Reality Is What You Can Get Away With

by Robert Anton Wilson, Joseph Matheny (introduction)

Here are images of our culture's absurdities, injustices, violence and desires, shot at you in a machine gun like assault on your senses and intellect.A hilarious, chilling and irrevocably mind-altering, - a left brain/right-brain challenge...a conscious-raising experience filled with laughter, rage -- and truth.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Speculative Fiction, Psychology

204 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Robert Anton Wilson was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews. In 1999 he described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth". Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."
In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called "quantum psychology".
Following a career in journalism and as an editor, notably for Playboy, Wilson emerged as a major countercultural figure in the mid-1970s, comparable to one of his coauthors, Timothy Leary, as well as Terence McKenna.

Reviews

[Matt Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

One nation, under surveillance, with wiretaps and urine testing for all.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only R.A.W. book I hadn't read is actually a proposed film script that he completed in the late 80s. Most surprising to me was the fact that he nearly had financial backing for it..to think, in the U.S. in the 1980s..this may have actually been bank-rolled.

There's no 'plot' as such - just an exposition of Wilson's philosophy, spelled out in jump-cuts, animations and some dialogue. The main premise of it seems to be that it's a document discovered by archeologists 500 years from now. They are using it to decipher just what went on in the "Age of Bullshit" (referring to this moment in history).

If you've read any of his other books, the talking points remain the same. If you haven't, then "Reality Is What..." may not be a good place to start. It's a head-trip, for sure--but easily navigated if you're a R.A.W. fan.

[Richard Clay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much much better than The Walls Came Tumbling Down, RAW's other crack at a screenplay - not least because there's no way I can imagine Reality... could ever have made it to any kind of cinema screen, however arthouse. This has some of the scatty fun of The Illuminati Papers - with which it shares one page. A charming dose of Bob.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a trip

[Teo Asinari · Rating 2 out of 5]

Messy idea-salad of rehashed one-liners. Incoherent and tiring, but often funny

[Kitap · Rating 5 out of 5]

More gold!
- Orgy of the Dead

What does God need with a starship?
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

This book purports to be a screenplay that RAW wrote while living in LA, while it is clearly a hilarious exercise in presenting his mind-bending views on all matters in a Dada-esque collage style that borrows Burroughs' cut-up technique and mashes up images from Abe Lincoln in Illinois with many Orson Welles gems. It's pretty darned hilarious when read in a single, overwhelming go.

Alas, this movie will likely never see production, at least by a filmmaker (though may Eris and "Bob" bless them should they, the filmmakers that is, and not Eris and "Bob," choose to do so),

but

as you read the book, the movie unfolds, as Abe says,

"inside your fuckin' heads, you idiots."

[Keith Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The human brain is divided into two hemispheres, the Jane and the Russell. Keep the lasagna flying!

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 2 out of 5]

An illustrated screenplay.