episode is that Joyce made Pope Adrian IV, Mookse, or the Fox and the Gripes were the Irish people. Pope Adrian IV was the first and last British popes. He issued a Papal decree calling for Ireland to be brought tighter under the control of the Catholic Church and also under the British crown.

Wilson then asks a series of questions. One was why was Mooske, or Pope Adrian IV associated with ‘space?’

Canto 88 was part of the “Rock Drill Cantos.” Wikipedia says that the two main sources for the “Rock Drill section was the Confucian Classic of History and a book from a former Senator Hart Benton, which chronicled the bank wars of 1820–1850.

Canto 88 is about the resistance to the Bank of the United States, which was championed by Alexander Hamilton, who was the Secretary of Treasury, and charted from 1791 and went defunct in 1811. The bank faced opposition from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who said the bank would benefit investors at the expense of most people. They also said that the establishment of the bank violated the Constitution which stated that the printing of money was the job of the Congress and should never be delegated to a private bank.

Wilson’s title for the week 9 assignment was ‘The Heroic Age,’ another reference to Vico’s Four Ages of Man. Wilson begins this week’s assignment with two quotes. One from Vico ad one from Jonathan Swift. Both quotes address the human desire for bloodlust in the form of War.

Wilson asks MLA participants to then read Pound’s Cantos # 76 and 61. Then asks then to read a page from Finnegans Wake

Briefly, Canto 76 is part of Pound’s Pisan Cantos, which he began while imprisoned, for treason, on a piece of toilet paper. The Pisan Cantos deal lots with the notion of memory. Canto 76, specifically, opens with a vision of a group of goddesses appearing before Pound. There’s more but I’ll leave it to you to read it

Canto 61 is part of the China Cantos, which run from Canto 52 to 61. In this Canto, Pound mentions two rulers of the Qing Dynasty. Rulers that he believed properly infused the Confucian he loved and institute a way of life based on that. The Qing Dynasty ruled China from 1636 until the Chinese Revolution of 1912 when they were overthrown.

Lastly, Wilson asks participants to find isomorphisms between Vico’s 3 Ages of Man and his and Leary 8CM theory.

Robert Anton Wilson titled Week 10 of the class, “Nonlocality.” The theory of Nonlocality, of course, was a favorite theory of Wilson’s. Today it is referred to mostly as Quantum Entanglement, and that is a lot of physicist’s favorite theory. Engineering principles based on Quantum Entanglement are about to produce ultra-high-speed quantum computers that will dwarf the capacity of computers currently in use.

Wilson opens the lesson with a quote from Kung Fu Tse, “How is it far is if you can think of it?” Wilson thing shares an anecdote about a recent synchro-mesh involving the work of James Joyce.

Next, he tells participants in the course that he caught a quick flu over the weekend after writing the story about his recent synchronicities. The flu completely knocked out of commission for the weekend as he spent most of the time sleeping on the couch or running to the bathroom. Wilson turned on the TV and saw a news report about the “Asiatic Bird Flu.” Of course, now we cannot help but think about COVID-19, but it also calls to mind the SARS outbreak of 2002–2004.

Wilson then shares a contemplation about Mt. Tain Shan, (translated means Peace Mountain) and how Ezra Pound never mentions it in his writing until his Pisan Cantos, which he began while imprisoned under torturous conditions. Wilson mentions Pound’s line in Canto 74 where he says he sees Mt. Tain Shan from his prison cell in Italy. Pound sees it in his mind’s eye, aided by memory and imagination. Wilson suggests too that Pound was able to access Wagadu or “the mind indestructible.” It seems to me that Wilson was suggesting that the ‘mind indestructible’ was isomorphic to his notion of the ‘Non-Local Mind’ which opens up when we access the 8thCircuit.

Wilson concludes his lesson with an anecdote of another news headline. He’d just learned that a newborn Panda in the Washington Zoo had just received its name, Tain Shan. “Make of that what you will,” writes Wilson.

Where does this Non-Local Mind Indestructible exist? Wilson, at this point, had just over one year left to live. Was he preparing on some level to enter Wagadu?

Week 11 was called “Hilaritas,” something Wilson contemplated a lot in his last years. Wilson provides the backstory to the term as he was using it. Wilson was hipped to the term through Ezra Pound, who dug it up in his archival journey through the history books. Pound has quoted John Scotus Erigena on the virtu Hilaritas and Gemisto Plethon in the recognition of divinity as Hilaritas and ‘speed in communication.’ Speed in communication. This is what the Internet has brought the humanity.

