What Book Changed Your Approach to Life?

[DB Roy]

Apologies if a similar thread already exists. In 1986, I was just stationed in Norfolk, VA having spent the previous year in Philadelphia, which I liked a lot more. But things are what they are and I went out on the town to check things out. I walked into a bookstore in a mall--maybe or Borders or a B&N or maybe yet something else.

I was looking around and didn't see much until I came across a book rack with a group of squids crowded around it BSing. There was a book on the rack called "The Illuminatus Trilogy." Suddenly, I had to have it. I don't know why but I had to have that book! I started to reach for it and this damned squid snatched it up. Damn! Then he put it down again. I reached for it and he snatched it up again. Sonofabitch!! I thought, "If he puts it down again, I'm grabbing it!" Lo and behold, he put it down again. I grabbed it and headed for the register. I could see him looking at me in the corner of my eye--watching me. Too bad, buddy.

I rented a flat off the ship and I went there and started to read it and was immediately drawn in. I took it to the ship and read it when I had time. When we put to sea for exercises, I would take the book with me and read it while on switchboard watch (you're not supposed to read but the top watch in the space I stood watch in didn't care what you did on watch as long as you weren't sleeping--"If you want to read then go ahead and read, just don't go to sleep.") I was fascinated by the info in the book. It caught me at the right time in my life. I was a 20-something who was fairly wide read and waiting for something to spark inside me. This book did it without a doubt.

The book talked a lot about Lovecraft whom I was a longtime fan of. And it talked about Pynchon's Lot 49 which I had read a couple of years before--another book that really intrigued me. The authors mentioned Adam Weishaupt and the Illuminati which, at the time, I thought they made up! Then, by digging around, I found out they didn't. I mean, that's what the book did--it awakened me to new things and spurred me on to find out more about them which, in turn, brought into contact with yet more things I had never known about.

By time I had hit my 30s, I was a walking encyclopedia of alternate history, conspiracy theories, occultism, rare and avant-garde literature and so on. Now, I want to make clear that I didn't believe in conspiracy theories nor practice occultism but I was fascinated by them--how they start, how they grow and why. Not only that but Wilson & Shea had drawn disparate threads of my consciousness together in this book. I was introduced to myself! It was the first time I had encountered the last words of Dutch Schultz and so I ordered the book of that title by Burroughs. In fact, my Burroughs collection at this time became huge. I wish I still had all the Burroughs books I had back then. By poring over Dutch Schultz references in other books, I learned about the Harlem racketeers and about the gangster and bootlegging scene during that period. In turn, I became an aficionado of the music of the 20s and 30s and that led into the world of jazz and the marijuana cults.

I carried on voluminous correspondences with really interesting people--occultists, anarchists, performance artists, writers, musicians--from all over the world and they, in turn, would introduce me to someone else. Some, I think, were crazy but that was ok. It's not that I necessarily believed anything they said but found their ability to go outside the box very refreshing. They saw the world through fresh eyes and inspired me to do the same.

Illuminatus taught me not to just stuff my head with facts but also with possibilities. Facts are what you present but possibilities are what you play with and, if you're diligent and lucky, you might just tease out a very interesting fact or two. Illuminatus talked about the mystery of the 23 and the 17. Of course, I began to notice it everywhere. Of course, you could say that about any numbers. But I would find 23 and 17 in odd places so I kept a journal every time I encountered them. I'd email it around to coworkers and friends whenever I added to it. This was over 20 years ago and, recently, an old coworker suddenly sent me an email out of nowhere asking if I still had that journal. It was stuffed with fascinating info and he had some students he wanted to give copies to. Unfortunately, I lost it some time ago.

One thing that I do remember putting in my journal was when Wilson & Shea wrote in Illuminatus about the 23 "being conspicuous by its absence." IOW, the 22 and the 24 will pop up but not the 23. They brought up the movie John Dillinger (who has prominent role in Illuminatus) had seen just prior to his death in Chicago called "Manhattan Melodrama" (1934) where Clark Gable is betting on horses and goes to stall #22 and places a bet and then walks to stall #24 to place another but we never see stall #23. Well, following up on that, I learned that one the FBI agents responsible for killing Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater was none other than Guy Bannister. Years later, Bannister was in New Orleans sharing an office with Lee Harvey Oswald who was passing out pro-communist literature on the streets which was strange since Bannister was fervently anticommunist. Then Oswald kills Kennedy on the 22nd of November 1963 and is, in turn, killed by Jack Ruby on the 24th--making the 23rd conspicuous by its absence. The same week I made that connection, I was looking at a chart of US presidents and noticed that the 22nd and 24th presidents were both Grover Cleveland. Just fun stuff like that. Illuminatus made me look at things differently and it changed me forever because I can't go back to the way I was before and don't want to.

