Déclassé / “small change” / The Leftovers

‘most of the literary intelligentsia still believe in those great dichotomies between the serious and the trivial, high art and low art, and all that bullshit.’ – RAW, 1977 interview, Beyond Chaos & Beyond

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Picasso’s “small change” – the little doodles and creative bits and pieces (aka “junk”) that littered his studios – exhibited his genius to the same degree as his “finished” “authentic” artworks, in the view of his friend, Jean Cocteau. That might seem a banal observation these days, when we think of the high monetary value of, say, a scrawled autograph (if it’s from someone famous). But Cocteau knew Picasso back in 1915 – he said those who claimed to like the Spaniard’s art but didn’t notice or appreciate his throwaway fragments (his “small change”, as Cocteau put it*) liked him for the wrong reasons.

On RAW’s “small change” surpassing Big Authors’ Big Denominations

I’ve read numerous widely praised non-fiction books (several from celebrated authors) that contain a few good ideas padded with a lot of fluff. And, to be frank, some of the good ideas look not so great to me over time. But those books and their authors always seemed to receive much more press and attention than Robert Anton Wilson ever did.

When on fire (which seemed often), RAW produced striking insights in every paragraph – not just one or two per book. But those insights, like his books, appeared difficult to categorise and “market” in the way that most respectable publishing houses and mass media like to categorise and pigeonhole. Spanning multi- topics, genres, gestalts and “tones” they seemed – and still seem – inexhaustible as well as uncategorisable (“generalist”? Certainly not specialised).

Déclassé & CROC

RAW mentioned that H.P. Lovecraft and Raymond Chandler influenced him, but that horror and detective stories by most other authors bored him by comparison. He says Lovecraft and Chandler tend to be regarded as “déclassé” (low-class, inferior status) by the intelligentsia, and Bob W. himself probably falls into this category from the perspective of the Custodians of Respectable Official Culture (CROC) who write prominent newspaper reviews and commission successful “mainstream” books and decide what’s important and what isn’t.

But some of the authors that Bob cites, and likes, who could be seen as outré, “outsider” or déclassé, etc (like himself) definitely seem to have risen in status (as ranked by CROC) since RAW wrote about them. A few have even become quite fashionable (Lovecraft, Chandler, Philip K. Dick). The same has happened to some of the ideas RAW promoted – eg Universal Basic Income (or its equivalents) – which at the time got emphatically dismissed as unrealistically utopian or otherwise naive/flaky by most of the Important Expert Commentators that I read.

Despite the vaunted democratization of media by the internet, I generally find that something like CROC very much prevails with things like book sales and whether someone is well-known enough to have popular influence, etc. And a lot of people still seem in awe of celebrity and fame, of course – and maybe, more than ever, confuse those things with merit.

(Incidentally, I recall seeking out a copy of William Gibson’s Neuromancer around 35 years ago – years before Gibson appeared on the “Officially Important Writer” radar, and purely on the basis of Timothy Leary’s enthusiastic raves, which I read in obscure imported US zines, in Forbidden Planet bookshop, London, circa 1986).

RAW’s info-art form?

‘I see this book as a machine to disconnect the user from all maps and models whatsoever.’ – RAW, Right Where You Are Sitting Now

I would tentatively posit a reason why Bob W. never made the Big Time: he presented a new and mostly unrecognised form of combining ideas. Recall that Bob practised bisociation, dissociation of ideas, Dadaist cut-up methods (as popularised by William Burroughs), Edward de Bono’s Po, Sufi and “hermetic” language techniques, E-prime and other General Semantics devices, not to mention several other semantic and cognitive gimmicks and systems, in order to generate new ways of seeing, thinking and communicating.

‘Une maison est une machine-à-habiter’ – Le Corbusier

‘As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.’ – Comte de Lautréamont

Much of RAW’s output looked to me as if his “synthesis” of ideas came structured by something akin to Surrealism or Cubism (or post-Dada astroluxe space jazz… or something). Not the linguistic form (as in Chomsky’s focus) so much as the ideational “content”; not the narratives (fiction or non-fiction), but the structure of conceptual-takes – juxtapositions of genres and belief systems, notions, impressions, observations, metaphors, logical arguments, cosmic ironies and down-to-earth opinions. (It seems that certain other genius writers do something similar in novels – but if you can name anyone else who does the same thing as RAW does with ideas, outside of fiction format, please let me know!).

‘Wilson is a Quantum Leap.’ – Israel Regardie

RAW aficionados and enthusiasts (like me) get excited when a new RAW article or interview (or book – check out The Starseed Signals if you haven’t already) is uncovered and published, because there seems a high probability of new and different insights and aspects. Or unpredictable takes on previously unvisited subjects. Or outstandingly hilarious riffs or jokes we somehow haven’t heard before, etc.

Which, no doubt, is why many of us now miss RAW’s style of commentary on current events (in 2021 or even 2046) – we crave that particular flavour and level of weirdly unpredictable, high-information genius, even when it takes the form of “small change” – disposable one-liners, spontaneous chimerical humour, original capsule reviews (of various books or films, etc) that were probably never destined for the New York Times cultural review section.

The Leftovers

Talking of capsule reviews, did you see ‘The Leftovers‘ (HBO series)? I started watching on the basis of its intriguing sci-fi premise – by the middle of the first series (episode 5) it started to lose me, but fortunately I persevered to the next episode, which focused on the ‘Nora Durst’ character, and from then on I found it a sometimes wild, surreal and increasingly gripping drama.

I mention it here as I imagine that – given its themes – it might appeal to some other RAW fans: strange belief systems and cults emerging from reactions to a bizarre global event (that’s the sci-fi premise). And most of the main characters seem to be going a little bit nuts under the strain. You’re not quite sure if you’re seeing “real” alternate realities or just beliefs that have taken too strong a hold on the characters (or whether there “is” any difference). Entertaining TV for these Covid times – although it was produced back in 2014-2017.

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* As cited in Picasso: His Life, His Art (edited by Domenico Porzio & Marco Valsecchi, 1979). Cocteau writes, “I keep a cardboard game die that Picasso once cut out and painted. I use it to try people out. Whoever ignores this tiny object and claims to like Picasso does not like him for the right reasons.”