Next, Wilson breaks down the notion of Virtu. He writes that the traditional definition of the term meant the essence of a thing and “the power of a process.”

“Erigena believed,” writes Wilson, “that Hilaritas had great power to heal. And Gemisto, as we saw, believed it a symptom of divine possession.” Wilson points out how the theme of Hilaritas runs throughout the Cantos. It appears from the appearance of Aphrodite at the end of Canto 1.

Wilson opened the assignment telling readers that Pound did not believe in “original sin.” Pound called it “the hex hoax.” However, Pound admits to the existence of grumpiness. Paradise is filled with Hilaritas. As the old Jewish proverb says, “God loves a Cheerful man, and so does everyone else too” (Something like that). Finnegans Wake, however, says Wilson, seems preoccupied with original sin. He notes that most Joyce scholars thought Joyce to be parodying the notion.

RAW is dropping some jewels in this assignment. Laying down gold like this, “Pound believes Paradise (=Wagadu) exists perpetually, but grumpiness prevents us from perceiving or experiencing it (Hooo Fasa).

Nest Wilson reports that he had another recent stay in the hospital. “Which I escaped in less than three days, due to the virtu of Hilaritas”

Original Sin was on Wilson’s mind. His question to the class reveals so much. “What do you know of the Buddhist, the Confucian and the Epicurean views concerning Original Sin?” He notes that among Pound’s major heroes were three Epicureans, Malatesta, Jefferson, and Adams) and a few dozen Confucians.

He also asked, “Why do you suppose Jung recommended Joyce as a new Bible for the Western world?”

Wilson ends his dispatch with what became over the years his favorite quote from the Cantos, Canto 120:

“I have tried to write a paradiso Terrestre

Stand Still.

Let the wind speak.

That is paradise.”

Wilson titled his final week’s assignment “In the Mind Indestructible.” The phrase references Pound’s version of a “Paradise Regained,” which is the end of the Cantos. Pound based the structure of the Cantos on Dante’s trilogy, from the Inferno, through to Purgatory, and then Paradise Regained (a reference to John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost.)

Pound trajectory is a linear progress from hell to heaven. Joyce, on the other hand, presents an endless cycle of comedy. Wilson asked which structure participants preferred.

Wilson next synthesizes some of the material we were dealing with in this final dispatch of Tale of the Tribe. He asks participants to view the Totem art featured in a previous assignment as a representation of Vico’s ‘Divine Age,’ to Homer’s Odyssey of the Old Testament, which he categorizes as ‘The Heroic Age, and the Cantos or Finnegans Wake, which Wilson said best represented ‘The Human Age.’ He was asking participants to think about art and literature in the context of an evolving human mind.

Next, he explains to MLA’ers Northrop Frye’s seminal “Anatomy of Criticism,” which helped usher in the New Criticism movement when Frye dropped it back in the dayo. Wilson wrote in Cosmic Trigger vol. 2 that discovering this essay by Frye in his early 20s was just as a major event. Frye’s essay clarified and inspired Wilson to create epic tales just as much as Pound and Joyce did.

Frye’s breakdown says that there are four kinds of prose fiction: Romance, Novel, Confession, and Anatomy. Wilson relates that Frye wrote about a fifth form, which he related to a “sacred text.” Wilson considers Finnegans Wake a Sacred Text according to this model.

RAW then asked participants to identify elements of novel, romance, confession, anatomy, and sacred text within the Cantos and Finns Wake

Wilson was nearing death. He may not have admitted it, but something within him seemed to know the last dance was approaching. Though he was a lifelong fan of Joyce and Pound, he seemed to zero in on Cantos and Finnegans Wake in his last few years. Most people, when approaching their death search for wisdom in the sacred books of old. The Bible, the Koran, Jewish proverbs, etc. Many find comfort in the thought that they are going to heaven where all their loved one reside, looking forever young, and always smiling.

Wilson’s intellectual approach to his coming demise brought him to the Cantos, Finnegans Wake, and the philosophy of Epicurus. Wilson was finding solace at death’s door, not from mythic hopes and wish-fulfillments. He was looking back at the history of humanity for peace of mind. Judging from his great Hilaritas in his last years, it looks like he found something worthwhile from studying these books.

Joyce worked with painstaking detail to layer in as many languages that he spoke, which was a lot, in his “hologrammic prose” method and the result is explosive. Personally, I still feel like a novice in the work of Joyce, but I do know reading Finnegans Wake out loud and while trippy in jelly tab acid, was one of the funniest experiences I had reading a book.

Did Robert Anton Wilson make it to Wagadu?

What about you?

Do you know the way to Wagadu?