I mean, a lot the stuff in the book is old, old hat to me now (e.g. the symbolism in the dollar bill, Hassan-I-saba). None of it would have fascinated me at all with the level of knowledge and experience that I have with life now. But, at the time, it came along just when it needed to and, boy oh boy, did it hook me. It made me want to investigate everything not just for what was there to learn on its surface but, more importantly, for what may lay beneath it. I learned that underneath, everything is amazingly connected. You might say that, whereas I was a surface dweller before, Illuminatus taught me to travel through the underworld.

So I think back to that day when I first saw the book in that mall. Why did I focus on it and have to have it? And, not surprisingly, I have encountered people online who say the same thing that I do about the book--that it changed the very way they look at things. I mean, we didn't become wild-eyed believers in crazy bullshit but we learned there's more to things than what meets the eye and sometimes, you can't always explain it.

[BookReaderUSA]

There are FAR too many to list.

[youkrst]

yeah i found it really difficult to cite a specific book, other than perhaps the bible.

i can easily name people who have changed my approach to life

Joseph Campbell
William Yeats
A B Kuhn
Alan Watts
George Carlin
Miguel Conner
Robert M Price
Carl Jung
Interbane

.... but the list would be endless seemingly...

Hendrix
Parker
Freak Kitchen
Matt Bellamy
Vinnie Colaiuta
Jeff Beck
George Harrison
Jeff Lynne

it just goes on and on like an "endless flowing stream"

no sooner do i specify a few and a few more spring to mind

like a river of living water flowing out of my innermost being

over the last two weeks or so it's been

noam chomsky
william blum
james corbett
metanoia films

and a few others, including DB Roy

[DB Roy]

But if you think back, there was ONE thing that changed you and opened you up to everything that followed, made you receptive to those things.

[youkrst]

there was ONE thing that changed you and opened you up to everything that followed

hmmmm, being born?

music?

nah... still can't quite put my finger on it, it's like trying to bite your own teeth, they have to break off before you can do that properly.

maybe when i first got symbolism, metaphor that was a watershed, when i saw that everything was a metaphor, that was a breakthrough.

michael hedges
bireli lagrene

[trichobezoar]

the book that changed my approach to life? there are three books, in particular, and a series--with seven books, so ten in all. i'm sure there are more, but these few came to mind almost immediately after reading the thread.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
Successful Intelligence: How Practical and Creative Intelligence Determine Success in Life by Robert J. Sternberg
Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action by Pierre Bourdieu
and... dun dun duuuun! The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling lol

i would list why these books changed my view of myself and the world we live in, but my hands are hurting a lot. (i have carpal tunnel syndrome.) i'll save the "why" for a later day. 'hope you don't mind.

: )

[trichobezoar]

it's been 5 days since i last posted... my bad. um, to answer the "why?" reading Godel, Escher, Bach helped me realize that i was an intellectual. i read it when i was 16. i didn't understand the math portion of it, but i loved it just the same. Successful Intelligence made me realize that there was more to life than a high iq--much more. Practical Reason was a book i read for a sociology class and it helped me see how concepts and paradigms make the world go round. and the Harry Potter series? it helped me enjoy reading again. i began to read prolifically after reading the series--my love of reading returned. *nods*

[janny]

Too many to mention, however, just recently I've read How To Save a Life, and it really struck me to the core and made me rethink things.

[Suzanne]

I have been reading and enjoying, "Alan Turing; The Enigma" for the last few months. What I enjoy the most about this book is how it encourages me to research new ideas, the philosophy of mathmatics is an example. This book has changed my approach to life because it has reinforced not only my desire to learn, but my capacity to do so and how exciting that is to me!

[DB Roy]

All I know about Alan Turing is the Turing Machine--a hypothetical machine that either simulates consciousness or explains how consciousness really works. I think most believe it only simulates consciousness. I'm one of them.