From: m.driussi@genie.geis.com
Subject: (urth) Venus not in RAW
Date: Tue, 12 May 98 02:30:00 GMT

What a lot of activity has been going on.

Well, I've been away.  And in my awayness I found opportunity to skim
through the Illuminatus! trilogy, because I was fairly certain that
it really =was= in there that I first read the curious detail(s) about
how the statute "Venus di Milo" was a modern fake, a tale also a part
of PEACE.  I remember first making this claim about ten years ago, when
both works were more freshly read.

I couldn't find it.  More's the pity--it really =should= be in there,
since it fits ILLUMINATUS! so well.

Well then, if not RAW (and it could not have been any other RAW since
that was all I'd read by the time I read PEACE, or so I think), then
who?  Think, think: something Mediterranean, perhaps Greek; mysterious;
gnostic and/or illuminated, to a greater or lesser degree; about
conspiracy of one kind or another . . .

Might it be THE MAGUS?  (Spooky that alga recommended this recently.)
So I skimmed through that one.  Skimming ILLUMINATUS! was depressing
enough--it made me want to re-read it, and yet here I'd just ruined
that for the moment by skimming.  Skimming THE MAGUS was even worse .
. . what a book.  It made me ache, but again, desire to re-read
thwarted by the action of skimming.  And still no Venus-the-fake.

Where, where?

THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET seemed like a long shot.  It was.  Another
re-reading ruined for the season.

Where could it possibly be?  ZORBA THE GREEK?  Didn't have a copy on
hand.  Search abandoned for the moment.

Back to THE MAGUS.  Peter Wright's essays play big on the "Godgame"
of THE MAGUS, and while I knew he was (W)right, I was not remembering
how very right he is.  Wolfe has mentioned THE MAGUS in an essay,
and/or an interview, I can't remember at the moment exactly where.

But gee, reel back your reading history fifteen or twenty years, see
what you find, wonder how they shaped your life at that time, how
they formed the dramas of those days, how they plotted the curve of
your adventure.  How often they quote from the same authors!  You
come back to the room of your own head and find that it has been
rented out to folks who begin their chapters with quotes from de
Sade--oh brother.

=mantis=

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